National Bolshevik Party - History

History

In 1992, Eduard Limonov founded the National Bolshevik Front as an amalgamation of six minor groups. Aleksandr Dugin was amongst the earliest members, and was instrumental in convincing Limonov to enter politics. The party first attracted attention in 1992 when two members were arrested for possessing grenades, although Limonov argued that they had been planted. The incident gave the NBP publicity for a boycott campaign they were organising against Western goods.

In 1992, the NBF joined the National Salvation Front coalition. When others within the coalition began to speak out against the NBF, it withdrew from the alliance. The resulting fallout led the NBP to produce a document entitled Limonov vs. Zhirinovsky, which criticized the leader of their former allies, the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, stating that "a Jew masquerading as a Russian nationalist is a sickness, a pathology" (Zhirinovsky having a Jewish background). Following the aborted alliance, the NBP attempted to reach a new deal with Russian National Unity in 1999, but this came to nothing.

Although these early actions showed alignment and sympathy with nationalist groups, a split occurred in the NBP in the 2000s which changed this to an extent. Opposed to the Vladimir Putin regime, Limonov somewhat liberalized the NBP and joined forces with leftist and liberal groups to oppose Putin.

In 2001, Eduard Limonov was arrested with NBP members on charges of illegaly purchasing of weapons. In 2003, Limonov was released from Lefortovo Prison. On August 2, 2004, NBP members occupied the Ministry of Health in Moscow in order to protest the cancellation of social benefits. This was followed by an attempt to occupy Putin's office in December of the same year, although that was put down, and 30 arrests were made.

The NBP was banned by a lower court in June 2005, but the Russian Supreme Court overturned that ban on August 16, 2005. In November 2005, however, the Russian Supreme Court upheld a ban on the party on the grounds that the NBP called itself a political party without being registered as such.

In August 2006, an anti-Limonovist faction of the NBP that was more right-wing, anti-liberal, ant-left, anti-Kasparov and aggressively nationalist formed the National Bolshevik Front.

On November 7, 2006, police detained 27 NBP members after an office break-in on the eve of the celebration of the October Revolution. In 2007, the NBP took part in a Dissenters' March and subsequent demonstrations against the Putin government.

The NBP was outlawed again on 19 April 2007.

In 2009, NBP members took part in Strategy-31, a series of civic protests in support of the right to peaceful assembly. In July 2010, members of the banned NBP founded the new political party The Other Russia. The NBP continued to organize, however, and in May 2011, NBP activists attacked the Embassy of Serbia in Moscow in solidarity with Ratko Mladić.