So 1999 started out shitty for the party. Despite the refusal to register, we still had a chance to break through to the elections as part of the Front of the Working People, Army and Youth bloc. I informed Anpilov that we had been hacked to death on the 20th of December. He said: “Don’t be upset, Eduard Veniaminovich, Trudovaya Rossiya has been re-registered, the Union of Officers has passed, we still have Soviet Women, so that’s enough to create a bloc.” As for the bloc, it has not been called the Front of the Working People for a long time. Anpilov said back in the summer that he would like to keep Trudovaya Rossiya and that he would try in court to chop off Tyulkin’s rights to the name of the bloc “Communists, Labor Russia for the USSR!” I was angry that Anpilov was acting so wildly. In my opinion, the name of the block should have been calculated in advance, start promoting it as early as possible so that voters get used to the bloc and, having met it on the ballot, would know it. But whether Anpilov would chop off the name of the 1995 bloc from Tyulkin, under which they almost got into the Duma, was still unknown.

The party experienced a refusal to register. First of all, those who are older. The leader of the Kemerovo organization, a former LDPR member, cautiously moved away from us. Andrei Fedorov became sad, having invested a lot of effort and work with me in the organization of congresses and registration. A guy from a good family (his mother was involved in the design of important missiles), a pupil of the law faculty of Moscow State University, he, of course, was crazy about the fate of Che Guevara, treated with contempt the deputies of the State Duma, where he worked as a legal adviser for Lukyanov. However, it is still better not to die in the forests of Bolivia, but to win as a result of voting.

Many were worried. But a political organization, created by the will and muscular energy of living young guys, cannot disappear or disperse to please the Ministry of Justice. We had to live on and work on. But how to work – it seemed a little clear. We hoped for an Anpilov-Terekhov bloc. But quiet rumors spread (through the youth organization AKM) that Anpilov was dissatisfied with us. Allegedly we are “too”. Rumors came that Anpilov had a new friend – Stalin’s grandson. Dzhugashvili.

“Stalin’s grandson is not Stalin himself,” I told the guys. (The leaders of that procession Anpilov, Terekhov, Kryuchkov, Prigarin then refused to fight, they got cold feet. It was an ultimatum: let us go to Red Square!) “Anpilov needs us,” we decided and calmed down. But in vain.

On January 29, in the building on Lubyanka, I had a meeting with General Zotov. The meeting was arranged by FSB captain Dmitry Kondratyev, already well known to me. Zotov, head of the Office for Combating Political Extremism and Terrorism, turned out to be a hospitable, short fat man. Kondratiev and I sat down at the conference table, while Zotov ran from his table to ours. From time to time he quoted my articles from the newspaper “Limonka” and it was for this that he returned to the table, where he obviously had my file open. I tried to explain to Zotov that we are not extremists, that, as always superficial, the media labeled us “extremists” just because we are bright, catchy, biting. We have bright slogans, bright flags. However, we have not had any incidents with the authorities so far. But perhaps they will.

That the National Bolshevik Party* was forcibly and illegally deprived of access to voters. That among the seven or more thousand (here Zotov smiled: “Well, really seven?!” – “Seven,” I insisted, “five hundred plus or minus, allowance for turnover”) members of the Party there are those who want to continue the struggle by other methods.

“I strongly discourage them from doing this,” Zotov said. “Me too,” I supported him. looking to the side, he added: “If you have people who want to continue the fight with illegal methods, let us know. Let Dima know or…” Here he took out a thick gray business card and wrote a phone number. “Here is my personal number.”

I left. A worried Kostyan was waiting for me at Furkasovo. “I already thought you were arrested.” – “The deadline has not yet come,” I replied.

On January 30, the next day, 13 of our people carried out an action at the congress of the Democratic Choice of Russia party. At the moment when Yegor Gaidar was making a speech and, they say, reached the word “extremism”, our guys stood up and began to chant slogans: “Stalin! Beria! Gulag!”, “Capitalism is shit!” The cinema and concert complex “Izmailovo” accommodates about two, perhaps, thousand people. The delegates of the congress of “emissions” were confused. They got their bearings only when the security of the cinema and concert complex was already leading our people out of the hall. Then the “emissions” came to their senses and began to spit, trying to kick and punch the National Bolsheviks, who were in the hands of the guards. It happened at the door. The guys were thrown into the police station. And they released him the same day, writing down all the data. For some reason, the police treated our boys sympathetically. I think because Yegor Timurovich was (and is) extremely unpopular among the citizens of Russia. He robbed everyone, including me. All my main books, starting from November 1991, were unsuccessfully released in Russia – I signed contracts for them based on quiet times. But when shock therapy broke out over Russia on January 2, 1992, I, with my 10 kopecks due to me from each ruble earned from the sale, turned out to be a beggar. And he could become a rich man. The first circulations were: 200 thousand, 250 thousand, 150 thousand copies and so on. There is nothing to say about the police, Gaidar also omitted them. Perhaps that is why they were sympathetic and treated the young hooligans.

The next day, Kostyan and I bought 9 newspapers, and seven of them contained articles and photographs of the fight from the congress. In terms of information, this was a major victory, TV channels also showed what happened in abundance. Losses: several tens of rubles in fines. Profits – a huge amount, despite the fact that more than half of the photos depicted emboldened “emissions” throwing their fists at the National Bolsheviks, who were tightly held in the hands of the guards. The National Bolsheviks did not even expect to beat the two thousand delegates of the Gaidar congress with a detachment of 13 people when they went there. The whole action was pure improvisation. Protest. But she taught us how to do well in the media. If we had organized a rally, journalists would not have come to the NBP in such numbers. And in the case of the DVR, they were already present on the site. This action taught us how to work.

On January 31, as if in order to distract the media from the scandal that had begun to unwind at the FER congress, all the channels suddenly showed Barkashovites walking somewhere and a police colonel trying to stop them, and then apologizing to them. Barkashovtsev allegedly was darkness, darkness, although later the newspaper “Version” reported, and our sources – eyewitnesses of the NBP confirmed that there were from 50 to 70 people. It turned out that the Barkashovites were walking, having gathered at the Domodedovskaya metro station, to the local police station. And they went to express their protest against the beating of their five comrades, which took place in this very department the day before. Five Barkashovites were just selling their newspaper “Russian Order” near the Domodedovskaya metro station. The police detained them, brought them to the police station and beat them. It was for this act of arbitrariness that the colonel apologized to them on the television screen. However, the colonel, without going into details, has already been branded both by the public, thirsting for the blood of the Barkashovites, and by the highest ranks of the police. However, we took this episode almost as a “set-up”, a provocation designed to divert public attention from our organization.

On February 12, dozens of people called me and said that Anpilov created the “Stalin bloc”, headed by Anpilov, Yevgeny Dzhugashvili and Lieutenant Colonel Terekhov. “Where are you?” dozens of people wondered. Ours, unlike not ours, offered to knock Anpilov on the head. “Eduard, do we have an alliance with them or not?” Kostyan got excited. “The guys demand that Anpilov come and report. We are a serious political organization, there are more and more of us, less and less of them. Why does he allow himself to behave like this with us !” We went to the headquarters of “Working Russia”, as we found out, “feeling” Anpilov on the phone, that he should be there. He showed up an hour and a half later. Closing alone with me in a room where packs of Anpilov’s “Lightning” lay in disorder, Anpilov – we both stood, looking away, – began to spit out the words: “Well, you see, Eduard Veniaminovich, I get it for you from ours. I’m tired of defending you. came to the Duma with this slogan “Down with both the government and the Duma!” Our people didn’t like it, this extremism is yours. “Viktor,” I said, “Deitch is an enemy, and his article, probably paid for, was published in Moskovsky Komsomolets with the sole purpose of discrediting me.” Well, why did you come to the Duma with this slogan “Down with both the government and the Duma!” Our people didn’t like it, this extremism is yours. You can’t fight against everyone. And you wrote it yourself. My people have read Deutsch’s article here, it’s a must!” “Viktor,” I said, “Deutsch is an enemy, and his article, probably paid for, was published in Moskovsky Komsomolets with the sole purpose of discrediting me.” Well, why did you come to the Duma with this slogan “Down with both the government and the Duma!” Our people didn’t like it, this extremism is yours. You can’t fight against everyone. And you wrote it yourself. My people have read Deutsch’s article here, it’s a must!” “Viktor,” I said, “Deutsch is an enemy, and his article, probably paid for, was published in Moskovsky Komsomolets with the sole purpose of discrediting me.”

Anpilov had a displeased look: “Well, it’s clear, all this was paid for, but then it appeared, and my people are dark.”

His last argument sounded plausible, but he did not explain in any way why Anpilov secretly, without warning us, created the “Stalin block” without us. “Victor,” I said, “the guys demand that you come and answer their questions. They have the right. This is politics, these are not toys.”

He said he would come on Monday. Will try.

I said don’t try. We must come. Otherwise, everyone will hate him.

He arrived February 18th. He again repeated the arguments: a flag with a white circle, but it reminds the Nazis, “Down with both the government and the Duma!” – a nihilistic slogan, one must rely on the Duma, there is no one else, and, finally, an article by Mark Deutsch, where my articles and speeches as a political leader are superimposed on quotes from the book “It’s me, Eddie!”. The guys told him, all this is understandable, but why did he betray us and exchange us for Stalin’s grandson? He quickly began to repeat what had already been said, the National Bolsheviks objected that the party was not only Limonov and that the members of the National Bolshevik Party had high hopes for an alliance with Labor Russia. And now what? Where to find other allies, where to look for them? “You misunderstood, guys,” Anpilov said. “The agreement is in force. The first three names, I won’t go first, are: we will give the first place to Dzhugashvili, then I, Terekhov, then two, – here he hesitated, – two important comrades, the remaining seven first places (there were 12 passing places when crossing the 5% barrier) will be divided. And you, too.” — “How many seats will there be at the NBP?” — “One thing,” Anpilov said. “We ourselves will have one more. But you can put your people on regional lists. Where you have stronger organizations, we will put your people forward there … “He looked at his watch. It was clear that he wanted to get out of here as quickly as possible and forget about what he was saying here. We’ll have one more ourselves. But you can put your people on regional lists. Where you have stronger organizations, we will put your people forward there … “He looked at his watch. It was clear that he wanted to get out of here as quickly as possible and forget about what he was saying here. We’ll have one more ourselves. But you can put your people on regional lists. Where you have stronger organizations, we will put your people forward there … “He looked at his watch. It was clear that he wanted to get out of here as quickly as possible and forget about what he was saying here.

The boys told him what they thought of him. Some sharply, some less sharply. Viktor Ivanovich understood.

When he left, I made a short speech: “Our unusual party was created by unusual people. Neither me nor my books can be called banal, neither Dugin can be called a banal person, nor Letov. You will have to put up with such founding fathers. You have others maybe one day you will be led by normal, family, blameless people, those who do not bear the stigma of immorality. I hope I will not live to see these days.

Leaving the meeting, we scolded Anpilov in black. Kostya offered to cut off his head. Along with Deutsch.

When on February 23 we suddenly saw the new flags of the Anpilovites: red with a white circle, and in the circle – the face of Stalin, we began to laugh. And they laughed for a long time.

On February 20, at about 11:30, our activists scattered leaflets at the entrance to the press conference of Nikita Mikhalkov and the screening of his film “The Barber of Siberia” for journalists. It happened in the Radisson-Slavyanskaya hotel. The leaflet was two-sided and was called “The Hangman’s Friend”. A small photo of Mikhalkov, taking off his sweater surrounded by Kazakh faces, opened the leaflet. In the leaflet, we reported that Nikita Sergeevich Mikhalkov had already shown his “masterpiece” “The Barber of Siberia” in Alma-Ata on January 7 this year, in the program of the election campaign of his friend Nursultan Nazarbayev. That before the screening, he publicly supported Nazarbayev’s candidacy, urging the Russians of Kazakhstan to vote for him. That on January 10 the elections were held so unfree, that even the OSCE was forced to call them undemocratic and falsified. Kozhegeldin, the former prime minister of Kazakhstan, was fraudulently removed from participation in these elections. Nikita Mikhalkov could not help but know that prisoners of conscience who fought for human rights in Kazakhstan, for the rights of Russians in Kazakhstan, are kept in the Nazarbayev camps and prisons in inhuman conditions. We have given the names of Suprunyuk, M.Ismailov, Nina Sidorova, Kolomets, the Antoshko brothers and many others who were persecuted in Kazakhstan. We have given the names of 20 Russians killed (a drop in the sea) by the Kazakh Tonton-Makuts – victims of his regime. They mentioned Elena Savchenko: the girl was raped and forced to dig her own grave so that she would betray her friends – the Kazakh opposition. former Prime Minister of Kazakhstan. Nikita Mikhalkov could not but know that prisoners of conscience who fought for human rights in Kazakhstan, for the rights of Russians in Kazakhstan, are kept in Nazarbayev’s camps and prisons in inhuman conditions. We have given the names of Suprunyuk, M.Ismailov, Nina Sidorova, Kolomets, the Antoshko brothers and many others who were persecuted in Kazakhstan. We have given the names of 20 Russians killed (a drop in the sea) by the Kazakh Tonton-Makut, victims of his regime. They mentioned Elena Savchenko: the girl was raped and forced to dig her own grave so that she would betray her friends – the Kazakh opposition.

Some of our people scattering leaflets were seized. They were kept in the department for two hours and then released. In the evening, the National Bolsheviks intended to scatter the same leaflets in the Kremlin Palace, where the premiere of the film “The Barber of Siberia” was to take place for all of Moscow, Russia and the government.

Around 2:00 p.m., I got a call from headquarters. “Eduard, this is some kind of provocation. One of ours went out to get some food and found a cardboard box on the steps. It was written on it: “NBP to fight crap!” They brought it in, opened it, and there were Molotov cocktails. The necks were plugged with rags What to do? It stinks of gasoline.”—”Throw him away immediately and get out of the headquarters! Immediately! I don’t know, well, break the bottles on the pavement!”

They did even better. They took the bottles to the 107th police station. And handed them over to the attendant. But I only found out about it a few hours later. When I dialed the headquarters number to find out about the results, it was busy. Frequent beeps … Finally, the same National Bolshevik called me that informed me about the “Molotov cocktails”: “Eduard, armed people broke into the headquarters. called “02” and reported that they saw through the windows in the headquarters of armed people. – “Where are you calling from?!” – “I slipped away. From the machine gun. They didn’t look for a long time, they looked in the main rooms, but they didn’t even try to break in where the two locked Dugin rooms were. They asked: “Is there a key?” – “No.” They didn’t try to break it when I was away, they looked disappointed. The senior, in civilian clothes, went into your office, then went out, said: call the firemen … Eduard, in my opinion, they were looking for a box of bottles. And when they saw that he wasn’t there, they realized that the number didn’t go through.”— “In my opinion, too, they were looking for a box. I’ll be right there. I’ll try to find a lawyer and come.”

An hour later I was at the headquarters on 2nd Frunzenskaya Street. The guys took out flags, curses. It turned out that we were sealed for the fire-prevention condition of the premises. TV cameras and cameras were aimed at me from all sides. “Who called the journalists? Who called you?” I asked an Interfax journalist. “Representatives of the law. Obviously, they were sure that they would find a weapon in your possession. NTV and the Duty Department are here.”

Sergey Belyak – our lawyer – and I started to give interviews. I was extremely depressed, I thought that the fireman would seal us up and the headquarters would be closed forever. The year before, we managed with great difficulty to fight off the Arbitration and get along with the Moscow Property Committee.

The foreman from the 107th division came and called me to testify. Although what evidence can there be. I didn’t see anything, I just drove up. On February 22, I scheduled a press conference right at the entrance to the headquarters. It was my birthday.

By February 22, I expected to figure out what happened, and we figured it out. One of our National Bolsheviks claimed that the senior in civilian life, who led the raid, was none other than a Murovite, Lieutenant Colonel Astakhov. It is not serious to say that the MUR appeared on the call “02” led by a lieutenant colonel. In order for Lieutenant Colonel MUR to break into the headquarters of the NBP himself, more compelling motives are needed. Here’s how we reasoned:

11:30. Our people are dropping leaflets at N. Mikhalkov’s press conference at the Radisson-Slavyanskaya.

12 hours. Having identified the captured guys (the leaflet was signed “National Bolsheviks”), an enraged Nikita Mikhalkov calls his close friend Minister of the Interior Stepashin: “Give them over the head, these idiots, you’re my friend. Throw them something, plant, don’t me to teach you and your people. Whom they raised their hand against! They must be punished.”

Stepashin: “Calm down, Nikita, you are pushing me to commit an official crime. Now, if your Kazakh cross-eyed friends planted something at their headquarters, then I would send people and they would find something.”

Nikita called the embassy, ​​maybe not even the ambassador, but immediately a representative of the KNB, and he sent people. Molotov cocktail – typically Kazakh style. When they closed the magazine “XXI century” in Alma-Ata, they threw a Molotov cocktail into the room.

It is precisely the fact that the provocation was carried out by two different groups of people that explains the fact that it did not take place. Twenty minutes gap between one group and another group decided everything. MUR is a rather effective organization. They break in and throw up, throw up and break in, everything is fine with them. MUR would also not have thought of bottles, their style is “cartridges” and “check” with drugs.

In addition to these arguments, I assumed that the Federal Security Service was involved in the provocation. The fact is that on February 18 or 19 Captain Kondratyev came to the headquarters. Very angry. “You promised General Zotov that you would stop all manifestations of extremism in your organization. You deceived us. You knew that you were preparing an action at the FER congress the next day. And you did not tell us.” actions,” I replied. “We don’t have the capacity of the FSB, we have a poor organization, and therefore centralism, alas, does not exist in our conditions. The chairman is by no means aware of everything.” “We’ll know,” he muttered and left.

On February 22, at a press conference at the doors of the Bunker, I told reporters both versions of the provocation. Main: Mikhalkov – Kazakhs – Stepashin, and one of the options: FSB. The version with the FSB was published by the Segodnya newspaper, mentioning the name of Kondratiev. A few days later, an extremely angry Kondratiev called. “I read your interview with Segodnya. Why did you give my last name?” And added for some reason: “I was not in Moscow, I just arrived.”— “Because you really visited the Bunker on the eve of the provocation on February 20 and expressed dissatisfaction with me of your department by the behavior of our organization. All that I said, by the way, not only to the Segodnya journalist, but to all the assembled journalists, was that, perhaps, the provocation was organized by the FSB at the request of Mikhalkov.”

He argued with me for a bit, then we agreed to meet at the entrance to a non-working grocery store on Lubyanka, more precisely, at the intersection of Dzerzhinsky (Sretenka) and Kuznetsky Most streets. There was a thaw and rain. We were standing under the canopy of the grocery store: Kondratiev – long, thin, with a mustache, in a raincoat and cap, and I – shorter, in a torn leather jacket of an American policeman, inherited from the artist Robert. Kondratiev was angry, again repeated that it was not the FSB who organized the provocation. I think he was afraid in front of his superiors that his clumsiness had covered him in the newspaper, he was afraid that this would damage his career. “I could have imprisoned you when you were blown up in June 1997, but I didn’t,” he said with the feeling of an offended person. “For blowing me up, could you put me in jail?” He didn’t answer. “Here, – said Kondratiev, wrapping his raincoat, – we are now forced to meet people in the street. There used to be a network of safe houses. “Well, I’m not your agent,” I said. “Do you know how much I get?” – I said. – I live no better than yours, everything goes to the party, here I go in a jacket with holes. Tell me, Dmitry, who did this?” He sincerely began to convince me that he did not know. “Well, find out,” I asked. All this time, Kostyan Lokotkov was walking along the edge of the sidewalk. In a jacket taken out of Germany. not that 2.300, not that 1.300, I did not remember exactly. “Yes, not a lot,” I said. He sincerely began to convince me that he did not know. “Well, find out,” I asked. All this time, Kostyan Lokotkov was walking along the edge of the sidewalk. In a jacket imported from Germany. not that 2.300, not that 1.300, I did not remember exactly. “Yes, not a lot,” I said. He sincerely began to convince me that he did not know. “Well, find out,” I asked. All this time, Kostyan Lokotkov was walking along the edge of the sidewalk. In a jacket imported from Germany.

Even then I was sure that he was lying, despite complaints about low wages. And his fangs popped out from under his mustache for a moment when he angrily said that he could have planted me then, after the explosion, although, perhaps, he was only boasting. He could have imprisoned me for blowing up our premises, only in an illegal way. By arbitrariness.

On the night of April 8-9, 2001, in a car with spinning giraffes, somewhere on the stretch between Gorno-Altaisk and Barnaul, his boss, Lieutenant Colonel Kuznetsov, said to me, turning around (I was sitting sandwiched between Captain Kondratiev, on the left, and the Barnaul FSB rank): “I was present at your Bunker when they were looking for weapons, you, of course, remember the story with Mikhalkov …” From admitting that an FSB operative lieutenant colonel was there, to a reasonable assumption that the FSB participated in a provocation, – one step.

On this, alas, the story with Mikhalkov did not end. The raid on the Bunker deprived the National Bolsheviks of the opportunity to scatter the leaflet “The executioner’s friend” in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses. Still clumsy, ours kept the leaflets at the headquarters and intended to go to the Kremlin Palace from the headquarters. Moreover, German journalists were already there, ready to pay a lot of money in dollars for entrance tickets to the Palace in order to film the action exclusively. The action broke down. The guys were looking for an opportunity to take revenge on the Friend of the executioner. Most of all, we were outraged that Mikhalkov was reputed to be almost a nationalist, posing as a “leavened” patriot, while in reality he was a boorish gentleman who sold Russians to Nazarbayev for fat handouts – financing of his films.

On March 10, I remember, we went, me and Lokotkov, to a certain action in support of an independent Tibet. Not crowded, but interesting action did not last long. Leaving the rally, we received a pager message that two of our people had been detained at the Cinema House for throwing eggs at Nikita Mikhalkov. Thus began the case of Bakhur and Gorshkov. The administrative violation, which, if the case had not concerned the evil star of Russian cinematography, would have ended with a fine for the guys, was regarded as a criminal offense, and its resolution dragged on for four months. Gorshkov spent a month in Butyrka and was released on bail (he had a newborn son), and Bakhur stayed in the filthiest prison in Moscow for four months and fell ill with tuberculosis there. In the end, both were tried, and they received two and a half years of probation. The story caused a sea of ​​articles and television reports. Novaya Gazeta unearthed a video of the scene of the detention of the guys in the Cinema House, where you can clearly see how Mikhalkov kicks Bakhur (he is being held by four at that time!), Kicked in the face! Even the insensitive Russian public shuddered. Even the “progressively minded” were outraged by Mikhalkov. Unfortunately, in the heat of this “NBP versus Mikhalkov” story, the press forgot that Mikhalkov himself was not interested in the NBP, our goal was to show that he was a friend of the executioner.

With surprising ease, we were able to persuade the fire department to let us open our premises. In exchange for a promise to buy new fire extinguishers, remove the plywood sheathing from the pipes, where it is still preserved. And we sent our activist Olga Deyeva to take fire protection courses. On February 24 or 25 we were already working in the Bunker.

During the testimony in the 107th police department, I remember the head of the department looked concerned and sympathetic and even summed up the incident, exclaiming: “How disgusting it all is!” I was also disgusted, but I could not, as the head of the 107th, go to my office. It was a struggle and it had to be continued. On April 30, the guys found my bodyguard Kostyan on the floor in the assembly hall. On May 3, he died in the hospital from asphyxiation.

Russian Version

https://drugoros.ru/biblioteka/moia-politicheskaia-biografiia/glava-15-ministerstvo-iustitsii

Krasheninnikov – now he is a deputy and head of the Committee, it seems, on lawmaking – was the Minister of Justice and resembled an enlarged copy of Nicholas II. Enlarged and inflated. Nikolashka, however, was not, in my opinion, blond, but the minister had bright lips, blue eyes, and remnants of hair on his head testified to the fact that he was blond.

It was October 6, and I was sitting in the minister’s office. He agreed to meet with me – easily, without any problems agreed. I decided on the basis of this that he was a positive type, but it turned out that I was mistaken.

Why did I contact him? The day before, he spoke in a negative spirit about extremism. If my memory serves me right, he was preparing a draft law on countering extremism and fascism, and now my National Bolshevik Party *, like the RNU, are examples of extremist organizations in Russia. I wrote him a letter, seducing an unknown secretary over the phone, got his fax number and invited the minister to meet. So that I can personally dispel the impression formed by Minister Pavel Krasheninnikov that the NBP is allegedly an extremist organization. To my surprise, I got a call, connected to him, and we agreed to meet.

I have already spoken of the backwater, second-rate impression given by the Department of Justice. (The Ministry of Culture in the Kitaigorod courtyard is an even poorer organization. In any case, both of them were such as of 1998.) The cops, if they did not play cards in the lobby, throwing them, greasy, at the incoming log, then something sometimes they did things that were degenerate, so that one had the impression that they were playing cards—everything was highly informal. They almost patted you on the shoulder. Fedorov and I went up to the third floor. Ragged paths – where they did not cover the linoleum, it was clear that the linoleum was full of potholes and potholes.

The secretary reported on us. Entered. Hello. The minister was in a blue suit. Fedorov and I sat down near a long conference table. Krasheninnikov sat opposite. A sallow-faced man sat down next to him and placed a portable voice recorder that looked like a spectacle case on the table. “Do you mind if we record?” I said no, we don’t mind. Andrei Fyodorov informed Krasheninnkov that he was taught at the university by the same professor who taught Krasheninnikov. I said that the NBP and the RNU are strikingly different organizations. I told the minister in a kind, gentle tone that the Limonka newspaper and the National Bolshevik Party should not be confused. Krasheninnikov nodded understandingly to all my explanations, but immediately parried them with his own statement. “But how then to understand that you chose a grenade as the emblem of the newspaper and the party seal” F-1″? And then how to understand the slogan “Eat the rich!”?”… And still, he made a rather favorable impression on me. I gave him the book “A Hero’s Anatomy”. He said that literally tomorrow or the day after tomorrow we are going to bring documents for the registration of the all-Russian political party NBP. “Bring it. We will consider it. We will give an answer within a month. If there are no flaws, we will register it.”

We said goodbye and left. Shaking their lips, the cops chased each other around the lobby. “Well, how did he seem to you, Edward?” Fedorov asked. “Yes, kind of friendly.” “He’s Stepashin’s man,” Andrey said. “In vain you told him that we are handing over documents for registration. Now he will demand them under his personal control …” – “Do you think he would be left in obscurity that the largest radical party in Russia brought documents for registration? You are a naive person “.-” And the book. Read more … “- continued Andrei, as if following his thoughts. A skeptical young man, he was often right.

On October 8, we handed over the documents to the same Natalia Vladimirovna at the reception. A huge bag of documents, including thick sheets with surnames, names, patronymics and addresses of five thousand two hundred and something National Bolsheviks. At least five thousand members were required to have a political party in order to receive the status of an all-Russian one. All of them should have been handed over to the Ministry of Justice. The same institution that was in charge of prisons and camps. In addition to the 5,200 members, they also had to provide information about the existence of party organizations in at least 45 subjects of the Federation, i.e. in half.

We provided. We have received the documents. They might not have accepted, citing the lack of one or another paper, but they accepted, hurray! “The minister told me, I saw him on the sixth, here at the ministry, that the answer would be in a month,” I said only to inform her of my meeting with the minister. So that at least in what she does, she personally does not slow down. It is unlikely that she knows what we talked about with Krasheninnikov, but there is probably talk about the fact of a meeting at the Ministry.

Honestly, despite all my hard life experience, I thought we would be registered. We had organizations, we honestly accumulated them through hard organizational work, why not register them? On November 8, Fedorov called the official, and she said that we were not registered. “You have incorrectly formulated two clauses of the charter and a problem with the protocols of four regional organizations.”— “But we submitted protocols for 51 organizations. Minus four defective ones, it still remains 47. And the law provides that 45 is enough.” – said the official. – You graduated from the law school of Moscow University. Papers are accepted in aggregate. Come on Monday for a refusal. If you want, appeal it in court. “

Fedorov hung up. I cursed. He cursed. They were silent. “Such work!” – he said. “If we appeal, it will take months. And the court is unlikely to decide in our favor. What do we have today?” – “November 8”. – “In order to adopt changes in the Charter, it is necessary to create a congress. Do we have money left?” – “There is some money.” – “If we manage to gather delegates, at least from two-thirds of our organizations, even for one day, – we only accept the Charter, – we will be able to gather delegates in the middle of next week, if we manage to hand over the documents most later than November 17, then we can count on a response on December 18, and thus we have time to register.If we register exactly a year before the elections. “There is no other way out.” I took out a list of regional organizations and got on the phone. “There will be work!” Fedorov said sadly.

I called Grebnev first. “Andrey, I’m glad I found you. It is urgent to hold the second emergency All-Russian Party Congress. The choice fell on your city. It is convenient for everyone. When? Next week. No, people will not spend the night in the city, only those who want to stay Or those who arrived the previous evening. These will need to be entered somewhere. What day will we appoint the congress for? Now … “Fyodorov and I bent over the calendar. It took time to warn the guys and that they had time to get there. “November 14,” I said to Grebnev. He sighed there in St. Petersburg. But his problems were much smaller than ours.

November 14 in St. Petersburg was a wild cold. At the building of some round St. Petersburg metro, where a meeting of delegates to the congress was scheduled with Grebnev’s immediacy, a group of twenty people, National Bolsheviks, was already standing. I, Kostyan Lokotkov and his comrade in the GDR who followed us (they slept together in the barracks of the “Dead Head” division) Anton Filippov joined the freezing ones. Everyone shook hands, went to a cafe, where they ordered 20 coffees. At this time, in the street in a stall, our messengers bought 20 packages of shawarma. Grebnev Sr., his voice alone aroused, I think, the hatred of the townsfolk, immediately got into a fight with the waitresses of the cafe. These girls with long legs and in aprons, in his opinion, slowly turned around. They really turned slowly, the cafe was designed for trendy boys who were not in a hurry, waiting for their girls, and not on the frozen National Bolsheviks. When they began to wear shawarma in the cafe as it was cooked, the waitresses already hated Grebnev and therefore called their gangsters who were sitting in the back of the establishment. But the bandits were not happy when they saw about thirty identically dressed indefinite young people. Therefore, they quickly went back to where they came from.

Through the mercilessly squealing snow, led by the deputy of the ZK (perhaps he was a deputy of another city body) Denis Usov, we went to the premises, which he kindly provided us. The path turned out to be not so close, but I was afraid that everyone would be confused in the transport, so we walked in a column. The sight was strange. Young people in such numbers, moving somewhere purposefully, are associated only with bandits or militants, so passers-by were in a hurry to clear the way for us. We arrived at a two-story pink barracks. Anyway, I remember it as pink. Such people like to rebuild or repair in the style of “European-style renovation” new Russians. Usov led us to the hall on the second floor. The hall looked like a large school classroom. Our people, stamping their feet, sat down, Fedorov opened his briefcase and handed out a set of papers: new Statutes, blank standard protocols that had to be filled out, and even photocopied lists of the personnel of the regional branches, then I officially opened the 2nd Extraordinary NBP Congress, briefly explained to them what to do. Everyone, like schoolchildren, diligently bent over the documents.

I left the hall in a sheepskin coat. It was cold in the hall. Three TV channels were waiting for me or any delegate who appeared, because in the hall we allowed them to film the first ten or fifteen minutes, and then they put them out. They always shoot, but they show it infrequently – I’m never sure if the interview will go on the screen. I explained to them the general position of the congress, I said that the congress was extraordinary, exclusively working, that we would all part ways in the evening. “Are you sure that the Department of Justice will register you this time?” a journalist from the Tower of Babel program asked me a question. “I’m trying to be sure,” I said. “If it’s decided at the top not to register us in order to keep us out of the voters, then the Ministry of Justice has a wide range of pretexts.” Fedorov got this time the main job, because he worked hard in the sweat of his face,

When we finished all the paperwork, I began to give the delegates travel money. We must give them their due – many took money only for the return trip, someone refused compensation altogether. On the other hand, the impudent Vinogradov, a delegate from Novosibirsk, unexpectedly demanded money to get to Novosibirsk. He was not invited to the second congress. As in general, this time no delegates from Siberia were invited. The party did not have the money for this. We limited ourselves to inviting exactly the number of delegates and the number of regional organizations that provided us with a quorum. “How did you even get here?” I asked Vinogradov. It turned out that he came to St. Petersburg from the 1st congress with the compassionate Grebnev, and he got stuck in St. Petersburg. I nevertheless took pity on him and gave money for a return ticket, advising him to get there as soon as possible and put things in order in the organization. Vika Popova did not come to the 1st congress, and I suspected that she had personal problems, and that they threatened to become problems for the NBP. Vinogradov, black-haired, impudent physiognomy, said: “Vika, as you, Eduard Veniaminovich, could make sure that she listens to me, this is my girlfriend, and she will do as I wish. I will take the organization into my hands.”

I gave him money and said nothing. For 7 or 8 thousand party personnel, we had the required number of assholes and troublemakers, as expected. The commanders of the military units know that this is inevitable, there is no social group, where there would not be an asshole if it is a small group, and assholes if it is a large group. Vinogradov was one of the assholes, he will prove it later. He was too free, too clever, and, as it turned out, an intriguer.

Grebnev then toyed with the idea of ​​forming departments or directions of the party. That is, say, the northwestern department could, according to Grebnev’s plan, include the St. Petersburg, Riga, Pskov, Kaliningrad branches of the party. It was possible to add Novgorod to it in the future, but in Novgorod we have not yet had a regional branch. I did not object to Grebnev, hoping that he would talk, talk and calm down that the idea would not survive to the stage of execution. There were sluggish attempts to implement the idea, but soon Grebnev stopped. In fact, the idea was the most destructive and dangerous. If suddenly a person not loyal to the Party appeared in the role of the head of such a department, he could withdraw the department from the Party. Create your own organization on the basis of the department, that is, make trouble.

Vinogradov took Grebnev’s idea to Siberia. He, continuing to work with us, achieved some success in building an organization in his native Novosibirsk, and achieved success in the sale of Limonka. He demanded more and more copies of Limonka to Novosibirsk, but he was in no hurry to pay the money. We encouraged him for a while. Even I was pleased with him for a while, thinking that maybe my physiognomy did not work in this case. After some time, I suddenly received from Krasnoyarsk two issues of the newspaper “Transsiberian Express” with the subtitle “Newspaper of the Siberian Branch of the NBP”. We guessed that the newspaper was published with our money. Of course, we could turn a blind eye to the publication, even welcome it, if the new edition would be useful to the Party. But, damn it, Vinogradov published in his leaflet pieces from “

Just like his National Bolsheviks. The people of Novosibirsk soon removed Vinogradov, and for several years now his name has been appearing under articles in the yellow newspaper New Siberia, published in Novosibirsk. “New Siberia” is the second “Moskovsky Komsomolets” on a provincial scale. They do not disdain to work for the special services. A month before Kazimirchuk’s group was arrested in Ust-Kamenogorsk by Kazakh security agents, the New Siberia newspaper published an interview with Cossack Sergei Svoykin, a provocateur who betrayed Kazimirchuk’s action, which was being prepared. Cossack Sergei Svoykin had previously appeared in the NBP back in 1997. We were just preparing for a trip to Kazakhstan. He was eager to go with us, but I did not like his zeal, and I refused him. Subsequently, it arose in St. Petersburg, in Nizhny Novgorod and in Ufa and everywhere he pretended to be my messenger, “Limonov’s right hand.” He usually came to the regional NBP, brazenly lied, fit in with one of the local National Bolsheviks, ate with them, drank, slept. In Nizhny Novgorod, he borrowed a large sum of money from Vladislav Aksyonov. In Ufa, he even climbed into the leadership of the organization. When the Ufa National Bolsheviks thanked me in a letter for sending them the Cossack Svoykin, “he helped us with the documents,” I urgently contacted them and scolded them. “If I sent you someone, I would warn you. I would give the person a mandate as a last resort. Check! This is a provocateur!” In Nizhny Novgorod, he borrowed a large sum of money from Vladislav Aksyonov. In Ufa, he even climbed into the leadership of the organization. When the Ufa National Bolsheviks thanked me in a letter for sending them the Cossack Svoykin, “he helped us with the documents,” I urgently contacted them and scolded them. “If I sent you someone, I would warn you. I would give the person a mandate as a last resort. Check! This is a provocateur!” In Nizhny Novgorod, he borrowed a large sum of money from Vladislav Aksyonov. In Ufa, he even climbed into the leadership of the organization. When the Ufa National Bolsheviks thanked me in a letter for sending them the Cossack Svoykin, “he helped us with the documents,” I urgently contacted them and scolded them. “If I sent you someone, I would warn you. I would give the person a mandate as a last resort. Check! This is a provocateur!”

In 2000, the omniscient newspaper “Novaya Sibir” published information that the NBP would allegedly try to stir up something in Kazakhstan in the near future. And she accompanied her information with excerpts from the publication “Second Russia” in NBP-Info. On the next page there was an article signed: D. Vinogradov.

I’ve come a long way here. On the evening of November 14, 1998, the remaining delegates, in a crowd of 35-40 people, went along the Nevsky to see me off at the Moscow railway station. On the way we stopped, and in the night shadow cast by the Kazan Cathedral, we drank a fairly decent amount of warming drinks. The cold only got worse at night. Then, inspired, imagining that we were in a procession, minting a step, we went to the Moscow railway station along Nevsky, voicing our way with our revolutionary assortment of slogans: “Stalin! Beria! Gulag!”, “Eat the rich!”, “Good bourgeois – dead bourgeois !”, “Re-vo-lution!”, if the police were somewhere nearby, then they preferred not to show up. However, I made sure that there was no damage. At the station, Vinogradov asked me for money for a ticket to Moscow. Then I swore at him and ordered him to go to Novosibirsk, to work for the party. Kostyan pushed him away from the car.

In the carriage, I lay down on the second shelf and fell asleep. The National Bolsheviks, having discovered that half the car was occupied by marines, united with them in mutual enmity, and then in mutual brotherhood.

On November 17, we handed over the documents to the Ministry of Justice. The same official Natalia Vladimirovna. On December 2, she called Fedorov and asked for a party program. By law, the Charter is registered, and therefore the requirement to provide a party program looked, to put it mildly, a non-standard requirement. I wanted to look at the physiognomy of Natalia Vladimirovna. What is she expressing now? We honestly brought her program No. 1 – a lilac little book published by Rabko, saying that this was the first, former program and the party was no longer working on it. We brought program number 2, the one that was squeezed to 26 points and published in Limonka several times. This program fit on the space of A-4 format in order to make it more convenient to make photocopies. We decided to issue this program as unused. We also brought program number 3, issued by me and Fedorov especially for the Ministry of Justice, the version adopted unanimously at the II Congress. When we gave her all these papers, I saw that among those papers that she already had, there was a brochure “Program Documents of the NBP”, compiled by a group of our activists from materials published over the years in Limonka. And in the brochure there are literary pearls, on the basis of which we will not be registered even as a branch in the society of chess lovers.

“As for me, I would register your organization,” said Natalia Vladimirovna, looking at us, as it seemed to me, sympathetically. “And why, in fact, do you need our program?” I asked. then it is unlawful.” “I’m not going to judge anyone,” she said. “I won’t make the decision.” “Who?” Fedorov asked. – “Guide”. – “Minister?” “Well, the minister among others.”

She called us again. In her room en face sat a young chick-official with whom Fedorov exchanged glances. Even Natalia, Vladimir’s daughter, summoned from another office some antediluvian official who looked like Andrei Bely in his old age: the top of the skull was bare, bushes of hair behind the ears. Officials are generally very antediluvian. They all seem to be from the era of Gogol. There are no others.

“Your party seal bears the image of the Limonka grenade,” he said bitterly. In addition, both the name of the newspaper and the press are symbolic derivatives of the name of Mr. Limonov, who is sitting in front of you.

Then they began to drive us according to the points of the program. “We told you that we do not use the program in the lilac cover. Besides, the circulation was exhausted two years ago.” “Yes,” Fedorov said triumphantly and handed her the paper. Where did he take it from?

After interrogation, otherwise you will not call it, with passion, we left. “Well, what do you say? Will they overwhelm us or let us through?” I asked. “We’ll find out soon,” Fedorov said.

On December 18, Fedorov called the Ministry of Justice in the afternoon. “The decision has not yet been made,” the official said wearily.

Fedorov called at five o’clock. “I told you, I’ll call you!” she hissed. “I’m sorry,” Fedorov said. “You must understand, the working day is drawing to a close. We are worried. Our fate is being decided.”

At the beginning of the eighth, we learned that we had been denied registration. “The decision was made at the highest level. You can come for the paper on Monday,” the official said quickly. “You can appeal the decision in court.”

“Bitches!” I said. “They sentenced us to death.” “What shall we do?” – “And the dick knows, – said Fedorov. – I did not think further.”

We handed in notices for pickets for the last four days before the New Year: 28, 29, 30, 31. From 11 am to 12 pm, we announced, we will be standing at the building on Vorontsovo Pole.

We also filed a paper to appeal the decision of the Ministry of Justice to the Tagansky Intermunicipal Court. It is supposed to consider such a complaint within 10 days. But in the state, flying at full speed towards democracy, the trial took place only on August 18, 1999. And, of course, it ended not in our favor.

Unfortunately, I do not have the text of this historic document: the refusal of the Department of Justice. Since all formal flaws were eliminated by us after the first refusal, the argumentation of the second refusal was based on arbitrary quotations from our own texts, in particular programs. We were accused of inciting ethnic hatred and racism (I came to the court with the issue of “Limonka”, which printed a portrait of Ayo Benes, but a black party member did not convince them).

On December 19, I wrote and faxed and mailed a letter to Minister Krasheninnikov. Not in order to influence him in the sense that he gave the order to register the All-Russian political organization of the National Bolshevik Party. It is only in living and healthy times that it is possible to bypass the bureaucracy, explain to the nobleman, and he will suddenly understand: an injustice has been committed, and everything will be corrected. Reasonable, impulsive and unpredictable nobleman. By December 1998, there were no such grandees left in Russia. But Krasheninnikov did not even remotely resemble one. I am even sure that the decision to refuse was made above the level of the Minister of Justice, and that the reason for the refusal was a simple and uncomplicated fact, expressed 8 months later at a meeting of the Tagansky Court by a representative of the Ministry of Justice. A certain Tikhomirov, an old man with the appearance and skin of a practicing alcoholic,

I wrote a letter to Krasheninnikov in the expectation that, perhaps, they would draw some lessons from what had happened. I wrote that the Ministry of Justice illegally refused to register a real and living youth organization that has existed for four years, while among the 132 all-Russian political parties registered by the Ministry of Justice, there are (and I named five of them) simply fake organizations in which no one is a member . That there is a biased attitude towards the NBP. That registration (on the day of writing my letter) on Sunday, bypassing all laws, of the hastily created organization “Fatherland” is an illegal action, that the National Bolshevik Party, by the will of the Ministry of Justice, is deprived of the opportunity to act in a legal field, to compete for Duma seats. The NBP is now doomed to look for other ways to fight, that the methods of its political activity will be forced to change. And the possibility is not ruled out that a leader will emerge from the depths of the organization who will call it to terrorist methods of struggle. And that I will not be able to keep the personnel of the party from rapid radicalization. I put the blame for such a radicalization of the party on the Ministry of Justice, I concluded.

On December 28, 29, 30 and 31, we shouted under their windows: “Re-gi-stration! Re-gi-stration!”, “Ministry without-for-kony!” – and many other slogans. We worried them a lot. Officials stuck to the windows. An additional police squad to help the forelocked Arkharovites was called to duty in the lobby. Annoyed, a representative of the ministry came out to us and asked me to go inside. The guys urged me not to go, they feared for my safety, but the picket was allowed, we did not violate the laws. I agreed to enter the building. Hoping they’ll come up with some kind of compromise. I was met by a tall gray-haired old man Eduard Panteleimonovich (or something like that), the manager. party registration department, and some official who looks like a secret service. “You present us with an ultimatum: registration or terrorism! You sent a letter to the minister, in which you blackmail him! Do you know that this is a case under jurisdiction?” the secret service official fumed. Old Panteleimonovich looked sad. “You prevent people from working,” was all he said.

“Why did you call me?” I asked. “Only for this? Well, I went to continue the picket.” And I left, leaving them.

When we were standing at the ministry on the 31st, we saw how Mercedes and Audis were driving up. Men and women in nice coats with Gucci and Armani bags were getting out of the cars. “These are gifts to the minister for the New Year, guys! And we are outcasts,” I said to the boys. “But we will win. Precisely because we are outcasts.”

Nastya made me a gift for the New Year. On December 12, she came with a large, larger than her, black backpack behind her back to live with me. Her father kicked her out of the house.

Later, on reflection, I decided that my book “A Hero’s Anatomy” also played a role in the refusal of registration. A free man, I innocently told unfree and treacherous people about my struggle. They made serious conclusions.

https://drugoros.ru/biblioteka/moia-politicheskaia-biografiia/glava-14-pervyi-i-vtoroi-vserossiiskie-sezdy-nbp

June 20 – on this day a hurricane swept over Moscow – tiny Nastya entered my life. It was immediately clear that two such scumbags were doomed to live together. We fell in love with each other: to hell with the baby.

In the meantime, Andrei Fyodorov, together with party activists, urgently completed the formation of regional organizations and prepared the First All-Russian Congress. Out of more than sixty organizations, we left 51 for fidelity and took up paperwork, sending them, preparing documents for submission to the Ministry of Justice for registration. There was a plan: to hold a congress on October 1-2, to submit documents in the next few days, the answer had to be received within a month in order to be registered before December 18, 1998. Exactly one year before the elections on December 19, 1999, as required by the electoral law.

We were running out of time, but it is also true that it was in 1998, the year of the split in the Moscow organization, that the party experienced unprecedented growth in the regions. The number of regional organizations has grown by more than a third and membership has doubled. We discovered that we have Party organizations in more than 50 subjects of the Federation and that we are over 7,000 people. The media continued to enjoy showing the population the ballet fascists of the RNE, giving us occasional mocking attention. Meanwhile, our modern ideology triumphantly captured at least the regional cities of Russia one after another. And several dozen cities of lesser importance, towns and villages were captured. This growth has not happened before for one simple reason. It was at this point that we were able to plow well and sow Russia with our ideas with the help of exclusively ” Previously, this saturation with propaganda did not happen. The official media, in particular television, showed us little and sparingly, I’m telling you, they worked as press agents for the RNU. Barkashov did not refuse the role of the “fascist threat” that society imposed on him, and he exploited the media with pleasure. It is possible that the NBP would not be able to resist the temptation if the media chose us for this role. But the fascist threat is supposed to be one, if there are several, then the public’s attention will scatter, and the threat will look less threatening. Be that as it may, “Limonka” plowed half of Russia precisely by 1998. It is paradoxical that the sudden growth of the party dates back exactly to the year Dugin left. Previously, this saturation with propaganda did not happen. The official media, in particular television, showed us little and sparingly, I’m telling you, they worked as press agents for the RNU. Barkashov did not refuse the role of the “fascist threat” that society imposed on him, and he exploited the media with pleasure. It is possible that the NBP would not be able to resist the temptation if the media chose us for this role. But the fascist threat is supposed to be one, if there are several, then the public’s attention will scatter, and the threat will look less threatening. Be that as it may, “Limonka” plowed half of Russia precisely by 1998. It is paradoxical that the sudden growth of the party dates back exactly to the year Dugin left.

People in the party, of course, crept up ardent, bright. But most of them lacked legal knowledge. There was not even the ability to write a simple minutes of the meeting. At best, our people could copy the sample text sent to them. Therefore, Fedorov and I suffered grief with them. The same documents had to be sent many times. In addition, we also started the registration of each department in the departments of justice of regional administrations. And there, officials mocked the National Bolsheviks to their heart’s content. They mocked me too. I remember that in Kaliningrad I had to send a total of eight (!) Variants of notification to the department of justice that “a regional branch of the National Bolshevik Party was formed and operates on the territory of the Kaliningrad region, acting on the basis of the charter of the NBP … and so on.”

I must say that I personally, when we began the gigantic task of formalizing and registering an all-Russian political party, had little legal knowledge. Andrei Fedorov had legal knowledge. He graduated from the university, but administrative and bureaucratic knowledge was not enough. Our former lawyer Taras Rabko knew best of all the bureaucratic requirements for registration. He helped Andrey with some advice, thanks to him for that too.

The fact is that we have already registered regional organizations of the party in the Ministry of Justice, in its regional branch. They were registered as they were formed. By the time of the First Party Congress, we were registered as an interregional public organization of the National Bolshevik Party with organizations in 36 regions of Russia. Subsequently, journalists (whose level of legal development was even lower than that of an ordinary National Bolshevik) did not understand why we register regional organizations in the regional branch of the Ministry of Justice, and not in the Ministry itself.

In fact, they are one and the same. Taras Rabko, when registering our first organization in Moscow, got wind of the fact that the easiest way to do this is in the regional branch. As we created regional branches, Taras Rabko went with a bundle of protocols to the regional branch of the Ministry of Justice, and there new regionals were added to those that already existed with us. But after 36, we had to refer the next 11 departments directly to the Ministry of Justice at Vorontsovo Pole, 4, next to the Indian embassy. In the left wing of the building, on the side, there was a reception room of the Ministry of Justice, a small vestibule, a small waiting room (like a ship’s cabin) with a table and three chairs, a two-meter corridor gut and a door to the reception room, where a legal adviser sits at the table on the left, right behind the door , in charge of organizations, and on the right – a lawyer,

I must say that the Ministry of Justice was at that time an institution completely forgotten by God with Soviet-era paths trampled to holes on the stairs. A few unkempt, impudent policemen downstairs (they should be guarding some ZhEK), Soviet patched and patched offices with peeling linoleum on the floor. Perhaps now, having received GUIN under its hand, the ministry is living in luxury? Andrei Fyodorov and I went to the Ministry of Justice reception: we talked with legal adviser Natalia Vladimirovna about the possibility of bringing documents for registration, and clarified the procedure for processing some documents. And they began to organize a congress. In August, there was a march on Moscow by “Labor Russia”, in which we were doomed to participate. Like it or not, we became allies. I remember that the plan for a trip to Moscow in the form of rays of a five-pointed star, extended to Moscow, I was amazed when Khudyakov, Anpilov and Terekhov showed it to me with pride at the headquarters of Labor Russia. It all seemed very old-fashioned to me. However, with the rays of a five-pointed star, several new people joined us in the NBP on that campaign, who then played a significant role in the party. Eduard Kulemin, an outstanding graphic artist and poster artist, arrived with the Smolensk detachment in a bus, whom I persuaded and persuaded in letters to become the leader of the Smolensk organization. He made the best posters for us at Limonka, and if in the first period of the newspaper’s existence – from 1995 to 1997 – the work of Lebedev-Frontov prevailed and set the tone, then in 1998-2000 the work of Kulemin prevailed. His skeleton with a party bandage on his arm and the inscription: “Don’t piss – join the NBP!” – a masterpiece of the National Bolshevik style. With a detachment for a trip to Moscow, our guys from the National Bolsheviks came from Ufa: Kuzlev, Stepanov and a few more people. Recently, Anton Kuzlev was brutally murdered under unpleasant circumstances, he was the head of our organization in Bashkiria. Then, beyond Moscow, in the forest, by a small lake, I also met a guy unknown to me from the city of Samara, a biologist Sergei Solovyov. Now Sergey and his countryman from Samara Maxim Zhurkin, as well as a guy from Smolensk Dmitry Gafarov are sitting in the Riga Central.

I remember that the St. Petersburg National Bolsheviks also arrived there. There is a photograph where a whole crowd of National Bolsheviks gathered at the edge of the forest. We were photographed by many, including my girlfriend, tiny Nastya. She came with me there and sat in a clearing with girls from Vladimir, with Irina Tabatskova and Nina Silina. Nina is currently being held somewhere near me in a stone sack in the Lefortovo detention center. According to rumors, she was taken to a stationary examination at the Serbsky Psychiatric Institute.

In the campaign against Moscow there were many red flags, sun, light. By evening, however, I slipped in the greasy mud near Moscow, and for the second time I sprained a vein and tendon in my right leg. The first time it happened at the end of September 1997. Then, returning from the Golgotha ​​elections in the Stavropol Georgievsky district, where I did not have the opportunity to play sports, there was no time, I decided to catch up at once and, standing on the bridge, began to “swing” my neck. And in his desire to quickly regain the lost form, he overdid it so much that he tore off the internal vein that runs from the groin to the knee, and the tendon accompanying it. I had to raise my leg on the bed with my hands for several months. Now everything has started all over again. I barely hobbled to the bus with the help of the security guard Kostyan, the guys and tiny Nastya. However, her help was psychological.

The Congress moved inexorably. Letters were sent out in advance. Responses were received from the leaders of regional organizations with their consent to participate. With the help of allies from the “Union of Officers”, the officer’s name was Albert, we found a working hostel in one of the Moscow factories. The hostel was used to accommodate business travelers from the regions of Russia. I signed a contract with the director of the hostel and paid an advance. The director was embarrassed by our seal – the image of a “lemon” grenade, but Albert averted her suspicions by telling her some uplifting lie. Finding a suitable hall for the youth congress was not very easy. Contrary to popular belief that all DCs need money and are ready to immediately provide space for any events in exchange for banknotes, I found out that this is far from being the case. In the center of the city, not far from the Belorussky railway station, we were charged a lot of money, and the director of a very suitable club for us with a neat hall for 500 seats with red chairs did not give up. “It’s better to leave it empty,” said the Russian businessman-director. A huge cinema not far from the square of the three stations turned out to be without a foyer. The director rented out the whole lobby to cosmetic kiosks, sellers of cakes, buns, ready-made dresses, leather jackets and medicines. And we needed a foyer. In the foyer we intended to register the arriving delegates of the congress and feed them during the break. That’s why we refused to shoot this rather cheap cinema. We could not wander endlessly around Moscow, looking for cinemas, – time was pressing. We chose the cinema “Almaz”, which is on Shabolovka. The pretty, even graceful, director of the cinema seemed to she was not afraid of God, or the devil, or the congress of staff correspondents of a youth newspaper called “Limonka”. Later, we were whispered that her lover served as a roof for her – some kind of bump in RUBOP. The headquarters of the RUBOP was located nearby on Shabolovka. I prayed to God that the headmistress would not be scared, and I wanted to hand her the money – the rent of the premises – in advance, but she insisted that we pay five days before the convention.

Why didn’t we say directly that the Congress of the National Bolshevik Party would take place? After all, we were a legally existing interregional organization. My experience in political work led me to believe that the prospect of hosting a convention of a radical youth political party under your roof would send an unpleasant chill through the chest of any director. And almost certainly would have caused a negative reaction from the local police authorities. The congress of the correspondents of the newspaper still did not frighten to such an extent.

In Almaz, we thought there were 500 seats. Then it turned out that there were more. Since our delegates were supposed to come with a maximum of four people from the regional organization, we did not need a large hall. And even psychologically harmful, since the invited media would rant about “a dwarf party that could not even fill the cinema hall.” In fact, we simply did not have the money to pay for the return trip to everyone who wanted it – only the poorest were paid. Smelly poverty prevented us from filling the hall. We did not want to be like the nationalists like Belyaev, who usually fill their halls with any human material. Only ours should be at the congress. No teapots, lopsided Orthodox. We even limited the number of invitees to the leaders of allied parties and movements. Without suits. At the entrance to the cinema should have been ours – the first control. Lokotkov himself was supposed to stand at the entrance to the hall and personally, guided by documents, face-control and instructions, once again check the incoming.

There was an overlay with the mandates of the congress participants. The mandates were ordered for us by Yura Klochkov, a friendly journalist and printer from the RCWP. Later, Klochkov began to make the Tula Rabochiy newspaper, one of the best workers’ newspapers that I know. And I know a lot of workers’ newspapers. So, the mandates cost us fabulously cheap. They were pieces of cardboard measuring approximately 200×100 millimeters. One side reproduced the flag of the NBP: on a red rectangle – a white circle and a black hammer and sickle. On the reverse side was the text: “Delegate of the 1st Congress of the National Bolshevik Party …” Surname, name, patronymic. The name of the organization and other data. For the journalists invited to the congress, the ticket was the same, but the flag was black, and after the last name, first name, patronymic followed the name of the media that the journalist represents. Alas, either the printer did not have enough ink, or he saved it, but all the mandates did not turn out red and black. Some are pink and grey. Even when cutting (I cut the mandates myself! I could not deny myself the pleasure!) it turned out that some of the sheets were defective, on them the drawing of the flag slipped from the reverse text, did not coincide with it along the contours.

The rains have come. Abundant. Not some Moscow ones. Some particularly impatient delegates had arrived five days earlier and now crowded the headquarters every day. In the composition: I, Fedorov, Lokotkov and the most decent National Bolshevik at that time, bearded and over thirty years old, Andrei Zhukov (he worked in the Mayakovsky Museum), we went to the director of Almaz to pay money. Having already suffered from the cowardice of the authorities and compatriots (the venue for the Conference of the Revolutionary Opposition had to be changed four times!) I prayed to God that the fragile director would not be frightened. She was not afraid, she arrived in a car with cheeky men, perhaps it was the famous RUBOP with his cop company, and accepted money from us, after forcing us to exchange dollars for rubles. The price of the dollar increased significantly daily, that was the time of the crisis, and I advised her to take payment in dollars. But a Russian director is a Russian director, he won’t let go of his own, but he won’t go for tricks either. No favors from nature. She didn’t want to.

The days, as with the expected explosion of the atomic bomb, were counted in reverse order: 5, 4, 3, 2 … On all these days, delegates continued to arrive, but since the hostel was booked by us for strictly defined days and nights, the entire arriving uniformly dressed encampment settled down in the Bunker. Finally, the evening before the Congress came: September 30th. Here the real invasion had already begun – the boys only had time to run in and shout: “Eduard, the Vologda leader has arrived! Eduard Veniaminovich, the Rostov organization! Eduard Veniaminovich – Magadans!”

The party was overgrown with figures, faces, articles, muscles. Members of the Moscow organization, I saw, got high, enjoyed the fact that there are so many of us, that we came from everywhere, that we have so many brothers and sisters. They spent years running around train stations, delivering newspapers every two weeks to abstract-sounding distant cities. And now they see the results of their work. The appearance of our regional deputies had a huge strengthening effect on Muscovites.

In groups, as we arrived, we sent delegates to the hotel. Tearing off their tea—everyone was hastily swallowing tea on the way—the boys picked up their backpacks. I went out to them in the big hall and explained the task, they were all given memos with diagrams, with telephones, with a description of the routes to the hostel, to the Almaz cinema and to the Bunker. Well, of course, I felt joy, as a person who has achieved his goal. I built a party, I built space out of chaos. I gathered these people from all over Russia, found them, gathered them into an organization. Despite the malice (“… nothing will work, you are not a politician, you are a writer, Eduard!”), despite the malicious barking of former comrades-in-arms (“… inadequate people, the NBP project will fail”), despite the fact that we have been buried since 1995, when the infant NBP only made its first squeaks, here it is, the party, passed in front of me with backpacks and bags. Different and similar, like brothers living from Magadan to Kaliningrad, boys and girls.

Towards evening I went to check what was being done at Almaz. They worked hard there. Our four-meter flag, made by me and Taras, hung over the stage. The slogan: “Russia is everything, the rest is nothing!” decorated the back of the stage. “Eat the rich!” “Capitalism is shit!” Our poster by Lebedev-Frontov: Fantômas aiming at the viewer from a revolver, with the inscription: “Get up, branded with a curse!” — hung on the wall near the stage. How it all resembled the revolutionary great parties. Everything was as it should be. And new, modern.

The next morning, more than one Lokotkov came for me, but a whole detachment arrived. The guys decided that perhaps the enemies would try to capture the leader on the day of the First Congress. Or arrange an assassination attempt on him. Andrey Fedorov also drove by. I was worried, as expected. Until the congress began, and even after it began, we were by no means guaranteed against surprises. Cinema “Almaz” can be surrounded by riot police. The doors of the cinema “Almaz” can be closed. There may be a “bomb” planted in the cinema as an excuse to close the convention.

We got out of the metro station “Shabolovskaya” and turned immediately to the left along Shabolovskaya street. Ahead of us, groups of young people in black clothes were heading somewhere in the rain: jeans, boots, I remember thinking that something suspiciously many young people were walking in the same direction with us. “Look, whole crowds of ours are knocking down, Eduard Veniaminovich!” Kostyan exclaimed cheerfully. It just dawned on me that they were ours.

I opened the congress. Ermakov kept the recording, but for some reason the first part of the congress sank into oblivion – it wasn’t recorded what I said there, I don’t remember verbatim, but the hundreds of guys who were present there probably remember and someone will tell, write memoirs. I congratulated them on the first All-Russian Congress, on the fact that the party, started less than four years ago, has grown from a handful of intellectuals into a powerful all-Russian organization. Fedorov was sitting next to me. After me, he announced the order of the congress.

We have elected the presidium. I put Taras Rabko there, he deserved it. I left the party, but without his energy, without his constant influence on me, without pushing, his popular role – Taras pushed me, and I felt that the people themselves want to create a party, this is their will – there would be no party. Volkov from Yekaterinburg, then Tolya Tishin, who had just joined the NBP for some immediate merits, and Alekseenko from Astrakhan, and Paderin from Severodvinsk, and Karyagin, who has now become a traitor, sat on the presidium. The hall was full of our guys. Petersburgers, who had to get the closest, arrived in larger numbers than they should have, they sat in a separate noisy square in the hall. Max Surkov came and sat in the distance, growing his beard. How much remorse and regret he must have felt. He asked in advance for permission to appear at the congress through intermediaries. He came with the poetess Vitukhnovskaya. In the front row, our powerful warrant officer Vitya Pestov (subsequently, his photograph with his fist raised in a National Bolshevik greeting was used by the Anpilovites for several of their leaflets, of course, without mentioning a word that he was a National Bolshevik), next to him Zhenya Yakovlev – the head of the Moscow regional organizations. Near Yakovlev – his alter ego – Major Burygin (killed at the end of March 2001), both from Elektrostal. Further heads and hands and red mandates – guys from all over Russia. next to him Zhenya Yakovlev is the head of the Moscow regional organization. Near Yakovlev – his alter ego – Major Burygin (killed at the end of March 2001), both from Elektrostal. Further heads and hands and red mandates – guys from all over Russia. next to him Zhenya Yakovlev is the head of the Moscow regional organization. Near Yakovlev – his alter ego – Major Burygin (killed at the end of March 2001), both from Elektrostal. Further heads and hands and red mandates – guys from all over Russia.

From time to time my gaze turned to the left, there, closer to the exit, in a white hood, sat my girl, my party comrade Nastya.

My presentation lasted about an hour. I wrote the text of the report in advance, but did not read it. I freely recounted the content of my theses, which had already been sketched out at the congress, at that time the young and brilliant Fedorov, such a graduate even Harvard would envy, outlined the program of the congress. I said that Russia is an old country, that it is ruled by old people. That there is no politics in Russia. That all political forces are pulling her into the past. Monarchists at the beginning of the 20th century – in 1913, radical communists – at the beginning of the 50s, Zyuganovites – in the Brezhnev era, democrats – in the 1960s and 1970s, in the European reality of these years … What is the RNE – calling the country in the 30s – years of the 20th century. We, the National Bolsheviks, are the only modern party that has never been seen before in Russia. We created our own party on the basis of counterculture and opposition politics. We picked up all the heroes of the fight against the System, as leftists, and right, picked them up – unnecessary democracy, built their own Pantheon of heroes. Their ashes knock on our hearts.

After me, the congress was greeted by the guests. Anpilov uttered (his speech has been preserved) a touching greeting, yet he wished us to get rid of the prefix “national”. I thought when he said this: “Why didn’t I ever have a wish for Trudovaya Rossiya to get rid of something?” I accepted them for what they are: a bit reactionary, straight as boards, and yet not bad aunts and uncles. The “Union of Officers” was represented by officer Albert, already known to me. He said that he was amazed at the party, consisting of all the youth. That, to be honest, we are the most promising of all existing parties. We were greeted by Pavel Bylevsky from the Russian Communist Youth Union. I still had a good relationship with Pavel. At one time we even gave the RKSM(b) our premises for their meetings. I remember strange Komsomol girls with braids and white socks. Perhaps they cultivated their own style. Bylevsky was happy for us, which he stated from the stage.

During a break in the foyer, Masha “Volgogradskaya” in a leather dress with straps, with a tattoo “Lemon” on her shoulder, red-haired, seductive, sold free sausages with a bun, and therefore a huge queue lined up at the counter of the locker room, turned into a buffet. The guys were talking lively, because the lobby was buzzing with voices. It was difficult for me, the leader of this whole newborn Zaporizhzhya Sich, to overcome the path from the door to the hall. Surrounded by journalists and the National Bolsheviks, who had questions for me. The media were present in an average or moderate, let’s say, amount. There were four television cameras, if I’m not mistaken, and a dozen or more press journalists.

After the break, representatives of regional organizations spoke. Kostya Mikhailyuk, “Mauser” – the leader of the Riga branch of the NBP, a tall, handsome guy no lower than Volkov – with witty fury, aroused great excitement about the practice of battles between the National Bolsheviks of Latvia and “Latvian fascism”. Mauser was applauded for a long time and in his person, of course, they applauded the militant organization of the National Bolsheviks of Latvia. On Stalin’s birthday, they launched a helium balloon over Riga with a portrait of Joseph Vissarionovich. Their organization was distinguished by the fact that it recruited, promoted, accepted into its ranks the black son of a Russian woman and a Libyan – Ayo Benes. In fairness, it should be said that not everyone liked the initiative of the Riga National Bolsheviks. So, The Pskov and St. Petersburg organizations protested and threw tantrums at me personally about Ayo Benes. The Pskov and St. Petersburg organizations (in any case, the St. Petersburg, when it was led by Grebnev) are the most right-wing in the National Bolshevik Party, therefore it is clear that they should not like the black member of the NBP. However, the courage and personal qualities of the biology student Benes subsequently forced many of his opponents to come to terms with his existence in the party. And in Latvia, Benes brought even greater popularity to the NBP, and besides, he was a living illustration of the fact that the party does not incite ethnic hatred. In addition to Mauser, comrade Abel and comrade Skripka, most valuable to the Party, have been and are still active in Latvia. Their contribution to the cause of National Bolshevism is invaluable.

Comrade Ivanov, an accountant by profession, took over from Mauser. Ivanov became the leader of the Magadan regional organization. Now he has departed from the party, but Alexander Dostavalov, who was with him at the 1st congress, continues to lead the party in distant Magadan with dignity.

Andrei Grebnev was then the favorite of the party. The most popular regional leader. And the St. Petersburg organization was the most productive regional organization of the NBP. As it should be, the regional leader inevitably imposes his style on the organization he leads. I understood this and did not try to cut all the leaders for myself or for some ideal that would satisfy me. Even if I wanted to, I still couldn’t beat the regional leaders. I didn’t have the time or money for that. Russia, even after the circumcision that the USSR underwent, is a huge country, and it is even clear that visiting 89 of its regions once will take a year or more and will require non-stop travel. Therefore, I considered it my main task to find a regional leader, and let him work at his own discretion, guided in general terms by the ideology of the party. Therefore, we had more red ones inside the party – left-wing regionals and more right-wing ones. Grebnev perched on the podium to the applause of St. Petersburg and the entire audience. Expansive, fast, unable to stop, he was such a dynamo, turning the engine of the party day and night. He could really call the guys in the middle of the night and go to paint Nevsky with our slogans. He was too fast, too. Having taken money from somewhere, the St. Petersburg residents hastily released a colorful poster calling for joining the National Bolshevik Party. In a hurry, in the word “Bolshevik” they lost one “s”, and our black hammer and sickle came out upside down. Scammers and evil tongues claimed that Grebnev was whipping up his already indefatigable energy with alcohol too much. Defensively, he answered me: “Yes, Eduard Veniaminovich, after the rally I’m taking the guys for a drink. and drink beer. It brings them together, makes them a team. We do everything together. We sleep, we eat, we go to rallies together. Why don’t we have a drink together! Are we doing a bad job? Who works in the party better than us?! Every month in St. Petersburg newspapers there are 10-20 articles about us. Who can do more?” Indeed, Nezavisimaya Gazeta also wrote about them, posting photographs.

From the rostrum of the 1st Congress, Grebnev called on the party to become a party of stormtroopers. He spoke after the Yekaterinburg leader Volkov, and therefore opposed him. Volkov’s style of colloquia on the themes of traditionalism or Eurasianism annoyed the former plastics factory worker. (Together with his brother Seryoga, they poured buckets, scoops and all kinds of auxiliary utensils out of plastic there.) “We are not going to sit on our asses for years and study the book Whip, as the scientist Alexander Gelievich Dugin, who recently broke away from us, calls for. Every regional leader should become a commander and turn his bespectacled guys into a stormtrooper squad. Or recruit other guys!” Grebnev grinned askance. Behind him were expulsions from the party of a certain number of old St. Petersburg party members. Most of the time, I think he was right, people didn’t work and were useless. But the fact that he eventually ousted the old party intellectuals from the party is also true. And it was bad. Because a healthy party needs everyone, both stormtroopers and intellectuals come in handy. Removing people who refuse to submit to “storming”, Grebnev unwittingly destroyed the potential opposition.

Grebnev and his furious speech were applauded. Even Volkov, who was sitting on the presidium. However, neither “Grebnev’s course” nor “Volkov’s course” suited the party. The stormtroopers already caused less excitement in St. Petersburg, although they were undoubtedly the most visible political group. Volkov, although he did not leave with Dugin, actually belonged to the previous generation of the National Bolshevik party member: a reasoner and a scribe. The time for pique vests in the party is over. And the time of the stormtroopers? The year 1998 did not allow the development of “storming” in Russia – the militia and special services are traditionally too strong in our country. However, in the days of the First Congress, the choice of future tactics was not yet so acute. After all, we were preparing documents for registration of the party. We did not rule out the possibility of participating in legal political struggle. That was the fight we were aiming for.

At the end of the first day of the congress, I went to my home. He invited a few party members who happened to be nearby to drink, sent them home early and went to bed early. Lokotkov played these days the role of the chief commandant of the Bunker, he also rented a cinema, escorting the last delegates who had sat out from there, so other people guarded me that evening.

There was only one incident at the convention. On October 2, at about six in the morning, the duty officer at the N police station called me and said that Andrey Grebnev and three others were with him, two of them were girls, and asked me to come. I called Fedorov, and Fedorov and Ermakov went to the department and took the whole company from there. He was not so wrong in this particular story, Andrei Grebnev. The director of the dormitory took a lot of business travelers on our heads and pushed our people out of some of the rooms allotted to them. Ours guessed to condense and settled down in the rooms of party comrades on the floor. Furious Grebnev entered into an intense polemic with the administration, that’s all. The administration called the police. I was terribly angry and intended to send Grebnev to St. Petersburg immediately after his release. However, he retreated from his intention,

On the second day of the congress, the leaders of the regions and representatives of friendly organizations continued to speak. Of the two available hymns recorded for us by the composer Comrade Nikolai, the delegates chose one, the one that is longer and where there is more brass. There was also listened to the march of the NBP, written for us by Dmitry Shostakovich, the grandson of the famous composer. The march caused a storm of enthusiasm in the hall. Subsequently, newspapers willingly wrote about Dmitry Shostakovich, the author of the NBP anthem.

I solemnly closed the congress. By evening, all the delegates who did not leave were supposed to gather in the square near the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and walk along with their allies in the Front of the Working People, the Army and Youth along the embankment to the White House, where a rally in memory of the events of 1993 was to be held near the former CMEA building.

Closing the congress, I gathered the leaders of regional organizations and brainwashed them for about an hour and a half. We clarified the methods of work, methods and frequency of communication, and much more. The leaders were all with varying political experience, ranging from zero to four years. The leaders of the eleven new organizations asked, of course, more questions. But even experienced party members had something to ask. Most of the regional leaders came to Moscow, or I went to them, but there were those who saw the leader for the first time. Calm or nervous, quick or thoughtful, these guys all brought questions. I patiently answered, realizing that even if we had settled for twenty days, and not for two, twenty would not have been enough for us. Only a few delegates were over 40 years old. Namely: Vladislav Aksyonov from Nizhny Novgorod (soon his young National Bolsheviks will rebel against him and remove him), Gennady Fedorov from Yaroslavl (still in the lead), the former Eldepeer member Galiev is the leader of the Kemerovo region, the Astrakhan regional organization was headed by an elderly teacher, but 35-year-old Alekseev came instead. That’s all. The rest of the contingent of leaders was young. I? Founding Fathers are not chosen. What age is, this is taken.

In a narrow circle of leaders, I expanded exclusively for their internal use information about the split in the Moscow organization in April of this year. I spoke about the split already on the first day of the congress, explaining to Grebnev’s guys the situation with Alexander Gelievich Dugin. But he spoke briefly, in every possible way avoiding a negative assessment of Dugin’s personality. I wanted him to remain the founding father of the NBP, not wanting to subject his image to an unfair revision, because it was better for the party itself. “So as not to erase the faces in the photographs later and not to censor the Party archives,” I laughed. However, regional leaders were supposed to know more. Many of them saw the stormy anti-National-Bolshevik controversy developed by Gelich on the Internet. I explained to the guys that Dugin turned out to be a bad and quarrelsome character. That he gloated over the split in the Moscow organization, that he intrigued against the party. That he was glad that, as he believed, the best party members left with him. That later he tried to tear the regional organizations away from the NBP…

“We will remember all this for him on the Night of Long Knives, Eduard Veniaminovich,” they said from the back row. “Why couldn’t all this information have been leaked to Limonka?” they asked me. “Having weighed the pros and cons, knowing how, arriving in the provinces, the Moscow fly becomes an elephant, we decided not to make the split public. We decided that such information could suddenly divide the party into two parts: those who are for Limonov, and on those who are for Dugin, while the conflict occurred for reasons far more important than the attitude of the party towards these two personalities. Therefore, we decided to hide the conflict from the party. I take the blame and I think that we did the right thing. In the heat of the moment, all of you could share and today we would have NBP (L) and NBP (D) or several NBPs in the likeness of numerous “Labor Russias”.

In the evening I let Grebnev and Mauser take turns leading the National Bolshevik column. There were many of us, we looked brave, and the numerous police detachments escorting us looked at us sullenly. And we screamed loudly. As was the case in previous years, we and our allies were not allowed to enter the overpass near the mayor’s office. I had to perform below, at the garages, substituting a small podium and rolling up the Labor Russia truck as a backdrop.

After the meeting, I said goodbye to those delegates who were leaving for the railway stations. He warned those who were going to go to the stadium for an all-night service in memory of those who died here 5 years ago. He warned against excesses both in alcohol consumption and in communication. “Every year more and more empty and useless people are wiping out here these days, who have nothing to do with the defense of the White House. Be vigilant.” And with a sense of accomplishment he went to bed. Accompanied by Nastya and security guard Lokotkov. Of course, there were also those who were dissatisfied, there are always people who ardently want the holiday to last and not stop. This time the Petersburgers were unhappy. I was very pleased. All this mob managed to make important decisions without any special excesses, talked, made sure how many of us there are and how strong we are. What is the task of congresses of political parties.

https://drugoros.ru/biblioteka/moia-politicheskaia-biografiia/glava-13-raskol

In my life there has never been a division into private and collective. On the contrary, both elements were intertwined. On November 11, 1997, Liza returned. She came, put “our” family CD Edith Piaf, sat on my knees. She and I went to St. Petersburg, I persuaded her to quit her job. The New Year has arrived, 1998. At the beginning, the year was quite successful, I divided time between Bunker, an apartment on Kaloshin Lane and Lisa’s apartment next to the Olympic plate. January 12, I remember, we painted the refrigerator with her. Like poor Mexicans.

Lover, I was the leader of the party. In the mornings, Lisa slept for a long time, and I was already sitting in the kitchen, working with letters, building a game. I couldn’t afford to relax. By the autumn of 1998, we wanted to hold the 1st All-Russian Congress and, after the congress, submit documents for registration of the party as an all-Russian political one. All this had to be completed and registration received no later than mid-December 1998, a year before the elections. I had a wild amount of work ahead of me.

By spring, my relationship with Lisa had gone wrong. She made us a newspaper. The fact is that Artyom Debkov got a permanent job in a prestigious company a long time ago, after Debkov, one guy from the magazine, located in the house where the Rolan Bykov Center is located, on Tsvetnoy Boulevard, made a newspaper for us. And then Lisa began to layout the newspaper. And very well designed. However, with me, a loved one, she was capricious, demanded wine, and therefore I had to literally pull out every number on myself, participate in its manufacture. When I left her apartment on Olympiyskiy – I couldn’t sit and guard my girlfriend – she hosted “friends” or “guests”. Judging by the numerous empty bottles, the guests were drinking heavily. I began to notice that her guests had the same tastes: “they” drank cognac, then when Liza cannot stand cognac and drinks dry, “they” bought, going to visit Liza, expensive fish: white and red. From which I deduced the assumption that her guests are the same. And I didn’t like that idea.

Once I went to the headquarters in the evening, at an inopportune time. And I found there a pretentious, curly-haired Old Believer in a coat and boots and a girl smelling of perfume. The Old Believer and the girl measured our guys for sewing black Old Believer shirts. I asked Kostya Lokotkov about the price, it turned out that the pleasure cost a lot of money: 167 rubles. I frightened off this company, everyone quickly scattered to the corners, a young man named Butrim flashed by, looking like an oriental boy from a painting by Pirosmani. Butrim replaced Karagodin as the closest student. The Old Believers made fashionable in the party of Dugin. For about a year he had been engaged in the Old Believers, with knowledge of the matter explained to the readers of “Limonka” the differences between the Old Believers “accords”, he was talking about the “bespriests”, “Kondratieffs”. A photograph was published in the newspaper: Dugin with beards, and around him a dozen bearded Old Believers. I considered Dugin’s infatuation with Old Believers to be his next whim and thought, reassuring myself, that this infatuation would also pass. However, the party did not have to follow all the intellectual and religious passions of Merlin, as many as nine shirts had to be sewn by the girl who measured ours. Nine souls that Merlin is trying to steal, I suddenly formulated the situation to myself in this way.

I spoke with Lokotkov then. “Bone, and you!” I said. “Well, I really didn’t expect from you.” I said, “You have nothing to eat, and you are throwing 167 rubles on carnival clothes. Are you going to a masquerade in it? Oslyabya’s costume?”

Merlin lectured them. In 1997, I traveled a lot, was absent for most of the year, and therefore did not see with my own eyes how the ritual of these lectures took shape. Returning to Moscow, I came to the headquarters on Mondays, built the people, discussed practical matters, the publication of a newspaper, and solved money problems. Party building sucked up all my time, so I usually showed up at the very end of Dugin’s lecture. He ran away on radio 101, and I took the floor. Once I arrived 40 minutes earlier than usual and was present for the last forty minutes of a lecture by Merlin called “Philosophical Russian”. I listened carefully to what Dugin said, and I really, really didn’t like what he said. And he said that we were not ready for a revolution, that at first, through painstaking improvement, a new type of person should be created, namely, a “philosophical Russian.” We all must become so, and only then, sometime, in an indefinite future, we may be able to start a revolution. He ended with a completely absurd appeal to the National Bolsheviks – to learn how to make money and ran away to the radio.

I had to softly disguise Dugin’s call to self-improvement before the National Bolsheviks. I said that the party is not a circle for the joint study of literature and art. The party sets itself political tasks. Self-improvement is not a political task. Nobody is against your self-improvement, but do it, as they say, in your free time from completing the tasks of the party. When I said this, I noticed skeptical smiles on the faces of several National Bolsheviks.

While I was plowing the sands of Central Asia, agitating the people on the border with Chechnya, Marilyn, it turns out, took away the souls of the guys. The next day, Lokotkov, Okhapkin, Khors came to me, very excited. “Eduard Veniaminovich, you must tell him to apologize.” – “To whom, for what?” — “Dugin. He thinks he can humiliate us with impunity.” — “What’s the matter?” They handed me “Limonka”, where in the heading “How to understand” – a short note “How to understand the bunker nazbols, children of the underground” was noted. Dugin poured out his bile on the beer-drinking, chess-playing, boxing residents of the Bunker, “useless morons who, moreover, are not averse to taking what lies badly.” “Why do you take it personally?” They explained to me that certain events happened in Bunker’s life, which all party members know about, that some 248, or something, rubles disappeared from Dugin’s cash desk, and he snapped at Lokotkov, Okhapkin, Khors and Dementyev about this. That they demand an apology, that Dugin arrogantly despises everyone, that he has delusions of grandeur and that such relationships cannot continue.

With great reluctance, I called Dugin. He immediately began to call me “Eduard Veniaminovich”, which did not bode well. “These people are inadequate human material,” Dugin declared dryly. “Instead of being grateful for being allowed into History, they are rude. that it was they who took your money. Both electricians and plumbers have the key to the Bunker. Then, you know, I was against selling anything but a newspaper in the Bunker. Money will certainly corrupt the personnel.”— “They also showed me the creation of Taras Rabko, in which he calls to deceive me by selling my books. What a vile race of rascals.” – “What kind of creation?” – “Your student Taras recommends in writing to cheat me, winding up 50 rubles for each Geopolitics book. He teaches party members how to take milk from my children!” – “Sasha, it was precisely because, in order not to create such situations, that I opposed the opening of trade in the Bunker.”

We were silent.

“Sasha,” I said. rake everyone together in the party.” “I demand that these four be expelled from the party,” said Dugin.

“Only out of respect for you, I have not yet stuffed his fat bearded muzzle,” said Kostya Lokotkov, having learned about Dugin’s demand.

On March 24, I flew to Novosibirsk. The second Novosibirsk organization of the NBP* had just been born there, a tall girl Vika Popova stood at its head. Having been in St. Petersburg, she saw the work of Grebnev, and he “ordained” her to the leadership of the regionals.

On the evening of the 26th, already in Moscow, having called Lisa, I found out that she could not come today and did not know when she would come. I realized that my girlfriend is not my girlfriend again. I went through a hard night and in the morning I decided to end this relationship. Personal collapsed. The collective, alas, was in a hurry to fall apart after the personal.

On April 5, we held the most active Day of the Nation: a procession and rally, the largest in the history of the Party. About 1,400-1,500 people gathered at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.

April 6 was a Monday. I held a regular meeting, Dugin was not present, but there was nothing surprising in this. He was often absent from regular meetings. Organization did not interest him. He was interested in the ears of the National Bolsheviks. I held a meeting and gave the floor to Maxim Surkov. In the three years that have elapsed since the 1995 elections, Max has become an authoritative person in the party, the “Bunkerführer” was obeyed and respected. He announced the work plan of the party branch for a week, after which he suddenly said: “Well, the last thing. I would like to discuss the situation with Alexander Gelevich Dugin’s request to Eduard Veniaminovich, with a request to expel Okhapkin, Dementyev, Lokotkov and Khors from the party.” I did not expect such a blow in the back from Maxim. “Maxim,” I said, “who allowed you to carry this dirty linen out of the hut while I’m still settling this conflict?” Alexander Gelievich asked, – answered Max, – to bring this story to light before the party. “-” Everyone already knows everything, “- Tanya Tarasova noticed from the place. ” Well, – I said, – since everyone knows everything, less will explain. As chairman of the party, I refuse to expel Okhapkin, Lokotkov, Dementiev and Khors from the party. I don’t think they are angels, but there must be a good reason for being expelled from the party: betrayal of the party or betrayal of party members. The four men mentioned are the same as all of you sitting in front of me: moderately careless, moderately lazy, devoted to the cause of the Party. There are minor sins, well, who does not have them. Tell that, Max, to Alexander Gelievich Dugin. And if he has questions and problems, we are waiting for him at the meeting. Let no longer hide behind Max Surkov.” — to bring this story to the light before the party.” — “Everyone already knows everything,” Tanya Tarasova remarked from her seat. “Well,” I said, “since everyone knows everything, it will be less to explain. As chairman of the party, I refuse to expel Okhapkin, Lokotkov, Dementiev and Khors from the party. I don’t think they are angels, but there must be a good reason for being expelled from the party: betrayal of the party or betrayal of party members. The four men mentioned are the same as all of you sitting in front of me: moderately careless, moderately lazy, devoted to the cause of the Party. There are minor sins, well, who does not have them. Tell that, Max, to Alexander Gelievich Dugin. And if he has questions and problems, we are waiting for him at the meeting. Let no longer hide behind Max Surkov.” — to bring this story to the light before the party.” — “Everyone already knows everything,” Tanya Tarasova remarked from her seat. “Well,” I said, “since everyone knows everything, it will be less to explain. As chairman of the party, I refuse to expel Okhapkin, Lokotkov, Dementiev and Khors from the party. I don’t think they are angels, but there must be a good reason for being expelled from the party: betrayal of the party or betrayal of party members. The four men mentioned are the same as all of you sitting in front of me: moderately careless, moderately lazy, devoted to the cause of the Party. There are minor sins, well, who does not have them. Tell that, Max, to Alexander Gelievich Dugin. And if he has questions and problems, we are waiting for him at the meeting. Let no longer hide behind Max Surkov.” – I said, – since everyone knows everything, it will be less to explain. As chairman of the party, I refuse to expel Okhapkin, Lokotkov, Dementiev and Khors from the party. I don’t think they are angels, but there must be a good reason for being expelled from the party: betrayal of the party or betrayal of party members. The four men mentioned are the same as all of you sitting in front of me: moderately careless, moderately lazy, devoted to the cause of the Party. There are minor sins, well, who does not have them. Tell that, Max, to Alexander Gelievich Dugin. And if he has questions and problems, we are waiting for him at the meeting. Let no longer hide behind Max Surkov.” – I said, – since everyone knows everything, it will be less to explain. As chairman of the party, I refuse to expel Okhapkin, Lokotkov, Dementiev and Khors from the party. I don’t think they are angels, but there must be a good reason for being expelled from the party: betrayal of the party or betrayal of party members. The four men mentioned are the same as all of you sitting in front of me: moderately careless, moderately lazy, devoted to the cause of the Party. There are minor sins, well, who does not have them. Tell that, Max, to Alexander Gelievich Dugin. And if he has questions and problems, we are waiting for him at the meeting. Let no longer hide behind Max Surkov.” betrayal of the party or betrayal of party members. The four men mentioned are the same as all of you sitting in front of me: moderately careless, moderately lazy, devoted to the cause of the Party. There are minor sins, well, who does not have them. Tell that, Max, to Alexander Gelievich Dugin. And if he has questions and problems, we are waiting for him at the meeting. Let no longer hide behind Max Surkov.” betrayal of the party or betrayal of party members. The four men mentioned are the same as all of you sitting in front of me: moderately careless, moderately lazy, devoted to the cause of the Party. There are minor sins, well, who does not have them. Tell that, Max, to Alexander Gelievich Dugin. And if he has questions and problems, we are waiting for him at the meeting. Let no longer hide behind Max Surkov.”

Dugin covered himself with Max again. A few days later, secretly from me, Max called a factional meeting, which was not attended by me and those whom Max considered my supporters. It was already an open split. The first in the history of the party. I don’t know what they said at that meeting, but the next Monday I scolded Max as best I could, brought to the attention of him and the whole party that Maxim Surkov had committed a serious crime, he was guilty of factionalism, called a general meeting without the permission of the chairman, at which … and so on. I put all this in writing – by order and ordered to hang it on the board at the desk on duty. I called Dugin again. I, as gently, calmly and delicately as I could, reminded him that we were the founding fathers of the party. That, as such, we have no right to emotions. That, as such, we must be above human passions and resentments. But he had apparently already made his final decision, so my words bounced off him. Subsequently, one of my associates expressed the idea that Dugin first decided to leave us, and only then found a pretext. In the spring of 1998, things were going well for him as never before: the volume “Fundamentals of Geopolitics” was published with a foreword by General Klokotov, Deputy Chief of the General Staff. Osnovy sold well, Dugin and Seryozha Melentyev were preparing the 2nd edition. In Germany, they accepted the “Fundamentals of Geopolitics” as the official doctrine of the Russian General Staff on the basis of the general’s preface. Some German magazines even published reviews of a Russian book that was not translated into German (the rarest case!) Dugin must have felt at the pinnacle of bliss. The arbiter of the fate of the Russian state! The NBP and its boys and girls became crowded with Dugin – I don’t know if he was going to leave us in advance or this decision came to him suddenly. I remember that in those difficult weeks and months I tried to minimize the damage. “Limonka” wrote little about the shaking founding fathers’ feuds. The fact is that there was nothing to be proud of here, any split is a negative event. A split on domestic grounds is a base phenomenon. The Mensheviks and Bolsheviks were divided into those for political reasons. However, on reflection, I came to the conclusion that the party at this moment is divided into those who want to read smart books until the end of their days, flaunt their revolutionary phraseology in salons, newspapers and on the body, that is, into pique vests, and those who who wants to go all the way that a revolutionary party should go. That is, in a sense,

“Limonka” did not write about the ongoing split at all, until “Invasion” began to appear as an insert in the newspaper “Tomorrow” – editor Mr. Dugin. He took out the rubbish from the hut, and after him we also had to shake out the rubbish. The tactic of silence has brought us tangible benefits, thanks to which we have avoided a split in regional organizations. Only a few – in Tatarstan and the Omsk region – were ruined by Dugin and ceased to exist.

But back to the split. In Moscow, the conflict developed slowly. Dugin did not appear. Valery Korovin approached me with a request to allow him to try to return Dugin, to persuade him. I allowed. Korovin gathered a delegation, and the delegation went to see Merlin. And the priest, of course, hypnotized them easily and quickly. As a result, Korovin and the company began to demand a general meeting in order to exclude the four accused from it.

Valera Korovin in those years looked like Shurik from “Operation Y” or “Prisoner of the Caucasus”. A wide-mouthed, big-eared boy with glasses, blond, came from Vladivostok and lived somewhere in the Moscow region. Valera studied hard at the institute. Honest and stubborn Korovin traveled with me to Stavropol, where he showed himself very well. He wandered the longest in semi-desert villages full of geese, spent the night in haystacks, and was the only one who saved the money given out for the campaign trip. For me, he became well, if not the conscience of the party, then at least a litmus test by which I determined honesty and purity. And now, in my apartment on Kaloshin Lane, Valera Korovin is sitting and convincing me and Andrei Fedorov to expel four of my comrades for the sake of Dugin. “Valery, I don’t have to praise Dugin,” I finally stopped him. I have known Alexander Gelevich longer than all of you and better than all of you. We were friends with him, founded the party together. I appreciate him, and even more so I cannot understand why a person of such high qualities could even put me in front of such a problem. A man of his caliber must not jeopardize the unity of the party, no matter what his feelings may be. Do you think, Valera, I like you all?” – “I agree that I should be expelled from the party, but that these four should also be expelled, and that Alexander Gelievich should return,” Korovin said in the voice of a hypnotized one. “Valera, you’re an idiot!” Andrey Fedorov intervened: “If these four were guilty, I would put them out. But if I now sacrifice my comrades for the sake of Dugin, tomorrow he will demand that I expel a dozen more people who he did not like from the party. Cyril and Mishka Horse, by the way, “Veterans of the party,” I said. “I’ll try to persuade Dugin to leave one of the four,” said smart Valera, blinking his yellow eyelashes under his glasses. “Valera, I gave you permission to try to persuade Dugin not to use you as a means of pressure on me. Dugin is very important, but the party will survive without him. The NBP will go ahead and win with or without Dugin.”

As it turned out, he remembered it: “… with or without Dugin.” On April 12, we gathered in my office to solve the problem. Without Dugin. I am at the table, Andrei Fedorov is next to me with the Party Charter (which turned out to be by the way on that day). I remember this meeting. Until the end of my days I will remember. Korovin spoke. He handed over the latest results of negotiations with Dugin. He lowered his demands. Expel Sasha Dementiev and Kostya Lokotkov, Okhapkina and Khorsa to announce reprimands. Then Korovin fell silent, and my best guys began to speak in support of Dugin’s demands. I praised them in the book Anatomy of a Hero, which has just been published (the events there end in mid-March 1998): Max Surkov and Limonka’s executive secretary Alexei Tsvetkov, even Nikolai Korzhevsky, who had just joined the party, 18 years old.

I said that I could not accept the ultimatum. That I do not see anything reprehensible in the behavior of our comrades in question. “These are your comrades, and the fact that you easily abandon your party comrades does not speak in your favor,” I said. “I see no future in relations with Dugin, my opinion: he decided to leave and will leave, and no sacrifices , if I bring them, they will not satisfy him. Subsequently, it will be necessary to periodically make sacrifices to him … “-” You, Eduard, have Korzhakov’s syndrome, – shouted the indignant Max. – You listen too much to what Lokotkov tells you. Lokotkov turned around and, clenching his fists, squeaked: “I would give it to you, Max, if it weren’t for the party …” “Listen to me,” I said. “Dugin despises you all, if you heard how he speaks of you, you wouldn’t be happy.”— ” Dugin is our ideologue,” Tsvetkov looked very dissatisfied, although initially he did not seem to participate in the conflict. “Well, that’s how to say it. The NBP Programme, a lilac book published by Taras, was entirely written by me, your chairman. In the NBP Program of 1996, the one that was published in “Limonka”, out of 26 points, Dugin is the author of only a few points, among them: the first, about “the empire from Gibraltar to Vladivostok” and the point “about the economy”, where 5 workers – a private enterprise, and that’s it. The rest is written by me. If you mean “Goals and Tasks of Our Revolution”, then Dugin’s pamphlet was not written for the NBP, and this mixture of Orthodoxy and existentialism has nothing to do with us.” They didn’t get embarrassed. Or they didn’t believe. “Dugin told me that you haven’t even read the book Whiplash”

Passions ran high. Mishka Khors (four defendants occupied the bench facing me), turning to the accusers, shouted: “Your beloved Gelich preaches revolution, and he himself is taking old chairs to the dacha, we were smashing these chairs. Old chairs! He is a bourgeois – your Gelich, used us, like a colonel of his soldiers, he forced them to dig a shitty ditch. Gelich, he reproaches Kostyan with beer, as if it were not him who wandered drunk from his room and back. He uses the party for personal purposes. He is still a coward, he is not, he acts through figureheads!” “All right, let’s vote,” shouted Tsvetkov. “Yes, yes, vote,” the rebels supported him. “According to the charter of the NBP, only the party council can expel someone from the National Bolshevik Party,” Fedorov told them. “The party council has 28 leaders of regional organizations. Gather them…”

No wonder they nicknamed him “Paragraph”. Bedlam is over. “I’m temporarily suspending my party membership!” Surkov shouted. And ran out. “And I! And I! And I!” My office is half empty. “Yes,” said Fedorov, “Merlin did a good job of working on them. They are all zombified. They seem to be normal boys…” — “You see, Andrey, how all sorts of ostentatious foreign words and the use of esoteric terminology affect young souls. The young man feels dedicated to his guru into the Great Mysteries and in exchange for this initiation I am even ready to send my comrades to civil execution. they said. “Take the lists of all the personnel of the Moscow branch, divide among yourselves and call everyone tomorrow, starting in the morning. I want to talk to everyone separately.” — “And those who temporarily suspended their membership?” — “These are not needed.”

The next day, I demanded from each National Bolshevik an oath of allegiance to me personally. I said that Dugin put his interests above the interests of the party, and that some party members left with him. The list of my faithful grew. 3, 16, 26, 29… 54. On the Internet, Dugin boasted that the entire Moscow branch had gone with him. According to our calculations, 12 or a little more people left with him.

A week later, the returnees appeared. Sergey Ermakov came, asked for a position and got it. Tanya Tarasova is back. Igor Minin returned. Then Seva.

Taking the guys away, Dugin did not know what to do with them, the passion of destruction possessed him. At first they had great plans. They began calling our regional offices, trying to persuade them to defect. But the leaders of the regionals have been communicating with me for years and, of course, they immediately called me. I comforted them. When I learned that Tsvetkov had been appointed leader of Dugin’s future party organization, I calmed down. In the past, I gave him instructions and therefore I knew that Alexei was completely unsuitable for organizational work.

Initially, a one-page tab in the Zavtra newspaper was called “The National Bolshevik Invasion.” A few months later, Dugin removed the “National Bolshevik” and put on the “Eurasian”. This was an indirect recognition of defeat in the struggle for the party.

Dugin settled near the Novo-Devichy Convent in the library. Having previously made a renovation there. (Money, they say, was given to him in Russian Gold. And he got into Russian Gold at my suggestion. A friend asked me to give a press secretary – a person who knows how to work with the press. I recommended Tsvetkov. Tsvetkov, having received a contract, handed over his Dugin.)

Subsequently, Dugin dispersed them all, except for Korovin and Butrim. He kicked Max Surkov out because he was heavily tattooed. He kicked out the red-brown Zionist, who looked servilely into Dugin’s mouth. Dugin was the last to oust Tsvetkov. Perhaps out of misanthropy.

What lay behind the trifling nit-picking of not the worst National Bolsheviks? I think Dugin understood that the era had changed. The country was saturated with knowledge about fascism. The Biblio-Globus store was full of richly illustrated albums about Hitler, Goebbels and the Third Reich. It was possible to go and buy what Dugin obtained with difficulty and let go drop by drop, the need for cultural activity disappeared. The post of guru was not needed. “Cyril and Methodius of fascism” was soon to be out of work in the party. At the same time, Dugin has already managed to retrain as the high priest of geopolitics. Without any irony, I believe that he is the most brilliant interpreter of geopolitics that is possible in Russia. And geopolitics suits him, because it is an optional fairy tale about how the world should behave. But Dugin is a storyteller. There was one more aspect in the split of the NBP, it is unlikely that Dugin himself understood it: in 1998, the formation of the National Bolshevik Party was completed in general terms. No, party building has not ended, it continues. However, the party is over. She was. A political party is not a circle of intellectuals and is subject to different laws than a circle of intellectuals. In a party with an established ideology, doers come to the fore, and not soothsayers of beautiful words. That is, the party was bound to move from talking about the revolution, from discussions about the best way to carry it out, to doing it. And in doing the philosopher Dugin was zero. He creaked out on several of our processions. Dugin’s departure, therefore, was not at all an accident. We have ceased to suit each other. His lecture “Philosophical Russian” was a proposal to make another round of self-improvement. But we have already done it from November 1994 to 1998. We did not want to become professional pique vests. I did not want. Therefore, in 1998, the “course of Kostyan Lokotkov” defeated the “course of Alexander Dugin.”

So I experienced two troubles at once. The loss of Liza and Dugin. It was not easy for me, with a distance of 14 days, to lose my beloved, in any case, a woman I really liked, and a friend, like-minded person, co-founder of the party, a brilliant person (no matter what he says bad about me, even now, when I am in prison, he spreads nasty things about me on his website on the Internet.)

However, in the spring of 1998, I also had joy. On March 3, we saw on TV screens our native NBP flags fluttering over the heads of young people in the city of Riga. On the eve of the Russian-speaking pensioners, who had gathered for a protest, were mercilessly scattered by the Latvian riot police. The mystery of the NBP flags was immediately solved. It turned out that Kostya Mikhailyuk and a guy named Bykov created an NBP cell in Riga. They contacted us. On the morning of March 5, together with our allies, the people of Anpilov and Terekhov, we went to an unsanctioned rally in front of the Latvian embassy. It was then that the slogans were born: “Our MIGs will land in Riga!” and “For our old people – we will cut off our ears!”. And on the same day, in collusion with us, our newborn Riga branch picketed the House of the Government of Latvia, and Grebnev’s St. Petersburg attack aircraft attacked the Latvian Embassy in St. Petersburg. Further development of the NBP in Latvia exceeded all our expectations. And to our kind envy, the Latvian media paid tons of attention to them. In a short time, the Riga National Bolsheviks managed to put the Baltic Republic on their ears.

We’ve made some progress here as well. Having called for a boycott of Latvian goods in the resolution of a rally near the walls of the Latvian embassy on March 5, smashing cans of Latvian sour cream and eggs on the embassy, ​​the next day we went shopping, accompanied by a TV-6 camera, where in front of the TV camera we called on shopkeepers, sellers and buyers to boycott. To our surprise and joy, Mayor Luzhkov visited the Latvian embassy at the end of March and picked up our initiative: he called on the Moscow authorities to boycott Latvian goods. He was followed by the governor of Primorye, Nozdratenko, and a little later, a dozen more nobles. We managed to move Russia at least a little bit.

*Banned on the territory of the Russian Federation

https://drugoros.ru/biblioteka/moia-politicheskaia-biografiia/glava-12-levye-soiuzniki

“Anpilych” at our first meeting in March 1992 in Umalatova’s room at the Moscow Hotel turned to me: “You, intellectuals …” To which I reasonably replied: “It’s you, intellectual, Viktor Ivanovich, in comparison with me. You graduated from Moscow State University, faculty of journalism, and I barely pulled ten classes. – “Well, don’t be offended, Eduard Veniaminovich,” he softened. “I didn’t mean to say that.”

I didn’t take offense. I liked him for many years, I avoided attacking him, although the journalist Limonov whipped many. I was impressed by the ease with which he communicated with his poor host. So, perhaps, some Heresiarch of the Middle Ages walked among the evil commoners, old women, maimed. Rebellious sectarians – such an impression was left by his troops, dragging red banners like banners. He pats one on the shoulder, says an encouraging word to another, gets angry and yells at a third, hugs a particularly close ally. His outward manners are impeccable, I still think so. But with its internal principles, the situation is worse. He never understood the postulate “Honor is in loyalty!” and therefore turned out to be unfaithful to a multitude of alliances and treaties. He himself was thrown many times, deceived, left, split, taken away from him by people, but this is no reason to practice betrayal. “Anpilych” was my model when on March 17 we ran together through the dark hall of the House of Culture in Voronovo, urging the deputies of the USSR Armed Forces not to disperse, to form a parallel government. He was my model when on the same day he conducted a crowd of 500,000 at Manezhnaya. (Alas, I didn’t understand then that it was X day and he had to lead people to the Kremlin, but he didn’t.) “Anpilych” was my model in 1994, when on June 22 on Sparrow Hills on the site in front of the university held a microphone in front of Yegor Letov, who sang: “And Lenin is so young! / And young October is ahead!” When the first issue of “Limonka” came out, our friend “Anpilych”, cheerful, came to congratulate us in the room in “Soviet Russia”. True, there were episodes of 1994, when I was ready to simply beat him up for his evasive savagery, for his indecision. In the summer of 1994, we brought him together with Barkashov. Once I, Dugin and Rabko waited for Viktor Ivanych on the Leninsky Prospekt metro platform for an hour and 40 minutes. From the subway, we had to take Anpilov to Vavilov Street to Barkashov. He never showed up. Later, when asked why, why didn’t he come?! Anpilov replied calmly that “it didn’t work out, comrades from the regions arrived, it was necessary to solve some problems with them.” As if there could be a problem more important than the problem of uniting left and right radicals. Anpilov never made it to the Palace of Culture, where the “Conference of the Revolutionary Opposition” on June 10, 1994 did not take place. He appeared at the first stated address: to the university, where our guys were already waiting for him and were supposed to bring him to the recreation center. Apparently, indecision still did not allow him to make a second attempt: referring to the devil knows what difficulties, he wrote a written greeting to the RNE, in particular, where he called Barkashov “comrade”. But only. The second trickster, Barkashov, received calls every quarter of an hour from the Palace of Culture from his deputy Rashitsky, and, making sure that Anpilov did not appear, he also did not budge. Then there was a well-known Russian drama, “the struggle of vanities”, but in fact – an operetta. The result was damage to the radicals. In the future, the forces of “Russian National Unity” were never involved in politics, and for the next 5-6 years, until their final collapse, they either posed for the media in their operetta camouflage, or mechanically handed out leaflets on the sidelines of other people’s rallies. Despite your ambition, despite the fact that he was able to build a good all-Russian organization, Barkashov was not a politician. Having built the organization, he did not know what to do with it. He made her stand in reserve for many years, seven whole years, and thus ruined her. Anpilov, unlike Barkashov, was a politician and committed political actions. For the NBP*, the year 1995 was spent in the construction of the Bunker and in the elections. I remember that in the summer of 1995, together with Rabko, I went to see Anpilov in order to jointly participate in the elections. We wanted several of our guys to be included in the party list of the Labor Russia – Communists – for the USSR bloc, in exchange for support for the bloc in the regions where we had party organizations, and support in Moscow. Meetings two or three took place in a construction change house, somewhere in the central region of Moscow. From these meetings I learned an unshakable confidence in the indecisiveness and wavering character of the opposition. The last time I visited “Anpilych” in his change house was five days before the deadline for submitting lists of candidates from political parties to the Central Election Commission. He was still waiting for Tyulkin, who in turn was waiting for Zyuganov’s decision on whether or not they would have a joint bloc. At that time, both my patience and the hope that we would be included in the list burst. In the case of a common bloc with Zyuganov, of course, we would not even be given one seat. In the case of the RCWP bloc and Anpilov’s Trudovaya Rossiya, we could harbor a faint hope that we might get a couple of seats. In case Anpilov goes alone, backed by registered but non-existent parties like the “Committee of Soviet Women” or Mr. Skurlatov’s “Renaissance”, even here we could only harbor a faint hope for a couple of places on the list. Viktor Ivanovich explained all this to us, sitting at the table and twirling the foreman’s pencil in his fingers. Angry, we said dryly to him, confident that the Anpilovites would not reach the Central Election Commission in any form, dry or fried, with or without Tyulkin. But they got there, that’s what was surprising, and even almost got into the State Duma, taking not five, but about five percent. It is quite possible that the authorities (Anpilov acted on her like a red rag on a bull) “helped” them not to get into the Duma, removing a few percent or a few tenths of a percent. neither fried, nor with Tyulkin, nor without, will reach the Central Election Commission. But they got there, that’s what was surprising, and even almost got into the State Duma, taking not five, but about five percent. It is quite possible that the authorities (Anpilov acted on her like a red rag on a bull) “helped” them not to get into the Duma, removing a few percent or a few tenths of a percent. neither fried, nor with Tyulkin, nor without, will reach the Central Election Commission. But they got there, that’s what was surprising, and even almost got into the State Duma, taking not five, but about five percent. It is quite possible that the authorities (Anpilov acted on her like a red rag on a bull) “helped” them not to get into the Duma, removing a few percent or a few tenths of a percent.

The psychology of indecision, procrastination, hesitation, as we see, did not at all affect the already existing electorate of radical communists. This was their original, given by History, advantage over us. We had to work like hell to get our interest and add shares to it. Anpilov inherited his electorate from the work of previous generations, from Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, from the 1917 revolution and the Soviet system. That is, many millions of people had already worked for the Anpilovites before them, and before us there was an open field.

From autumn 1995 to autumn 1996, as already mentioned, we worked with the right. We came out of this work with the right as from under a cold shower. A certain bastardity of the right, their inferiority, made the left simply attractive in comparison with them. And the model of society that they proposed looked a little fresher. If the oldest rightists were guided by 1913, the Barkashovites, Lysenkoites and others were guided by the “Hitlerian” model – assault detachments, the 1920s and 30s, then the Anpilovites still had the Soviet system of the last years of Stalinism 1945-1953 as a model. (For the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the ideal was undoubtedly the Soviet Brezhnev period, 1964-1980.) My appearance as co-chairman of the KSRNP on TV screens in February 1996 turned the leftists away from me until the very end of the year. After September 18, however, the situation improved. The thing is, that on September 18 I was attacked. The attack was prepared in advance and should have been carried out on September 12th. On the 18th, three men tracked me down and, having knocked me down from behind with a blow to the back of the head, began silently kicking me on the head. As a result, I received numerous eyeball injuries in both eyes, nose fractures, and head injuries. The Left Opposition forgave me, a wounded man, my mistake in February. Anpilov came to our headquarters to express his sympathy. Apart from me, of the party leaders, he was the only one who was attacked once. We agreed on joint participation in actions dedicated to the third anniversary of the October uprising. As a result, I received numerous eyeball injuries in both eyes, nose fractures, and head injuries. The Left Opposition forgave me, a wounded man, my mistake in February. Anpilov came to our headquarters to express his sympathy. Apart from me, of the party leaders, he was the only one who was attacked once. We agreed on joint participation in actions dedicated to the third anniversary of the October uprising.

Gathered at the metro station “Barrikadnaya”. I, as an actor, gradually developed stage prejudices, fears, faith in omens. I was afraid of only one thing: a weak turnout of personnel. Several times I had a panic dream: I came to the subway, and there was no one there: it was empty! I woke up horrified. At Barrikadnaya on October 3, I saw our flags from a distance. A sufficient core of the guys stood in some stupor, surrounded by Anpilov folk types (he had regulars there: a mustachioed sailor with an accordion, three front-line grandmothers singing “Three Tankers”, and other folklore). I approached with the guard Lyosha Razukov – these were the first days of his service with me, he stepped in on September 23. We came from the Arbat on foot. In the depths of the disorganized Allied army, I began to build our ranks. The first to bring out the guys with our standard was the National Bolshevik Party. Then he put five people with a banner “We will not forget, we will not forgive!”. Evenly distributed the flags. I repeated many times to the swear-box to go, keeping a distance, in ranks. To look at the back of the head of the one walking in front … Then these formations became common actions repeated at each procession, but then the Anpilovites looked at us with their mouths open. The tactics of “chants” was also born, if I am not mistaken, precisely on the third anniversary of the October events. The fact is that “Labor Russia” usually held its processions to the sound of Soviet music rattling from the loudspeaker of an old UAZ car with bells-speakers on the roof. From time to time the music was stopped, and then Viktor Ivanovich or his assistant spoke, usually in a plastic miner’s helmet on his head – Khudyakov, “Yura”. “Labour Russia” had only a few slogans in her arsenal: “Yeltsin’s gang is on trial!” Then a more modern slogan appeared: “Comrade, be bolder, drive Boris in the neck!” These slogans were not shouted often, they usually went in a swaying sea, buzzing.

The National Bolsheviks used a new tactic: they shouted the whole procession. The texts of the chants began to be compiled in advance. All chants were hierarchically subdivided into fundamental, programmatic ones: (“Russia is everything, the rest is nothing!”, “Revolution!”, “A good bourgeois is a dead bourgeois!”, “Let’s complete the reforms like this: Stalin, Beria, Gulag! “, “Capitalism is shit!”) and momentary, dedicated to the topic on which the action was held. The short-term ones included those composed for a rally at the Latvian embassy: “Our MIGs will land in Riga!”, “We will cut off our ears for our old people!” or born near the walls of the Kazakh embassy: “Let’s take away the Russian north of Kazakhstan from Nursultan!” At first, even the allies looked disapprovingly at us – why shout! But soon they realized the advantage of an outrageously noisy column over a gloomy and sleepy one, obediently floating to the wheezing remnants of Soviet music on a tormented cassette. And timidly began to shout their “chants”.

On October 3, I did not stay in the vicinity of the White House for the night. The guys stayed on duty. At night, Anpilov approached their fire many times, sat down, and talked for a long time. I guess they won him over. Many languages ​​were suspended very well. Tsvetkov, Max Surkov. Dugin was with us that evening. Everything was “excellent, excellent” – the last “excellent” – from Dugin’s jargon, his favorite.

De facto, our cooperation with Anpilov thus began a year before the official signing of the agreement between us in the fall of 1997. This cooperation, mainly joint public events, taught the National Bolsheviks a lot. Prior to our affair with Trudovaya Rossiya, we didn’t really know how to correctly issue a notice of a rally, where to take it, and when. We had no idea about the routes, about the meetings with the authorities and the cops in the mayor’s office before the events – about all the tedious bureaucracy of street political life. We learned from the Anpilovites, and they learned from us (although our example did not suit them in everything, they always met with hostility, and if our methods were adapted, it was too late).

There are a lot of tricky little things in holding marches and rallies or pickets. They need to be known. Up to such nonsense that the make and number of the car on which your speakers will drive should be included in the notice. If you do not check the smuts in time and do not replace the batteries, then your action will not be heard by anyone, and so on. All this, as well as disputes with Moscow administrations, cops, and prefects about routes, we learned from Trudovaya Rossiya. There were a lot of great people there. Unsightly in appearance, elderly, but kind-hearted, furious, sympathetic. One “Baba Olya” is worth something! When the miners were sitting on the Humpback Bridge in the summer of 1998, Baba Olya fed them – she brought them buckwheat porridge in a bucket. Newspapers, without bothering to prove themselves, called the Anpilovites “lumpen”, but in fact they were Muscovites, and not even quite as simple and working as Viktor Ivanovich would like. They were Muscovites, stunned by the sudden onset of a new world, sinister and criminal. Instead of the world in which they lived most of their lives. Dazed. This is how they often looked. Dressed in simple, unprepossessing clothes, with clumsy, rumpled faces. They did not use lotions due to poverty, life has made many ragged wrinkles and reduced hair. In addition, to go outside for the whole day (and many came from the Moscow region) – you need a bag, you need to put on shoes in worn-out shoes or sneakers, you choose clothes that are more comfortable, but one that you don’t feel sorry for – suddenly a fight or you fall. The Anpilovites always looked like poor provincials, this is not a parade of thousands of Germans and Khakamads, these are the masses of the people. Only the bravest or the most desperate remained. After October 1993, the people were so frightened that the “mass protests of the working people” (as it was called in Soviet times) ceased. Gathering from two to five thousand people was a great success. Anpilov secretly dreamed of 20 thousand, with which he could break into the Kremlin. I already recalled my conversation with him in the car (he was driving) when I asked him: does it not seem to him that we could take power on February 23, 92 and March 17, 92, and also on May 9, 93, in those days, up to 500 thousand people gathered under the banner of the opposition. He said that yes, he was tormented by memories of this power. We agreed that we did not have the necessary experience, and therefore only he did not call on the masses to storm the Kremlin. Four years later, Anpilov dreamed of twenty thousand. Now, I believe, he dreams of five.

Since 1995, when another round of friendship between Viktor Ivanovich and Gennady Andreevich ended, there have been three or four opposition rallies in Moscow on major holidays. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation and the trade unions that joined them got together and walked along their own route and usually held their rally in Lubyanka or on Theater Square. Anpilov, Terekhov and we, the National Bolsheviks, gathered on Oktyabrskaya, walked along Dmitrovka, to Bolotnaya Square, from there we went across the bridge to the Kremlin from the side of Vasilyevsky Spusk and held a rally there. There was another route: they walked from Pushkinskaya down Tverskaya, and held a rally at the monument to Zhukov, next to the Kremlin. Very small groups of communists, sect parties under the leadership of Prigarin and Kryuchkov, kept apart from us and from Zyuganov. They often followed in the footsteps of either the Zyuganovites or our procession.

Meanwhile, the situation in the country could be characterized as stagnant-reactionary. Moreover, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, having abandoned the bold struggle against the regime, having adapted the tactics of substituting paper protests into the wheels of power, objectively encouraged this power. The sluggish gloomy reaction put on the country, not yet a close muzzle, but already a muzzle, and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation fought more with us – radicals and “provocateurs” than with the lazy boa of power, every season swallowing a few more pieces of our freedom. By its inaction, the largest opposition party in the country has created a favorable climate for the consolidation of supporters of the existing government. The Communist Party did not attack, and even yelled if someone else tried to bite the government. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation helped officials defeat the Democrats, oust the Democrats from all key positions. Yeltsin sucked out democracy like a big fat fly. Mr. Gusinsky and Mr. Malashenko and gentlemen from the liberal media helped Mr. Yeltsin win the elections in 1996, despite the fact that Yeltsin was not physically capable of leading the state. Here’s the schedule.

And yet there were still many people on the streets. The trade unions could withdraw most of all. Once they gathered up to 70 thousand people on Vasilyevsky Spusk. And they didn’t know what to do with them. In the evening, several hundred “National Bolsheviks,” as the TV journalist Lobkov reported, “attacked the police with stones and bottles.”

In the summer of 1996 (if not in the summer, then in the spring, for sure), I persuaded D. Zhvania to take on the hard work of leading the National Bolshevik organization in St. Petersburg. This happened after I received several alarm signals from the National-Bolsheviks of St. Petersburg, a sort of SOS sent by them to me. They had no leader, and the healthy forces of the party were simply dying out, while the sick were decomposing. I summoned Zhvania to Moscow, he arrived in a leather jacket, long-haired, his hair long and straight, resembling a Persian and the image of a Latin American revolutionary, which is shown in good films. He was 27 years old, and he was well versed in the theoretical and practical issues of the revolution. He worked with us for a long time, but he hesitated to join the party, preferring to keep his “Workers’ Struggle” and even issue a leaflet. I told him: “Dima, I have few people with your experience and your level of revolutionary development. You know that the prospects for your “Workers’ Struggle” are very good, because in fact you are a member of the Party and work for us. You know the situation in the St. Petersburg organization. She is unwell. Party veterans tell youngsters about Dugin’s election campaign and the deceased legend Kuryokhin and drink vodka, new people come, look at this disgrace and do not linger for a long time. I have no one but you. You must raise the organization. Take it, at least for a little while, until a leader is found.”

He allowed himself to be persuaded. He wanted to work for a big organization. Hundreds of people came to us in St. Petersburg, unfortunately, we were not able to properly receive them all, provide them with party work, listen, understand, such a subtle mechanism was not provided for in the party … We caught and left some people, the rest left. The cells of our network were too wide. I endlessly regret those many thousands of young people who could not be recruited to work in the party throughout Russia. I just feel resentment and remorse. So many great guys and girls didn’t understand us, and we didn’t understand them…

Zhvania went to St. Petersburg and energetic news began to come from there. The first thing he did was to drive the entire rotten element out of the Party. I didn’t tell him to kick me out of the party, I myself always raked people and made them together, that was my task – to rake people. But the gangrenous, of course, had to be cut off. There were dissatisfied, and even “veteran” Masha Zabrodina complained to me burrly on the phone: “Zhvania arranged a purge here. He kicks out old party members.” However, later the good news also came: having fallen at the beginning, then the number increased, the rallies were excellent. By December, there was a crisis in St. Petersburg. I went to investigate. It turned out that a young working guy Andrey Grebnev claims to be the leader. And he is supported by part of the organization. Things have gone too far…

I arrived and called a general meeting. I spoke for three hours at the meeting. Among other things, I said that I have no personal preferences in this case. What is more important to me is the health of the St. Petersburg regional organization, its prosperity, its success, its growth. And who will make the organization successful: Zhvania or Grebnev – does not change the essence of the matter. It is clear that Dmitry Zhvania has experience, and Grebnev has the support of part of the NBP organization and enjoys the support of young people in the area of ​​St. Petersburg where he lives, and this significant support can be useful to the party. Every 15 minutes they tried to engage in a verbal brawl, but, thank God, I had enough authority with both of them to stop them every time. I suggested that they eventually stop praising their virtues and get down to business. Specifically, to carry out a major action, decisive and original, in which both Grebnev’s people and Zhvania’s people can excel. During the meeting, a proposal was put forward for a peaceful action on the cruiser “Aurora”. The proposal so captivated everyone that we immediately went to reconnaissance on the cruiser. Although it was a day off, I remember that, speculating on my name, the guys managed to get the rear admiral to come out to us and, leaving some meeting in his cockpit, gave the National Bolsheviks a tour of the cruiser. When in May 1997 the St. Petersburg National Bolsheviks captured the cruiser, then the rear admiral mentioned my name to journalists with unkind words.

Having somehow reconciled the St. Petersburg leaders, I left for Moscow. In fact, the best way out would be to name a third person as the head of the St. Petersburg regionals, but there was no such person. For several days I even toyed with the idea of ​​making Masha Zabrodina the leader of the National Bolsheviks, but I was told that she was not indifferent to drugs.

Already in the middle of 1997, Grebnev triumphed. He became the leader of the NBP organization in St. Petersburg and for about two years was our best regional leader. A pumpkin-headed, energetic street kid, the son of a Tatar teacher and a quite respectable dad (his father lived apart from the family), the younger brother of Seryoga, or “Sid”, also a National Bolshevik, Grebnev gave the organization a style of storm and stress. To begin with, the boys cut up the whole city, painted it with political slogans. For his St. Petersburg attack aircraft, Grebnev acquired somewhere gray jackets with pockets, it turned out something like a uniform. Each procession was carefully worked out and therefore looked bright. They did not spare material for the flags, went to the beat of drums, stamped with heavy boots and caused a stir in quiet St. Petersburg. They were even used in a billboard to advertise sunglasses. A huge shield hung on Nevsky Prospekt, it was an excellent photograph of the National Bolshevik Party, with flags and slogans marching down the street, and a fashionable young man walks a little ahead, puts glasses on his nose and the phrase: they say, when you walk along Nevsky Prospekt in a column friends, black glasses protect your eyes. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of text reproduction, something like this. This billboard caused a scandal, they say, even Governor Yakovlev intervened. In the end, the shield was burned. Who? God knows. The National Bolsheviks of St. Petersburg liked this multi-meter shield. black glasses protect your eyes. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of text reproduction, something like this. This billboard caused a scandal, they say, even Governor Yakovlev intervened. In the end, the shield was burned. Who? God knows. The National Bolsheviks of St. Petersburg liked this multi-meter shield. black glasses protect your eyes. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of text reproduction, something like this. This billboard caused a scandal, they say, even Governor Yakovlev intervened. In the end, the shield was burned. Who? God knows. The National Bolsheviks of St. Petersburg liked this multi-meter shield.

According to the order given by me, the regionals of the NBP began to ally with Labor Russia. In St. Petersburg, the Anpilovites were represented by the deputy of the Legislative Assembly, Leonov. Grebnev began to work with him. The deputy had deputy opportunities and even a room in the Oktyabrskaya hotel, but the deputy had no people – personnel. The NBP had personnel, but there were no opportunities, so Grebnev and Leonov worked together.

At the end of February, in the company of Taras Rabko, I made a trip to the Nizhny Novgorod region and the city of Yekaterinburg. For the sole purpose of inspecting local party organizations. I liked Vladislav Aksyonov, a big man, a philologist by profession – the then head of the organization in Nizhny Novgorod. An honest provincial intellectual, with the psychology of an old Russian, however, from the first, and from the second, and from the third glance, he was completely unsuitable for work as the leader of the National Bolshevik Party in the region. He was torn between two families: the old one (an adult daughter) and the new one (a large woman, Maria, lived in a wooden house in a village forgotten by God, where I spent the night at the will of Aksyonov one night, and left with him early, on my birthday on February 22, 1997 , on the blue snow to the train to leave for Nizhny, and there, having changed to the Volga, rush immediately to Arzamas). The absent-minded, disheveled, lyrically inclined philologist Vladislav Borisovich Aksyonov was the sweetest person, but we never saw the organization. We saw a handful of people around Aksenov. Therefore, when later the youth of the Nizhny Novgorod branch raised a rebellion against him, I had to, stepping on my heart, support this rebellion. The guys removed Aksyonov and now the Nizhny Novgorod organization is one of the most furious. Dmitry Yelkin received a suspended sentence in Nizhny for attacking the SPS headquarters. Ilya Shamazov – broke his hip while jumping from a train, was arrested by the Latvian police and spent seven months in a prison in the city of Daugavpils. These are just two examples.

In Yekaterinburg, in the apartment of the general’s daughter, we quarreled with Taras Rabko. In fact, by the time of this trip, Taras had already moved far away from the party, and I wonder from today, from prison, why I took him with me then. Perhaps in order to talk on the trip, arrange a showdown. He was my “student”, and I, frankly, worried about his departure. I saw that, although formally he did not say “I’m leaving the party,” in fact he stopped doing for us those small legal needs that he had done until now, dumped everything on the young Andrey Fyodorov.

I wrote – “he was my student.” Yes, as Karagodin was a student of Dugin. Alexander Gelevich expelled his last student Karagodin in 1996. With a huge scandal. And in his own way, in Duginov’s way, he survived this gap. “Eduard, maybe something is wrong with us, something we inspire them is not why Andrei, from a thin blond with an angelic physiognomy, who wanted to know the truth, turned into a cynical creature swollen from beer?” Marilyn once told me. He added me to share the blame with him and even mentioned Taras, but Taras was always a hostile creature for him. Unlike Dugin, I know that Taras Rabko was my student, but I was also his student, Taras. I came to a country that I forgot, and Taras was my teacher in this forgotten Russia. He showed me Russia, explained it, he represented Russia for me. At first he was for me the people of Russia – his friends in Tver, his parents in Kimry – were for me the people of Russia. And Taras made his fourth part to our four founding fathers – he brought the youth of Russia and its people. He personified them. And here in Yekaterinburg, we, using an insignificant pretext (I just shouted at him that he had been talking on the phone for an hour and forty minutes with his adored object, Countess Tolstoy Jr., in St. Petersburg), whipped each other on feelings. I did not offend him very much – I could have done more. You could say he was pissed off. That, having checked himself, he realized that he was not a brave man. But why doesn’t he say this: “Why don’t you say, Taras, that you are afraid to follow the path of the party and therefore you leave out of fear?” He only accused me of leaving Tver immediately after the elections of 1993. God, but he did everything himself He was afraid that we should not have a party organization in Tver, because he studied there – he did everything so that our newspaper would not get into Tver. After all, he was its founder, his name was on it. The storm of his feelings then resulted in Taras’ night escape from the apartment. In the morning he returned, we drank a lot of beer and left for the station. On the train out of 26 hours, he slept for 22 hours. And said hardly a dozen words.

Volkov oriented my visit in such a way that I saw about sixty people in the audience of the Polytechnic University, after which, after about ten minutes, we were expelled from the building by the vice-rector and his guards. And later, after driving through half the city, in the presence of strangers, we were forced to hold a party meeting. That’s all communication with the National Bolsheviks. There was a photo where we sit with strained faces.

In April 1997, I left for Kazakhstan, in Kokchetav, with a detachment of National Bolsheviks. Having traveled half of Asia, we returned in the first days of July. And already on July 14, the premises on 2nd Frunzenskaya were blown up. Perhaps the Kazakhs – in retaliation for trying to support the Kokchetav Cossacks. Or maybe they blew up the valiant organs. That day I saw for the first time one of the FSB officers who would arrest me in Altai four years later: Dmitry Kondratyev. Already in July 1997, I went to the city of Georgievsk, Stavropol Territory. There, having familiarized myself with the state of affairs, I accepted the proposal of the local National Bolsheviks, led by Sasha Titkov, to run for State Duma deputies from the Georgievsky district in the by-elections. By-elections were to be held in mid-September. I stayed in Georgievsk at work until mid-September and, having lost the election, returned to the capital by train “Vladikavkaz – Moscow”. In Moscow, my girlfriend Liza – no longer my girlfriend – told me that she “fell in love.” I gave her a slap. Of course, when you travel so long and so often, it is unrealistic to hope for the fidelity of women.

On October 2, at the headquarters of the NBP on 2nd Frunzenskaya, Anpilov, Lieutenant Colonel Terekhov and I signed a tripartite agreement, according to which we enter into allied relations in order to act together as one bloc in the elections to the State Duma in December 1999. And already on November 7, we were walking in a single column, carrying a huge bloody banner with white letters: “Front of the working people, army and youth.” The banner was sewn by Nadya Voronova, later she would become famous for the fact that at the awarding of the “Person of the Year” award she would whip Gorbachev in the face with a bouquet.

https://drugoros.ru/biblioteka/moia-politicheskaia-biografiia/glava-11-regionalnye-organizatsii

The first two—Rostov and Yekaterinburg—appeared in our country immediately after the formation of the Moscow intellectual core of the party. Local young leaders Oleg Gaponov and Ivan Trofimov sent a letter from Rostov. Taras and I made a trip to Rostov-on-Don in the autumn of 1994. I remember there were still tomatoes hanging in the Rostov gardens when our train arrived in Rostov. Gaponov was a musician, once the leader of a fairly well-known group “Through the Looking Glass”, if I’m not mistaken. Trofimov was also a musician and lyricist. Together they created a new group “Che Dans”. Che, of course, by the name of Che Guevara, and “dance” – from dance – to dance: “Chegevarov’s dances.” Their texts were far from cheerful dances: “Make bombs, kill bankers”, with the chorus “knives shine like a guiding star”, – Taras and I brought these texts to Moscow from Rostov, and they were adequately printed in one of the first issues of Limonka. Gaponov and Trofimov were then fascinated by the Latin American revolutionary element: at home, Gaponov’s house hung on the wall along with the flag of the NBP * – the Sandinista flag. Both were close friends with students from Nicaragua who studied at local universities. I would even say that the cult of the Latin American revolution reigned in Trofimov’s apartment, where we stayed.

Galonov and Trofimov gathered about forty or more like-minded people around them. Among them was even a “businessman” Oleg Demyanuk – as expected, with a car, he owned a small shoe factory. There was another car owner in the ranks of the party – the guy Kostya. Taras and I liked the Rostovites. True, they were rather blood-red, extremely leftist, but it was pleasant to look at them, healthy young guys, when in the evenings they tried to find out from Taras and me the subtleties of the new teaching in Trofimov’s apartment: clusters of people sat on the floor along the walls, on chairs and beds. Only a small part of these first guys now remain in the ranks of the party. The rest sifted, left – the turnover of personnel in political movements has always been huge. I experienced staff turnover until I read some startling statistics somewhere. Of the 70 participants in the founding congress of Mussolini’s party in March 1919 (“san sepulcristi” – as they were called by the name of the church in which they gathered), only one person entered the lists of the fascist party in the elections in July 1921: Mussolini. Most of the participants in the 1st Congress managed to leave the party, almost all the Futurists left – among them later the famous director Toscaninni. Among the famous participants in the revolution of 1905, only Trotsky participated in the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. And the composition of the Central Committee of the RSDLP or the CPSU (b) changed every few months. Who now remembers Dan or Martov, who spoiled Lenin’s blood just as Dugin spoiled it for me? Only historians remember. Meanwhile, Dan was a huge problem for Lenin. And later – Martov. – so they were called by the name of the church in the hall of which they gathered)

Russia is an extremely centralized country, in this, and only in this, it is similar to France: it has Paris and the rest of France. And in Russia there is a capital and the rest of the country. Already Germany or the USA are arranged differently. The country feels the attraction and vicious charm of the capital, the country loves and hates the capital. The Russian province is arranged monotonously and uniformly. Regional cities, usually with a population of 400,000 to a million, always have a core of local nomenklatura—personnel and a reserve of power. Next to the core of power there is a core of troublemakers – troublemakers – local opposition competing with the core of power. And besides this, there is a youth core – a youth party. The novelty of our party lay in the fact that we decided to look for personnel among the youth party, and not among the party of the local opposition. Let’s say Anpilov, or Terekhov, or the Liberal Democratic Party recruits people from the opposition’s troublemakers. (Usually this is 30-50 people per city, everyone knows each other and runs from party to party. From Anpilov – to Zhirinovsky, from Zhirinovsky – to the “Congress of Russian Communities”, from KRO to DPA, etc.) How does the regional the city and its politics, I understood during my first elections in Tver. There was no influx of fresh people into the number of these 30-50 personalities. We decided to create a party from other human material. We were not embarrassed that, at first glance, the youth party was mostly apolitical. In any case, such was the widespread opinion that it was apolitical. In fact, it turned out that no, not at all, well, not apolitical at all. And so my estimates, social observations and calculations began to come true. Rostovites turned to us themselves. It doesn’t matter that they were far left, we added right-wing views to them. Subsequently, Gaponov and Trofimov were unable to carry the burden of the party. For four years now, Kostya Pudlo has been the head of the party in the Rostov region, on my first visit he was a thin youngster. But, replacing each other, stone by stone, we are building a party. Trofimov subsequently became the soul of the Forbidden Drummers group. He is the author of the text “Ai-yay-yay, they killed a black man.” That is, not weak talents have gathered in the NBP.

Dima Volkov, “the highest leader of the regional branch of the National Bolshevik Party,” as I jokingly called him, was right-wing. He knew Dugin even before the party, read “Elements”, often came to Moscow for right-wing literature. In Yekaterinburg, he communicated with the scientific and humanitarian intelligentsia. (In 1997, during my visit to Yekaterinburg, Volkov, I remember, introduced me to Professor Bakshutov, a student of the philosopher Losev, and before that he sent me his books.) At the first meeting with Dmitry Viktorovich Volkov, I thought that he was too good for our company. A handsome, slender giant, with a manly face, black-haired, usually dressed in a suit, he was a social class above the usual leader of the National Bolsheviks. Our regional leaders, it turned out later, were obviously socially unsatisfied individuals: poets, provincial journalists, musicians, punks, workers. Volkov looked like a completely satisfied person. Volkov studied traditionalism: Evola and Guénon, he could talk rather boringly about traditionalism. Before joining us, he had already visited the RNU, but if for us he was strange, then for the gray staff of the RNU he was too brilliant. I silently called Dima Volkov a “playboy” and thought that he would not stay long with us. But, to my surprise, he lingered and even without hesitation took my side in the conflict with Dugin. But he still left, my first impression turned out to be correct, he was a playboy, he made good money, he drove a car for 20 thousand dollars, he talked with a wealthy intellectual bohemian. When I arrived in 1997, he met me at the station with a motorcade of a jeep and a Mercedes. And carefully controlled as it turned out later, all my contacts with the National Bolshevik masses. During those five, it seems, years that he led the Yekaterinburg branch of the NBP, the branch did not accomplish anything particularly heroic, and when it did, it was without Volkov. Volkov overslept the fight with the riot police near the university building, where the students fought under two NBP flags, the fight was led by the junior command staff of the NBP. The squad has not grown much in numbers over the years, and this circumstance has always aroused my suspicions. Such a large center as Yekaterinburg could give much more recruits to the NBP. With skillful leadership, the number could reach the number of the St. Petersburg and Moscow branches, that is, many hundreds. Later, analyzing the work of Volkov with the guys from Yekaterinburg, with his assistant Ruslan Froltsov, with comrade Vasily, I realized that that Volkov kept the branch under control with funding. Only he had money, and he could get money. Therefore, the personnel did not rebel against him, as happened in other regions. We are talking about money here only as a means of the work of the party: money for the publication of Nord-Ost, the student newspaper of the NBP in Yekaterinburg, money for flags, for premises, albeit small ones, were given by Volkov. The fact that a handsome Viking giant ran an organization in Yekaterinburg was actually our bad luck. People would have got rid of some barefoot and nondescript leader long ago. He acted with the magic of his body, the magic of erudition. He left the NBP and even owed me money personally for many thousands of copies of newspapers just when it became dangerous to engage in radical politics, in 1999. And went into that world of cars, good-natured professorial discussions about traditionalism, generals’ daughters and a warm company of intellectuals chirping about Guenon and Evola. Well, the devil is with him. The Last Judgment on a person takes place according to the results of his whole life. The Last Judgment he arranges over himself. And not once, and not one day, and not one minute this Judgment lasts. And his own inconsistency and insignificance is terrible.

After this lyrical digression, it is appropriate to recall one more of our first organizations. It was created by our guys in the city of Severodvinsk: our activists, engineers of the Zvyozdochka and Sevmash factories. Volodya Paderin and Dima Shilo. Created in 1995 and still successfully lead. In 1996, I went to Severodvinsk to inspect the organization and was satisfied. Volodya Paderin, a small, energetic dynamo man, the son of a self-taught worker-artist Anatoly Paderin, is a true representative of the working class. The reasons that brought him to the party are clear and concrete. He saw enough of the misfortune of his native plant, saw how, for the sake of an agreement with America, they cut up powerful submarines, cut out their heart – a nuclear reactor, soldered them and sent them to scrap metal. I saw how the empty stocks of factories rust, the cranes do not move, how canvas-covered companies and battalions were sent on early leave for lack of work. I saw how Severodvinsk was emptying, how it had shrunk from a city of 250,000 to a city of 150,000, how the population was fleeing from the towns and villages of the White Sea, how towns and cities were dying, desolating and merging with the eternal peace of the northern landscape, and having looked Volodya was indignant. And together with Dima, they created a branch of the National Bolshevik Party. They painted the city with slogans. The newspaper began to be distributed. They quickly became the only living radical party in Severodvinsk. They experienced the wrath of their superiors. When the arrival of the American Minister of Defense, who came to the factories to voluptuously experience the pleasure of the ceremony of cutting the Russian nuclear submarine, unknown people managed to inscribe on the boat: “Yankee, go home!” – Our guys were persecuted by the FSB. The organization of the NBP in Severodvinsk still exists under the same leadership. After a year or two, I understood the technology of party building.

To create a regional organization actually means, first of all, to find a leader for it. The most convenient thing is to take a ready-made youth leader from the youth party, if there is no free leader, then you can take an energetic fan of Limonov, or Dugin, or Letov and appoint him the head of the regional branch. Need someone to start. It is necessary to blind together three or four people, and then it will go. If a “fan” is able to carry the banner of the Party only for a year or six months, then it’s still good. It happened that there was no leader in the youth get-together – that is, authority, one whose tastes are equal, they listen to words, and his opinion means a lot, around whom there are always people. It happened that the fans of Limonov, Dugin, Letov were not at hand. Then we took anyone from the local opposition: right, reactionary, Orthodox, left Anpilovites, happened, and some zhivoeda. For now. For a while. That is, sometimes our local organizations were started by “old rightists” or “old leftists”. There were, however, no more than five such cases.

Russia is an old country. Each city has long been divided by nomenclature. There is no place for young people in your city. She must seek a worthy place in the sun, acting according to the rules of the nomenclature. Then, after 20 years of struggle, aging, the youth will receive part of the power. But she won’t be young anymore. Out of bounds and beyond the reach of power, youth exist in every city in their world. Those who do not integrate into the traditional Russian society of power, cops, criminals and hard workers exist outside it or on its borders – “en marge” – in French, hence the completely correct name “marginals”, but in Russia it has acquired a derogatory meaning. The party realized early on that marginals are socially dissatisfied individuals, those who claim a higher place in society, and for this reason we, the National Bolsheviks, need them.

Marginals, alternatives, we began to collect in the party. Subsequently, allegedly Dugin looked at the monster – the NBP – the work of his own hands and was horrified. But Dugin himself is a marginal. In any case, he was up to 37 years of age. And that’s the best thing about it. Of course, we could not go to every region and stay there for some time, study the local youth hangout and choose. Russia is a huge country, this is not Germany, where Hitler sent Gregor Strasser or Goebbels to the north, and in two months he organized organizations in three states and founded two newspapers. We have 89 regions, huge distances, ice expanses. Therefore, we threw the Limonka bait into the regions and waited. It pecked almost immediately. But it failed dozens of times. I offered to work with us, to organize an NBP cell for each more or less reasonable addressee. Someone did not agree immediately, many agreed, but they turned out to be incapable, there were people like Logunov (I hope I remember the name correctly and I don’t offend some other person). This guy sold our newspapers, plying from Kislovodsk to Mineralnye Vody, sent us hundreds of application forms for joining the party, organized strikes on our behalf in the cities of the North Caucasus in 1995, in order to then send us a letter from the Solovetsky Islands. It was signed by him, but the rank of bishop was added to the name. The Bishop owes us money for thousands of newspapers. With this money, he made a pilgrimage from the North Caucasus to the Solovetsky Islands. What he repented to me, completing the repentance with the message that he had cancer. Whether he died of his cancer or not, I do not know. This guy sold our newspapers, plying from Kislovodsk to Mineralnye Vody, sent us hundreds of application forms for joining the party, organized strikes on our behalf in the cities of the North Caucasus in 1995, in order to then send us a letter from the Solovetsky Islands. It was signed by him, but the rank of bishop was added to the name. The Bishop owes us money for thousands of newspapers. With this money, he made a pilgrimage from the North Caucasus to the Solovetsky Islands. What he repented to me, completing the repentance with the message that he had cancer. Whether he died of his cancer or not, I do not know. This guy sold our newspapers, plying from Kislovodsk to Mineralnye Vody, sent us hundreds of application forms for joining the party, organized strikes on our behalf in the cities of the North Caucasus in 1995, in order to then send us a letter from the Solovetsky Islands. It was signed by him, but the rank of bishop was added to the name. The Bishop owes us money for thousands of newspapers. With this money, he made a pilgrimage from the North Caucasus to the Solovetsky Islands. What he repented to me, completing the repentance with the message that he had cancer. Whether he died of his cancer or not, I do not know. It was signed by him, but the rank of bishop was added to the name. The Bishop owes us money for thousands of newspapers. With this money, he made a pilgrimage from the North Caucasus to the Solovetsky Islands. What he repented to me, completing the repentance with the message that he had cancer. Whether he died of his cancer or not, I do not know. It was signed by him, but the rank of bishop was added to the name. The Bishop owes us money for thousands of newspapers. With this money, he made a pilgrimage from the North Caucasus to the Solovetsky Islands. What he repented to me, completing the repentance with the message that he had cancer. Whether he died of his cancer or not, I do not know.

The fact that scammers appear around a living team is nothing surprising. The rogue race is a living race. I don’t even think that this Logunov was a swindler. He was a crazy youth leader.

Around the living team there are also “teapots”. In 1996, a certain Dima Revyakin began attending our meetings on Mondays. Taras Rabko explained to me that Revyakin is a very famous youth idol – the singer of the Kalinov Most group, that I should encourage him. I encouraged. Stopped him at the headquarters, said: “Come to us? Come. And read our newspaper.” Added some extra encouragement. Some time later, Revyakin asked to join the party. On the Day of the Nation, I handed Revyakin an NBP membership card at the monument to Cyril and Methodius, under the eyes of television cameras. He was happy and sang into the microphone along with another singer of the part, Sasha Nepomniachtchi.

A few days later the duty officer knocked on my door. “Eduard Veniaminovich, Revyakin wants to talk.”

“What can I do, Dima? He handed me a piece of paper. What he said was written there. I looked into his eyes. They were completely empty.

“Go away with your statement. This is not a food base for you. You will be in the party forever. No leaving. Hello to the Siberian military district…” – “But how…” – “Go, go…”

A few days later he ended up in a psychiatric hospital. The defective singer got caught. Now, they say, he again successfully gives concerts.

From the very day of its foundation, musicians have been rushing to us. Excellent, healthy guys, their contribution to the party is invaluable. Egor Letov – ticket No. 4, the late Sergei Kuryokhin – ticket No. 418, Selivanov (“Red Stars”) – No. 13, Igor Zhevtun – No. 43, Sergey Troitsky (“Spider”) – No. 14, our oldest member of the NBP Sashka Aronov ( “Donor Day”), Nepomniachtchi and they have no number. Even the recently fashionable Knife for Frau Müller group are long-term members of the party. About “Che Dans”, Gaponov and Martynov and “Forbidden Drummers” I just mentioned. There are plenty of fellow travelers: Vadim Stepantsov, Tegin, even the Leningrad group. Santim (“Gang of Four”) has been a member of the party for a year now. Let’s stop there. Let’s go back to Lemon.

That ordinary collective work on the creation of “Limonka”, on its production, on transportation to railway stations, delivery now to 67 cities across Russia and the CIS, in fact, created the party for us. I have said many times at meetings: “No matter how ordinary the work of mailing a newspaper may seem to you, guys, remember how eagerly they wait for a newspaper in frozen Russian cities. The official press will never tell the radical truth that the youth of Russia will find in our newspaper” . Before the First All-Russian Congress, I sometimes wrote up to 20 letters a day. Seizing on the slightest opportunity to create party cells in those regions where they did not yet exist, he incited the most random people to create a party. Sometimes, after an exchange of five or six letters, it turned out that I had reached a dead end. Then I either asked the one who was incapable, create a cell of the party, recommend an energetic guy in the region. Or catch another person and start all over again. Hell of a job.

The experience with Zyuganov put pressure on me for a long time. After promising me personally assistance (or at least non-interference) in the December 1993 elections, he scammed me. I called him ahead of time, consulted, “Will you, Gena, nominate someone in the Tverskoy district? I would like to try my luck and compete for a place in the State Duma. “No, Edik, we won’t have anyone in Tverskoy. Go, we’ll help you. If we were allowed to participate in the elections, I would put you on the list of the Communist Party.” A few weeks later, Yeltsin allowed the Communist Party of the Russian Federation to participate in the elections, but Zyuganov did not say to his party lords when they divided the districts: “Let’s take Limonov on the list? Not a member of our party, but his own. He did so much for the opposition. A brave man, fought in Serbia.”

Dick bald said Gene. It is clear that I was shocked by the betrayal of “my own”. And I was pushed to the right. Since you are betrayed by the left, you naturally lean to the right. I went to a right-wing conference called “Where is nationalism heading?”, so, it seems, where I saw a lot of right-wingers: the national democrat Sevastyanov, the leader of the People’s National Party Sukharevsky, the head of the Moscow organization of the National Republican Party (I forgot my last name, fat and tall) , in St. Petersburg, the party was headed, taking her away from Lysenko, – a suspicious former cop Yuri Belyaev. I spoke at their conference. (Although they were reluctant to recognize the NBP* as nationalists or not at all.) It is interesting to note that Korchinsky, a former UNA/UNSO leader I like, told me that the Ukrainian nationalist beau monde never recognized the UNA/UNSO as nationalists. In my speech, I said that we should unite and stop fighting each other, that we should fight the System. After my speech, Ivanov-Sukharevsky approached me and said that he agreed – it’s time to unite.

A little later, all of the above: I, Ivanov-Sukharevsky (a colorful personality in his own way, a film director, an actor, a man in white gloves and a red jumper, a demagogue, an anti-Semite and a psychopath), the head of the Moscow organization of the NRPR (the same fat and tall, damn it, like is it him?), another type with oriental features, the head of an obscure organization, we all gathered in my office in the Bunker and formed an organization called the Coordinating Council of Radical Nationalist Parties (CRNP for short). It happened at the beginning of 1996. Thus, for the second time I became the leader of a political bloc, if we consider the National Bolshevik Front, created in May 1993, the first. (I understand that for a “normal” mortal, not for the political maniac that I am,

In February 1996, there was also a public, how to put it, “washing”, or something, of our coordinating council – Yuri Belyaev, a fat cop (he was a cop at least until 1993) convened a congress of nationalists in St. Petersburg. Some on the account. In general, there was an impression that the cops were paying for the congress. We all went to this congress: Ivanov-Sukharevsky, a man with oriental features, and even Dugin. On the first day, the Congress of the National Republican Party was to be held, and on the second day, the Congress of Russian Nationalists.

Nothing interesting happened on the first day. Music was played, banners were carried. The rather thinned NRPR party members made speeches. The hall was full of all sorts of people. I attended the 1st NRPR Congress in 1992. There were well-known members of the Russian national party: among them Bezverkhy, a skinny old man with a red nose, the leader of an organization of Wends. Well, there were us, sinners, the entire KSRNP, headed by the inspired Byronian blond Ivanov-Sukharevsky, his assistant Sharopaev (already familiar to the reader from the FPRD – a former collective member of the NBF three years before). There was Oleg Bakhtiyarov, a good man, a psychiatrist and a militant, a participant in the war in Transnistria and the capture of the mayor’s office in 1993, a resident of Kiev, one of the leaders of the Slavic Unity organization. There was Dugin, sitting decorously next to me in the first section, but during the break (his brother-in-law Seryozha Melenyev was standing in the lobby selling books) Dugin disappeared, and I found him in the evening at the headquarters of the NBP. Another part of the hall consisted of that human material, which, by analogy with the “dem. shiz” – could be called “national shiz.” And in the old journalistic jargon, such an audience is called “dummies.” These are regulars, furious aunts and uncles, screamers and hysterics, shouting from their seats with a good obscenity in all emotional moments. At the very beginning, a group of half-drowsy, half-drunk skinheads, about 30 people, sat in the hall. During the break, they had a drink and wandered around in the lobby between the trays with right-wing literature, returning to the hall from time to time. There were a large number of old, lame and slanting, with defects, and simply poor people. I already knew this crowd. They should not be mistaken for people of national convictions, although some of them were primitive, folklore-type nationalists. They should not have been taken for the electorate either, because there were an insignificant number of them, from 200 to 300 people in total. They were not to be conquered—that is, whether they applauded or whistled, it did not matter. They should have been perceived as not very pleasant people crammed into the congress hall. So I did.

Belyaev proposed to meet in the evening, closer to the night, in order to discuss what we would do tomorrow at the congress of Russian nationalists. We agreed to meet at our headquarters closer to the night. At the headquarters, I found an already unhealthy atmosphere. The party members who were at the congress had already all migrated to the headquarters and now wandered around there with cheerful faces of people who had gathered for a party. I didn’t spoil their mood. That was a period of crisis, when the first composition of the St. Petersburg National Bolsheviks degraded (not all, of course), and there was no any outstanding leader. (By the middle of the year, I persuaded Dima Zhvania, the leader of the Workers’ Struggle, to become the leader of the NBP in St. Petersburg, and in December young Andrey Grebnev would already challenge him.) Belyaev arrived, several more party leaders arrived, Bakhtiyarov was present, we called Dugin. He reluctantly showed up. The story of the next day of the congress boiled down to the following problem. Tomorrow the congress was to be chaired by Vladimir Bezverkhy, the head of the society of pagan Wends. He was considered the patriarch of the right-wing movement in Russia, Belyaev treated him like a teacher, which he did not fail to announce on the first day at the NRPR congress. But the problem was that the Nationalist Congress of Russia was supposed to nominate a nationalist presidential candidate. And here Bezverkhy, on the instructions of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, was supposed to manipulate our congress so that we would announce the red Zyuganov as a candidate. And Belyaev wanted Yeltsin. Why Yeltsin? There was such a national belief that it would be worse with President Yeltsin than the people would calm down for a long time with President Zyuganov. Already drunk and, as always, paradoxical, Dugin also spoke in favor of Yeltsin… Bakhtiyarov said that we are insane, if we say something that people will not understand us. And Bakhtiyarov was right. I? I listened to them all and decided that I would take the side of the majority. But to begin with, I suggested going beyond the two candidates. Why only Zyuganov and only Yeltsin? Let’s nominate one of our own. Those present, it turned out, do not want their own. The most famous national leaders of Russia at that time were Nikolai Lysenko and Alexander Barkashov. Lysenko they all unanimously rejected. For Belyaev, he was a former rival – the former leader of the NRPR, defeated, pushed out of the leader’s seat back in 1994 by Belyaev. Lysenko was then in prison (before that, he spent two years as a deputy of the State Duma, by the way, the only one of the radical nationalists who was a deputy). Nobody wanted to hear about Lysenko. For Belyaev, he is a former rival, for everyone else he is not an authority. “Let’s Barkashova?” I suggested. “This guy sent hitmen to me, they threatened my wife…” Ivanov-Sukharevsky exploded. The fact is that his apartment was attacked, and Ivanov-Sukharevsky believed that Barkashov organized it. “No, not Barkash,” shouted Belyaev, “besides, his organization is falling apart… you’ll see tomorrow, three groups on behalf of the RNU are going to participate.” Belyaev grunted contentedly and swayed in his chair. How cold. and swayed in his chair. How cold. and swayed in his chair. How cold.

I do not exaggerate and do not write satirical notes. Barkashov was not loved as the most successful, as the most hyped, his organization got all the attention of the media. Barkashov himself possessed the arrogance of an upstart proletarian, was boorish and unfriendly, which did not add love to him. But he was the leader of the largest organization of Russian nationalists at that time. And in fairness, he should have been nominated. Although I didn’t like him either, and Belyaev was right, Barkashov started having problems with the RNE both in St. Petersburg and in other regions. But they started with Barkashov, while other nationalist parties had them for a long time, and the same Sukharevsky knew that in comparison with Barkashov’s organization, his organization was just a sect.

“Yeltsin! Only him! The worse, the better! We need to support this image of Yeltsin!” Dugin spoke clearly and with expression. They listened to him, being afraid of his erudition. I barely persuaded Dugin to come to the office of Sasha the Afghan, where we were conferring. “Eduard, I joined the party without giving you a promise that I would have to communicate with all sorts of idiots,” Dugin said when I arrived at the headquarters from the congress and invited him to a meeting. I persuaded him, and now he was suffering, and therefore he articulated the words so clearly and spoke in an evil voice that he had already drunk and wanted to drink more with the young men and girls of the National Bolsheviks: with the thin boy Leus, with the girl Masha, with the student Karagodin, this one came with us from Moscow, they were waiting for him in the assembly hall room. Two or three dozen more National Bolsheviks were loitering there, excited by the arrival of the leaders.

I let them indulge me. He let himself be carried away by Dugin’s paradoxicalism. And Belyaev just prudently wanted to take the side of the authorities and declare it. After all, Barkashov also declared at all corners that he supported Yeltsin. I let myself be carried away also because I was outraged by the treacherous position of Zyuganov and the Communist Party in relation to myself and to the nationalists. After all, part of their electorate belonged to us. After all, it was for them that nationally minded voters voted, because we were not allowed before the elections. After all, Zyuganov picked up and exploits part of our ideas, forming the People’s Patriotic Union. “Yeltsin, Yeltsin, only him. We need to support this club of Yeltsin!” Dugin shouted and slipped away.

Soon all the leaders withdrew, having decided that tomorrow together we would turn the tide of the congress and make it so that the congress would vote for Yeltsin so as not to vote for Zyuganov. Dugin and Karagodin and a 17-year-old girl Masha Zabrodina appeared in the office of Sasha the Afghan. “Masha has long dreamed of meeting you, Eduard Veniaminovich,” Dugin said caustically, and he and Karagodin left. I spent the night with Masha and in Masha. In the morning she took me to the convention. When I entered the meeting room, Alexander Dugin, the boy Leus, and the boy Karagodin were levitating high in a puff of smoke above the floor. They talked about mystical fascism. “Sasha, it’s time for us to go to the congress,” I reminded him. “Are you really going to bend me to your will, Eduard Veniaminovich?” Dugin said. All I had to do was hurry to the convention.

It turned out that they all had time to get scared. And now they didn’t know what to do. Bakhtiyarov said it was crazy. “And Barkashov?” Belyaev noted. “Barkashov is forgiven what they will not forgive us,” someone said. “We made a decision yesterday,” I said, “let’s follow the decision we made. We need to be firm.” “What will the audience say?” asked the Oriental man. “The audience will say whatever Alexander Kuzmich Sukharevsky inspires them,” I said, and in that way I won the support of Ivanov-Sukharevsky that day. “This is madness,” Bakhtiyarov exclaimed, “the people won’t understand.” “Let’s follow the decision.” “What are you whispering about?” We sat in the presidium.

We started with the fact that I announced the decision to create the Coordinating Council of Radical Nationalist Parties, announced several points of rapprochement – the umbrella under which we agreed to unite, and invited the leaders present who wish to become members of the Coordinating Council to sign the document. Even Bezverkhy signed it. The hall applauded, shouted: “It would be so long ago! It’s time!” – “Right!” – “An association!”

As Belyaev announced last night, at first a gloomy guy perched on the stage, saying that he represented the St. Petersburg regional branch of the RNU. From the back rows, a dozen gloomy people interrupted his speech, declaring the guy an impostor and calling themselves true representatives of the RNU. “Why do you think you are true and the other group is not?” Bezverkhy asked in a business-like manner. “Give us a word!” — demanded from the back rows. Bezverkhy gave the floor to the second group. Representative of RNU No. 2, naming the representatives of the RNE No. 1 group by name, denounced everyone, calling them breakaway renegades and, as proof of his authenticity, referred to Barkashov’s letter and reached for the letter. “No,” Bezverkhy stopped him, “we don’t need a letter, we don’t have a RNU congress, we just wanted to know which of you will represent the RNU at the congress.”

“That’s right! Enough fooling your head! Find out for yourself who your impostors are, and come later. Do not interfere with the work of the congress!” the hall exploded. “Crazy!”

There were more folk types in the hall than yesterday. More teapots. Bezverkhy said that from the Coordinating Council and the problems of the RNU, we should turn to the most important issue on the agenda: to decide who the nationalists of Russia will support in the presidential elections in June. “Lysenko! Barkashov! Topless!” the crowd shouted correctly.

“Your emotions are clear to us, but here’s what happens: Lysenko is in prison, Barkashov’s organization has split in two and, as I was just told, is disorganized, well, as for Bezverkhy, I’m withdrawing my candidacy, the age is not the same. himself as a leader. Here is our colleague, the head of the “Russian Party” Miloserdov, as you probably know, joined the entire “Russian Party” in the People’s Patriotic Union of Russia. The association is headed by Zyuganov Gennady Andreevich.”

The hall murmured in annoyance. “No, you wait… Gennady Andreevich…” Bezverkhy quite skillfully began to process the hall in the direction of Zyuganov. In fact, this was not even required. It was necessary to persuade the leaders of the parties. Voting was provided only for the leaders. The entrance to the hall was free, any schmuck from the street could come and sit down. When Bezverkhy finished his speech with the words “… I propose to support the candidacy of the Oryol peasant Gennady Andreevich Zyuganov!” – they applauded him with might and main.

I whispered to Sukharevsky to take the floor. Sukharevsky came out and, raising his hands to the mountain (he was immediately applauded, he was a recognized orator), exclaimed: “I, too, support Zyuganov, a native of Oryol, a Russian man. I like him.” Applause followed. “But I am against the people who surround him. I am against Kolker, I am against Goldstein, I am against Berliner…” The audience applauded. I definitely didn’t meet the named personalities in Zyuganov’s entourage and didn’t hear about them … Sukharevsky either invented them or had in mind the leader of the RKRP rivaling the Communist Party – Tyulkin. There were several Jews in the St. Petersburg branch of Tyulkin’s party, but the surnames were different. Sukharevsky did not dare to say that we supported Yeltsin, but he trampled on the topic for about ten minutes and finally said that if only Yeltsin had not been a democrat … And so he fits the article,

Then a man with an oriental appearance went to the microphone and spoke for a long time about the fact that Yeltsin was waging a Russian war in Chechnya. The congress took place before Khasavyurt, the Russians then squeezed the militants into the mountains, and the performance was a success. Shevelyov then applauded. (Here, I remembered his last name: Shevelev!)

Feeling that he was losing points, Bezverkhy released the representative of the Communist Party. Surprisingly, the audience changed its mood from speaker to speaker. The communist was applauded. Ivanov-Sukharevsky came out again and did verbal pirouettes for a long time, ending with a list of the victims of communism, clearly invented, because unthinkable figures appeared there. If you believe them, it turned out that the Russians have long been gone. Meanwhile, they sat in the hall. A break was announced, during which Bezverkhy sat gloomy. I ran to the lobby and found a bored NTV correspondent with a camera. “Do you want a sensation? In ten or fifteen minutes, the congress will announce that it does not want to support Zyuganov and prefers to extend the status quo so that Yeltsin remains.” edition!” He contacted and ran. ” They gave good. But you will represent yourself, one of you, because I am alone today, we have a reduced team, I am with a camera and that’s it. Can I film you now backstage, then the material will be in time for the evening news?” I gathered Sukharevsky, Shevelev, Belyaev, the Moscow head of the NRPR and, taking the microphone, said: “The Congress of Nationalists of Russia does not want to support Zyuganov in the presidential elections, believing that he election…” And so on and so forth. “We prefer that the status quo continue and that Yeltsin’s rule eventually provoke popular uprisings against the regime.” Shevelev, Belyaev, the Moscow head of the NRPR and, taking the microphone, said: “The Congress of Nationalists of Russia does not want to support Zyuganov in the presidential elections, believing that his election …” And so on and so forth. “We prefer that the status quo continue and that Yeltsin’s rule eventually provoke popular uprisings against the regime.” Shevelev, Belyaev, the Moscow head of the NRPR and, taking the microphone, said: “The Congress of Nationalists of Russia does not want to support Zyuganov in the presidential elections, believing that his election …” And so on and so forth. “We prefer that the status quo continue and that Yeltsin’s rule eventually provoke popular uprisings against the regime.”

This performance cost me dearly. These few phrases. The masses of the people, in any case those whom I later met at processions and meetings, each time did not fail to recall this episode to me. It’s amazing that some forgive everything, others – nothing. Barkashov publicly declared for years that he supported Yeltsin, Zyuganov and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation made possible the daily normal functioning of the Yeltsin state, voted for 70% of all laws proposed by Yeltsin. I have never heard the masses of the people reproach them.

However, later we quickly found ourselves a national candidate. A couple of weeks later, on behalf of the KSRNP, I represented our candidate Yuri Petrovich Vlasov in the press club of the Radisson-Slavyanskaya Hotel.

However, the episode with “Yeltsin’s support” was a good lesson for me. The fact is that the masses do not understand paradoxical thinking. We made a mistake then, which I now repent of. It was necessary to read and re-read Hitler, to know the philosophy of the masses.

After the interview, the congress resumed. At the congress, I soon said the same thing as for NTV. Hall applauded. The headless one was put to shame. I’m wildly tired. I jumped from the stage into the hall and wanted to leave with Masha Zabrodina, who was waiting for me. But the way was blocked by journalists. One of them, bearded, asked me a brazen question, from which I choked with rage: “Why are you speaking on behalf of Russians? You are not Russian, are you?” My fist itself flew into his face. A fight broke out, hindered only by rows of chairs. We were divorced.

Yuri Petrovich Vlasov, I, unfortunately, was forced to recognize and quickly; From February 20 to April 26, I did a brilliant quick course in “Vlasovedenie” and, in addition, I recognized his wife in a parallel course in “Larisa Sergeev tutoring”. Two immoderately large animals (when Vlasov got into Anton Filippov’s car, the springs sank), they lived in a web of their own prejudices. The anti-Semitism of Larisa Sergeevna could not even be called anti-Semitism. It would be more appropriate to call “this” either “Jewish insanity” or, more modestly, “Jewish eating.” Sometimes very figurative expressions of a large beautiful white Larisa Sergeevna (the people call such a “beer queen”) were well-aimed observations of a talented impressionist. This is how she characterized the State Duma: “Five hundred teeth sit in three rows, and I was enrolled as a Jew-lover. The Jews have long kept me in the anti-Semites.

The Vlasovs, on the other hand, turned out to be rare terry specimens. Prokhanov told me: “Did they decide to support Vlasov? Well, support … In general, this is a pathology, Limonov, not politics. I said no, I didn’t. Prokhanov was wrong all the time in people, but with Vlasov he turned out to be right.

The first evening they had, when we came to the Vlasovs with a company of Kosoererpists, as I ironically called them (besides, I rallied them, I gave them a name, and I even threw them in the elections with Vlasov, because I had to work, shine, develop nationalism) , went quite well. They had a decent size (but, of course, cramped for their seal bodies) apartment not far from the Sokol metro station, where we settled in the living room. Vlasov gave us all books. It turned out that he was a prolific writer. When I later looked into his books, I found that they were full of the lamentations of Larisa Sergeevna – as our simple Kosoererpe people said about Vlasov, Vlasov turned out to be “henpecked.” I wrote exhaustively about Vlasov in Anatomy of a Hero, so I don’t want to repeat myself. The strongest man on the planet disappointed me with the wretchedness of his worldview, and even to live after that for some time was disgusting to me. A healthy mind does not always live in a healthy body, that’s what I discovered in the Vlasov case. However, whether such a massive body is healthy is also a question.

Together with the KSRNP (that is, the NBP mainly) we got him over 80,000 signatures, two major sponsors. I arranged a press conference for him in the press club of the Radisson-Slavyanskaya Hotel, in the Central House of Writers, on the Ekho Moskvy radio station, and I was going to work for him in the sweat of my brow. But after registering as a presidential candidate and a disgusting scene in the hall of the Central Election Commission, when Larisa Sergeevna deliberately rubbed me away from her husband, not wanting to let us in one TV frame, Vlasov began to hide from us. He did not appear at a press conference organized by me for him at the Arguments and Facts news agency, allegedly went instead to meet with voters in Krasnogorsk. Trampled all agreements with us.

It is difficult to say what has torn away the dense soul of the Vlasovs from us. Reading some scenes (many) from my first novel, It’s Me, Eddie, could have turned them away from me. At the same time, it is hard to believe that the Vlasovs were not immediately told at the end of February, when he agreed to work with us (after all, I headed the KSRNP), what I wrote. Had the denunciation been getting to him for two whole months? All it took was a phone call.

Why did I and the Coordinating Council need him? Well, firstly, what kind of nationalist parties are we if we do not undertake political actions. And a national presidential candidate is the most propaganda political action that can be carried out. In addition, never before has a national presidential candidate been nominated in Russia. It was interesting to feel the pulse of the nation – to determine what part of the nation would be for him. Great job, great test. I never believed that Vlasov could win the elections. I even doubted whether he would take 15% of the electorate. I (not for the public, for myself) expected 7-9%. He didn’t even take one. But he himself is to blame. After leaving us, he, a presidential candidate, began to behave more than strange. He began to lie. He began to pretend to be good and handsome. I told Cherkizov on Ekho Moskvy that he was for democracy, that the principles of democracy and the free market are his principles. “Oh, how!” exclaimed Cherkizov. Then how do you differ from such candidates as Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev and Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin? Cherkizov remarked wittily. In all likelihood, Vlasov, having become a presidential candidate, believed that he could win the election. And he averaged his program outrageously, severely disappointing his small electorate, who before this statement would have definitely voted for him and his plump Larisa Sergeevna and their principles. When the results of the presidential elections were published in mid-June, I only sighed. In all likelihood, Vlasov, having become a presidential candidate, believed that he could win the election. And he averaged his program outrageously, severely disappointing his small electorate, who before this statement would have definitely voted for him and his plump Larisa Sergeevna and their principles. When the results of the presidential elections were published in mid-June, I only sighed. In all likelihood, Vlasov, having become a presidential candidate, believed that he could win the election. And he averaged his program to disgrace, severely disappointing his small electorate, who before this statement would have definitely voted for him and his plump Larisa Sergeevna and their principles. When the results of the presidential elections were published in mid-June, I only sighed.

The Coordinating Council gradually came to naught, because it could not be otherwise. Because I wanted to, seeing how small the forces of our allies. Having appeared in 1994, the People’s National Party of Ivanov-Sukharevsky initially attracted journalists with its pickets. The main attraction was Alexander Kuzmich Ivanov-Sukharevsky, a small blond, actor and film director. Under his howls, the party stood in the street for about a year and a half, usually in the amount of 8 or 10 people under twice as many flags. They also skillfully used a speaker and a tape recorder. In addition to the quite sensible, but limited Sharapaev, Sukharevsky had an even more valuable gold of the party – Volodya Popov, a journalist from Novosibirsk. Popov, focusing first on the materials of “Elements”, and then on the materials and printing of “Limonka”, made Sukharevsky the newspapers “Era of Russia” and subsequently “I am Russian”. With this, the NNP somehow kept afloat. But they didn’t have any people. Perhaps they had two or three regional organizations, if the Fuhrer Sukharevsky was not lying, but in Moscow things were deplorable. On the first Day of the Nation, organized by the NBP at the monument to the heroes of Plevna, we, the NBP, overtook over three hundred people, and Sukharevsky appeared with Popov and Sharapaev. The fat, muzzled Moscow leader of the NRPR brought only one person with him. Shevelev – four. That is, these were actually groups of leaders, not parties. We, the National Bolsheviks, did not get any profit from cooperation with them. Belyaev had about 20 people in St. Petersburg, but even these stayed together only because Belyaev had placed them all in a security agency. There was also a group of Kasimovsky and Vdovin, young stormtroopers who broke away from the RNE, calling themselves the RNS (Russian National Union), 15-20 people, with several regional branches (and possibly without them), but they were not included in the KSRNP. Well, of course, the RNU kept to itself, our (my and Dugin’s) contacts with Barkashov were completely interrupted at the beginning of 1995. Subsequently, the larger the National Bolshevik Party became, the worse Barkashov treated us. But in his own organization, the opposite processes began. We consolidated, and the RNE was split up. Barkashov was jealous and spiteful.

By mid-1996, it became clear that the Coordinating Council could not exist. Our allies parasitized us. Allies can be equal. I was ready to ally with RNE. Barkashov’s hostility did not repel me. But he didn’t want to. He was waiting for Yeltsin’s call, so he had to look for allies in another camp: in the camp of the radical left.

The consequence of the nationalist congress in St. Petersburg was Dugin’s first attempt to get away from us. He walked the path of betrayal to the middle, but returned from the road. The split didn’t happen then. Returning from St. Petersburg, Dugin suddenly calmed down. Preparing a new issue of the newspaper, I called him. Usually he did not have to be asked about the article, he always did his lesson for future use and on time. Now he muttered that there would be no article this time. He was busy and did not write. Almost on the same day, two “disciples” stood in my hallway in Kaloshiny Lane – Kostya Chuvashev and Andrey Karagodin. Chuvashev, stuttering more than usual, said that his parents urgently asked him to fulfill an order for several volumes of religious literature, because he would not be able to make a newspaper. There were only a few days left before the layout of the newspaper was delivered to the printing house. So the sweetest and most talented kid Chuvashev put me, to put it mildly, in an extremely difficult position. I should have looked for a layout designer. And where? I had no idea. I recklessly relied on Chuvashev’s loyalty to Limonka. The second “student” – Karagodin – mumbled that he needed a typewriter, his parents suddenly lost both of their computers, and they urgently need to print some documents. I gave the children their toys and, closing the door behind them, cursed. Those are shameful calves! But in fact, these guys were only guilty of loyalty to their “guru”. The “guru” himself should have been blamed.

In the summer of 1996, he kept his distance. He published an issue of the magazine “Elements”, dedicated to national Bolshevism, where he managed not to mention us in a word. The party members pointed this out indignantly! Merlin looked into the forest, looking for a new King Arthur? Since 1995, he began to cooperate with the Zhirinovsky faction in the Duma, embarrassed (we were going to St. Petersburg), exposed his ticket as an assistant to an LDPR deputy in order to take a free ticket at the railway ticket office. Subsequently, it turned out that he made all trips to St. Petersburg on this ticket. I warned him not to get carried away by Zhirinovsky, after all, I had already gone through the same path three years before him. It was unpleasant for me that our priest also serves as a priest on the side a little. However, he did not work out with Zhirinovsky, most likely, Dugin simply came to Volfych late, when all the places were already taken, The ideology of the Liberal Democratic Party has long been formed, and although Lyosha Mitrofanov fashionably called his committee in the State Duma the “committee on geopolitics,” he put the usual stuffing into this shell. After grumbling that “geopolitics” had been stolen from him, Dugin resumed his cooperation with us and began to write to Limonka. But Chuvashev did not return to us. The layout of the newspaper began to be made by the lanky and clumsy, like scissors, guy Artyom Debkov. He was sitting in the old building of the university opposite the Manezh, and I began to carry materials to him on foot. The layout of the newspaper began to be made by the lanky and clumsy, like scissors, guy Artyom Debkov. He was sitting in the old building of the university opposite the Manezh, and I began to carry materials to him on foot. The layout of the newspaper began to be made by the lanky and clumsy, like scissors, guy Artyom Debkov. He was sitting in the old building of the university opposite the Manezh, and I began to carry materials to him on foot.

Why did Dugin recoil from us in February 1996? There are many opinions on this matter. Rabko suggested that 17-year-old Masha Zabrodina was the cause. Allegedly, she slept with Dugin before me. Dugin himself, after the split in 1998, said somewhere that he allegedly “returned” after the attack on me on September 18, 1996, the attack convinced him of my alleged honesty and devotion to the cause. The latter is doubtful, Dugin is not sentimental and vindictive.

I will now clarify once and for all the party’s birthday problem. September 8, 1993 – the date of registration of the Moscow branch of the National Bolshevik Party * – cannot be considered our birthday. Why? For a simple reason: at that time there was not even a Moscow group. And although I signed on the night of September 20-21 the appeal of political parties to President Yeltsin from the National Bolshevik Party, this is nothing more than a gesture of resistance. Subsequently, immediately after the coup, the dastardly “Moskovsky Komsomolets” published on the first page both the Appeal and signatures, where my signature is next to the signature of General Titov from the National Salvation Front. I am proud that I put my signature on that fateful night on the right paper: Yeltsin ruined Russia. He destroyed the gains of dissidents and democrats, he killed nationalists, and to top it all, put a man from the past over us – Putin. However, the birthday of the National Bolshevik Organization, I think, should rightfully be considered the day of the publication of the first issue of the newspaper Limonka. After all, in fact, “Limonka” has become “our everything”: our program, our textbook of politics, our collection of legends, our charter of the party service. Therefore, the birthday of the party, I, its first chairman and the only living founding father, declare November 28, 1994.

The elections of 1995, when Dugin was registered as a candidate for the 210th constituency in St. Petersburg, and I in Moscow, in the north-west of the capital, I described in detail and colorfully in Anatomy of a Hero. There is also Liza in a fly jacket, who attended two or three election rallies with me. We had little chance of winning: the chairman of a radical party with goals unknown to pensioners and a philosopher – a friend of the refined, brilliant avant-garde musician Kuryokhin – what could we hope for? But no one could stop us from trying. It should not be thought that we, the leaders, the founding fathers, enjoyed the privilege of being nominated. I remember that we blessed the regional leaders of the party for the feat. Another thing is that few could. Handsome, tall, reasonable Dima Volkov from Yekaterinburg failed to organize the collection of signatures, two other leaders fell out of the race at the stage of collecting signatures. In fact, the privilege turned into hard work. Should have:

1) Organize people to collect signatures, raise them to the attack for a month or more – daily. It required at least thirty or fifty citizens of the National Bolsheviks knocking on the doors every day, good fellows-talkers.

2) It was necessary, in accordance with the requirements of the Electoral Commission, to issue signatures and other documents.

3) Having received the registration certificate of a candidate for deputies, it was necessary, like a damned one, for another month and a half to travel from morning to evening to factories, social services, housing departments, moronic channel television stations, to pensioners’ clubs, to talk with people who were total strangers.

4) Meanwhile, the teams of the National Bolsheviks were supposed to cover the district with leaflets. They were taken to the police, warnings were given to the candidate, they were cold, they were hungry. It was necessary to give them money, to warm them with alcohol, to inspire them.

In general, it was necessary to ruin the elections for four months, dealing only with them. I already had the experience of elections in the Tver region – the north-west of Moscow was still easier. It did not stretch for more than three hundred kilometers, at least. During the election process, I fell in love with my National Bolsheviks boys and was proud of them. My confidants: Mishka Horse, Max Surkov – were 18 years old. Sasha Aronov is a little older. All of them – in black jeans, in leather jackets, Max Surkov also, in my opinion, had a Mohawk on his round head – did their duties with dignity. I remembered the corresponding page in Diary of a Loser: “Standing behind the clumsy hardened fathers and mothers, children, teenagers look vaguely into the future. For their sake it is worth living.” I assumed that the boys would behave like this – the National Bolsheviks, if they were given duties. But here I got a chance to check it out. Dugin in St. Petersburg gathered a crowd of guys around him, and although he was constantly dissatisfied with the guys, they collected signatures for him on time. As a matter of fact, before the appearance of Dugin in St. Petersburg at the end of the summer of 1995, an organization was barely hatching there. In February of that year, I came to St. Petersburg, performed at the Lenin House of Culture, and a lanky pimply guy climbed right on the stage – he introduced himself as Zhenya Vesnin – and demanded that I introduce him as the head of the St. Petersburg organization of the NBP. I refused to nominate him so hastily, but after that he began to do something, there were some progress. Therefore, when Dugin appeared in St. Petersburg with the aim of becoming a candidate in the elections to the State Duma, everyone began to flock to him. Kuryokhin got him a basement on Pogodinskaya street, Dugin’s election headquarters was made there, and subsequently for several years the St. Petersburg branch of the NBP was located there, sharing it with a tea-packing company. The supply manager of both the tea-packing company and the headquarters of the NBP was the same person: Alexander, an Afghan, an excellent, sincere type. It is curious, but the building that sheltered the NBP in its basement was a brothel under the tsars – naked fairies supporting the balcony at the corner of the house have survived to this day. The first National Bolsheviks of St. Petersburg came to the premises to help Dugin – friends and even former school comrades of Vesnin (he himself had already managed to move away from the party – what a fluidity there was). I remember that Masha Zabrodina, the daughter of a sailor, a slightly burry girl of 17 years old, came to the St. Petersburg NBP for the first time, with large – well, how about a party comrade, all the more dead, to put it more decently – with large balls of breasts. With her came the beautiful girl Tanya Tolstaya, both studied at the Faculty of History of Leningrad State University. Countess Tolstaya did not stay long in the party, but Taras Rabko met her when he arrived in St. Petersburg at the request of Dugin, and fell in love with her. His romance with Tatyana lasted five years. And it only died down about a year ago.

That is, young men / girls met on the party field, met, fell in love.

As you can see, different audiences gathered to help Dugin then. He was supported by the Workers’ Struggle group, headed by Dmitry Zhvania, such harsh, educated boys of the Trotskyist persuasion. The beaten-up skins came – completely tattooed with swastikas, I remember two of them, returning from our headquarters with signature sheets, ended up in the police, where they were severely beaten. The Limonka newspaper undertook to defend them and defended them. Plus Kuryokhin’s musicians and Vesnin’s schoolchildren: it turned out such a bright team. Dugin, having managed to collect such an unprecedented cocktail, subsequently made a mistake. He began to drink with the guys and, having already lost the elections, he made a fashion for himself to go to St. Petersburg, to have a good time, apparently escaping from the control of his wife. Reveling in drinking bouts, he completely ruined the organization he had created. Those who did not want and could not drink left, he rallied everyone else for a while, running into a truly carnival binge. Once he brought me to St. Petersburg, and I had to watch this fun. One should not think that the philosopher Dugin is an ugly wino. He is a hard-working, intellectually energetic person and can produce up to 20-25 pages of talented texts daily. Once every few months, he deliberately allowed himself to get drunk, perhaps this process rejuvenated him, revived him, gave him a new start. But he soldered the first composition of the NBP in St. Petersburg.

Those who think that this could not have happened in the “serious” games of the past, that they only did that, frowning with a pencil in their hands, read “Mein Kampf” and “Capital”, I refer to the daily life of Italian fascists and stormtroopers. It is useful to read Curzio Malaparte’s book “Caput”, various memoirs. Even the inflexible Stalin managed to get drunk in Tsaritsyn during the defense of it with Kliment Voroshilov, for which Lenin blamed him and scolded him when he appeared in the capital. People remain people, no matter what they do, whether they cultivate fields or work in political parties. A person comes to the party also because not to be alone, to feel close to friends – their muscular bodies. Among the friendly rites of the political collective is a joint marinating in the streets, a proud column under bright flags seeks to intimidate the enemy with its appearance, to declare itself. The number of rituals includes fights with the enemy, and a joint meal, and joint libations. A political party is like a tribe, separate, different, and it needs rituals to maintain itself in community. It is certainly bad and immoral when libations are excessive. We have always fought against this in the National Bolshevik Party. In the Moscow organization, I finally forbade joint libations at headquarters. Outside the headquarters and when they are not engaged in national Bolshevik work, the National Bolsheviks are also called upon to observe moderation. However, we never had alcoholics. There were a few drunkards I didn’t take my eyes off of. Some we have expelled. During the elections, our newspaper became more boring. The fact is that Dugin, and after him I, began to print election materials in it. The materials were designed for voters, and not for the National Bolsheviks. I myself was disgusted to read them, and after the elections I will write sharply later: “Voters must be kicked.” Alexander Gelevich was crushed by the election result, I don’t remember how many votes he received, but not many. However, I got some strange, if I’m not mistaken, 5,555 votes, which contrasted sharply with my result in 1993 in Tver, when I got about 23,000 votes. This defeat in my case was explained simply: the voter already in 1993 chose parties (albeit in a purely Russian sense of the word), but no longer paid attention to individuals. As for Dugin, he was much less known to the general public. In his constituency, Yabloko Golov won. Personally, Golov was hardly more famous than Dugin, but the St. Petersburg intelligentsia was extremely sympathetic towards Yabloko. Vladimir won in my district … here I confess that I forgot the name of this rather ordinary democrat … Lysenko! I remembered. Democrat.

After the elections, I took up the newspaper with even greater energy. In order to cut costs, I myself began to glue the Lemonka layout. Learned to do it in less than two hours. On the appointed day, I put my newspaper in a folder, took it to the Polezhaevskaya metro station and climbed up on foot along Sorge Street. Passed by the janitor in “Cartolithography”. He either found director Slutsky in his shabby leather jacket or took the model directly to the production department on the second floor to the girls in white coats, gave them the accompanying photographs and left.

Typographic work has always been a pleasure for me, as well as being in a printing house. Slutsky had no orders at that time, and therefore we, who paid in cash, were welcome here. We were treated kindly. I was already thinking that I had found friends for many years, when suddenly, a year later, “our unidentified enemies” ran into Slutsky, threatened him that if he continued to print our newspaper, he would be refused a large order for printing school textbooks for the Moscow region .

Slutsky did not divulge who “NNV” was, but he hinted that it might be the Communist Party of the Russian Federation or the Liberal Democratic Party, and asked me to look for another printing house. I then took offense at him and even turned to the prosecutor’s office with a request to investigate this story, especially since Slutsky told me that he had been threatened. A few years after the events, I was told that a certain Lyubov Kezina, the Minister of Education of the Moscow government and the mother of Zhenya Kezin, a friend of Taras Rabko, was involved in the case. I remembered Zhenya on a trip to the city of Vyatka as a tall guy with a tail and nothing more, and I didn’t think that his mother would somehow influence the fate of our newspaper. To this day, I still don’t understand what really happened. Either Zhenya Kezin showed his mother excellent issues of Lemonok and said: “Here’s mom, how to publish, in the best printing house in the city, idle, because they don’t have jobs.” And Kezina’s mother was looking for a place to publish Moscow textbooks cheaply and with high quality. And then Kezina, so as not to compromise herself by being next to a radical newspaper, dropped to Slutsky: “By the way, why do you publish these communist fascists? Are they paying you well?”

“Yes, please!” Slutsky could say, “they pay the lowest prices. I will ask them to find another printing house, there is no problem, Lyubov Alexandrovna.” And it could be even simpler: having received a bold order, Slutsky himself decided to put us out of harm’s way. It was very easy for him to cope with his conscience: “Cartolithography” had to feed its workers, and the director Slutsky was like a father-breadwinner to them.

I rushed to look for a printing house. It all happened in the spring of 1996. It was then, with a distance of several weeks, that the first crisis with Dugin occurred. I will talk about him in the next chapter, but for now I will talk about how the newspaper built the party.

The mechanism was simple. A radical youth newspaper published in the capital, very unusual, cheerful and evil, full of Dugin’s right-wing fairy tales, steep left and right materials. Speaking in the languages ​​of youth about youth in an accessible form. Talking about what to read, what to listen to, what to watch, immediately connecting any kid from a godforsaken city to the capital, to civilization – such a newspaper suddenly appears in the city of Nsk. It is read, passed from hand to hand, it causes fermentation of minds. She tosses seeds into the waiting soil of a Russian provincial town. A few months later, where “Limonka” hit, a circle was formed, and then a cell of the National Bolsheviks. These guys met, discussed the newspaper, then wrote to us. And they received – sometimes they waited a long time, but in the end, as a rule, they received – an answer. We sent them other issues of the newspaper, the exchange was tied up, the delivery began. This is how our first organizations appeared. We did not immediately understand this mechanism ourselves. When they understood, they began to use it.

At first, I only took care that our newspaper got into the largest possible number of cities. At first, Logos-M took from us from 5,000 to 3,600 copies of Limonka. By 1996, they began to take less. But not because there was no demand for us, but because it was unprofitable for kioskers to deal with us. They gave the reader millions of copies of Komsomolskaya Pravda, Arguments and Facts or AIDS-INFO, those newspapers that already had millions of readers. It was unprofitable for them to put us on their counter in one square meter. The newspaper and publishing business was the first in Russia to successfully become capitalist, operating in a free market mode. This market did not want to give way to a political opposition newspaper – that’s one thing. And secondly, we could not pay fat money for popularization. We didn’t have them.

Gradually, we switched to self-distribution. We took part of the newspapers to the Lenin Museum, where there was a patriotic press market, and handed them in bulk to opposition old women and old men. Some of the newspapers traveled by train to various cities in Russia and the CIS. We did not always receive money for our newspapers, but we invariably and stupidly delivered our newspapers to the stations. And newspapers were met in distant cities, and when we eventually counted the number of regional organizations of the NBP in 1998, we gasped: more than fifty regions were in our hands. They were conquered first by Limonka, and only then by the NBP.

You need to understand how Russian society works. Every Russian city has a small core of active youth, and everyone knows each other. It is clear that our newspaper could not interest criminals. But the youth of the counter-culture, the politically motivated youth, the alternatives, the rockers, the punks, all read us avidly. Not necessarily everyone went to the NBP, but everyone read! Each issue was expected (and expected!) with impatience. For what else is happening in the dull life of a provincial town? The newspaper gave unity with the youth movement throughout the country. I think that in the near future “Limonka” will be studied as the most important literary, cultural and political phenomenon of the late XX – early XXI century, which has no analogues in the history of Russia. The myopia of those who do not understand the size of this Beast called “Lemonka” is amazing. We were the absolute Beginners!

Through its revolutionary aesthetics (even in weak manifestations of hooliganism and debauchery), through the 4th lane, where new music, new video, new graphics, new cinema were promoted (in the end, the avant-garde cinema found refuge here – Salnikov and Mavromati, and the art avant-garde – Brener and Osmolovsky, and the poet Vitukhnovskaya, and the avant-garde musician Kuryokhin) – we hooked souls, even those far from politics. And then they began to read both the 2nd and 1st pages – the policy itself. We have managed to make politics not boring. Privatized the heroes of the world and left and right: Che Guevara and Manson, Mishima and Baader. Nobody in Russia needed them: we picked them up. And they gave our reader and party member as examples to follow.