Yelena Bonner

Yelena Bonner is presented as a prominent dissident and moral authority whose support for National Bolshevik activists challenges the narrator’s categorical view of Eduard Limonov and his movement. Though she appears only briefly, her judgment changes the meaning of the political landscape Carrère is trying to understand.

Identity and Public Standing

Bonner is identified as the widow of Andrei Sakharov, described as a learned scientist, dissident, and moral authority who won the Nobel Peace Prize. The narrator invokes her standing to emphasize how unexpected her position seems: her endorsement cannot easily be dismissed as the approval of a marginal partisan.

Support for the National Bolsheviks

The narrator discovers Bonner’s view while reading Anna Politkovskaya’s articles. Politkovskaya had defended forty National Bolshevik Party militants accused of occupying and vandalizing the presidential administration’s offices while shouting for Vladimir Putin to leave. The militants received lengthy prison sentences, and Politkovskaya described them as courageous young people of integrity who offered hope for their country’s moral future.

Bonner, the narrator learns, likewise favored the National Bolsheviks, or nazbols. She suggested that the party might consider changing its name because of the unpleasant associations it carried for some people; otherwise, she regarded its members as admirable. Her response distinguishes the party’s provocative label from the qualities she saw in its adherents, without suggesting that she was herself a party member.

Significance in the Narrative

Bonner’s position confronts the narrator with a contradiction. He had regarded Limonov as a repellent fascist leading a skinhead militia, yet here were two figures he regarded as exemplary moral authorities defending or praising the movement’s young members. Bonner’s approval does not resolve that contradiction; it makes the narrator reconsider the categories with which he had approached Limonov.

The discovery forms part of the book’s account of a changing political context. Several months later, Limonov joined a coalition called The Other Russia alongside Garry Kasparov and former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov. The narrator takes that coalition as evidence that Limonov’s position in the country had shifted. Bonner’s earlier support helps prepare the ground for that realization: the opposition surrounding Limonov could not be understood solely through the narrator’s initial image of him.