Along the way: what interested Putin at the exhibition about Zhirinovsky
On April 24, Vladimir Putin arrived at the exhibition dedicated to the 80th anniversary of Vladimir Zhirinovsky's birth. The President listened to stories from the life of the LDPR leader and examined unique exhibits from the archives. The figure of the flamboyant politician, who passed away four years ago, still remains popular among Russians: now a certain "nostalgia for Zhirinovsky" is noticeable in society, political scientists say. How Muammar Gaddafi's Bedouin cape turned out to be among the exhibits and what the main liberal Democrat said about his acquaintance with Vladimir Putin is in the Izvestia article.
Putin at the exhibition "Zhirinovsky. Continued"
Leonid Slutsky, who took over the leadership of the Liberal Democratic Party in April 2022, when Vladimir Zhirinovsky passed away after a long illness, conducted a tour of the exposition in the capital's Manege for the head of state.
Russian President Vladimir Putin visits an exhibition at the Manege dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the birth of the politician, founder of the Liberal Democratic Party Vladimir Zhirinovsky
The President viewed the exhibition with interest, having listened not only to the well-known facts about the life of the outstanding politician, who would have turned 80 on April 25, but also to some curious stories from his life. And because of Zhirinovsky's flamboyant and explosive nature, there were a lot of them. Among them, for example, is the case when, in the 1990s, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi saved Zhirinovsky from the cold by giving him his Bedouin cape. The politician himself liked to remember this — Gaddafi then hosted guests in his tent and, noticing that one of them was cold, ordered to give him a handmade camel's hair cape. The President appreciated this unusual exhibit with a smile.
Vladimir Putin has always recognized Zhirinovsky's contribution to shaping the political system of modern Russia, emphasizing that the LDPR leader's knowledge, experience and organizational skills were in full demand in parliamentary activities. The President has repeatedly said that the Liberal Democratic Party is rightfully considered one of the leading political forces in the country. It was established in 1990, and Zhirinovsky headed it for more than 30 years and was a deputy of the State Duma of all eight convocations.
The first meeting between Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Zhirinovsky, as the leader of the Liberal Democrats recalled, took place in 1993 during the constitutional conference, which was led by Anatoly Sobchak— then the mayor of St. Petersburg.
"The 93rd year. A constitutional conference is underway. I am the leader of the party, and all parties have turned on who wants, Sobchak led. And when he returned to St. Petersburg, he told Putin, and Putin was his deputy: look closely, Zhirinovsky and this party, he speaks very well about the Constitution, well done," Zhirinovsky recalled in an interview.
The LDPR leader regularly participated in the presidential elections of the Russian Federation, including in 2000, 2012 and 2018, when Vladimir Putin was a participant in the campaign. In April 2022, after the death of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the head of state personally came to say goodbye to the politician - he left a bouquet of red roses and stood silently by the coffin.
Despite the LDPR's status as an opposition party, Zhirinovsky regularly acted as a partner of the current government, for example, during the 1993 referendum on the adoption of a new Constitution, said Evgeny Minchenko, head of the Minchenko Consulting communications holding. At that moment, the adoption of the Constitution was the key goal of Boris Yeltsin's team, and Zhirinovsky, whose party sensationally won first place in the State Duma elections that same year, took a constructive position that helped the authorities maintain stability in the country at the right time, the political scientist added.
— When in 2016, I, at that time the vice-president of the Russian Association for Public Relations, presented Vladimir Volfovich with the Hamburg Bill political prize "For his long—term contribution to the political and social stability of Russia," he even shed tears and said: "Finally, they have correctly understood the function that I perform in the state," Minchenko told Izvestia.
The LDPR leader often asked uncomfortable but important questions for the country's future. And the search for answers to them allowed the entire state system to develop, political scientist Dmitry Yelovsky noted in an interview with Izvestia.
— Vladimir Putin, as you know, appreciates opponents who sincerely root for the fate of Russia, offer constructive solutions and are ready to take responsibility and engage in joint work. Zhirinovsky was one of those politicians," he said.
Why is "nostalgia for Zhirinovsky" growing?
The exhibition "Zhirinovsky. Continuation. LDPR" was held from April 11 to 23. On the first day alone, about 3 thousand people visited it, and now the bill goes to tens of thousands. The Moscow Manege has already announced that everyone who did not have time to attend it will be able to do so on an additional day — April 25. And see, for example, the famous propaganda "loaf" on which Zhirinovsky traveled through villages with a loudspeaker, his student notes from 1959, and even the typewriter on which the first party program was created.
The main image of the exhibition is the legendary Zhirinovsky "train", which passes through the epochs: from childhood, political struggle in the 90s to the station "My predictions have come true".
"I was very, very touched by the station called Detstvo,— Alexey, one of the visitors to the exhibition, told Izvestia. — I did not expect that an exhibition about such a scandalous and high-profile politician would begin with absolute silence and personal tragedy. The video is the strongest impression. There Zhirinovsky, already an adult, walks around an empty room and remembers. There's real pain and tears in his eyes. And these are his words about his mother, their hard life.... It breaks the soul. Under the shell of an outrageous man was a boy who learned early to lose and survive. I liked that while watching the exhibition, there is no feeling of pity, but only admiration for this person.
Vladimir Zhirinovsky has repeatedly spoken about his difficult childhood. He was born in difficult post-war conditions, so sometimes he went hungry. There were many of his personal memories at the exhibition, for example, about the most delicious candy that he ate in kindergarten, picking sweets from the Christmas tree, because they were rare in the house. Zhirinovsky was the sixth child in the family — his mother Alexandra Pavlovna had five children from her first marriage. The future politician did not know his father, Wolf Edelstein. He left almost immediately after the birth of his son — he was deported to Poland, and later he moved to Israel.
"Three months later, my mother came to him with me, a three-month-old, in her arms. She stayed there for a short time, persuading her father to return to Alma Ata. But the embassy was categorical: they say, only the wife can return, she has a Soviet passport, and the husband must stay in Poland. But my mother couldn't leave her elders in Alma Ata - she had five more children. So they broke up, corresponded, mom sent him photos," the politician once said.
Both this personal difficult story and the vivid image of a modern politician do not allow his figure to "fade away" even after passing away: "nostalgia for Zhirinovsky" is clearly growing in society, who was undoubtedly a bright figure and speaker, political scientists say. And today, unfortunately, Evgeny Minchenko concluded, of course, there was no substitute for him.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
