Vladimir Zhirinovsky presidential campaign, 1996

Background

Zhirinovsky's aspirations for higher office had been well-known. He had previously run in the 1991 Russian presidential election. On June 20 1991, just eight days after losing the Russian presidential election, Zhirinovsky had announced his intentions to run for the elections of the President of the Soviet Union, which were slated to be held March 1995 (with some talk of potentially scheduling an early election for the spring of 1992), but were never held due to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991.^[1][2] After the fall of the Soviet Union, Zhirinovsky's ambitions turned back to the presidency of Russia, which was now the country's ultimate head-of-government

Despite his third-place finish in the 1991 presidential election, experts had not expected for his Liberal Democratic Party to perform strongly in the 1993 legislative election.^[3] Polling conducted as late as a month before the election had shown his party with less than 2% support.^[3] At the tail end of the 1993 campaign, Zhirinovsky and his party saw an astonishing rise in support.^[3] Neither the liberal parties nor the communist parties were able to unite into solidified voting blocs.^[4][5][3] Democratic leaders had spent the election campaign fighting each other, rather than against opponents such as Zhirinovsky.^[3] Ultimately, Zhirnovsky's LDPR ultimately placed first in the 1993 legislative elections.^[3][4][5]

While Zhirinovsky had, following the 1993 legislative elections, been seen as likely to lead the opposition to Yeltsin in the next presidential election, he subsequently fell out of favor.^[6][7] Some argued that had Zhirinovsky maintained a moderate and diplomatic profile while dealing with the Western media, he might have received some degree of tolerance, perhaps even support, from the West. However, Zhirinovsky's statements and interviews were so inflammatory that they drove away all potential support he might have received.^[8]

Following its performance in the 1993 legislative elections, Zhirinovsky's LDPR had the potential to be at the core of an organized opposition.^[7] Zhirinovsky struggled to sustain his party's electoral momentum after 1993, however.^[9] His violent antics in the Duma had the effect of disintegrating his party's credibility. Consequentially, Zhirinovsky's party declined in prominence.^[6][7] Ultimately, Zhirinovsky's faction split, by 1995, the LDPR found itself competing with the resurgent Communist Party for nationalist-leaning voters.^[9] Zhirinovsky's outlandish behavior had also largely removed him from serious consideration as a viable competitor for the presidency.^[6][7]

Even as he began to organize his campaign, the disarray of his political party continued. In the early months of 1996 Zhirinovsky's party lost several key members, including Viktor Kobalev, who had been the head of the party's successful campaign in the 1993 legislative election.^[10]

Official campaign

Jean-Marie Le Pen, who in February visited Moscow in support of Zhirinovsky's bid for the Russian presidency

Zhirinvsky was nominated at the LDPR congress on January 10, 1996.^[11]

In February, at Zhirinovsky's behest, French nationalist politician Jean-Marie Le Pen traveled to Moscow to voice his support of Zhirinovsky's candidacy.^[12][13]

In February, Zhirinovsky leant his endorsement to Pat Buchanan, the Reform Party candidate for the United States presidential election. Buchanan sought to distance himself from the controversial Zhirinovsky. After Buchanan distanced himself from this endorsement, Zhirinovsky attacked him, writing an open letter which said, "You turned out to be just like Clinton and other corrupt politicians, moved by greed and vanity, not by love for the fatherland...Pat, you're a piece of crap. You dumped in your pants immediately after getting my congratulations."^[10]

Zhirinovsky officially filed his candidacy on April 6.^[14] Zhirinovsky was generally not considered to be a frontrunner, and was polling in the single-digits.^[15][14] His campaign was officially registered four days later.^[16]

In his first television campaign advertisement, Zhirinovsky declared, "We don't need a collapsing and decaying Russia. We need a new Russia, a new course, a new policy".^[17]

In his campaign, Zhirinovsky portrayed himself as the only alternative to Boris Yeltsin and Gennady Zyuganov.^[15] Zhirinovsky was known to propagate an image centered around evoking a strong personality. Notorious for his flamboyance and outrageous stunts, on the campaign trail, Zhirinovsky delivered populist slogans accompanied by frequently by outrageous remarks.^[15][18] During his campaign, he was dismissed by some as an entertainer and a clown.^[19] Zhirnivosky's campaign team attempted to give Zhirinovsky a more serious, less buffoonish, reputation. However, these efforts were unsuccessful.^[4]

Zhirinovsky was famous for his inflammatory nationalist rhetoric, which had caused Western observers and moderates in Moscow to view Zhirinovsky as him as a dangerous and destabilizing influence in Russian politics.^[15] Zhirinovsky used divisive rhetoric and appealed to resentments towards ethnic minorities in order to build support amongst ethnic Russias, the largest nationality in the Russian Federation's populace.^[19][15] In his campaign, Zhirinovsky promoted the idea of a "great Russia" surrounded by imperialists and spies, essentially laying the blame for Russia's shortcomings on sabotage.^[15] He peppered these allegations with blatantly antisemitic undertones.^[18][8][20]

Zhirinovsky campaigned for the votes of prisoners. Zhirinovsky believed that he would be able to garner a strong enough support amongst incarcerated convicts to qualify him for the second round of the election. As a result, he visited prisons to campaign. When visiting prisons, Zhirinovsky went as far as promising to grant presidential amnesty to individual prisoners.^[18]

Zhirinovsky's began running out of resources early into the election campaign.^[4] In many regions, Zhirinovsky's campaign lacked the financial resources to establish an effective campaign organization.^[21] Consequentially, Zhirinovsky was ultimately unable to field a competitive campaign in many areas. Among the locations where Zhirinovsky failed to install a competitive campaign operation was the city of Perm. Zhirinvosky's party had won the vote in Perm several months earlier, in the 1995 legislative election. However, despite making a last-minute campaign visit in the closing weeks before the election, Zhirinovsky lost the city, coming third behind both Yeltsin and Zyuganov.^[21][22]

Outcome

Zhirinovsky received an even lower share of the vote than he had been predicted to. As had been anticipated in the polls, he failed to perform high enough to qualify for the second round of the election. To political observers, Zhirinovsky's performance seemed to indicate that he was no longer a political firebrand. Russian voters appeared to view him more as an entertaining figure than a feasible political leader. Zhirinovsky had lost much of his share of the nationalist vote to Lebed, who had performed surprisingly strong in the election.^[23]

In some places Zhirinovsky managed to perform roughly as well as he had in his 1991 presidential campaign. For instance, in the Chelyabinsk Oblast Zhirinovsky received 5.23% of the vote, comparable to the 5.77% of the vote he had received there in 1991.^[24] However, even in Chelybinsk, Zhirinovsky underperformed when compared to the LDPR's performance there during the 1993 and 1995 legislative elections (LDPR had garnered 20.58% of the Oblast's vote in 1993 and 10.06% in 1995).^[24]

Campaign videos and advertisements

Whilst other candidates took advantage of their allocated free airtime by airing taped montages or scripted remarks, the videos that Zhirinovsky provided for his free airtime often sounded like he was speaking extemporaneously, often improvising and ridiculing the advertisements of rival campaigns.^[19]

Among the television ads released by the campaign was an eleven-minute long campaign film with a dancing police officer, a tap-dancing professor and a singing pilot. ^[26]

Zhirinovsky's campaign posters included ones declaring him to be "Russia's last hope".^[27]