I learned Russian for some time (actually it used to be compulsory but I liked it) - a very easy language for us, Poles, as we Slavs have all the phonems in common. zh is only a transcription of the Russian cyrylic letter, which is pronounced almost like French j (e.g. jardin), though the Slavic sound's a bit more harsh.

We use z with a dot above it to denote the same letter.

Just to get back on the track: in Polish the word for muzhichok would be czlowieczek; the same mechanism as in Russian because it derives from czlowiek - man. An interesting word is staruszek - the "cute and lovable" form of starzec: old man - which itself originates from staruch: "male crone"!