December 13, 2010

Is punk novelist Limonev Vladimir Putin's worst nightmare?

by

Eduard Limonev

He was a New York punk in the 1970s, then an “incidiary” novelist … on his way to succeeding Vladimir Putin as leader of Russia? As Marc Bennetts explains of Eduard Limonov in an interview for the Observer:

An avant-garde poet forced out of the Soviet Union in the mid-1970s after refusing to inform for the KGB, Limonov ended up in New York, where he hung out with the Ramones and Richard Hell & the Voidoids at the legendary CBGB punk club. “In New York I found the same kind of people – non-conformists, painters, poets, crazy underground musicians – that I had left in Moscow. I even wore Richard Hell’s ripped T-shirt for a long time,” he recalls, when I ask him about his punk past. “I still listen to that music, of course. Everyone likes to hear the music of their youth.”

But he laughs away the suggestion that punk has influenced his confrontational political philosophies and strategies. “I am wiser now, I have matured – and anyway, how can one be a punk after 60? That would be silly.”

But having returned to Russia and dodged imprisonment on trumped up charges, Limonev is now working toward running for president in 2012, when Putin is expected to seek a third term. Explains Bennetts,

Limonov may insist that his pogo-ing days are far behind him, but when I ask him if he believes he has a real chance of becoming president there is something distinctly punk rock about his answer. “I have a chance to become a conflict,” he tells me, staring out at the impressively urban south Moscow skyline.

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.

  • http://www.tumblr.com/ghostorballoon Chris Schaeffer

    Limonev is a decent writer (“It’s Me, Eddy” is seedy and sordid in exactly the right way) but “trumped up charges” is being sort of generous. This is still a guy who hung out with Radovan Karadzik shooting a sniper rifle into Sarejevo for no discernible reason and didn’t get around to renouncing xenophobia and antisemitism until the early 2000′s.

    As far as writers-cum-political iconoclasts go, he’s definitely got a disconcerting shade of Mishima about him.

  • http://www.tumblr.com/ghostorballoon Chris Schaeffer

    Limonev is a decent writer (“It’s Me, Eddy” is seedy and sordid in exactly the right way) but “trumped up charges” is being sort of generous. This is still a guy who hung out with Radovan Karadzik shooting a sniper rifle into Sarejevo for no discernible reason and didn’t get around to renouncing xenophobia and antisemitism until the early 2000′s.

    As far as writers-cum-political iconoclasts go, he’s definitely got a disconcerting shade of Mishima about him.

  • http://blog.oak-tree.us Rob Oakes

    @Chris Schaeffer: Radical he may be, but that will probably make him a good match for Putin. It looks like he wants the world to shine a spotlight on the current state of Russian politics, and I think that’s good.

    Vladimir Putin has done a lot of good things for Russia (albeit in a very bad way), but that does not mean he should be Russia’s next tsar. Having a bit of bad-tempered competition (even if he is xenophobic and antisemitic) will be good for the country.

  • http://blog.oak-tree.us Rob Oakes

    @Chris Schaeffer: Radical he may be, but that will probably make him a good match for Putin. It looks like he wants the world to shine a spotlight on the current state of Russian politics, and I think that’s good.

    Vladimir Putin has done a lot of good things for Russia (albeit in a very bad way), but that does not mean he should be Russia’s next tsar. Having a bit of bad-tempered competition (even if he is xenophobic and antisemitic) will be good for the country.

  • http://www.tumblr.com/ghostorballoon Chris Schaeffer

    I can get behind that. I keep coming back to the comparison to Mishima, which feels sort of too easy, but also pretty apt. In particular I’m thinking about the sequence near the end of Paul Schrader’s excellent biopic in which Mishima actually stages his attempt at a coup, and finds that nobody seems to know what he’s trying to pull, or care. As a political dissenter he was a dud, operating in grand pomp on the public margins and fetishizing far-right tropes in a way that alienated everybody but his own clique. Still, as a public figure, he was a shock to Japan’s system and a wake-up call to Western readers who still nurtured outdated Orientalist notions about what Japanese literature offered.

    I guess the thought of Limonev actually winning any kind of election is as far-fetched as it is sort of terrifying, but as an act of public spectacle, you’re right, it could serve as a furious spotlight on Russia’s politics. Looking back on the article, I think Limonev is completely aware of this. “I have a chance to become a conflict.” Fair enough.

  • http://www.tumblr.com/ghostorballoon Chris Schaeffer

    I can get behind that. I keep coming back to the comparison to Mishima, which feels sort of too easy, but also pretty apt. In particular I’m thinking about the sequence near the end of Paul Schrader’s excellent biopic in which Mishima actually stages his attempt at a coup, and finds that nobody seems to know what he’s trying to pull, or care. As a political dissenter he was a dud, operating in grand pomp on the public margins and fetishizing far-right tropes in a way that alienated everybody but his own clique. Still, as a public figure, he was a shock to Japan’s system and a wake-up call to Western readers who still nurtured outdated Orientalist notions about what Japanese literature offered.

    I guess the thought of Limonev actually winning any kind of election is as far-fetched as it is sort of terrifying, but as an act of public spectacle, you’re right, it could serve as a furious spotlight on Russia’s politics. Looking back on the article, I think Limonev is completely aware of this. “I have a chance to become a conflict.” Fair enough.

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