Hello, I Must Be Going

Just two weeks after his spectacular transformation from obscure buffoon to Russia's most notorious politician, Vladimir Zhirinovsky decided to take a little vacation. His idea of a good time: a riotous road trip through Central Europe, hobnobbing with a German right-wing firebrand, skiing in the company of an Austrian Waffen-SS veteran and, in virtually every place on his itinerary, behaving in ways that tend to get ordinary people thrown out of bars. But in Zhirinovsky's case, he was given the bum's rush from entire countries. Back in Russia at week's end, the nationalist demagogue was able to regale friends with how he was booted from Bulgaria, barred from Germany and booed in Romania without even paying a visit. In fact, he returned to Moscow only after it became clear that nobody else wanted him around.

As a rule of thumb, such loutishness should be enough to torpedo any politician's career. It is a testament to Zhirinovsky's perverse appeal, however, that these public-relations debacles had almost no effect on his stature at home, where media coverage of his blundering antics was virtually nonexistent. Abroad, however, his bullying and bigotry have prompted Western governments to consider easing their pressure on President Boris Yeltsin to push through his economic reforms or risk a backlash by the likes of Mr. Z. All of which is a fairly impressive accomplishment for a man who, up to last month when his spectacularly misnamed Liberal Democrats won 23% of the popular vote, was universally dismissed as a clown.

First stop on Zhirinovsky's 10-day tour de farce was the Munich airport, where he met with a leader of Germany's radical right and publicly reaffirmed his desire that Germany and Russia carve up Poland between them. While the German press denounced him as "Russia's Hitler," Zhirinovsky blissfully continued his holiday in a remote village in the Austrian Alps, where he paid a call on his friend Edwin Neuwirth, an industrialist who has denied that the Nazis used gas chambers to kill Jews during World War II and has told reporters he was "proud" to have served in Hitler's military corps, the Waffen-SS.

Zhirinovsky's friendship with the Nazi veteran became all the more incongruous when Israeli officials disclosed that in 1983 the Russian politician sought and was granted permission to immigrate to Israel -- an invitation that normally requires evidence of a Jewish background. The disclosure created further puzzlement over his widely publicized anti-Semitic remarks and fanned long-standing rumors that his father was Jewish (Zhirinovsky has responded only by saying his mother is Russian, his father "a lawyer").

During a brief respite from public effrontery, Zhirinovsky kept benignly busy -- skiing, basking in health spas and perusing telegrams, including one he received from an Austrian animal-rights group urging him to protect the "flora and fauna" of Alaska -- after he fulfills his campaign promise to reclaim the 49th U.S. state for Mother Russia. But then he felt compelled to stage an impromptu press conference, at which he "revealed" that Russia's military possesses something called an "Elipton," a weapon of mass destruction more powerful than a nuclear weapon. Asked what in the world his boss could be referring to, Zhirinovsky's top deputy back in Moscow could only stammer: "Elipton . . . Um, well, no, I cannot explain that."