We Are All to Some Extent Vladimir Vol'foviches …

… Yet if Vladimir Vol'fovich did not exist we would have to invent him. Yes, Russia needs him. Moreover, he was created by Russia from the same papilionaceous material from which is cut in its entirety the flitting philosophy of Ivan Aleksandrovich Khlestakov. There is a certain grayness, a certain defenseless cheekiness, and a certain disarming, childlike, innocent candor in Zhirinovsky's very existence:

I had nowhere at all to play—neither in the room nor in the corridor. There was always a queue at the toilet, there was always a stench because it always smelled bad in the toilet, especially as people would enter it one after the other in unending succession. There were no fresheners. If a total of ten or eleven persons go to the toilet in the morning, there is no time for fresheners. And some people smoked there, which was also revolting. … Since childhood, I had always been in these noxious clouds of tobacco smoke. … I was in everyone's way. I was the smallest.