Eduard Limonov - Early Life

Early Life

Limonov was born Eduard Veniaminovich Savenko in Dzerzhinsk, a Gorky Oblast (now Nizhny Novgorod Oblast) industrial town on the Oka River in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union. Limonov's father—then in the military service – was in a state security career and his mother was a homemaker. In the early years of his life family moved to Kharkov in the Ukrainian SSR, where Limonov grew up.

By Limonov's own account, he began writing "very bad" poetry at the age of thirteen and soon after became involved in theft and petty crime as an adolescent hooligan. Limonov adopted his nom de plume for use in literary circles during this time.

Limonov moved to Moscow in 1967, marrying a fellow poet, Yelena Shchapova, in a Russian Orthodox ceremony. During the Moscow period Limonov was involved in the Konkret poets' group and sold volumes of his self-published poetry while doing various day jobs. Having achieved a degree of success in this manner by the mid-1970s, he and his wife emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1974. The exact circumstances of Limonov's departure are unclear and have been described differently. The Soviet Union issued him an Israeli visa to do so, but soon after the pair came to the United States.

Limonov settled in New York City, where he and Shchapova soon divorced. Limonov worked for a Russian-language newspaper as a proofreader and occasionally interviewed recent Soviet emigrants.

Like Eddie, the immigrant protagonist of Limonov's first novel It's Me, Eddie, Limonov was drawn to punk subculture and radical politics. Limonov's New York acquaintances included Studio 54's Steve Rubell and a Trotskyist group, the Socialist Workers Party. As protagonist Eddie finds out as a consequence, the latter is a victim of the FBI.

Limonov was himself harassed by the FBI. As Limonov later retold it in France, the FBI also interrogated dozens of his acquaintances, once asking a friend about "Lermontov" in Paris.

I did not find the freedom to be a radical opponent of the existing social structure of the country which pompously calls itself the 'leader of the free world,' but neither did I notice it in the land which represents itself as the 'future of all humanity.' The FBI is just as zealous in putting down American radicals as the KGB is with its own radicals and dissidents. True, the methods of the FBI are more modern. . . . The KGB is, however, studying the techniques of its older brother and modernizing its methods.

The first chapter of It's Me, Eddie, was published by an Israeli Russian-language journal. Finished by 1977, it was consistently rejected by publishers in the United States and only brought out a few years after becoming an instant success in France in 1980. In interviews, Limonov says this was because the book was not written with anti-Soviet tones, like other Russian literature admired in America.

Disillusioned, Limonov left America for Paris with his lover Natalya Medvedeva in 1980, where he became active in French literary circles. Having remained stateless for thirteen years, he was granted French citizenship in 1987. His Soviet citizenship was eventually restored by Mikhail Gorbachev. Limonov and Medvedeva married but were divorced in 1994.

Limonov has been later married to the actress Ekaterina Volkova and has a son Bogdan and daughter Alexandra with her.