ZHIRINOVSKY ON RUSSIAN POLITICS.

Ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky lectured Western reporters on the political significance of last Saturday’s brawl in the Duma, wherein he ripped the spectacles from deputy Yevgeniya Tishkovskaya, grabbed her round the neck and pulled her hair. "You do not understand the psychology of our people," he said. "This might be a handicap to me in a prosperous country like France or Belgium or Holland. But don’t take the West as a model. There you only need one love letter from a politician’s secretary and his campaign is finished. Here it is the other way round. Our voters love a bit of contrast, a shock to the system. So if you journalists wrote every day that I was just a normal democrat with a normal program, quiet, intelligent, educated — I would be finished immediately."

1. Russian media, September 13.

2. UPI and Reuters, September 13.

3. Reuter, September 13.

4. Interfax, Itar-Tass, and various Russian media, September 13.

5. Russian media, September 12 and 13.

6. Russian media, September 13.

7. Public TV and Russian TV, September 13.

8. Ogonek, No. 36.

9. Russia’s Radio, Radio Mayak, Interfax, September 13.

10. Public TV, Independent TV, September 13.

11. Interfax, September 13.

12. Flux and Basapress, September 13.

13. Interfax, September 13.

14. Interfax, September 12.

15. Itar-Tass, September 12.

16. Interfax, September 12.

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