Maschinengewehre und ein Wettbewerb der Revolutionsprojekte: Der Prozess gegen Ėduard Limonov

Abstract

The first section outlines the March 2001 arrests of National Bolshevik activists who had procured machine guns and explosives, obeying orders, it was claimed in the ensuing investigation, of their party leader, the cult-author Eduard Limonov, and Sergei Aksenov, editor in chief of the party newspaper Limonka. The two were subsequently arrested and accused not only of the illegal acquisition of weapons (Criminal Code of the Russian Federation §222) but also of founding an armed group (§205), of preparing acts of terrorism (§205) and of instigating an uprising destructive of the constitutional order of the Russian Federation. The section outlines media reactions to the arrest of “the well-known writer Limonov” and examines a polemical open letter composed behind bars by Limonov in which he accuses society of indifference. By comparing his own case with that of Iosif Brodsky and bringing discredit upon the latter, Limonov pursues the somewhat contradictory goals of appropriating the symbolic capital of the dissident movement and simultaneously destroying one of their central myths. The “hypertrophied literary political nexus” (Parté 2004, 1) becomes manifest in its most aggressive incarnation: the writer-revolutionary.The second section goes back to Walter Benjamin’s characterization of political radicalism among the bohemians of Baudelaire’s Paris. It emphasizes Limonov’s deeply felt kinship with Baudelaire, asking whether the former’s project can be viewed as an instance of radical aesthetic subjectivity in the tradition of the avant-garde. To my mind, to decide whether Limonov’s is really a political or merely an aesthetic project is too complex a problem to solve satisfactorily at the present time. Providing a summary of scholarly treatises on the problem, I argue that Walter Benjamin’s notions of ‘aestheticization of politics’ and war in a fascist context can serve as points of departure in future research. Another useful notion might be ‘myth’; it has been addressed on the one hand by French philosophers Nancy and Lacoue-Lebarthe, who further develop Benjamin’s above mentioned notions, and on the other hand by Olga Matich in her psychoanalytically informed analysis of Limonov’s more recent writing. Let me urge caution in the use of these leads, as we are dealing here with aesthetics, however irrational and repellent they might be, that are not state-controlled, but rather serve young people, freely representing their marginality.After thus bracketing larger questions, I devote the third chapter to the core interest of the article: the question as to whether Limonov’s terrorism was judged to be a gory reality or the trial was merely and purposely addressing fiction. The strategy of the prosecution was to treat speech acts as signifying a bloody reality, while Limonov, facing several years in prison, suggested the speech acts’ rhetorical nature. The court’s decision followed Limonov’s suggestion and acquitted him and Aksenev of the charges of terrorism and instigating an insurrection. Moreover it emphasized that the prosecution seemed rather inclined to construe a conspiracy.The last chapter explores in depth one of the main pieces of evidence brought forward by the prosecution: the “Theory of a Second Russia.” This text, which was attributed to Limonov by the prosecution, but was in fact authored by a Latvian regional party leader, was published in party bulletin NBP-Info № 3, devoted to the ideology and political perspectives of Eurasianism. The text imagines an uprising of the Russian minority in Kazakhstan and the building of a second free and wild Russian state that would in the long run conquer the first state. Limonov has emphasized that this text was received for a column of Limonka devoted to organizing a competition among proponents of revolutionary projects. This competition was announced by the post-/conceptualist poet Dmitry Pimenov, who himself contributed a couple of very surrealistic revolutionary projects. The competition, in encouraging imagination of the improbable, was a striking example of the then virulent blurring of literary and political genres. The exotic potential of the imaginary Second Russia imaginary is then further developed in Limonov’s book of prison lectures, A Different Russia. Limonov’s vision includes a touch of aestheticization of violence that is analyzed at the end of the article. I argue that a state in Limonov’s myth is a violent father figure admired and loved at the same time, an ambivalence which makes positioning Limonov in the field of politics a difficult task.