The opposition to the opposition: the Liberal Democratic Party in the political spectrum of Russia in the 1990s

The object of the author's research is the history of the Liberal Democratic Party, which was founded in the late USSR and gradually became an important element of the political life of the Russian Federation. The subject was the formation and development of V. V. Zhirinovsky's personality and party, its changes during the transformation of the economic, social and political system of the Russian Federation. Using a variety of information sources, such as scientific research, reference publications, materials from archival collections, the general and party press, the author recreates the difficult path of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, its position regarding the government and the opposition. This allows the author to assess the development path of the party as one of the elements of public relations, formally playing the role of an alternative to the ruling forces, replacing a full-fledged political opposition in the perception of the masses of citizens. The political fate of the Liberal Democratic Party has become a reflection of the views of the ruling elite on the formation of the political system of post-communist Russia. Acting on the political field of nationalists and statesmen, centrists and conservatives, changing its position between the opposition and the government, the Liberal Democratic Party actually contributed to the formation of a pro-Western centrist regime in the Russian Federation, hostile to both liberals and socialists promoting the ideas of real economic, social, and political transformations.