Early life, 1943–1966 Limonov was born in
Dzerzhinsk,
Gorky Oblast, Soviet Union. Limonov's fatherthen in the military servicewas in a
state security career and his mother was a
homemaker. In the early years of his life his family moved to
Kharkov in the
Ukrainian SSR, where Limonov grew up. He studied at the
H.S. Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University. By Limonov's own account, he began writing "very bad" poetry at the age of thirteen and soon after became involved in
theft and
petty crime as an adolescent hooligan.
Konkret poets in Moscow, 1966–1974 In 1966, together with his first wife, Anna Moiseevna Rubinstein, (their marriage was not registered officially)
Literary exile in New York, 1974–1980 Although neither he nor Shchapova were Jewish, the Soviet Union issued permission for the couple to emigrate to Israel, but soon after the couple arrived in the United States. As protagonist Eddie finds out as a consequence, the latter is a political target of the
FBI. Limonov was himself harassed by the FBI. As he later recounted, the FBI interrogated dozens of his acquaintances, once asking a friend about "
Lermontov" in
Paris when he had resettled in France. and became active in politics. Limonov was an active supporter of
Serbia in the wars that followed the breakup of
Yugoslavia.
Paweł Pawlikowski's film
Serbian Epics includes footage of him meeting with
Radovan Karadžić, then the
Bosnian Serb president and later a convicted
war criminal, on the front lines of
Sarajevo in 1992. The film also shows Limonov participating in a sniper patrol and firing a few rounds with a machine gun on the outskirts of the besieged city. When asked about the incident in 2010, Limonov said he had been shooting at a target range and that Pawlikowski added an extra camera shot to make it appear he had fired into a populated area. This explanation has been challenged. On another occasion, Limonov said 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, respectively. However Limonov soon tired of Zhirinovsky, accusing him of moderateness and of approaching the president and consequently split from him, publishing the book "Limonov against Zhirinovsky" (1994). In 1993, together with figures like
Aleksandr Dugin and
Yegor Letov, he founded the
National Bolshevik Party which started to publish a newspaper called
Limonka (the Russian nickname for the lemon-shaped
F1 hand grenade; also a play on his pen name Limonov). In 1996, a
Russian court judged in a hearing that the NBP paper
Limonka had disseminated illegal and immoral information: "in essence, E. V. Limonov (Savenko) is an advocate of revenge and mass terror, raised to the level of state policy." The court decided to recommend issuing an official warning to Limonka, to investigate the possibility of examining whether Limonov could be held legally responsible, and to publish its decision in
Rossiiskaia gazeta. After that, a criminal case was launched against him on charges of incitement of ethnic hatred. He served almost two years before being paroled for good behavior. Limonov continued his political activities as one of the leaders of
The Other Russia, on 14 April 2007, Limonov was arrested again after an anti-government rally in
Moscow; on 31 January 2009 was detained again in Moscow. In July 2009, he helped organise the
Strategy-31 series of protests. It was denied official registration in 2010 and in 2019, after it got re-established without Limonov as formally part of its leadership.
Later life and death, 2013–2020 Starting in 2014, Limonov supported the
annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation and the at the time unrecognized
Donetsk People's Republic and
Lugansk People's Republic, and encouraged Russians to take part in the
Russo-Ukrainian War on the Russian side. The Other Russia also created a militia called "
Interbrigades" to support the separatist movement in Donbas; they took part in the battles for Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, and also were engaged in the protection of the leader of Limonov during his visit to the Luhansk region. He died on 17 March 2020, aged 77, in Moscow. It was reported that Limonov had been battling cancer; complications from two surgery procedures such as throat problems, struggles with
oncology, and
inflammation were cited as the direct cause of his death. == Literary work ==