release, he defiantly wrote a song about Lenin "rotting in his mausoleum". Letov was a polarizing figure in the Soviet Union. He was controversial in the mid-to-late 1980s when he satirized the Soviet system and developed a gritty Siberian punk sound. After the fall of the Soviet Union, during the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis, Letov developed a fan base among nationalists and communists due to his strong opposition of Yeltsin's government. Letov was one of the founders and the first member of the National Bolshevik Party. He ceased contact with the party around 1999 and distanced himself from politics. In his 2007 interview with Rolling Stone Russia, Letov stated: "In fact, I have always been an anarchist—and I still am. But now I'm more into ecological aspects of contemporary anarchism, eco-anarchism, that's what I've been moving toward recently". In 1997, Letov married Natalia Chumakova, the bass guitarist of Grazhdanskaya Oborona. Letov died of heart failure in his sleep on 19 February 2008 at his home in Omsk. He was 43 years old. Influences In an interview, Letov expressed that his favorite poets were Alexander Vvedensky (1904–1941), one of the OBERIU writers, and the Russian Futurist poets, such as Vladimir Mayakovsky and Aleksei Kruchenykh. At the beginning of his interest in poetry he was influenced by the Austrian poet Erich Fried. He also expressed his interest in Conceptualism, and spoke of his own work in punk music and in creating a public image as a work of conceptual performance art. Letov's favorite writers, who considerably affected his world view and writing style, were Andrei Platonov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Henry Miller, Bruno Schulz, Flann O'Brien, Leonid Andreev, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Kōbō Abe, and Kenzaburō Ōe. His worldview was also inspired by Existentialist philosophy, traditions of Russian Cosmism, and Latin American magic realism (Julio Cortázar, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez). In music, Letov was a big 60s psychedelic and garage rock fan, especially citing Arthur Lee's Love as his favorite band, as well as Texas noise rock band Butthole Surfers, Genesis P-Orridge's Psychic TV, and The Residents. Other notable influences include Sonic Youth, Ramones, The Stooges, The Velvet Underground, The Fall, Dead Kennedys, The Birthday Party, Swans, Joy Division, Throbbing Gristle, and Einstürzende Neubauten. He also cited industrial, ska and reggae, avant-garde composers such as John Cage, medieval and baroque classical music, Soviet VIA bands and various folk music as influences on Grazhdanskaya Oborona,