The Russian writer, politician and Soviet-era dissident Eduard Limonov has died at 77. His controversial 1970s memoir ‘It’s me, Eddie’ scandalized Russia when first published in the country in 1991, selling over a million copies.
His death was announced by State Duma (national parliament) deputy and chief editor of ‘Yunost’ magazine Sergei Shargunov. His assistant Dmitry Sidorenko subsequently confirmed it to Moscow daily RBK. He didn’t specify a cause of death but said it happened on Tuesday.
Born in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod (then Gorky) region in 1943, as Eduard Savenko, to a military family, Limonov mostly grew up in Kharkov, in Soviet Ukraine. He moved to Moscow in the 1960s where he wrote poetry and became active in literary circles. in 1973, Limonov and his second wife, Elena Shchapova, emigrated from the Soviet Union. Soon after, she left him and married an Italian Count.
Limonov settled in New York, working for a Russian-language newspaper and immersing himself in radical politics and the punk sub-culture. He complained about harassment from the FBI, writing that “the FBI is just as zealous in putting down American radicals as the KGB is with its own radicals and dissidents… [but] the methods of the FBI are more modern.”
He later wrote about this period in ‘It’s me, Eddie’ where he detailed casual sexual encounters with homeless people. In France, where it was first published, it was titled ‘The Russian Poet Prefers Big Blacks (Le poète russe préfère les grands nègres.’
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