Zhirinovksy: Fascist? KGB plant?

[zodiac <zodiac@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I mentioned I had just read Boris Kagarlitsky's _Restoration in Russia_.
(Kagarlitsky is a Russian writer and winner of the Isaac Deutscher Memorial
Prize for another book, _The Thinking Reed_.)

There's an interesting chunk of stuff on Zhirinovksy -- who Kagarlitsky
insists bears no relation to fascism. (He supposedly one a couple of
defamation suits for being labelled a fascist.) In demonstrating that Z.
ain't no "brown shirt," K. delves into what a true fascist movement needs as
a basis -- a healthy petty bourgeoisie, of which Russia simply has none. I
thought it might be interesting, considering the on-going cyberseminar...

So, here, for your "fair use" (honest!) reading pleasure, a big chunk of
K.'s book.

Ken.

~~~~~~~

Zhirinovsky's political career had begun as if from nothing at
precisely the moment when Gorbachev's perestroika was entering its
decisive phase.  At that point, in the spring of 1990, a multi-party
system was proclaimed, and a ridiculous individual appeared on the
scene, heading an organization with the absurd name 'Liberal Democratic
Party of the Soviet Union'.  The censored press immediately began
giving him detailed coverage, and his face began flashing onto the
television screens.  The party leader gave endless interviews,
explaining that his mother had been Russian and his father a lawyer,
and providing confused explanations of the essence of scientific
liberalism.  He travelled about the world, 'forging political links'.
All this aroused envy.  Zhirinovsky's party comrades convened an
extraordinary congress and expelled him.  The victors even wrote a poem
about it:

     His drama was over,
     His political path at an end.
     It had poured out like water from a tap
     That someone had forgotten to turn off.

However, the celebrations were short-lived.  Zhirinovsky immediately
gathered new supporters, and before long he once again headed the
Liberal Democratic Party (LDP); the rebels were scattered.  The
impression produced by all this was ludicrous and pathetic, but in
dissident circles people began to suspect that the authorities had
created Zhirinovsky's party specifically in order to undermine the
influence of genuine liberal organizations.  When these rumours reached
the ears of the Liberal Democratic leader, he immediately approached
the KGB and obtained a statement declaring that he was not an employee
of the security service.

Zhirinovsky still had almost nothing to say about the greatness of
Russia.  Most of his discourses were on private property and on rooting
out the totalitarian past; in this, he resembled other 'democrats'.
Nevertheless, he was not accepted in official democratic circles, where
people regarded him as a provocateur.

After Yeltsin finally consolidated his position at the head of the
Russian state apparatus, Zhirinovsky began more and more often to
criticize the new authorities.  It is true that he simultaneously
attacked both communists and democrats.  Miraculously, the television
stations, which conducted an unceasing propaganda war against Yeltsin's
opponents, opened their doors wide for Zhirinovsky.

Anyone who deviated even a little from the official line of the Russian
government knew that the doors of the editorial offices were closed to
them, and that even a brief appearance on a television screen was an
unattainable dream.  It was to take years of effort before the
information blockade was partially broken towards the middle of the
1990s.  But for Zhirinovsky, things were different.  The more he
attacked the democrats, the more they helped him get his message out.

Again and again Zhirinovsky received assistance.  In 1991 the Supreme
Soviet, at that point still headed and controlled by Yeltsin, allowed
him to run in the presidential elections even though he had not
gathered the necessary 100,000 signatures.  The censored state
television carried detailed coverage of every statement by the LDP
leader, and journalists of the official press did not miss the
slightest chance to cite his utterances.  In the autumn of 1993
Zhirinovsky's party was not banned for a single day, since it had not
objected to the shelling of the parliament.

During the 1993 elections, Zhirinovsky again received help.  First he
was invited to participate in the Constitutional Assembly, and then
provided with television air time on credit.  After the elections the
television station directors revealed that our hero had paid for
lengthy broadcasts with promissory notes.  No one else managed this
feat; from all the others, the stations demanded immediate payment, and
the communists and the Agrarian Party were unable to mount a propaganda
effort for lack of funds.

These mysteries are easily explained.  The authorities needed
Zhirinovsky.  At first he discredited the democratic movement.  Then he
was used to weaken the communists and nationalist groups, to sow
discord in the opposition, and to provoke constant squabbles in the
opposition milieu.  If the actions of the authorities were absurd, and
the utterances of the country's rulers often simply barbaric,
Zhirinovsky counterbalanced this, turning the actions of the opposition
into a preposterous farce.  At protest meetings of many thousands of
people, for some reason every Russian television camera crew recorded
footage only of Zhirinovsky, even if the organizers were not permitting
him to speak.

Of course, the interest which Zhirinovsky held for journalists was not
to be explained only by the urgings of influential people.  Among the
political leaders of the 'new Russia', Zhirinovsky was the most
colourful figure.  Not one of his appearances went off without scandal.
 For correspondents of popular publications not much inclined to
serious analysis, he provided a continuous flow of fresh material.

Journalists and political opponents openly called Zhirinovsky a
fascist.  Several times he took people to court and won the cases.
Tlese court decisions were perfectly justified; in Yeltsin's Russia,
the words 'fascism' and 'fascist' meant nothing whatever.  This was
simply invective exchanged by representatives of the authorities and
the opposition.  Communists and nationalists condemned 'demofascism',
and government ideologues spoke constantly of the gcommunist menace'.
No one even bothered to ask what fascism was, what its social character
might be, and whether a potential base for it existed in Russia.

If someone found time to look into Soviet history textbooks, he or she
would find there a frequently recurring thesis to the effect that
fascism is closely linked to capitalism.  And this is true: fascist
regimes have arisen only on the basis of capitalist economies.  The
fact that non-capitalist systems have developed their own forms of
totalitarianism is something quite unrelated.  One way or another,
however, the ideology of nationalism appeared on the earth together
with the growth of the bourgeoisie and the rise of the bourgeois state
system.  Fascism as an extreme form of nationalist doctrine arose when
this system was in crisis.  When the multinational Soviet Union was
destroyed and replaced with a series of national states, which then set
out to construct capitalist economies, the conditions were in fact
created in which a fascist movement might appear and spread.  This was
especially true since at the moment of its formation the Russian
national state was in a wretched condition, and Russian capitalism was
in crisis from the very first day of its existence.

However, the more we reflect on the threat of Russian fascism, the more
obvious it is that none of this has the slightest relation to
Zhirinovsky.  Fascism is always a movement.  Although fascist
organizations have used elections in order to win power, fascism is
basically a mass extraparliamentary movement of the petty bourgeoisie,
embittered against the working class and against liberal democracy,
which is incapable of defending small property-owners.  But a movement
is precisely what Zhirinovsky lacks.  His politics are a one-man show,
while his statements have been thoroughly 'electoral'.  What he needs
is a voice, articles in the press.  He has never tried to mobilize his
supporters.  In Russia there has never been a multi-million-strong mass
of enraged burgers, since we have not possessed burgers at all.

Of course, small fascist groups could not fail to arise in Russia as in
Western countries.  Their weight and influence, however, have not been
greater than in Europe, but less.  During the crisis of 1993 an open
split took place among extreme rightists.  Some groups supported the
parliament, seeing in it their salvation from 'masonic forces', while
others supported a strong presidential power, which accorded more
closely with their ideology than did parliamentarism.  These latter
views were expounded in some detail in the newspapers by Dim Dimych
Vasilev, the founder of Pamyat and patriarch of the Russian far right.
Vasilev defended and gave his blessing to Yeltsin's coup.

Behind the petty-bourgeois fascist movements in Europe stood large
financial and industrial capital, alarmed by the growth of the workers'
movement and by the appearance of anti-capitalist alternatives.  The
more real these alternatives became, the more pressing was the need of
the elites to find a way out of the crisis through fascist methods.
But here as well, there was nothing resembling the policies of
Zhirinovsky.  Russian finance capital is linked not to national
industry, but to commercial speculation.  Russian financiers regard
industry at best as a source of funds.

Among the people elected to the duma on the LDP list, there were more
than a few entrepreneurs of middling means.  They gave Zhirinovsky
money for the party's campaign.  But none of these people bore the
slightest resemblance to the German industrialists who financed Hitler.
These business entrepreneurs simply wanted to get into parliament in
order to solve their own problems, or, as deputies, to receive immunity
from prosecution.  The deal they struck with Zhirinovsky - money, in
exchange for future mandates - made it possible for the LDP to run an
extensive campaign in 1993, but did not allow the party to create a
strong parliamentary fraction.  Squabbles broke out among the
politicians, while the business people simply occupied themselves with
their own affairs.

For all prominent political figures in Yeltsin's Russia, there is one
general recipe for success: manipulation of popular discontent, through
the use of 'democratic methods' such as elections, referendums and
press articles, combined with political intrigue at the top level.  In
this sense Zhirinovsky has differed little from Yeltsin, Gaidar and
even such 'moderate pragmatists' as Shakhrai and Volsky.

The 'strong power' and the 'people's leader' embodying the national
ethos are only external attributes of fascism.  All these attributes
were clearly evident in Yeltsin's movement.  Nevertheless, Yeltsin did
not become a real Fuhrer.  Vladimir Vol'fovich was even less like a
Fuhrer.  Ideologically, Zhirinovsky is clearly not of a fascist bent.
During the election campaign he spent a good deal of time agitating for
the rights of sexual and national minorities ('homosexuals and
Gagauzy') [Translator's note: the Gagauz are a small Turkic-speaking
national minority in southern Moldavia].  Zhirinovsky's book The Last
Push to the South features a strange combination of bombastic arguments
about the greatness of everything Russian with appeals for tolerance
and pluralism.  On the first page the author declares: 'the main thing
is that there should not be enmity, that no particular nation should
dominate, that there should not be discrimination ... it is wrong to
bind everyone to a single party, to a single idea, to one concept.'

'Less heroism!' is the appeal Zhirinovsky addresses to his readers.
'If we all sacrifice ourselves, who is going to live in our country
after that?'This sounds almost like Brecht's dictum: 'Unhappy is the
land that has need of heroes.' But while speaking out against
fanaticism and extremism, Zhirinovsky at the same time calls on
Russians to make 'a last push to the south', to break through to the
Indian Ocean.  He promises that the Orthodox Church will be dominant in
society.

With Zhirinovsky there are many such loose ends, but there is no great
problem in this.  Fascism, Stalinism and Maoism are relatively
integrated and consistent ideologies.  Totalitarianism requires
consistency.  A totalitarian regime needs a certain logic even in its
demagogy.  It is a quite different matter that the superficially
logical constructs of totalitarian propaganda conflict with the diverse
and multi-faceted character of life itself, reducing it to
depersonalized and hence false formulae.  Zhirinovsky's demagogy is of
a quite different order.  This is democratic demagogy, something
familiar even in ancient Athens.  Among Zhirinovsky's precursors can be
numbered such populist politicians as Ross Perot in the United States,
Tyminski in Poland, and of course, Boris Yeltsin in Russia.

Through manipulating public discontent while avoiding confrontation
with the authorities, Zhirinovsky scored a sensational success in
December 1993.  It is true that other opposition forces helped him in
this.  The communists conducted a lacklustre campaign, vacillating
between efforts to outdo all others in the use of patriotic slogans and
attempts to prove their respectability.  Social problems vanished
almost entirely from their propaganda.  While achieving a certain
degree of success, the Communist Party let slip its chance of becoming
a leading opposition force.  The right-centrist Party of Russian Unity
and Accord was quite incapable of putting forward an intelligible
explanation of what it was for or against.  The centrist Civic Union
failed to make any impact at all.

Protest votes flowed off almost entirely to Zhirinovsky.  Although his
Liberal Democrats were without local organizational structures and
failed to offer a clear alternative, their election campaign attracted
disappointed and confused Yeltsin admirers.

Zhirinovsky most of all resembled the leaders of the 'democrats' as
they were when they came to power.  In this sense, it is curious to
compare his book The Last Push to the South with Yeltsin's
autobiography Against the Grain.  Zhirinovsky's book is of course more
lively.  It reveals a great deal about the intimate life of its author,
especially since on the first page the would-be saviour of Russia, in
thoroughly Freudian fashion, links the formation of his views with the
sexual dissatisfactions of his youth.

Yeltsin is a person of another generation, and far more puritanical.
His text is much more official in tone, and ultimately he does not even
hide the fact that the book was compiled by a specially invited
journalist.  Zhirinovsky, it appears, wrote his book himself.

Nevertheless, there are many similarities.  Both Yeltsin and
Zhirinovsky try to arouse the reader's sympathy with tales of their
difficult childhoods.  Both limit their political biographies to
relating their personal career histories, making no attempt to analyse
their real roles in history or the reasons for their success.  Both
make use of their books to indulge in self-glorification.  Both are
convinced that the main thing is to force the public to love them.
Ideas, principles and social interests are all perceived exclusively
through the prisms of their own personalities.

These are precisely the traits which can make someone a really
successful demagogue.  But a brilliant demagogue is not always an
effective politician.  However we might excel at hoodwinking our
neighbours, there will always be someone who is even better at taking
the public for a ride.  The demagogues learn from one another,
accumulating experience, and every new stage in political life gives
birth to demagogues of a new, more refined, more cloyingly
overfamiliar'democratic'type.  Meanwhile, the public becomes ever more
sophisticated and demanding; it is unwilling to be duped in the old
fashion, but needs new ideas and unexpected methods.

Zhirinovsky's autobiography is the touching story of a boy whom
everyone treated badly, of a son of the provinces seized away by the
self-confident capital.

     From childhood I was hurt in every possible way by social
     hostility and by enmity between my relatives.  I grew up without
     knowing warmth from anyone, either friends or parents.  It was as
     though I was always superfluous, a burden to everyone, and an
     object of criticism.  I was almost never praised, but rather,
     endlessly berated. (Posledniy brosok na yug, Moscow 1993, p. 27)

There is more in the same vein: women didn't like him, he had no
friends, the dean of his institute railed at him.  He had trouble
getting an apartment, and the work he was offered was not very
suitable.  He always suffered from a poor diet, from difficulty in
relaxing, from enforced transfers and from his lack of party
membership.

All the same, he was by no means a victim of the system.  The fact that
he was not a Communist Party member did not hold him back at any stage
of his career.  This unfortunate provincial, badly used by all, somehow
gained entry to the elite Institute of Oriental Languages, and after
serving as an officer in the Caucasus, was given the opportunity to
work abroad.  Then followed work as a researcher for the Soviet Peace
Committee, and trips to France, Switzerland and Belgium.  It was here
that Zhirinovsky first admitted he was lucky; the vacancy might have
been for a researcher on Africa, and he clearly had no wish to
associate with blacks.

Reading Zhirinovsky's autobiography, one is involuntarily reminded of
dozens of other young provincials who have set out to `conquer the
capital'.  As a rule, it has fallen to provincials to move Russian
culture and science ahead.  However, these people have not complained
about their fate; on the contrary, they have reckoned themselves
fortunate simply because the opportunity has appeared for them to
perform the work they love.  Such people have always had plenty of
friends, and they have rarely given any thought to the question of who
outstripped whom on the road to success.  At the same time, people from
the provinces have always filled out the ranks of the young careerists
who complain constantly of injustices, demanding attention and seeking
the sympathy of those around them while busily forcing out their rivals
and winning new posts.

By the Soviet standards of those years, Zhirinovsky enjoyed an
exceptionally successful career.  Nevertheless, our hero was forever
dissatisfied.  A three-roomed cooperative apartment was too expensive.
He was not allowed to perform his military service in Russia (and where
was the army supposed to station a Turkish language specialist?). His
unsatisfactory vacations consisted of endless trips to Black Sea
resorts, which he mentions repeatedly.

It is clear that Zhirinovsky's bad experiences while on holiday played
an important role in shaping his socio-political concepts and
geopolitical strategies:

     The last push to the south.  I dream of Russian soldiers washing
     their boots in the warm waters of the Indian Ocean, and changing
     permanently into their summer uniforms.  Light boots, light
     trousers, a short-sleeved tunic with an open collar and no tie,
     and a light forage cap.  And a small, modern Russian machine
     pistol, produced by a factory in lzhevsk.  These weapons are much
     better than UZIs.  So that any platoon of Russian soldiers will be
     able to impose order on any territory.  And even better, so that
     there will not be any need for this.  We have to pacify this
     region for good, so that there can be holiday resorts, youth
     camps, sanatoriums and health clinics on the shores of the Indian
     Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.  Huge stretches could be taken
     over for leisure purposes.  The whole south could become a
     continuous zone of sanatoriums and rest homes for the industrial
     north and for people of all nationalities.  All. (p. 66)

The extent of the geopolitical ambitions of this Soviet provincial is
that the entire coastline of the southern seas should be transformed
into something like the trade union holiday resorts in Crimea during
the 1950s.  This theme recurs constantly in Zhirinovsky's book, as
though it were haunting the author.  He also promises that he will at
last build roads throughout all Russia.  'Good concrete ro@ds, with a
wide rnedian strip and every three kilometres, a telephone.  And
garages with mechanics, filling stations everywhere, lighting,
signposts, overpasses and viaducts.  We've already done such things in
space.' (p. 115).

Such benevolent yearnings as this are jumbled together with abuse
directed at 'southerners'- Algerians, natives of the Caucasus, Turks
and Azerbaijanis who 'like poisonous toadstools, like cockroaches' have
overwhelmed Russia, are crawling into Europe, and are spoiling life in
Paris.  In southern Africa, Russia is obliged to help set up a'white
republic'.  In short, the book contains a thick stream of racist
demagogy, mixed with the everyday prejudices of the Russian (and
European) vulgarian.  The same can be found in the pages of Russian
imigri newspapers in the West, not to speak of publications of the
'liberal' Russian press of the 1990s which every day set out to terrify
their readers with talk of the 'black peril', and which call for saving
European civilization from an islamic invasion.

T'he racism of the Russian press is notorious throughout the world.
The newspaper Obshchaya Gazeta described activists of the African
National Congress in South Africa as black tribal terrorists (Obshchaya
Gazeta, 11-17 February 1994).  The magazine Sobesednik published on its
front cover a racist cartoon aimed at people from the Caucasus, and
even the highly regarded Nezavisimaya Gazeta twice published articles
in which the authors complained that racial tolerance was ruining
America.  From theory of this kind it is only a short step to practice,
as was seen when Moscow Mayor Yuriy Luzhkov set about banishing members
of Caucasus nationalities from the Russian capital, or when the Russian
mafia terrorized its Chechen rivals while issuing appeals to
'patriotism'.

These are all typical features of our 'new democracy', as it is
interpreted by the ruling groups in our country.  Zhirinovsky simply
gives expression to these moods.

In the competition between demagogues, Zhirinovsky has been able to
outstrip Yeltsin.  This has been rendered easier by the fact that in
the December 1993 elections Zhirinovsky was not running against the
'People's president' himself, but only against his acolytes in Russia's
Choice.  Making careers for themselves in the corridors of Power, these
people have never learnt to lie convincingly at public meetings.

Zhirinovsky's slogans were already well known to the public as the
themes of Yeltsin's speeches: anti-communism, strong executive power,
the presidential republic, the rebirth of Russian statehood, attacks on
neighbours (the former 'fraternal republics') and foreigners, and talk
of future prosperity.  Zhirinovsky gave out irresponsible promises
right and left, including promises that Yeltsin, Gaidar and Co. had
made and not kept.  It was not by chance that they used the same
liberal-democratic symbolism.  The people who voted for Zhirinovsky and
the supporters of Russia's Choice were much the same.  In Zhirinovsky,
they saw 'today's Yeltsin'.  The ruler of Russia and his friends
discovered with astonishment that they did not have a monopoly on
populist demagogy.  The same weapons they had used against Gorbachev
and the communists were now being turned successfully against them.

Doing a hasty rethink, the regime's ideologues began trying to terrify
people with the 'fascist danger'.  Political writers began publishing
long-winded tracts on 'Russian fascism'.  But it was already too late;
the demagogy of the early 1990s had been turned against the people who
had been the first to preach in favour of a strong central authority, a
national state and racial intolerance.  As one of the readers of
Obshchaya Gazeta wrote in a letter, the word 'fascist' now struck him
not as an affront, but as denoting 'a valiant Russian patriot'.  The
letter added: 'You know how we railed against that other word, "junta".
 Now people speak of the experience of Chile, and the wisdom of
Pinochet.' If Zhirinovsky was a fascist, the writer continued, then
'consider me a fascist'.  The writer intended to vote for 'people who
defend Russians, who put a stop to theft and banditry'.  He went on to
declare: 'I want patrols with dogs to walk the streets, and not drunken
bandits.  I want bandits hanged on the streets' (Obshchaya Gazeta 21-7
January 1994).

Pouring out a stream of new ties onto the heads of the Russian
population, who in most cases had little idea of the truth, the state
propaganda machine managed to impress on people that there was nothing
worse than communism.  But it was unable to convince them that as a
result of the victory over communism life had become better.  And so,
it was necessary to seek out new villains.  They could be 'blacks',
foreigners, masons, Jews, Americans, or the 'democrats' themselves.
But the most important thing remained hidden from the bewildered and
embittered citizen: the fact that his or her miseries were not due to
anyone's intrigues, but were the inevitable result of the functioning
of the system that had been set in place.  While the ordinary citizen
was looking for evil-doers, the system was not threatened either by
revolution or reform.  But the politicians and ideologues themselves,
who had become waste materials, were available to be sacrificed.

Zhirinovsky'sappealsforthe'restorationoforder'onaworldscale reflected
not only the demands of ordinary Russians for security and stability.
'Me growth of international chaos as the US and its allies showed their
inability to cope with the role of new masters of the planet speaks for
itself.  This is why Zhirinovsky's appeals have much in common with the
declarations of Western politicians.  Both in the US and Western
Europe, and in the countries of the former Soviet bloc, new right-wing
movements have been gathering strength.  Although in countries such as
France and Italy such movements have become much more influential than
Zhirinovsky's LDP, no one in these countries has sounded the alarm,
since the strategic interests of the West have not been threatened
either by the National Front of jeanMarie le Pen, or by the Italian
Lega Nord.

Unlike real fascism, these movements - amorphous, and with a parasitic
relationship to the structures of bourgeois parliamentarism - cannot
really contend for power.  Nevertheless, they are dangerous.  This is
not only because their growth demonstrates that the crisis of the 'new
world order' is undermining democracy, but also for the reason that so
long as the demagogy of these movements 'works', millions of people
will howl in unison with the leaders of these movements and will
believe in their mindless recipes for salvation.  T'he members of these
movements are doomed to remain hostages of the very social order that
they sincerely hate.

The rise of Zhirinovsky's'liberal democracy'has shown that there is an
alternative to Yeltsin.  The people who sowed the wind have reaped the
whirlwind.  Proposing that a dictatorial constitution be approved 'for
democratic ends', they finished up with a 'democracy' not only without
democrats, but also without laws or guarantees.  The only guarantee has
been Yeltsin.  What he represents is not a guarantee of stability, but
a guarantee of the inviolability of bank accounts and of looted
property.  It is not surprising that in the words of the author of the
letter to Obsbcbaya Gazeta,

     the people voted for a dictator president because all the
     democrats cried out that the president would be like a tsar.  So
     we all voted for the president's constitution and for Zhirinovsky,
     who wants to take the president's place, while profiteers, bankers
     and speculators voted for the democrats.

Having destroyed the bases of the law and undermined any respect for
truth, the Russian elite is having to reckon with the consequences of
its own actions.  Against this background, the merry careerist
Zhirinovsky appears as only a minor evil, a mere reminder of the real
threat, a symptom of the disease.  The name of this disease is
'capitalism Russian-style'.



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