Eduard Veniaminovich Limonov (; 22 February 194317 March 2020) was a Russian writer, poet, publicist, political dissident and politician.
He emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1974, but returned to Russia in 1991, where he founded the National Bolshevik Party. The party was banned in the country in 2007 and superseded by The Other Russia. In the 2000s, he was one of the leaders of The Other Russia coalition of opposition forces.
Biography
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.