On Friday, a number of vehicles carrying several dozen police, at least one court marshal and, it appears, several firefighters from the Emergency Situations Ministry pulled up to a residential building in southwestern Moscow. They spent several hours using welding equipment to cut through two steel doors leading to a basement space, where they ultimately detained 15 members of the National Bolshevik Party. What was this about? The police were carrying out a decision made by the Moscow Arbitration Court back in March ordering the NBP to vacate the premises, which were rented in the name of a fictitious company called Honest Entrepreneurs. The exact legal grounds for the decision were unclear. By all accounts, the NBP had been an exemplary tenant. It paid its bills on time, and its members had turned a semi-abandoned space into a habitable basement. (more…)
Archive for June, 2005
Eviction for Convictions
Monday, June 20th, 2005Party Style
Friday, June 17th, 2005
In 1994 I have founded National-Bolsheviks party. I was so sick of conventional politics that I have decided to create some entirely new idiology based on style. Much later I have declared that National-Bolsheviks were in existence before National-Bolsheviks Party was created. Yes, when in 1994 somebody asked Egor Letov, Russian punk idol, why he is so poorly dressed, I was present in that moment. Letov answered that he is wearing clothes which his admirers normally wear. “And they are poor people, you know,” explained Letov. “That why I wear cheap baskets, he pointed at his sneakers.”
Taking example from Letov we have recommended to our followers in few first issues of “Limonka” to wear black jeans, black footwear, to cut their hair short. That was precisely those clothes that poor moscovits youngsters were sporting in those days, and now. So our party style was an imitation of street style. In that very sense it is true that National-Bolsheviks were valking streets of Russian cities before National-Bolsheviks Party was created. Black is very practical colour, stains and dirt are less visible on black clothes. Later some vise journalists wanted to tie our black clothes to fascist black shorts. I always pointed out that poor moscovites youngsters are dressing up in black. And short hear is practical, it doesn’t require much care.
A New Life for Orderly Lefortovo
Tuesday, June 7th, 2005
When Lefortovo is removed from the jurisdiction of the Federal Security Service and placed like all other penitentiary facilities under the Justice Ministry, the legend of the much-feared, high-security prison may finally draw to a close.
At Lefortovo, prisoners suffer extreme isolation, and routine prison regulations are followed to a depressing degree, but this also can make time spent there more tolerable, former inmates say.
“I feel a strange pity for the place. After the FSB gives it away, the super-orderly Lefortovo will turn into a regular, stinking jail,” said writer Eduard Limonov, who spent 15 months in Lefortovo in 2002 and 2003 as the FSB investigated his radical National Bolshevik Party. (more…)