You are the leader of a large Russian political party. You have built your career on blood-curdling threats to Western countries, in particular the "evil empire," the United States of America. And when you did well in the elections the hearts of faint-hearted Western politicians sank into their boots.


But now you are in America and things are going rather well. Rather too well in fact. Vladimir Zhirinovsky has appeared on CNN, he has talked to millions, he has met the United Nations secretary general.


But then the skandal strikes. Zhirinovsky storms out of the Plaza Hotel in buffoonish style, he insults the Vietnamese men from room service. Everything is back to normal.


The New York Post and other publications have fairly straightforward explanations for Zhirinovsky's exit from the Plaza, on the lines that he was rude or he was overcharged. But this is a Russian political column and we would blush not to speculate that there really was a political provocation behind it all.


I offer two explanations: the first is that Zhirinovsky himself orchestrated the bust-up. The problem is Zhirinovsky had liked America too much.


There is a tradition here. Vladimir Mayakovsky, the poet of the Russian revolution, adored the United States and wrote a hymn to the Brooklyn Bridge. Nikita Khrushchev, a lifelong communist, was wowed by American technology and consumerism.


Zhirinovsky is even more anti-Western than those two. The parliamentary record from two weeks ago quotes him as saying that Russia was being ruled by a secret Western intelligence cabal: "now we have the CIA instead of the KGB, instead of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union we will have comrades from Washington, from Tel Aviv, from London." So in order to save face before the voters, who might have started saying that he was a CIA agent himself, Zhirinovsky staged a public row, was thrown out of the Plaza and became the West-hating underdog again.


The extreme opposition's problem is that, whether they like it or not, they have become as Westernized as everyone else in Russia. A snarling protester at a communist demonstration is holding a banner in which Yeltsin is covered in dollar signs, but he opens his bag and takes out a can of Pepsi.


And their political agenda has moved westward, too. Nowadays, they talk about a mixed economy and a free press. So a humiliating incident in a New York hotel is handy to keep the rhetoric going.


The second conspiracy theory is diametrically opposite. The Russians had a quiet word with room service at the Plaza so that America could be reminded about the kind of man they were dealing with. Zhirinovsky was doing quite well in America up to that point, but then he lost it.


Almost everyone is a nationalist in the Russian political line-up these days, from the quiet-spoken Andrei Kozyrev to megaphone Zhirinovsky. The Plaza incident was a timely reminder that there are nationalists and nationalists.


There are three broad reactions to all the foreign policy stormclouds glowering over the Russo-American relationship involving Bosnia, Iraq and the Republicans' victory in the mid-term elections.


There is Zhirinovsky and his fellow extremists. No matter what happens they will call the West the enemy and blame the CIA and the Pentagon for ruining Russia.


There is the Foreign Ministry line. The ministry always used to be the most liberal of the Soviet institutions and its recent tilt toward a tough nationalist stance looks more like logical diplomacy than drum-beating patriotism. By all accounts, for example, the diplomats strongly resisted the cancellation of Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin's visit to Poland over a minor incident at Warsaw station.


Vladimir Lukin, the former ambassador in Washington and Kozyrev's great rival, is much closer to this line than it often seems. He recently criticized Kozyrev's Iraq initiative on the grounds that it was endangering something much more important, the relationship with the United States.


In between there are the floating nationalists, who keep their options open. Boris Yeltsin and his government belong to this category. On the one hand they cancelled the Polish trip and earned a gold star with the Russian patriots. On the other Yeltsin was careful this week to offer a hand of friendship to the United States and the Republicans. But, then, he doesn't have to put up with room service at the Plaza.