Leadership Quote by Vladimir Zhirinovsky

Zhirinovsky’s genius was never policy detail; it was the weaponized aside. “And, for instance” is doing the real work here, shrinking a potentially explosive question - religious pluralism in a state with a privileged Orthodox Church - into the tone of a man tidying up a messy room. The list that follows (Baptists, Adventists, Lutherans, Pentecostals) isn’t random. It’s a roll call of “non-native” Christianity in the Russian imagination: groups historically marked as foreign, sectarian, or suspicious, often associated with Western influence, regional minorities, or aggressive proselytizing. By naming them, he signals he knows exactly who triggers the cultural anxiety.

Then comes the sly permission: “let them exist on line with others.” It sounds tolerant, even liberal, but it’s conditional tolerance, delivered from above. “Let them” presumes the state (or the national majority) is the landlord, granting residency to tenants who can be evicted. “On line with others” is equality framed as administrative arrangement, not a right. It’s pluralism recast as order: you may exist, provided your existence doesn’t challenge the hierarchy.

The political context is post-Soviet Russia’s bargain between nationalism and managed diversity. Zhirinovsky often played the loud tribune of Russian dominance while leaving himself an escape hatch: a sentence like this can be cited as evidence of “moderation” without costing him his brand. The subtext isn’t generosity; it’s control - a performance of magnanimity that reinforces who gets to decide what counts as acceptable belief.