The National Bolshevik Party (, NBP) was a Russian political party that operated from 1993 until it was banned in 2007. Its members were known as Nazbols ().
Founded in 1993 by writer Eduard Limonov, political philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, and punk musician Yegor Letov, the NBP was seen as an attempt to unite left-wing and right-wing extremists on the same platform, with Ilya Ponomarev characterising the party as having "used a bizarre mixture of totalitarian and fascist symbols, geopolitical dogma, leftist ideas, and national-patriotic demagoguery." Dugin left the party in 1998, and from the early 2000s, the NBP focused on human rights activism as part of the anti-Putin movement in Russia, becoming known for its direct action tactics. In 2006, the NBP, alongside Garry Kasparov's United Civil Front and the Vanguard of Red Youth, formed The Other Russia coalition.
In 2007, the NBP was declared an extremist organization by the Supreme Court of Russia and was banned. The NBP was, at the time, the only large-scale nationwide organization officially recognized by a court as extremist under the Law on Combating Extremist Activity.
There have been smaller NBP groups in other post-Soviet countries, as well as in the United States and Israel. The party's official publication, the newspaper Limonka, derived its name from Limonov's surname and from the idiomatic Russian word for a grenade. The main editor of Limonka was, for many years, Aleksey Volynets. In 2010, Limonov and other former members founded a new party, The Other Russia of E. V. Limonov.
Ideology
Party platform
The NBP claimed inspiration from the National Bolshevik ideas that arose during the Russian Civil War, such as those of Nikolai Ustryalov, who came to believe that Bolshevism could be modified to serve nationalistic purposes. His followers, the Smenovekhovtsy, who then came to regard themselves as National Bolsheviks, borrowed the term from German politician Ernst Niekisch, who was initially associated with left-wing politics and later National Bolshevism. However, the NBP differed from their cited historical inspirations; while Ustryalov advocated for capitalism, the NBP instead agitated for nationalisation and a welfare state. According to scholar Marta Żakowska, the party's ideology "aligns more closely with recent leftist philosophical thought than with the historical projects it alludes to in its name".
The NBP's ideology and style were initially modeled after Italian fascism while the party simultaneously defended the Soviet Union's domestic policies, specifically those implemented under Stalinism, asserting that they were a means of preserving the country's "national and social justice." The party was described by observers as a mixture of far-left and far-right ideology. Some analysts have interpreted the totalitarian aesthetics, uniformity, and ideology of the NBP as a form of postmodern stiob, satire, and contrarianism.
The party's base was, especially in it's early days, very heterodox and considered a big tent of radicalized political groups and subcultures, which made the establishment of a unified party line that went beyond anti-establishment, as tried by Dugin, difficult. Sociologist Alexander Tarasov described the party as a "lifestyle party" in which everyone "projected their own political beliefs onto Limonov" and the party served as a "psychological outlet" for young people who were dissatisfied with Yeltsin's Russia. He described the party base as a bizarre mix of "retired Stalinists, former Trotskyists, postmodernist gays, Nazi skinheads, former anarchists, punks, bohemians, Orthodox traditionalists, Buddhist neophytes, and so on." According to Tarasov, the party had problems arranging seating plans as to avoid scuffles between the different groups.
Limonov, with his hypermasculine rebellious image and fashion style (black combat boots, leather jacket, tinted glasses) established a cult following among some young, disenfranchised men who flocked to the party.
According to the 1994 program, the global goal of National Bolshevism is the creation of an "Empire from Vladivostok to Gibraltar based on the Russian civilization," and the essence of National Bolshevism lies in "a withering hatred for the anti-human system of the trinity: liberalism/democracy/capitalism. A man of rebellion, a National Bolshevik sees his mission in destroying the system to its foundations. A traditionalist, hierarchical society will be built on the ideals of spiritual masculinity and social and national justice." National Bolshevism's external enemy was identified as "the Great Satan – the USA and the European mondialists". The party's aim after achieving power was to build "a total state, where human rights will give way to the rights of the nation" and "any separatist aspirations of national minorities will be ruthlessly suppressed". The party's economic program was to "terminate all agreements with the West" and build an autarkic socialist "economic dictatorship" with progressive nationalization. Other party positions included "the establishment of Russian sheriffs, empowered to deliver the culprit dead or alive; the live broadcasting of executions on television; a ban on abortions; and a legal obligation for all women between 25 and 35 years of age to give birth to at least four children".
After Dugin's departure from the party in 1998 and during Limonov's prison sentence in 2001-2003, the NBP experienced an ideological shift under the guidance of Vladimir Linderman, Limonov's second-in-command. Moving away from its previous right-wing and authoritarian positions, the party's main focus became human rights and pro-democratic activism, while retaining its Russian nationalism, anti-NATO sentiment, and left-wing economic positions. In its later years, the party publicly denounced fascism and rejected "any form of xenophobia, antisemitism, or racial intolerance" in favor of Great Russian civic nationalism; the party advocated for Russian nationalism on the basis of culture and language rather than ethnicity.
Limonov explained this ideological shift, stating:
On 29 November 2004, at the party's fifth congress, a new program was adopted. According to the new program, "the main goal of the National Bolshevik Party is to transform Russia into a modern, powerful state, respected by other countries and peoples and beloved by its own citizens". The program demanded the free development of civil society, freedom of independent media, public oversight of law enforcement, an end to the Second Chechen War via negotiation, and the protection of the rights of Russian-speaking people outside of Russia. The program was highly critical of Vladimir Putin's government and state institutions, stating that "the activities of the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs today pose no less of a threat to the security of Russian citizens than Chechen terrorists".
On the difference between the 1994 and 2004 programs, the party stated:
According to an FAQ document published by the party in 2005, the NBP "advocates social justice in the economy, imperial dominance in foreign policy, and civil and political freedoms in domestic politics" and that "a National Bolshevik state is harsh on the outside, against external enemies, and soft on the inside, for its own citizens (unlike today's Russia, whose government constantly compromises national interests on the global stage while oppressing its own people)." In economic policy, the document called for nationalisation of oligarch property and for state funds to be redistributed as reparations for privatisation; in foreign policy, it claimed as the party's goal the restoration of the USSR "as a counterweight to the growing appetites of the United States" but also to "fight against creeping Chinese expansion"; in domestic policy, it condemned Vladimir Putin's administration as "oligarchic, despotic, and anti-national" and the Kadyrov family as a "criminal clan".
Speaking on the colour revolutions, the document voiced ambivalent support:
Counterculture
Since its formation, the National Bolshevik Party has had relationships with the Russian counterculture in Russia, the post-Soviet countries, and Israel. National Bolsheviks often used shock aesthetics from the punk subculture in their propaganda and the NBP was structured more like an avant-garde art project than a political party in its early years. The NBP attracted a significant number of artists, punk musicians, and rock bands. Bands involved in the party included Letov's Grazhdanskaya Oborona, Kalinov Most, , Korrozia Metalla, , , Pop-Mechanics,, , , and Instruktsiya po Vyzhivaniyu. Punk music was considered one of the main modes of expression of the NBP. Some of these bands performed as part of the NBP-affiliated rock project Russkiy proryv ("Russian Breakthrough"). Limonov, who was involved in punk circles during his exile in New York City and called himself the "Johnny Rotten of literature", aimed at cultivating a following of punks, bohemians, and artists and wanted the NBP to become the leading organization of the Russian counterculture and avant-garde. In the manifesto of The Other Russia, NBP's unofficial successor party, Limonov wrote that the October Revolution was not organized by the "sailors, peasant and [...] workers", but by "misfits, hysterics, tramps, demagogues, orators, half-educated people, bums, and all kinds of rolling stones."
Party symbolism The symbols of the National Bolshevik Party are a combination of communist, national socialist, and Imperial Russian symbols; the party nonetheless denied any link to fascism and national socialism. The party's flag was first unveiled at a Yegor Letov concert in Moscow in 1993.
The party's motto was "Russia is everything, the rest is nothing!" (), and it adopted the greeting "Yes, death!" ().
History 1992–2000: origins and early years
In 1992, Eduard Limonov founded the National Bolshevik Front (NBF) as an amalgamation of six minor groups.Lee, p. 314 Aleksandr Dugin was among the earliest members and was instrumental in convincing Limonov to enter politics. The front first attracted attention in the same year when two members were arrested for possessing grenades. The incident gave the NBF publicity for a boycott campaign they were organizing against Western goods.Lee, p. 320 The NBF joined forces with the National Salvation Front (NSF), which was a broad coalition of Russian communists and nationalists.Lee, p. 321
The NSF was one of the leading groups involved in the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis, and Limonov participated in the clashes near the White House in Moscow on the side of the anti-Yeltsin opposition. When others within the coalition began to speak out against the NBF, it withdrew from the alliance.Lee, pp. 328–9
On 1 May 1993, Limonov and Dugin signed the declaration of the founding of the NBP:
Along with Dugin and Limonov, a co-founding member of the party was Siberian punk musician Yegor Letov, who was invited by Limonov. According to Limonov, Letov's membership in the party drew "thousands of recruits over the years", but he "proved to be inconsistent, capricious, and unpredictable". Other prominent musicians who were members of the NBP included Sergey Kuryokhin, Sergei "Pauk" Troitsky of Korrozia Metalla, Dmitry Revyakin of Kalinov Most, Limonov's then-wife Nataliya Medvedeva, Aleksandr Nepomnyashchiy, Slava Mogutin and Roman Konoplev. Artists who collaborated with the party included writers Alexei Tsvetkov and Zakhar Prilepin, filmmaker Oleg Mavromati, and mathematician Misha Verbitsky. Letov left the party around 1996, distancing himself from nationalism and reaffirming his support for anarchism.Сорокин, Кирилл Егор Летов. Средства «Обороны». Rolling Stone Russia, July 2007
On 28 November 1994, Limonov founded the Limonka, the official newspaper of the NBP.