Controversies around Zhironovsky
Zhirinovsky has been accused of anti-Semitism (for his part, he suggested that Jews were often to blame for anti-Semitism[6]) for statements in which he accused Jews of ruining Russia, sending Russian women to foreign countries as prostitutes, selling children and organs to the Western world, and provoking the Holocaust. He reportedly even praised Adolf Hitler's ideology of Nazism[16] and befriended Edwin Neuwirth, an Austrian industrialist and a "proud" former officer of the Waffen-SS who has denied that the Nazis used gas chambers to kill Jews during World War II, leading some of the German media to denounce him as "Russia's Hitler".[7][14] Zhirinovsky has expressed admiration for the 1996 United States presidential election contender Pat Buchanan, referring positively to a comment in which Buchanan labeled the United States Congress "Israeli-occupied territory", and said that both countries were "under occupation" and that "to survive, we could set aside places on US and Russian territories to deport this small but troublesome tribe." Buchanan strongly rejected this endorsement, saying he would provide safe haven to persecuted minorities if Zhirinovsky were ever elected Russia's president, eliciting a harsh response by Zhirinovsky: "You soiled your pants as soon as you got my congratulations. Who are you afraid of? Zionists?"[17] Zhirinovsky repeatedly denied his father's Jewishness until he published Ivan Close Your Soul in July 2001, describing how his father, Volf Isaakovich Eidelshtein, changed his surname from Eidelshtein to Zhirinovsky. He rhetorically asked, "Why should I reject Russian blood, Russian culture, Russian land, and fall in love with the Jewish people only because of that single drop of blood that my father left in my mother's body?"[18]
Besides expressing his hatred for Turks and Caucasians,[19] Zhirinovsky also called for the deportation of all Chinese from Russian Far East.[20] During the 1992 visit to the United States, Zhirinovsky called on television "for the preservation of the white race" and warned that the white Americans were in danger of turning their country over to black and Hispanic people.[13]
[edit] Foreign relations
Zhirinovsky is well known for his boasts pertaining to other countries, having expressed a desire to reunite countries of the ex-Soviet "near abroad" with Russia to within the Russia's borders of 1900 (including Finland and Poland). He has advocated forcibly retaking Alaska from the United States (which would then become "a great place to put the Ukrainians"), turning Kazakhstan into "Russia's back yard", and provoking wars between the clans and the nations of the former Soviet Union and occupying what will remain of it when the wars are over.[16] Zhirinovsky, who encourages separatism within the Russian minority in the Baltic states,[7] endorsed the forcible re-occupation of these countries and said nuclear waste should be dumped there.[16][21]
Zhirinovsky hailed what he described as "the democratic process" in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, whom he supported strongly. The friendship dated at least until the first Persian Gulf War in 1991, during which time Zhirinovsky sent several armed volunteers from the "Falcons of Zhirinovsky" group to support the Iraqi president. Allegations have dogged Zhirinovsky closely since the fall of Baghdad that he personally profited from illicit oil sales as part of the Oil-for Food scandal, a charge investigated in 2005 by the Independent Inquiry Committee into the Oil-for-Food Programme (Volcker Commission) and the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI).[22] He is also close to the Serbian nationalist leader and war crimes suspect Vojislav Šešelj.[16]
Zhirinovsky said he's dreaming of a day "when Russian soldiers can wash their boots in the warm waters of the Indian Ocean and switch to year-round summer uniforms",[23] following the Russia's conquest of Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey and occupation of the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean.[19] He also declared that Bulgaria should annex the Republic of Macedonia, and said that Romania is an artificial state supposedly created by Italian Gypsies who seized territory from Russia, Bulgaria and Hungary.[14]
Russia’s southern neighbor Georgia has been another frequent target of Zhirinovsky’s rhetoric. After Aslan Abashidze was ousted from power in 2004 as leader of Ajara, an autonomous Georgian region, Zhirinovsky worried that similar revolutions would occur in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.[24] Highly critical of Georgia’s pro-Western line,[25] he is an energetic supporter of the Georgia’s breakaway republic of Abkhazia; in a high-profile incident in August 2004, he departed on a campaign to promote a tourist season in Abkhazia aboard a cruise ship which was briefly intercepted by a Georgian coast guard vessel.[26] After war broke out between Russia and Georgia in 2008, Zhirinovsky argued in favor of Russian recognition of Abkhazian and South Ossetian independence. "We should have taken the whole territory of Georgia under control," he complained, and "arrested all Georgian officers and taken them here, like to Guantanamo, arrested Saakashvili and handed him over for trial by a military tribunal and gone to the border with Turkey." [27] In 2009, he called the decision to hold NATO military exercises in Georgia during Soviet Victory Day celebrations in Moscow a "total revision of the history of the Great Patriotic War" and suggested that Russia should respond by conducting large-scale joint military drills with Cuba and Venezuela in the Caribbean Sea.[28]
Zhirinovsky has been expelled from Bulgaria for insulting its president and was barred from entry to Germany.[29] In 2005, Kazakhstan declared Zhirinovsky persona non grata on the territory of his historical homeland, due to the politician's controversial speech about the change of the Russia-Kazakhstan border, in which he questioned the Kazakhs' place in history.[30]
In 2006, Zhirinovsky became persona non grata also in Ukraine, following his statements regarding the January 2006 Russia-Ukraine gas dispute (this ban was revoked in 2007). In reaction to Condoleezza Rice's criticism of Russian foreign policy during the dispute, Zhirinovsky stated that "Condoleezza Rice needs a company of soldiers [and] needs to be taken to barracks where she would be satisfied."[31] At the film premiere of the film Taras Bulba in 2009 he stated: “Everyone who sees the film will understand that Russians and Ukrainians are one people — and that the enemy is from the West".[32] In February 2010 Zhirinovsky claimed that Eastern Ukraine would become part of Russia “in five years" claiming that "the population is largely Russian” and called President-elect of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych “basically Russian” (Yanukovych's father was an ethnic Belarusian[33] and Yanukovych refers to himself as Ukrainian[34]).[35]
On the November 2006 death by poisoning of Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko in London, Zhirinovsky said: "Any traitor must be eliminated using any methods. If you have joined the special services to work, then you should work, but to betray, to run away abroad, to give up the secrets you learned while working - all of this looks bad."[36][37] Sergei Abeltsev, Zhirinovsky's former bodyguard and State Duma member from the LDPR, added: "The deserved punishment reached the traitor. I am sure his terrible death will be a warning to all the traitors that in Russia the treason is not to be forgiven. I would recommend to citizen Berezovsky to avoid any food at the commemoration for his crime accomplice Litvinenko."[38] In the 2007 election, political patronage from Zhirinovsky enabled Litvinenko murder suspect Andrei Lugovoi to win election to the Russian parliament and thus the formal parliamentary immunity.[15] He also accused Great Britain (according to him, "the most barbaric country on the planet") of fomenting the World War I, the October Revolution, World War II, and the collapse of the Soviet Union.[39]
[edit] Nuclear threats
In 1999, at the start of the Second Chechen War, Zhirinovsky, the ardent supporter of the first war in Chechnya in the mid-1990s, advocated hitting some Chechen villages with tactical nuclear weapons.[40] He has also advocated using nuclear weapons and naval blockade-imposed starvation in a case of Russia's war against Japan.[16] In 2008, during the resulting political row between the United Kingdom and Russia, he suggested dropping nuclear bombs over the Atlantic Ocean in an effort to flood Britain.[7] Among his early threats, Zhirinovsky claimed Russia possesses "Elipton," a weapon of mass destruction supposedly more powerful than nuclear weapons.[14]
[edit] Personal violence
Zhirinovsky also has a history of igniting personal violence in political contexts. In his notorious debate with Boris Nemtsov in 1995 a "juice fight" broke out.[41] In 2003, Zhirinovsky engaged in a fistfight after a television debate with Mikhail Delyagin.[42] In 2005, Zhirinovsky ignited a brawl in the parliament by spitting at a Rodina party legislator, Andrei Saveliyev.[43] In 2008, he has showed himself shooting a rifle at the targets representing his political rivals.[7] During the 2008 televised presidential debate, he threatened Nikolai Gotsa, the representative of Democratic Party of Russia candidate Andrei Bogdanov with violence, saying he's going to "smash his head" and ordering his bodyguard to "shoot that bastard over there in the corridor". Gotsa sued Zhirinovsky in civil court for 1 million rubles (approximately US$38,000) in damages and eventually received a judgment of 30,000 rubles (approximately US$1,150).[44]
[edit] Other controversies
In 2006, in answer to the Ramzan Kadyrov's support for polygamy in Chechnya, Zhirinovsky said it should be applied across Russia.[45] To eradicate bird flu, he proposed arming all of Russia's population and ordering them and the troops to shoot down the migrant birds returning to Russia from wintering.[46] He has also threatened to remove restrictions on arms sales to Iran and proposed to sell the disputed Kurile Islands to Japan for $50m.[29]
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As copied from Wikipedia.
