Orange Revolution

The Orange Revolution enters the book as Eduard Limonov’s alternative to the violent uprising he once imagined: a recent example of pacifist, democratic revolution that he says the Kremlin fears and will try to crush. Its significance lies less in a narrated account of events in Ukraine than in the political distinction Limonov draws around it—a revolution pursued through democratic change rather than armed revolt.

From insurrection to a democratic model

In an interview, Limonov acknowledges that his life has followed a plan he had once imagined for himself, including the role of professional revolutionary. The narrator connects that role to Limonov’s younger fantasy of spending a fortune on weapons and staging an uprising. Limonov then revises the comparison: the time is no longer right for armed insurrection, and his desired model is instead the recent Orange Revolution in Ukraine. The shift does not erase his revolutionary ambition; it changes the means and political form he claims to favor.

For Limonov, the example is also a warning about state power. He describes democratic revolution as precisely what the Kremlin fears and says it will stop at nothing to suppress. He presents his own vulnerability—having been beaten with baseball bats, narrowly escaping an assassination attempt, and being named among the country’s enemies—as part of that danger. The book reports these statements as his account of the threat, not as an independent explanation of the Orange Revolution or proof that it caused the threats against him.

A changing opposition landscape

The Orange Revolution is recalled against the background of a changing position for Limonov inside Russian politics. After the narrator encounters accounts in which Anna Politkovskaya and Yelena Bonner defend National Bolshevik Party militants as courageous opponents of the state, the narrator recognizes that Limonov’s political standing may have shifted even if Limonov himself has not. Several months later, Limonov joins Garry Kasparov and others in the opposition coalition The Other Russia. The sequence gives the Orange Revolution context as a contemporary democratic precedent at a moment when people previously treated as beyond the bounds of acceptable politics are entering a broader opposition alliance.

The later account of party organizing shows that this political landscape remains constrained. At a National Bolshevik Party convention, Limonov tells delegates that the moment is not yet ripe for taking power and describes activity on the periphery of the former Soviet republics instead. The government subsequently refuses to authorize the party, despite its thousands of adherents; Limonov warns the minister that forcing it underground could push young people toward extremism and terrorism. These developments do not establish a direct consequence of the Orange Revolution. They do show the contrast between the democratic model Limonov invokes and the pressure placed on opposition organization in the political setting described by the book.

A precedent, not a narrated revolution

The book gives no scene-by-scene history of the Orange Revolution, and it does not detail its course or outcome. Its function is to serve as Limonov’s compact political reference: a recent example he uses to distinguish democratic, pacifist upheaval from the armed revolt of his earlier imagination. That distinction makes the revolution a measure of change in his stated tactics, while the surrounding narrative leaves open how far his political practice conforms to the model he names.