Editing National Bolshevism (section)

===[[File:Limonov.png]] Limonovism===
Limonovism is the ideology of Russian poet, publicist, and dissident Eduard Limonov, born Eduard Veniaminovich Savenko. Savenko was born in the [[File:Cball-USSR.png]] Soviet Union in 1943 to a father in the [[File:Tankie.png]] military, while his mother was a homemaker. At 13, he began writing poetry under Eduard Limonov and committed petty crimes.

Limonov moved to Moscow in 1967 and married fellow poet Yelena Shchapova in a Russian Orthodox ceremony in 1973. While in Moscow, he was involved in the Konkret poets' group, sold volumes of his self-published poetry, and worked various jobs. By the mid-1970s, he had achieved some success. 1974 he and his wife emigrated from the Soviet Union under unclear circumstances. Reportedly, the [[File:KGB.png]] KGB gave him the choice of becoming an informant or leaving the country. Although neither he nor Shchapova were Jewish, the Soviet Union permitted them to emigrate to Israel, but they soon relocated to the United States. Limonov settled in New York City, where he and Shchapova divorced.

In New York, Limonov worked as a proofreader for a Russian-language newspaper and occasionally interviewed recent Soviet emigrants. Like Eddie, the protagonist of his first novel, It's Me, Eddie, Limonov was drawn to punk subculture and radical politics. His acquaintances included Studio 54’s Steve Rubell and members of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, which was a political target of the [[File:CIA.png]] FBI. Limonov himself was harassed by the FBI, which interrogated dozens of his acquaintances. He later recounted how a friend was questioned about "Lermontov" in Paris after he had resettled in France.

Limonov criticized both the Soviet Union and the United States, stating: "I did not find the freedom to be a radical opponent of the existing social structure in the country that pompously calls itself the 'leader of the free world,' but neither did I notice it in the land that represents itself as the 'future of all humanity.' The FBI is just as zealous in suppressing American radicals as the KGB is with its dissidents. True, the methods of the FBI are more modern. The KGB, however, is studying the techniques of its older brother and modernizing its methods."

The first chapter of It's Me, Eddie, was published by an Israeli Russian-language journal. Completed in 1977, the book was consistently rejected by publishers in the United States and was only published in France in 1980, where it became an instant success. Limonov claimed it was rejected in the U.S. because it lacked anti-Soviet tones, unlike other Russian literature admired there.

In New York, Limonov experienced another side of the American Dream. Living in poverty due to low income, he rented a room in a run-down hostel and spent time with homeless people. Dissatisfied with the [[File:Cball-USA.png]] USA, he eventually moved to Paris. In 1991, he returned to Russia, restored his citizenship, and became politically active.

Limonov strongly supported Serbia during the Yugoslav Wars and participated in a sniper patrol in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The film Serbian Epics includes footage of him traveling to the front lines of Sarajevo in 1992 with Radovan Karadžić, then the Bosnian Serb president and later a convicted war criminal, and firing a few rounds with a machine gun toward the besieged city. When questioned about this in 2010, Limonov claimed he had been shooting at a target range. That filmmaker Paweł Pawlikowski had altered the footage to make it appear he had fired at an apartment complex, though this explanation has been challenged. On another occasion, Limonov stated that he "celebrated his 50th birthday in Kninska Krajina [...] by firing from a Russian-made heavy gun at Croatian Army headquarters."

During the 1990s, he supported Bosnian Serbs in the Yugoslav Wars and Abkhaz and Transnistrian secessionists against Georgia and Moldova. Initially an ally of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Limonov was named Security Minister in Zhirinovsky's shadow cabinet in 1992. However, he soon accused Zhirinovsky of being too moderate and close to the Russian president, leading to a split. In 1994, Limonov published Limonov Against Zhirinovsky.

In 1993, along with [[File:Dugin.png]] Aleksandr Dugin and Yegor Letov, Limonov founded the [[File:Nazbol.png]] National Bolshevik Party (NBP), which published the newspaper Limonka (a reference to the F1 hand grenade and a play on Limonov's pen name). In 1996, a Russian court ruled that Limonka disseminated illegal and immoral information, accusing Limonov of advocating revenge and mass terror as state policy. This led to an official warning, legal investigations, and a criminal case against him for inciting ethnic hatred.

On 24 August 1999, during Ukrainian Independence Day, Limonov and 15 supporters climbed the clock tower in [[File:Sball-Sevastopol.png]] Sevastopol, calling for a review of the city's status and urging the Russian State Duma not to ratify the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation between Russia and Ukraine.

Limonov was arrested in April 2001 on charges of terrorism, plotting the overthrow of the constitutional order, and illegal weapons purchases. Based on an article he wrote in Limonka, the government accused him of planning to raise an army to invade Kazakhstan. His trial occurred in Saratov, where Russian Duma members Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Alexei Mitrofanov, and Vasiliy Shandybin appealed for his release. Limonov dismissed the charges as politically motivated but was convicted of arms purchases and sentenced to four years in prison, while the other charges were dropped. He served nearly two years before being paroled for good behavior, during which he wrote eight books.

In 2006, Limonov married actress Yekaterina Volkova, with whom he had a son, Bogdan, and a daughter, Alexandra. They separated in 2008. On 19 April 2007, the Moscow City Court banned the National Bolshevik Party as extremist, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court.

Limonov continued his political activities, becoming a leader of The Other Russia alongside liberal, nationalist, and communist politicians. He participated in protests, including the Dissenters' Marches. On 3 March 2007, he was detained at the first Saint Petersburg Dissenters' March, arrested again after an anti-government rally in Moscow on 14 April 2007, and detained once more on 31 January 2009. In July 2009, he helped organize the Strategy-31 protests but later split from the liberal opposition. In July 2010, he and his followers established The Other Russia political party as an informal successor to the NBP. Still, it was denied official registration in 2010 and again in 2019 after being re-established without him in formal leadership.

From 2014 onward, Limonov supported the annexation of Crimea, the unrecognized DNR, and LNR, and encouraged Russians to fight in the Russo-Ukrainian War on Russia’s side.

Eduard Limonov died on 17 March 2020 in Moscow. Reports indicated that he had been battling cancer, with complications from two surgeries—including throat problems, struggles with oncology, and inflammation—cited as the direct cause of his death.