Zhirinovsky Beat

By ANDREW MEIER/MOSCOW

THE PLAYBOYSK ADVISER

1998 was a rough year for Vladimir Zhirinovsky, madcap leader of Russia's ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party. Last month his colleagues banned him from the Duma floor after he called for the communists "to be shot." But things may be picking up with the publication of his latest book, The ABCs of Sex. At a publicity event for the 222-page tome, the self-proclaimed "sexual knight of all the girls of Russia" proposed a new domestic sex industry as the panacea for the country's economic ills.

His book, co-authored with a party lieutenant, is full of lusty pensees. All hotels should maintain sex agencies "for guaranteeing the sexual needs of the guests." Licensed prostitutes should be launched into space to reduce the stress of the Motherland's weary cosmonauts. Ditto for the fellows suffering in the armed forces and Russia's teeming prison colonies.

ABCs pays scant attention, however, to such grim issues as the rapid rise of HIV and AIDS in Russia or to the country's continued reliance on abortion as the preferred form of birth control. Perhaps because of this, book sales have been brisk and the publisher is talking about a second printing. Zhirinovsky announced last week that he'll soon run for governor of a Russian region--which one remains to be announced. Then he flew off to Libya, his fifth visit to pal Muammar Gaddafi in the past year.

--By Andrew Meier/Moscow