Limonov’s identification with the weak

Limonov’s identification with the weak is a recurring allegiance that outlasts his shifts in political language and allies. It does not make him a consistent humanitarian or erase his appetite for power. Rather, the book presents a durable instinct to take the side of those being defeated, subordinated, or cast aside—even as the identity of the underdog changes and the rhetoric used to defend it remains combative.

Choosing a side in Sarajevo

During the siege of Sarajevo, the choice for observers was also a choice of position: to follow events from inside the besieged city or from the forces surrounding it. Jean Hatzfeld and Jean Rolin, both attentive to the victims on either side and unwilling to hide facts that trouble their own views, nevertheless go where the shells are falling. The principle is not that the weaker side is innocent. It is that an imbalance of force gives the weaker side a claim on attention and solidarity.

The account makes that solidarity deliberately uncomfortable. Hatzfeld initially believed Serbian snipers had wounded him in an ambush; after recovering and returning to investigate, he concluded that Bosnian militiamen had fired the shots that cost him a leg. A reversal of that kind unsettles any simple division between innocent victims and guilty perpetrators. Rolin, too, experiences a moment of satisfaction when Serbs are hit, but the feeling does not last as the balance shifts again. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia is then criticized for prosecuting Serbian war criminals while Croatian and Bosnian counterparts receive what the narrative calls predictable leniency from their own courts. The account also turns to the harsh conditions of defeated Serbs in Kosovo. Victim and torturer can exchange places; keeping faith with victims therefore means adapting as circumstances change, not treating one side as permanently virtuous.

This is the frame through which the book makes sense of Limonov’s own shifting loyalties. The preference for the weak does not depend on their being morally spotless. It is a position taken amid changing power, and it demands a willingness to notice when yesterday’s victim has become today’s aggressor.

From abandoned Russians to Central Asia

When Limonov addresses National Bolshevik Party supporters, he describes Russia as ruled by corrupt old politicians and casts the young as the country’s future. He also argues that the political moment is not yet ripe for taking power. Instead of pursuing coalitions with Orthodox anti-Semites or Stalinists, he directs attention outward, to former Soviet republics where, he says, Russians have been abandoned. His speech identifies 25 million Russians as left behind by the collapse of the Soviet Union, and singles out 900,000 in Latvia, 11 million in Ukraine, and five million in Kazakhstan. He portrays these communities as former agents of Soviet rule who have become victimized or ostracized in countries they helped develop, and proposes fostering insurgencies and separatist republics in the Baltic states and Central Asia.

The scale of his appeal exceeds his initial plan. He announces a canvassing tour of Central Asia and looks for about ten volunteers; a hundred hands rise in response. The tour through Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan lasts two months, with eight National Bolsheviks accompanying him. Photographs show the group beside tanks and Russian troops stationed in the region. The expedition does not destabilize much, but it alters the focus of Limonov’s sympathies. He returns less interested in the Russians who prompted the journey than in Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Tajiks, and Turkmens, whom he describes through traits such as pride, poverty, hospitality, and traditions of violence and vendetta.

His enthusiasm shifts again toward Chechens, whose frugality, guerrilla tactics, and cruelty he praises. The change from Serbian influence and opposition to Islam to an admiration for Muslim peoples is striking. The narrator acknowledges the essentializing quality of Limonov’s descriptions: solidarity here is expressed through broad characterizations, not careful differentiation among individuals. Yet the book identifies a continuity beneath the change. Limonov’s successive causes are linked by their position against stronger powers, not by a settled ideological account of the people involved.

Class, authority, and the domestic scale

The account’s portrait of Limonov’s father offers a counterpoint to the idea that his politics simply descend from a family history of spectacular repression. In Paris, Limonov likes to announce that his father was a Chekist because the claim makes listeners imagine something terrible; then he punctures the effect by describing him as essentially a gendarme. Venyamin Savenko had served as an NKVD orderly during the war, stationed in front of a factory, and later became a junior lieutenant whose work included organizing soldiers’ cultural activities. He arranged dance parties for Red Army Day, played guitar, sang, and polished his nails. The narrator describes him as a modest functionary in a system of supervision, while distinguishing that role from the most terrible acts of repression.

Limonov’s own ascent also complicates a straightforward identification with the powerless. Once a foundry worker in Saltivka, he moves into Anna’s central-city apartment and becomes its master of the house. Friends and artists gather at an open door; people listen when he speaks because he occupies the household’s position of authority. The book likens that authority to a feudal nuance: the master of a house can be imagined as master of a city, just as Stalin was master of the Soviet Union. Yet this new status grows out of a sharp change in class position, from worker and outsider to host in a bohemian circle. His seven-year partnership with Anna is described as stormy and affectionate: he keeps her steady, while she smooths his rough edges. The intimate setting thus repeats the larger tension in his politics: sympathy for the excluded does not prevent him from wanting command.

A durable allegiance, not a doctrine

The narrator’s account of Limonov’s appeal does not reduce his politics to a consistent platform. In Sarajevo, solidarity follows the weaker party through reversals; in Central Asia, it moves from Russians presented as abandoned to local peoples and then to Chechens. The rhetoric can turn from D’Annunzio’s imagined heroic battalion to the image of a liberator, but the book locates the common thread in choosing those who are losing or have been pushed aside. It calls this a coherence beneath an erratic trajectory, while leaving the moral cost of the choice visible: the groups Limonov supports are not thereby made innocent, and his sympathy does not amount to a rejection of authoritarian power.

The later portrait of Mitya, a National Bolshevik who accompanies Emmanuel Carrère to meet Limonov, brings that allegiance into everyday life. Mitya is around thirty, married, has a young daughter, and earns a respectable living in an Internet-related occupation. He spends a couple of hours a week helping protect Limonov, which Carrère understands as a way of remaining faithful to youthful ideals, much as someone might continue playing in an amateur rock band without expecting success. The party appears here not only as a political vehicle but also as a practice of companionship and fidelity. Across battlefields, separatist ambitions, class changes, and modest acts of protection, the underdog remains the recurring point of orientation—even when the person championing the weak has himself become a master, a leader, or a would-be commander.