Socialist Workers Party

The Socialist Workers Party is introduced as an American Trotskyist organization committed to world revolution. In Eduard Limonov’s New York years, it becomes both a point of entry into organized left-wing politics and a test of the gap between revolutionary language and the restrained conduct of political meetings. He is drawn to its circle, but wants it to become something far more militant than the group Carol presents to him.

Identity and Political Setting

Carol, who hands out leaflets in the park where Limonov spends his days writing, explains that the Socialist Workers Party represents American Trotskyists and partisans of world revolution. Her description meets a pronounced sympathy in him. In principle, he sides with the reds, blacks, Arabs, gay people, derelicts, drug addicts, Puerto Ricans, and others who have little to lose and, he thinks, ought to become agitators for revolution. He supports Trotsky, while suspecting it would be unwise to tell Carol that he is not against Stalin either.

The party’s appeal is therefore political and personal at once. Limonov is attracted to a revolutionary cause, but he is also isolated and hungry for collective belonging. The organization offers meetings, shared commitments, and people who might form a community around him.

Meetings and the Demand for Action

Impressed by Limonov’s fervor, Carol invites him to a meeting in solidarity with Palestine and warns him that it could become dangerous. He arrives enthusiastic. The speeches, he finds, are sufficiently vehement; what disappoints him is what follows. When the meeting ends, people go home, split into small groups, or continue talking in coffee shops. The next meeting, rather than any immediate collective action, is what remains on the agenda.

When Carol asks what he expected, Limonov describes a group that would stay together and obtain weapons, attack a government building, hijack a plane, or bomb something. These are his wishes, not actions taken by the Socialist Workers Party. The contrast exposes his impatience with a movement whose public radicalism does not, in his eyes, lead into confrontation in the streets.

Work, Reading, and Belonging

Limonov continues seeing Carol and her friends. He attends Socialist Workers Party meetings, agrees to distribute leaflets, and accepts from Carol the collected works of Leon Trotsky. He increasingly admires Trotsky’s direct approval of civil war and his contempt for pious speeches about the sacredness of human life. The image that grips him is the former émigré becoming commander of the Red Army, moving between fronts in an armored train: a transformation into power and action that Limonov imagines as a possible destiny for himself.

His relationship to the group remains divided. He clings to Carol partly in the vague hope of sleeping with her, but she has a boyfriend, and Limonov returns to his hotel alone. Still, the circle matters to him: it is a group and, in his experience, almost a family. His longing for that family is strong enough that even the Hare Krishnas chanting in the park briefly seem like a possible community to join.

Limits and Narrative Significance

Limonov ultimately judges the American Trotskyists by the distance between what they discuss and what they will risk. They speak for oppressed minorities and political prisoners, but he considers them afraid of the streets, ghettos, and the real poor. The Socialist Workers Party does not satisfy his appetite for insurrection; at the same time, its members provide a temporary social home and a practical route into political activity through meetings and leaflet distribution.

The episode establishes a recurring tension in Limonov’s politics: the need to belong pulls him toward a movement, while his desire for dramatic, dangerous action makes ordinary organizing seem inadequate. The party’s importance in the narrative lies in that mismatch, not in any stated formal membership or later role for the organization in his political career.