The political TV advertisements culture that is Russia: Russian voters are heading to the polls to elect members of the State Duma on 18 September. Tyler Cowen’s Marginal Revolution blog pointed us to the excellent piece on Global Voices by RuNet Echo that “looks back at the most memorable political advertisements in Russia over the past two decades, highlighting some of the strangest, silliest, and scariest videos put out by politicians seeking elected office.” Almost nothing can be worse than 11-minute acid-trip of a video made by 1996 Presidential candidate Grigory Yavlinsky — even though he didn’t make the run-off and eventually lost to Boris Yeltsin, 5.5 mn people voted for that guy (runtime 11:20). Yavlinsky struck again in 2000 with a series of ads suggesting that not voting for him implied that Russia would descend into dystopia if people didn’t vote — that didn’t work either, he got 1.2 mn fewer votes than in 1996.

Then there’s the overtly racist one: political party Rodina’s 2005 “Let’s Clean the Trash From Moscow!” is one of the most infamous political advertisements in Russian history (runtime 00:30). “The video shows dark-skinned Caucasian immigrants tossing watermelon rinds to the ground, complaining about a passing Russian woman pushing a stroller. Party leader Dmitry Rogozin and Yuri Popov, a pro-Rodina Moscow City Duma member, then approach the immigrants and tell them to clear out… Rodina later collapsed as a political party.”

The one that’s just weird: “In one of his 2012 presidential campaign advertisements, Zhirinovsky is seen whipping a donkey that refuses to pull him through the snow. “This lousy little donkey is the symbol of our country!” Zhirinovsky tells viewers. “If I become president, we’ll again have a valiant troika.” The video ends with the awkward slogan “Zhirinovsky and it will be better!” (Runtime 00:31).