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| “ | Many types of people will disappear... Many people will want to join us. Possibly we will conquer the whole world. People will die young, but it will be fun. We will burn the corpses of the heroes. | „ |
| ~ Eduard Limonov |
Ėduard Limonov, real name Ėduard Veniaminovič Savenko, (Dzeržinsk, 22nd February 1943 – Moscow, 17th March 2020) was a writer and politician.
Biography edit
Early life edit
Eduard Veniaminovič Savenko was born on the 22nd February 1943 in Dzeržinsk, Russia. Eduard's father is Veniamin, a low-ranking NKVD officer and his mother is Raisa. During his childhood, Eduard grows up among the city thugs. In the immediate post-war period, he spent a turbulent adolescence in the outskirts of Kharkov, frequenting street gangs, drinking heavily, and becoming involved in petty crimes that did not cost him prison only for a series of lucky coincidences. After a violent fight with an opposing group, he is arrested with the aggravating circumstance of having wounded a policeman with a knife, and this would cost him years to serve in a penal colony. However, the commissioner was his father's comrade and silences the investigation.
He starts writing poetry and wants to become a great poet. He starts working as a smelter in a factory and his modest and routine life seems to frustrate his aspirations. One night, seized by desperation, he cuts his wrist at the kitchen table at home and passes out. The next day he wakes up in a psychiatric hospital where he will stay in drug treatment for two months, until an old doctor helps him out and find a job.
In fact, he travels the city as a book peddler. During this period of his life, he discovers the central Bookshelf 41 which is the haunt of the official and underground artists. With renewed enthusiasm for poetry, he begins to frequent the environment. After closing in the evening, the creatives move to the apartment of Anna, a Jewish woman older than him, suffering from mental disorders, the bookstore's prime contractor. The young man sees in the relationship with her a useful tool for emancipation from the gray suburb where he lives with her parents and thus settles himself. In the apartment where he lives with his partner and her elderly mother, in addition to making acquaintances and getting noticed as a poet, he learns to sew and begins to make clothes on commission. However, he fails to fulfill his aspirations, so he decides to leave the city along his girlfriend Anna.
Life in Moscow edit
In 1967, he moves to Moscow. There, Eduard and Anna are clandestine, as in the Soviet Union a special permit is also required to move from one region to another and they do not have one. They live by expedients, often change apartments hosted by acquaintances, they also eat the leftovers of other customers at the public canteen and survive thanks to sewing jobs.
Eduard begins to frequent the circles of the official intelligentsia and the alternative ones gathered around the group called SMOG in parallel, remaining dissatisfied with both. When he finally gets permission to read his poems, they are appreciated, but he doesn't want to compromise, he wants to be recognized as a great poet without having to slavishly ingratiate himself with the characters of the Soviet cultural establishment. And while the turnover of tailoring jobs grows and the couple is economically calmer, Anna's malaise intensifies, so much so that she is hospitalized and then leaves the city to spend a rest period with some friends in Latvia. During her absence, at a birthday party, Limonov meets Tanja who, after a few months of stealth meetings and a suicide attempt, will marry in the church, leaving Anna and starting a bohemian made of sex, poetry and financial difficulties.
Seeing that neither of them succeeds in achieving the goals they had set themselves and convinced that the only place where their ambitions can be fulfilled is the United States, towards the end of 1974 they manage to obtain a visa for expatriation to Israel, to then reach North America.
Moving to the USA edit
After the initial amazement, the two realize that life in the new world is not as easy as they dreamed of and success is not so close at hand, despite being able to be admitted into some of the "good salons" using contacts with Russian exiles. living in New York. Thanks to the good offices of Brik, Tatjana frequent the house of the spouses where the jet set of the metropolis meets. Tanja is admired and complimented, but she doesn't get a model contract. They meet the famous poet in exile Iosif Brodskij, who directs Eduard to Russkoe Delo, a newspaper for Russians in America, and is hired there, but the job consists in translating articles from English into Russian.
The dissident scientist Andrei Sakharov receives the Nobel Prize, and Limonov, who has a very negative opinion on dissidents, writes a vitriolic article which he sends to various newspapers. Somehow it arrives in Moscow, and is published in Komsomolskaya Pravda. The chief editor of Russkoe Delo summons him and accuses him of being a spy for the KGB and Eduard loses his job. For her part, Tanja, deluded that she can become a popular model, quickly becomes the lover of a top-notch photographer, ending up leaving Eduard who has a psychological breakdown due to shock.
From this moment on, Limonov begins a descent to the lower rungs of the social ladder, living like a tramp looking for affection. In this tragic moment of his existence, he begins to have homosexual relations, especially with African-American stragglers. By now he hates American society and regrets having abandoned his native country which he instead continues to admire, but at the same time he knows well that those who leave the Soviet Union can no longer return there.
In his homosexual wanderings he meets a former Russian dancer, Gennady Smakov, who introduces him again to the cultural world of the exiles. At an evening in a beautiful loft he begins to court Jenny, managing to quickly become her boyfriend, but later discovering that she was the maid of a billionaire, Steven, who spends a few days from time to time at his villa in New York. After being left by the girl, Eduard manages to get hired as a butler in Steven's house, while she moves to California and marries another man.
Financially settled again, Limonov feels frustrated and humiliated by the new job, which he also performs competently and efficiently, having various violent desires, including those to kill all the participants in the evenings organized by Steven. After receiving countless rejections to the publication of his book, which he titled Io, Edička, when he has lost hope, he receives the news that someone has sent his manuscript to a famous French publisher, Jean-Jacques Pauvert, who has decided to publish it under the provocative title "The Russian poet prefers big blacks".
Moving to Paris edit
When Limonov moves to Paris, Eduard finds himself alone in the French capital, depressed, with a trunk full of 5,000 unsaleable costumes and a travelogue that is of no interest to any publisher. He starts working as a film critic, writes a collection of reviews of Werner Herzog's films but is treated badly by this during a commissioned interview. He starts writing on Télérama, hosts a weekly broadcast for a free radio, and, when Limonov's first novel comes out, invites him as a guest.
Despite a less than rudimentary knowledge of the French language, Limonov begins to make friends in the underground cultural environment. With the ways of provocation and the eccentric clothing of a sovieto-punk he becomes a charismatic character in the circuit of Parisian fashionistas. The publishing success is confirmed by the second novel "Diary of a failure" which will be followed by "Story of a domestic", two works still dedicated to his overseas experiences that complete the so-called "American trilogy".
He becomes the lover of a countess, but in the fall of 1982, during a trip to New York at the invitation of his American publisher, he meets a 25-year-old Russian singer named Natalia Medvedeva, falls madly in love with her and takes her with him to Paris. She will soon discover that she is an alcoholic and a nymphomaniac, and thus she will become a source of great pain for the writer. The relationship is turbulent, they separate and reconcile several times, eventually they will marry.
Later, he writes the "Soviet trilogy": "The Glorious Epoch" on Stalinist childhood, "Eddy Baby I love you" and "Little rogue" on his criminal youth in Kharkov, as well as countless stories about episodes that had not found space in the novels . However, the circle of readers does not expand, and the circulation of his works stands between five thousand and ten thousand copies. A publisher advises him to write a real novel, which becomes Oscar and women, but this gets negative feedback from critics and the market. And, in the meantime, he has already transcribed all the memories he had to publish.
In 1985, he meets with Jean-Edern Hallier, director of Idiot international, a provocative, quarrelsome and anti-conformist sheet, on which Limonov can express all his resentment for the cultural and political establishment, dates back to this period, and begins to write in French.
Return in the Soviet Union edit
In the new political climate of openness, Limonov's books are also published in the Soviet Union.
He receives an invitation to participate in some conferences in his homeland and returns there for the first time after his trip to the States with Tanja, staying at the Hotel Ukraine, playing the part of "literary rock star" but, again, he resists the public and he prefers the reality of the street.
In the streets of the metropolis, Limonov is looking for his wife who, after a Parisian quarrel, left before him for the Soviet capital and has never been heard from again. Meeting his mother-in-law and one of his friends, he discovers that they have hosted Natasha for the last few days, but now she is gone again. The next day, he decides to see his parents again and takes the train to Kharkov. The father suffered a stroke the previous year and is debilitated. He had planned to take the train back that same evening, but he stays a week in the modest council flat where he grew up.
War in Jugoslavia edit
In November 1991, Limonov took part in the war in Yugoslavia. Invited there for the publication of one of his novels, he is taken to Vukovar, a Croatian city with an ethnic Serb majority, part of the self-proclaimed Serbian Republic of Slavonia, just liberated by federal militias and reduced to a pile of rubble after months of bombing. From here on, he enthusiastically embraces the Chetnik cause, offering himself as a volunteer, getting to know and becoming a close friend of the commander Željko Ražnatović known as Arkan, head of the Tigers of the Serbian Voluntary Guard who will become famous for the ethnic cleansing made in Croatia and in Bosnia.
In Sarajevo, Limonov is contacted by the Polish-born English director Paweł Pawlikowski to interview Serbian leader Radovan Karadžić and he accepts.
Life from 1991-1995 and Foundation of the NBP edit
In August 1991, taking advantage of Gorbachev's absence from Moscow, some conservative soldiers attempt a coup by attacking Parliament in Moscow, but under the leadership of Yeltsin, president of the Russian republic, a strong resistance is organized, which forces the coup leaders to capitulate after four days. Limonov is in Paris at the time, and obviously sided with the putschists, publishing articles of applause and support for those he believes can awaken the former glories of the Soviet Union.
During this period, Limonov moves between Paris, the Balkans and Russia, where he returns every two or three months, being baffled by the rapidity of the changes.
At that moment, he comes into contact with like-minded characters: Colonel Alksnis, intellectual Aleksandr Gel'evič Dugin. The two slowly decide that it is necessary to enter politics in the first person and therefore founded the National Bolshevik Party.
In September 1993, Yeltsin decrees the dissolution of the Duma and calls for new elections. For most of the parliamentarians it is a new attempt at a coup d'état and they are perched in the parliament building, led by vice president Ruckoj. Limonov and Colonel Alknis, along with thousands of other "patriots", rush to defend the rebels against the hated Yeltsin. Ruckoj gives the order to go to conquer the television tower, the Ostankino tower. Eduard leaves for the destination together with a multitude of supporters, but when they arrive, they find the army that does not hesitate to fire on the crowd. There are many deaths and also Limonov is wounded in the shoulder.
The elections that follow will be the first in which the National Bolshevik party participates and Eduard presents himself in the Tver district. In reality, at that moment the party has only three members, so the electoral campaign cannot enjoy funding and propagandists, and Eduard and Rabko (the third member of the party) have to do practically everything. The results are not exciting and, even before the end of the polls, Limonov returns to Paris, where he finds his wife drunk after a three-day orgy with two strangers.
Disappointed by everyone, he immediately left for the Balkans, where he enlisted among Arkan's troops, asking to be assigned to the defense of the Serbian republic of Krajina. However, after a couple of months in which he was able to fight the fierce guerrilla war in the mountains of Krajina, the complex diplomatic games cause Arkan to fall out of favor and his army to be demobilized.
The expansion of the party edit
Thanks to the publication of all his books, Limonov has become a celebrity in Russia, but despite this he is not rich and, although he has sold hundreds of thousands of copies of his books, he lives with Natalia in a dilapidated and lightless building. In the autumn of '94 he founded Limonka, the official organ of the party, drafted almost entirely by him and his wife, who for the occasion signed herself "Margot Führer". The newspaper has an absolutely innovative style and graphic look for a party sheet. In short, the party manages to gather a few thousand militants, young people, ready for anything and with nothing to lose. Quickly, new offices are opened in other cities, but in the political elections of '96, not wanting to ally with either of the two big parties, the party gets a poor result. Furthermore, Limonov is going through a very difficult period from a psychological point of view, as Natalia has left him, this time for good.
One evening he was attacked by three men who beat him to death, forcing him to spend eight days in the hospital. It is a warning that Limonov will never know who the instigator is, even if he suspects a general who has also run for the presidential elections: General Lebed. Since then, he will always be escorted by three brawny men who act as a deterrent to new ambushes. Replaced Natalia by a very young 22-year-old punk, crazy about him, Limonov organizes the party's first congress, facing considerable difficulties. Here he communicates to the delegates the new line he has drawn up:
- the time is not yet ripe for the PNB to take power in Russia.
- In the meantime. it is necessary to focus on the Russians who live in the peripheral nations, abandoned to themselves after the breakup of the 'Soviet Union.
Limonov mainly refers to the Baltic countries and the states of Central Asia. Since the party is already well established in the Baltic republics, he embarks with some volunteers on a two-month trip to the Central Asian republics.
In Altaj Eduard and eight members of the party set up a camp, where they train for survival for 3 weeks, then leaving three followers there for the whole winter, without help and in complete solitude. During this trip, Eduard discovers the local populations, that is Kyrgyz, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Tajiks, proud populations and custodians of ancient traditions to whom all his sympathy goes. Influenced by the Serbs, he had always despised Muslims, but now he is able to appreciate Islam, imagining himself as the liberator of the Asian populations from the dictators who came to power after the Soviets left. But Vladimir Putin comes to power in Russia who, with the excuse of the fight against terrorism, attacks Chechnya, at the same time outlawing some inconvenient parties, including the National Bolshevik Party, although they have never made themselves known for criminal acts. but rather for sensational actions for which they paid a heavy price in terms of beatings, deaths and years in prison. The next morning the political police arrived by helicopter, arresting everyone on charges of preparing a coup and of being terrorists, even if the only weapons found were two shotguns.
Detention edit
Limonov is locked up in the Lefortovo prison in Moscow, where the most dangerous enemies of the state are held. The inmates live in perpetual isolation, subjected to harsh discipline. Most of them come crashing down, but not Eduard who writes four books in a year. After fifteen months he is transferred to Saratov, where the trial will be held. The new prison is the opposite of the previous one, the inmates, for the most part, are common criminals and are crowded into cells too small to accommodate them. Limonov arrives there with the reputation of being a political opponent, a celebrity and an intellectual, but despite this he immediately gains the respect of the other prisoners. On the other hand, he has always aspired to be part of the most rejected society and he is very well in that condition.
At the trial the prosecutor asks for 15 years of sentence. Days later he receives the news that Natalia has died, probably from an overdose. He will have to serve his sentence in the Engels labor camp in southern Russia, where he further perfects his meditation techniques, gaining access to Nirvana. After a few months, however, he is released from prison with a lot of television crew that resumes the event. The political climate has changed and it is not possible to keep a great writer and party leader in jail.
Last years edit
On the 14th April 2007, Limonov was arrested again after an anti-government demonstration in Moscow and again on the 31st January 2009. However, he supported Putin's foreign policy following the 2014 riots in Ukraine. After a long illness, he died in Moscow on the 17th March 2020 at the age of 77.
Ideology edit
Political ideas edit
He and his party belived in an utopia where Russia, Europe and Central Asia are in a single megastate that imitates the USSR. In fact, he believes that the the fall of the Soviet empire was the greatest catastrophe of the century.
This idea arose when he thought that there was a need to preserve the Bolshevik-Soviet heritage, idea very similiar to the Soviet communist nationalism.
Admirations edit
Liminov particularly admired Stalin, Bakunin, Julius Evola and Yukio Mishima, as it can be read in his works. His admirations range up to Benito Mussolini, the Banda Baader-Meinhof and oriental mystics and from Lenin to the Sex Pistols.
He celebrates Stalinism as a patriotic symbol, but without wanting to recreate the totalitarian system, positioning itself on an idea of non-communist and non-fascist national socialism nor an anti-communist or anti-fascist.
Trivia edit
- When in 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev becomes the new secretary of the CPSU and begins his Perestroika policy, Limonov does not join the general consensus, believing that those choices are the prologue to the end of Soviet power.
- In the documentary "Serbian Epics" (1992), Eduard is filmed while he fires a few bursts of machine guns in the direction of the besieged city. Probably, from the distance of the hill on which he was standing he could not do damage to things and people, but the scene, along with other journalistic anecdotes, circulates in France and Eduard is suddenly considered as a "war criminal” from the French cultural environment.
- He tried to make a coup in Kazakhstan.
- In 2010, a video was released of Eduard having sex with a woman along with Viktor Shenderovič and Aleksandr Potkin.