SARATOV, Volga Region — Writer Eduard Limonov has never been one to keep his thoughts to himself, especially when it comes to “the evil force called The System.”
Under communism, Limonov’s anti-Soviet views got him expelled from the country. When he returned to Russia in the mid-1990s after 20 years abroad, he headed up a fringe ultranationalist movement and railed against the new regime in the Kremlin, preaching extremism and social justice “by any means necessary.”
This week, Limonov came crashing down on the Federal Security Service — now from a defendant’s cage in the Saratov regional court where he is on trial on charges of terrorism, illegal arms possession and creating an illegal armed formation together with five other members of his National Bolshevik Party. Limonov is also charged with calling for the violent overthrow of the government, as is one other defendant, Sergei Aksyonov, owner of the party-affiliated newspaper Limonka.
In a 10-hour statement to the court delivered Wednesday and Thursday, Limonov denied all four charges, saying the case against him had been fabricated in an attempt to get rid of radical dissident voices.
“This case is aimed at immersing our society in fear … and returning the country to a one-party system where only the party of power has a right to exist,” he read out from a sheaf of computer-typed pages.
Prosecutors say the NBP intended to overthrow the government through a partisan war waged from neighboring Kazakhstan, where there is a large population of discontented Russians and a weak army. Limonov, they say, articulated the methods for doing so.
Limonov has been in prison since April 2001, when a squad of security officers detained him, Aksyonov and four more party members outside the remote village of Bannoye in the Altai region, near the border with Kazakhstan. All were detained on weapons charges, but only Limonov and Aksyonov have been kept in custody.
The other four defendants on trial at the Saratov court — Dmitry Karyagin, Vladimir Pentelyuk, Nina Silina and Oleg Laletin — were detained separately, in Saratov and on an Ufa-bound train. They are charged with illegally buying and possessing arms, a crime that can carry a prison term of up to seven years, according to Limonov’s lawyer, Sergei Belyak.
However, as the investigation progressed, the charges against the group snowballed.
“This case is political and was ordered at the top, but who ordered it isn’t clear,” Belyak said in an interview Wednesday.
Limonov has been an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin. Less than a month before his arrest, Limonov published an article accusing Putin of having overly cozy, behind-the-scenes ties with aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, Belyak said.
Limonov’s dislike for the president went well beyond the bounds of political debate. He once went as far as calling Putin a latent homosexual.
Federal prosecutor Sergei Verbin said there has been no pressure on prosecutors, either from Moscow or Kazakhstan.
Asked whether he thought the terrorism and sedition charges held water, Verbin said he felt they were justified. He said Limonov was a charismatic radical capable of unleashing a violent force that he himself might end up being unable to bridle.
“Members of this party are young guys who get enthralled by these ideas, which is perfectly understandable,” Verbin said.
What many of the young Bolsheviks don’t understand, he said, is that their “revolutionary romanticism” — as Limonov describes his party’s style — could end in bloodshed.
Limonov is certainly a magnetic figure, with seemingly boundless energy.
At 59, he is lean and spry, with a neat goatee, long gray hair and dark eyes glinting behind thick glasses. During his 20 months behind bars, he has written seven books, four of which have been published, with the rest due out next year.
Belyak was optimistic that the case against Limonov will fall apart.
Of 27 witnesses called by the prosecution, only four stood by their original testimony, Belyak said, adding that the gravest charge of calling for a violent rebellion has not been proved thus far in court.
Verbin declined to comment on the strong and weak points of the prosecution’s case, saying it could affect the court proceedings. But he said he believed there was “serious” proof of Limonov’s guilt.
An FSB spokesman said Thursday that his agency would not comment now that the trial was under way.
But a high-ranking source in the Prosecutor General’s Office in Moscow acknowledged that investigators have done a patchy job, possibly because they were rushing to put together the more serious charges.
“The whole case against him is raw,” said the source, who is familiar with the evidence in the case.
As Limonov stood in his cage recounting the history of his party and his relations with the FSB, he methodically pointed out flaws in the prosecution’s case, citing witness testimony and specific pages from his voluminous case file.
Limonov himself characterized his party as a loose, unstructured group “more like a veterans’ club or an amateur choir,” and its members as “naive young patriots” whom he had no real means of controlling.
But, whether under Limonov’s orders or on their own, the Bolsheviks have been known to stir up trouble, both in Russia and in former Soviet republics — where Limonov says millions of Russians “have been left at the mercy of authoritarian regimes.”
NBP members have lobbed eggs, tomatoes and ink bottles at everything from the U.S. Embassy, during NATO’s bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, to Oscar-winning filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov. They have raided the offices of other political parties, including the liberal Union of Right Forces, and occupied a sailor’s club in the Ukrainian port city of Sevastopol, home to the once-disputed Black Sea Fleet.
A particular focus of the party’s ire has been Latvia, which has raised concerns among human rights activists over its treatment of its Russian-speaking minority. Three NBP members are now serving prison sentences for seizing part of Riga’s St. Peter’s Cathedral in November 2000.
Another flash point has been Kazakhstan.
Limonov conceded that his relations with Kazakh authorities have been strained. In his court statement, he said that when he visited Kazakhstan a few years ago, local authorities made him sign a document obligating him “not to interfere in Kazakhstan’s internal affairs.”
Prosecutors refer to an NBP plan to incite an uprising in northern Kazakhstan as the “Second Russia” program.
Limonov argued in court that there was no program, just a theory, an artistic concept.
“To seize power in the language of Limonka” — which is slang for hand grenade — “means the same thing as to attain power. It is not a call to armed rebellion,” Limonov told the court.
But Limonov’s politics have made not only his opponents wary. The Russian PEN Center has, along with other intellectuals, called on prosecutors to free Limonov for the duration of the trial. On Thursday, the PEN awarded him its prestigious Andrei Bely literary prize. But it has been careful to distance itself from his ideas.
And it is no wonder they make people nervous. In a hand-written note published in this month’s issue of Limonka congratulating the NBP on its eighth anniversary, Limonov writes: “We are opposed by an evil force. It’s called The System. You all know its names and faces, there’s no need to repeat them. Bureaucrats, generals, special services — these are the overfed bastards choking our Motherland, killing her on the fields and in the mountains of Chechnya, poisoning defenseless hostages, fellow citizens, with gas in Moscow. We know who they are. They dared to go against the people, and the people, whom the NBP knows, will trample them to bits.”
The trial began in July, but was then suspended until September. It is now in the so-called third phase, in which defendants testify. Witnesses for the prosecution and defense were questioned earlier.
Verbin said he expected a verdict by late February or early March.
Natalia Yefimova, The Moscow Time
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