In 2007, I wrote an extensive profile of Avigdor Lieberman in the Atlantic. To complement Haim’s suggestion that we understand Lieberman’s voters, here’s my effort to understand what drives the man himself.
Avigdor Lieberman is an oversized man in an undersized room. His beard, remorselessly trimmed to a narrow, graying stripe around his cheeks, frames a wide face with pale, icy eyes. As he speaks, he waves his tiger paw of a hand, holding a cigar the proportions of a small cannon. The cigar is not lit, but the laws of drama say it will be by the third act. In Russian-accented Hebrew, he is talking about his admiration for Peter the Great and Winston Churchill. Before World War II, he says, all the “lovely, liberal, progressive people” threw every insult at Churchill that they now throw at him-“warmonger, embittered, extremist”-except for having a beard and being Russian. He smiles at the thought. …
Lieberman says he “identifies very deeply” with Churchill, who “stuck to his position and let nothing move him … I like people who swim against the current.” The same qualities draw him to Peter the Great. “At least 300 times” Lieberman has read Peter the First, a Soviet-era historical novel describing the 7-foot-tall autocrat who dragged Russia into modern Europe and made it a military power, and he believes himself to be a man, like Peter and Churchill, who sees grim truths and whose foresight will yet be rewarded. …
Read the full article here, and return to SoJo to comment.