Nikolai Yurievich Verzhbitsky (born 12 February 1980), known as Nicolai Lilin, is an Italian‑Moldovan writer and tattoo artist from Transnistria. He moved to Italy in the early 2000s and published his first novel, Siberian Education, in 2009; it was later adapted into a 2013 film. The novel, which Lilin claimed was based on his own experiences as a member of a Siberian criminal gang in his native Bender, became a bestseller in Italy, though a number of journalists and historians have labelled it a fake memoir. Similar criticisms were directed at its sequel, Free Fall, which recounts the author's alleged experiences during the Second Chechen War.
Although he initially presented himself as a vocal critic of Russia under Vladimir Putin, Lilin has consistently adopted anti‑Ukrainian and anti‑Western positions since the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian War. He has drawn attention for expressing Eurasianist views and for disseminating conspiracy theories, false information and defamatory remarks.
Biography Ancestry Lilin claims to be the descendent of nomadic, Christianised, formerly tiger-venerating indigenous Siberian people who adorned themselves with tattoos meant to symbolise their life experiences and to serve as identification, a practice he says dates back 5,000 years. He has given differing accounts as to the exact provenance of his ancestors, from southern Siberia in 2011, to Yakutia in 2017. These natives, which he calls "Efey", would raid Indian and Chinese caravan convoys until they were purged by tsarist forces. A splinter group called "Urkas" took refuge in the taiga and formed a criminal organization, resisting all attempts at subjugating them until finally being defeated by the Soviets. By order of Stalin, the Urkas were deported to Bender, Moldova in 1938.
Lilin's claims regarding his heritage have been disputed. Former Kremlinologist and La Stampa journalist , as well as criminologist , noted that "Urka" does not denote an ethnic group as Lilin claims, but is a term first recorded in the early 20th century referring to professional thieves,Varese, Federico (14 January 2011), "Tattoo tales", Times Literary Supplement, no. 5624, p. 23 while historian Pavel Polian noted that the Efey never existed. Both Polian and Varese, as well as historian Donald Rayfield, anthropologist Michael Bobick and Kommersant journalist Elena Chernenko, further pointed out that the victims of population transfer in the Soviet Union were sent to Siberia, but never from there, and that Stalin could not have deported the Urkas to Bender in 1938, as the city was still part of Romania. Lilin himself would admit in an interview with Le Monde that he didn't know who the Urkas were exactly, having been told about them by his grandfather, but was unable to find any corroborating archive material. When asked about the inconsistency of Siberians being deported to Moldova during an interview with Vanity Fair, Lilin stated that the Urkas were sent to do the Soviet regime's "dirty work" in ridding Bender of pro-European Jews, Ukrainian nationalists, Romanians and Moldovans.
According to an uncle of Lilin, the Verzhbitskys originated in Poland, and settled in Moldova during the 19th century. A rehabilitation letter and data uncovered by Memorial regarding Lilin's great-grandfather show that he was not a deported Siberian criminal, but a Kurtamysh-based factory worker born in Tiraspol who was executed by the NKVD in 1938 on charges of being a Romanian agent.
Early life
Lilin was born Nikolai Yurievich Verzhbitsky to Yuri and Lilia in Bender, in the Moldavian SSR. He describes a poverty-stricken childhood with no bathroom and where gas and electricity were considered luxuries. He stated in a 2010 interview that he had never attended school, though he would contradict this in subsequent writings and interviews. In an interview with Delo, he described an incident where his father discovered he had smoked for the first time, and was forced to smoke three packets of cigarettes in a row as punishment, receiving beatings if he tried stopping. This resulted in him being hospitalised for a week, and left him with the habit of vomiting when in the vicinity of someone smoking.
Lilin claims that at the age of 12, with the outbreak of the Transnistria War, he was handed a firearm for the first time, and was involved with other children in gathering intelligence and munitions during the battle of Bender. He alleges that during the conflict he lost an uncle and a cousin to a gang of neo-Nazis led by Andriy Parubiy. He states that after the war, he took part in a gang war alongside his father, who was a bank robber. His parents separated after his father suffered three assassination attempts and moved to Greece, while his mother moved to Italy, leaving Lilin with his grandparents. Lilin describes his grandfather as an elder member of a criminal gang who first taught him the ways of the Urkas and acted as a surrogate father. In several interviews, he claimed that his grandfather was a Siberian hunter and Gulag survivor who, despite being anticommunist, fought as a sniper during World War II and was on the same convoy that took Vasily Zaitsev to Stalingrad.
Lilin has stated that he served nine months of a four-year sentence in a maximum security juvenile prison at the age of 12 for attempted murder after stabbing a drug pusher in self-defence. He also claims that he maimed a man who had driven a young boy to suicide. Lilin states that he killed for the first time at age 14, with the victim being a "Gypsy" drug dealer whom he shot with his grandfather's revolver. Still at age 14, per his narrative, he stabbed a boy in the back, leaving him paralysed for life. A character profile of Lilin from Transnistria, however, states that his only recorded crimes involved stealing boats on the Dniester.
According to Igor Popushnoy, a resident of Bender who knew Lilin since he was 19, Lilin habitually invented stories about himself, and had never served time in prison, having instead earned a living in law enforcement. Another acquaintance from Bender, Viktor Dadetsky, implied that Lilin was influenced by the movies he had borrowed from his video rental shop, particularly Fight Club and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Service in Chechnya Lilin claims that at age 18 he began serving in the Russian army. In a Vanity Fair interview, he claimed he was drafted while studying yoga in India, while in an interview with Oliver Bullough he stated he had volunteered. He further claims to have served for two years and three months in the antiterrorism corps of the GRU during the Second Chechen War. Some Italian sources state he served in the 56th Guards Air Assault Regiment.
He claims to have briefly taken part in the battle of Grozny and said in an interview with Il Giornale that his unit had tortured prisoners of war. He claims he encountered very few Chechen guerrillas during the conflict, instead fighting mercenaries from Afghanistan, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. He has described two instances during the war in which he was nearly killed: the first occurring when he was shot in the chest with an AK-47, surviving thanks to his body armour, the second happening when a vehicle he was travelling in was capsized by a grenade launcher which left two comrades dead and himself with damage to his hearing.
Inquiries undertaken by Elena Chernenko however show that his name does not appear in any sources close to the Russian Ministry of Defence, and his old acquaintance Igor Popushnoy stated that he had never served in the army, while Donald Rayfield expressed doubt as to whether a citizen of Transnistria could have been drafted by the Russian armed forces.
Private security Lilin claims that after leaving the army, he attempted to find work in Saint Petersburg, but was rebuffed for being a war veteran. While there, he was arrested for illegal firearm ownership and held in custody for several months, during which he claims to have been regularly beaten. Per his narrative, he later worked as a private security guard for a Russian opposition group with links to Chechen terrorists. He later spent three years working for a private Israeli security company as an antiterrorism consultant. He states that at one point he worked as a drill instructor for the Afghan National Security Forces.
He concluded his service after injuring his leg in Iraq while working as a bodyguard for Western businessmen. In an article he wrote for L'Espresso, he stated that he had been shot, while in his interview with Elena Chernenko, he stated that his leg was injured by a landmine, subsequently elaborating that it had been triggered after an American serviceman jumped on it. He states that he later moved to Siberia to live with his great-uncle by the Lena river, while struggling with PTSD. After retiring, he claims to have been contacted by an ex comrade offering him a position in a pro-Gaddafi mercenary group during the Libyan civil war, which he refused.
Move to Italy
Lilin moved to Italy in 2003 or 2004. Prior to this, he states that he had been a vagrant travelling throughout Europe, at one point becoming romantically involved with a neo-Nazi in Germany "who was proud to be the granddaughter of an SS officer". He then went to the United Kingdom, but left the country after using a knife during a brawl. Per his narrative, he subsequently moved to Northern Ireland and started a relationship with a woman whose family had ties to the IRA.
He says he had originally intended to settle in Ireland to work as a fisherman, but was tricked into going to Italy by his mother, who lied about having cancer. He claims that, from 2005, he spent two years working for a Vatican-affiliated security company infiltrating Satanic cults, during which he claims to have uncovered a child sex ring operating in Europe and Russia, and thwarted the summoning of a Swiss Satanic cult leader to a Turin nightclub. He also credits himself with uncovering the presence of MS-13 in Turin. He further claims that he once suffered an assassination attempt in Turin by Islamic radicals who planted a bomb under his car.
He briefly lived as an illegal immigrant after his residence permit expired. His situation remained precarious until he was discovered in 2005 by playwright Franco Collimato of the Libre cultural association in Turin. He acted as a consultant for Collimato's 2006 play AK, il Canto dei Catari (AK: Song of the Cathars), coaching the actors during action sequences.
Literary career Siberian Education In 2005, while working for Libre, Lilin was asked to write stories for the association's website. His writings were forwarded to the Einaudi publishing house by playwright Giorgio Cattaneo, and he was commissioned to write what would become Siberian Education.
The novel is said to be based on Lilin's childhood experiences among exiled Siberian gangsters in Transnistria. It quickly became a bestseller in Italy, ranking number 10 on la Repubblicas list of top ten most sold books in April 2009. By July of that year, the book had sold over 50,000 copies domestically and had been published in 40 countries by 2011. The novel was adapted into a film directed by Gabriele Salvatores in 2013. Lilin helped write the screenplay, and applied tattoos on John Malkovich in order to portray his character. A stage adaptation followed shortly after.
Praise