Russian writer Eduard Limonov has died

2020-03-17T20:07:22.705Z

The writer and militant Eduard Limonov has died. His party announced this, according to Interfax. Limonov died in a Moscow clinic, said writer and MP Serghei Shargunov. He was 77 years old. "He stayed in touch until the last moment, he spoke, we could write to him," added Shargunov, who did not indicate the cause of death. Information on the writer's death was also confirmed by his assistant. According to Mash, Limonov "underwent two operations" in the day. "First she had throat problems, then an inflammation started," writes the newspaper. According to the publication, Limonov was hospitalized on March 15 in a private clinic after "a long oncological battle". Limonov announced on his Facebook page on March 13 that he had signed a contract for a new book with the Individuum publishing house. "The volume has already been written," he said. Poet, writer, dissident, politician (but above all bastian contrary). Limonov was made famous outside Russia by the very successful book of the same name by Emmanuel Carrère, perhaps the first case in the world of an author more famous as a character than as a writer. In reality, Limonov was known to everyone at home. For his books, of course, and also for his forays into the realm of politics. Synthesizing his 77 years on stage is almost impossible. There are the Soviet years, the rise from nothing to glamor in words, the American exile, the French period, the return after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the crazy years of 'reformist' politics, fought by the columns of the his newspaper Limonka (hand grenade, in Russian) and from the ranks of his party, the National-Bolsheviks (aka Naz-Bol). A militancy - shared with Alexander Dugin, the ultra-nationalist philosopher often described as Putin's ideologue - which cost him jail in 2001, for subversive and unconstitutional activity. Limonov in the beginning criticized Putin harshly - "he stole the program", he said - but then, after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, he somehow rehabilitated him, although he immediately overtook him on the right. His position on the Ukrainian question was nothing short of fundamentalist - "it is a country of fantasy and will end up dismembered" - and, if it were up to him, he would have sent Russian tanks to half of Europe. "I'd like to die in battle," he said. But political struggle - and writing - have never been too far from its center of gravity, given that it had founded a new party (Other Russia) and recently joined protests against Putin's constitutional reform designed to secure perpetual command. In the last period he had started traveling again, hosted in 2018 at the Turin motor show (first trip abroad after returning to Russia in the 90s), to present the autobiographical novel 'Zona Industriale'. "Carrère? We will have met three times." As if to say: whipped cream. "But it was fundamental for me, it made me known".