Russian political leader. Born on April 26, 1946, in Alma-Ata (now Almaty), Kazakhstan. He left at age 18 to attend Moscow State University, where he studied Turkish and other languages. After graduating about 1969, he went to work as a translator in Turkey, whence he was expelled in murky circumstances eight months later. He went on to earn a law degree, working first in a state-run law firm (where he was asked to resign) and then at the Mir publishing company.

When the local council held elections in 1987, Zhirinovsky sought to run as the firm's candidate and as an independent, but he was disallowed by the Communist Party and Mir, which cited a letter from his previous employer that questioned his ethics. Zhirinovsky was not deterred. In the spring of 1990 he was asked to become the chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party, but by October his views had provoked his expulsion. In the spring of 1991 Zhirinovsky created his own party and took his previous party's name.

In June 1991 he ran for the presidency and won some six million votes, which placed him third. It was widely reported that his career could only have been possible under the auspices of the KGB. Documents surfaced that showed that the surname of his father, who was killed the year he was born, had originally been Eidelshtein, that Zhirinovsky had changed his name at age 18, and that he had been a member of state-sponsored Jewish group in the late 1980s. Given his rabid Russian nationalism and broad anti-Semitic asides and the support they drew from large segments of the population, the charge that he was Jewish was significant. Zhirinovsky, however, heatedly denied that he was Jewish or that he had been affiliated with the KGB. Zhirinovsky says that lies are acceptable in the name of lofty ideals. The execution of statesmen is the worst of crimes, he remarked when Ceausescu and his wife were shot by a firing squad.

The facts did not always seem to matter. Zhirinovsky's campaign proclamations that he was "the last hope of a cheated and humiliated people" and "the very same as you" and his promise to "bring Russia up off its knees" resonated more keenly among many voters than did those of more conventional politicians. "If there were a healthy economy and security for the people, I would lose all the votes I have", he said. Zhirinovsky later defended the failed 1991 August Coup against Mikhail Gorbachev and was an outspoken critic of Yeltsin, although he did not join the parliament's bid to oust the Russian leader in 1993.

In the Russian parliamentary elections in December 1993 Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party won 22.8% of the votes He had promised to create a dictatorship when elected president.

In 1995 his party was the runner-up to the Communists in the elections for the Duma. Denounced as a fascist and xenophobic extremist by his opponents, he was nonetheless been popular with many Russians. In 1996 Zhirinovsky again ran for president but received only a small percentage of the vote. In the late 1990s his popularity waned: His party won 6% of the vote in the 1999 parliamentary elections, and he placed fifth in the 2000 presidential election. in 2003 his party finished a close third with 11.6 percent of the votes in the elections for the duma..

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