[5] By Limonov's own account, he began writing "very bad" poetry at the age of thirteen and soon after became involved in theft and petty crime as an adolescent hooligan.

[4] In 1966,[6] together with his first actual wife, Anna Moiseevna Rubinstein, (their marriage was not registered officially)[7][2] he first came to Moscow, earning money sewing trousers (Limonov "dressed" many in the intelligentsia; sculptor Ernst Neizvestny and poet Bulat Okudzhava among others), but later returned to Kharkov.

[7] During his period in Moscow, Limonov was involved in the Konkret poets' group and sold volumes of his self-published poetry while doing various day jobs.

Limonov's New York acquaintances included Studio 54's Steve Rubell and a Trotskyist group, the Socialist Workers Party.

[12] I did not find the freedom to be a radical opponent of the existing social structure of the country which pompously calls itself the 'leader of the free world,' but neither did I notice it in the land which represents itself as the 'future of all humanity.'

He managed to afford a room in a miserable hostel and spent time with homeless persons, some of whom he had casual sexual intercourse with, as related in ‘’It’s me, Eddie’’, published in France under the title Le poète russe préfère les grands nègres.

Finally, disillusioned with the country he termed "a damned outhouse bereft of spirit or purpose on the outskirts of civilization", Limonov left America for Paris with his lover Natalya Medvedeva in 1980, where he became active in French literary circles.

Paweł Pawlikowski's film Serbian Epics includes footage of him meeting with Radovan Karadžić, then the Bosnian Serb president and later a convicted war criminal, on the front lines of Sarajevo in 1992.

The film also shows Limonov participating in a sniper patrol and firing a few rounds with a machine gun on the outskirts of the besieged city.

[13][14][15][16] When asked about the incident in 2010, Limonov said he had been shooting at a target range and that Pawlikowski added an extra camera angle to make it appear he had fired into a populated area.

[17] On another occasion, Limonov said that he "celebrated his 50th birthday in Kninska Krajina ... by firing from a Russian-made heavy gun at Croatian Army headquarters.

In 1993, together with figures like Aleksandr Dugin and Yegor Letov, he founded the National Bolshevik Party which started to publish a newspaper called Limonka (the Russian nickname for the lemon-shaped F1 hand grenade; also a play on his pen name Limonov).

[20] In 1996, a Russian court judged in a hearing that the NBP paper Limonka had disseminated illegal and immoral information: "in essence, E. V. Limonov (Savenko) is an advocate of revenge and mass terror, raised to the level of state policy."

The court decided to recommend issuing an official warning to Limonka, to investigate the possibility of examining whether Limonov could be held legally responsible, and to publish its decision in Rossiiskaia gazeta.

[22] Limonov was jailed in April 2001 on charges of terrorism, the forced overthrow of the constitutional order, and the illegal purchase of weapons.

[31][32][33][34] The Other Russia also created a militia called "Interbrigades" to support the separatist movement in Donbas; they took part in the battles for Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, and also were engaged in the protection of the leader of Limonov during his visit to the Luhansk region.

[36] It was reported that Limonov had been battling cancer; complications from two surgery procedures such as throat problems, struggles with oncology, and inflammation were cited as the direct cause of his death.

Your obedient servant—Christian Eduard Kracht (truthfully my middle name)"[38] Limonov's works were scandalous for the Russian public, once they began to be published in the USSR during the late perestroika era.

The author later argued that such scenes were purely fiction; however, his fellow Russian nationalists were nevertheless appalled by such descriptions in Limonov's work.

Thus, the Neo-Nazi leader Alexander Barkashov remarked to a journalist of Komsomolskaya Pravda concerning Limonov: "Если лидер педераст, то он родину продаст."