Russian Presidential Candidate Wants To Be 'Tsar'

Fed up with westernizations such as the word 'president', far-right candidate Vladimir Zhirinovsky wants to party like it's 1899.

As you may or may not know, the Russian presidential election is just a month away. On March 4, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will face off against billionaire playboy Mikhail Prokhorov, the Communist Party's Gennady Zyuganov, Sergey Mironov, head of the leftist A Just Russia party, and, for those who think Putin's too soft, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, head of the Liberal Democratic Party. Don't be fooled by the name, though – the Lib Dems are neither all that liberal nor all that democratic, which probably explains why Zhirinovsky took to the pages of Russia's Izvestia newspaper to call for the term "president" to be nixed in favour of "tsar". Zhirinovsky says that "president" is a Western term that has no real meaning in Russia (he and his party are pretty keen on keeping Russian things Russian), and that "tsar" is a far more appropriate term for the leader of Mother Russia. Of course, there hasn't been a tsar in Russia since 1917, when Tsar Nicholas II and the rest of the Romanov clan got acquainted with the darker side of Bolshevism. Anyhow, it's not like Zhirinovsky's going to win this thing, but the Dostoyevsky-lovin', serf-oppressing part of us is definitely quietly rooting for him.