The Fascism of Vladimir Zhirinovskii: Political Religion and the Rise of the Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia in the Early 1990s

Abstract

This paper applies the concept of generic fascism to post-Soviet Russia’s leading extremely right-wing, so-called Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia founded in 1989, and, since then, under the leadership of Vladimir Zhirinovskii. It, first, introduces a notion of fascism as a political religion that can be defined as ‘palingenetic ultra-nationalism’. It, second, briefly outlines Zhirinovskii’s agenda of the necessity of Russia’s ‘Last Dash to the South’. Third, it analyzes whether and in which way the fascist criteria of ultra-nationalism and palingenesis relate to Zhirinovskii’s plan of the creation of a new Russian empire that would include, apart from the former Soviet republics, also Turkey, Afghanistan and Iran. Finally, the paper briefly discusses implications of a classification of Zhirinovskii’s programme as fascist for the international comparative study of the extreme right.