Moscow’s Manezh exhibition hall is playing host to a celebration of the life and politics of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the outspoken, unfiltered and unrepentantly toxic founder of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), who died in 2022. What is meant to memorialise Zhirinovsky’s career, though, also highlights the degree to which the Kremlin is losing control of the nationalist right.

The LDPR – which was neither liberal nor democratic – was established in 1992 and from the first was a populist force that was more a vehicle for the bombastic Zhirinovsky than the expression of a coherent ideology. “Zhirik” was a meme even before the social media age, known for his outrageous opinions and media-savvy stunts. At various times he advocated forcibly retaking Alaska from the United States, suggesting that it would then be “a great place to put the Ukrainians,” and looked forward to the day when “when Russian soldiers can wash their boots in the warm waters of the Indian Ocean.” He even proposed elevating Vladimir Putin to the rank of tsar, something that embarrassed the perpetual president.

Although Zhirinovsky repeatedly stood for the presidency himself, he only ever managed to win 6-8 per cent of the vote. That didn’t matter, though,........

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