ULYANOVSK, Russia--One of Russia's most controversial writers and political figures has been found guilty of forming an illegal armed group and organizing the purchase of illegal weapons.
A district court in the southern Russian city of Saratov handed down the verdict on Edward Limonov on 31 January. Limonov heads the radical National Bolshevik Party. Five other party members were convicted on similar charges, although some of the charges were subsequently dropped. Prosecutor Sergei Verbin requested sentences of 14 years' imprisonment for Limonov and 12 years for Sergei Aksyonov, founder of the party's newspaper, Limonka, ITAR-TASS reported.
The court is expected to pass sentence in late February or early March.
Limonov and Aksyonov, his right-hand man in the National Bolshevik Party, were arrested by Federal Security Service (FSB) agents on 7 April 2001 in an apiary in the Russian republic of Altai. Limonov was detained in the Lefortovo jail in Moscow until June 2002, when he was transferred to Saratov. Four others were arrested in Saratov and Ufa while attempting to purchase six submachine guns and 157 rounds of ammunition.
One of the accused said at the trial that Limonov had ordered the weapons purchase.
Investigators claimed that party leaders began plotting two years ago to seize power in one of the former Soviet republics with a large Russian-speaking population and set up a "second Russia" there. The National Bolsheviks allegedly planned terrorist actions in northern Kazakhstan with the help of a French criminal known as Bob Denar. FSB officers claimed to have found a letter from Denar addressed to Limonov. Limonov denied the accusations.
On 4 February the court cleared the four arms buyers of charges of conspiracy to commit terrorism and of forming an illegal armed group.
LIMONOV'S STRUGGLE
Limonov's life story is rife with bizarre twists and turns. Born Edward Savenko, he took a pseudonym formed from the Russian word for "lemon." The name of the party newspaper, Limonka, refers both to its founder and to a kind of grenade.
Limonov, 59, was expelled from the USSR in 1974. Already possessing a reputation as an avant-garde poet, he went first to the United States, then to France, where he became a celebrated writer. He has dual French and Russian citizenship. His books in English translation include His Butler's Story, It's Me, Eddie: A Fictional Memoir, and Memoir of a Russian Punk.
During the 1990s Limonov's name was associated with radical politics, both left and right, more than with his fiction and poetry. He failed to win election to the Russian Duma, which some observers put down to the sexual passages in his books, and briefly joined Vladimir Zhirinovsky's ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party before forming the National Bolshevik Party in 1993. The announced aim of the National Bolsheviks was to revive Lenin's revolutionary spirit in the new capitalist age.
After Limonov's arrest, many prominent French intellectuals circulated a petition demanding his release.
The small party Limonov founded--the actual number of members is not known--is noted for pulling off attention-grabbing stunts. In November 2002, two National Bolshevik protestors threw tomatoes at NATO Secretary-General George Robertson during the alliance's summit in Prague. Other party actions include pulling down flags of nationalist parties and shouting anti-capitalist slogans at gatherings of mainstream parties. Recently a teenage party member was charged with throwing a cake at the mayor of Nizhny Novgorod.
"Racist Latvia, independent Ukraine, [Mikhail] Gorbachev, the Democratic Party of Russia [led by reformist former Deputy Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar], and Gaidar himself are legitimate targets" for publicity stunts, Limonov wrote in Limonka. He recommended that the party carry out noisy but peaceful actions to attract as many people as possible, and guard against attempts by secret security services to destroy it.
On 7 February, Rosbalt reported that during a four-day address to the court, lawyer Sergei Belyak said there was no material basis for Limonov's conviction. He said the three main pieces of evidence on which the court based its verdict--an article in a party bulletin entitled "Theory of the Second Russia," other texts in party publications, and the Saratov weapons purchase--were unconvincing.
Belyak said investigators failed to present direct evidence of Limonov's involvement in the submachine gun buy. Last November, Vladimir Linderman, a Latvian citizen who heads that country's offshoot of the National Bolshevik Party, told Kommersant that he, not Limonov, was the author of "Theory of the Second Russia."
Linderman said the essence of the text was that "if the Russian people on the territory of another state are suffering genocide, then that people has the right to rise up.
If First Russia, that is, the Kremlin and those who live in Russia, can't do anything, then Second Russia must rise."
Linderman denied that the text exhorted anyone to overthrow the Russian constitutional system.
"The question is about the other state," he said. "But the investigation interprets it as the party's document calling for rebellion in Russia." The text was purely theoretical, he argued.
Limonov said the majority of the 250 witnesses for the prosecution were not competent and had been influenced by security officers. Twenty witnesses called by the defense testified in support of the writer.
Neither the case nor the National Bolshevik Party have aroused much interest among ordinary Russians, although a number of intellectuals joined their French counterparts in backing Limonov's right to free speech, even though many have distanced themselves from his politics.
Limonov's third wife, Natalia Medvedeva, a singer and writer who lived with Limonov in exile during the 1970s and 1980s and who was herself prominent in Russian avant-garde circles, died in Moscow on 4 February at the age of 44. Although the couple eventually divorced, Medvedeva wrote for Limonka under the pseudonym Margo Fuehrer and visited Limonov in jail.
As extravagant as his former wife, Limonov wrote seven books while in Lefortovo jail, including one called Russian Psycho. One is due to be published in March and others are forthcoming. Limonov said he had not had time to write while in jail in Saratov.