KGB

The KGB is more than a security service in the book: it is a presence that gives Limonov’s imprisonment its mythic weight, lends force to accusations against him, and links post-Soviet political actors to the institutions and habits of the Soviet state. The narrative also distinguishes the organization itself from the broader Chekist world that survives its historical moment, carrying old allegiances into new political conflicts.

Identity and Political Shadow

The KGB enters through several overlapping associations rather than through an institutional history. For Limonov’s admirers, Lefortovo Prison is a KGB fortress, an Alcatraz of Russian mythology where the state holds its most consequential enemies. Limonov’s time there becomes central to his legend: he endures isolation without complaint, writes, helps fellow prisoners, and emerges with a reputation that makes inmates and guards compete to carry his suitcase. The KGB’s significance in this account lies partly in the scale of the threat its prison represents and partly in the courage attributed to a man who withstands it.

That prison story has a public life of its own. When Limonov describes his experiences to Steven Gray, he recounts his psychiatric hospitalization and conflicts with the KGB, but also shapes the account to suit an audience. He knows which familiar elements of political imprisonment will appeal to Gray and supplies them with the expected solemnity. The episode makes clear that the KGB is not only an instrument of repression in the narrative; its reputation can also be converted into cultural capital by an émigré writer presenting himself to a wealthy American host fascinated by Soviet life.

Accusations, Reputation, and Personal Memory

The KGB’s name becomes an accusation when a Soviet newspaper reprints Limonov’s article about dissidents and emigration. The piece appears beneath a photomontage placing his image at the foot of a New York skyscraper, although the original photograph was taken in Moscow. At the office of Novoye russkoye slovo, editor Moishe Borodatikh points to the article and tells Limonov that the paper says he works for the KGB. Limonov responds with a shrug rather than a denial, then leaves without waiting to be dismissed. The accusation turns his writing into apparent evidence of collaboration and helps precipitate his departure from the newspaper.

The charge is potent because Limonov’s relationship to Soviet security is also rooted in family history. When he meets Jenny’s parents, her father, a former FBI agent, reminds him of his own father, Venyamin Savenko, who worked for the KGB. The comparison briefly places two rival security worlds in the same domestic conversation. Jenny’s father treats the resemblance without hostility, and Limonov sees him as an uncomplicated, decent man; the moment complicates the familiar image of security officers as representatives of an impersonal political machine.

Chekists and the Nationalist Opposition

In Moscow, Limonov meets Viktor Alksnis in a television studio during a debate between opponents and supporters of Mikhail Gorbachev. Alksnis, a parliamentary representative for Soviet military personnel in Latvia, calls for martial law and a union of political forces ranging from Marxist-Leninists and Stalinists to neofascists, Orthodox believers, monarchists, and pagans. Limonov and Alksnis quickly become close allies. Alksnis introduces him to soldiers and Chekists who publish ultranationalist papers, including Dyen, where Limonov begins working as a Russian journalist. After Limonov returns to Paris, the two men continue exchanging calls and faxes, encouraging one another with the expectation that a coup may be imminent.

The book’s wording matters here: these associates are identified as Chekists, not simply as the KGB acting as a unified organization. Their presence shows the persistence of a security-service political milieu within the opposition to Gorbachev, alongside military figures and readers of extremist literature. The KGB thus belongs to a larger landscape of Soviet institutional inheritance, in which old state-security identities and networks can attach themselves to an anti-Gorbachev coalition rather than to a single, settled political camp.

From Soviet Service to Post-Soviet Power

The former KGB officer Vladimir Putin offers a contrasting afterlife of that inheritance. Repatriated hastily from Dresden after East Germany ceased to exist, he returns to Leningrad without a job or a place to live and makes a living as a black-market taxi driver. The narrative situates this individual reversal amid the economic dislocation that followed shock therapy: while some Russians enrich themselves, millions face rising prices and stagnant wages. Putin, like Limonov, regards the end of the Soviet empire as the greatest catastrophe of the twentieth century. His appearance connects the former security service not only to memories of repression or Limonov’s political circle, but also to a future political figure whose post-Soviet fortunes will become important later in the book.

The later summons to the Lubyanka keeps the distinction between historical KGB and contemporary state security visible. An officer tells Limonov that he is responsible for the dossier on him and his party, questions the grenade printed in the party newspaper Limonka, and asks whether it is intended to incite murder. Limonov answers that it depicts a model made in a Russian weapons factory and that he knows of no law against reproducing it. The officer gives him a mobile number and invites him to report young associates tempted by terrorism. Limonov agrees politely. The exchange is presented as a meeting with a Chekist at the Lubyanka, not as proof that the Soviet-era KGB itself remains in operation; its significance is the continuing presence of state scrutiny and the recognizable institutional vocabulary of the Chekist world.