Zhirinovsky's School

The legendary School No. 25 in Alma-Ata, from which Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky graduated. In those years it was Secondary School No. 25 named after Dzerzhinsky, with a language bias (once the school named after Comrade Yezhov, directly opposite the KGB building). One of the city's old schools, it was in its day called "the Jewish school" on account of the large number of Jewish teachers. From the 1960s it was the only school in the city with intensive study of French. Already in Zhirinovsky's time the school was reckoned elite and stood under the patronage of the KGB: for PE the pupils of the Twenty-Fifth went not to some gymnasium hall but to the Dynamo stadium across the road. Vladimir Zhirinovsky often recalled his school years and took pride in the level of knowledge he had received at School 25. The same school was attended a little later by the President of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. Today the school has the status of a gymnasium and bears the name of the writer Ilyas Yesenberlin, who lived in the house next door