"Pchela": What’s leftist and what’s rightist in Russia and in the world?

Eduard Limonov: There’s no longer any left or right. There’s the system and the enemies of the system. The system is the liberal democracy that triumphed everywhere, that noxious, shit-colored weed. The enemies of the system—that’s who we are, extreme Communists, extreme nationalists.

"Pchela": How would you assess the leftist and rightist movements in Piter?

- I think that in Piter and Moscow both the extreme left and extreme right are in a state of crisis now. There’s a re-evaluation of values going on, and the disappearance of most extremist organizations of the sectarian type. New, much more interesting political formations are emerging.

"Pchela": Was it worth trying to achieve the unambiguous victory of the Serbs in Yugoslavia?

- Yes, absolutely. Milosevic betrayed the interests of the Bosnian Serbs in order to serve the interests of his own voters from eastern Serbia, to serve the conservative monster of the peasantry, who were ready to agree to anything in order to restore ties to the West, so that fuel would be shipped in and their cars would run. Unfortunately, this is another example of how no nation is united: everyone voted for Milosevic, but Milosevic gave Serbian Krajina and Knin to the Croatians. An example of internal betrayal and the betrayal of Russia. Instead of the 70% of the land that the Serbs had controlled, they were left with 50%. The result is hundreds of thousands of refugees.

"Pchela": What is the attitude of the National Bolshevist Party to [Alexander] Lukashenko [president of Belarus] and to what’s happening in Belarus?

- The classical patriots support Lukashenko, but we regard him with some suspicion because we’re not sure that he won’t wind up the way President Meshkov did in the Crimea. That is, third parties will profit from this clash of the Belarussian Supreme Soviet and Lukashenko. His meddling, as I see it, is too high-handed. We’re in favor of the reunification of Russia, yes, but of a different Russia with a different Belarus.

"Pchela": What is the significance of Alexander Dugin in the NBP? What role does he play?

- Dugin is our ideologist, the party treasure, in a certain sense. That is, he plays the role of the high priest. I concern myself more with politics (that is, with genuine politics), while he handles ideology.

"Pchela": There are many literary styles in Limonka [The Hand Grenade, the NBP’s newspaper]—yours is one, for example, Dugin’s another. Could you point to a certain aesthetic core?

- There’s the style of Limonka proper. There’s Dugin’s style and my style, but there’s a style in Limonka that is a creative combination of these two and many other styles. That is, we change according to the talents which come our way. A new person comes in, he brings in something new. There’s this guy who’s started writing for us under the pseudonym Gastello—an excellent, interesting writer. He absolutely brought his own breath of fresh air to Limonka, made it more concrete, brighter, more contemporary. We have a lot of interesting writers.

"Pchela": What means are permissible in order to achieve political ends?

- All means are okay, except for betraying your ideals. You have to remember that our slogan is "Russia is everything—the rest is nothing," a credo which mustn’t be breached.

"Pchela": How would you evaluate the parliamentary elections, in which the NBP participated?

- To be honest, we didn’t expect to win. In the last elections for the Duma, it was already clear that it all came down to a confrontation between the moderate communists of the CPRF [Communist Party of the Russian Federation] and the regime. And we knew that there was no place for us or for other parties. Society was polarized. Therefore the results of these elections didn’t cause any heartbreak: it’s just that a hunting dog has to run and a party has to participate in elections. Our time will come and we’ll win all the elections, there’s no doubt about that. Today we’re satisfied that we occupy certain strata, a certain part of the population is behind us.