Víctor Serge

Victor Serge (1890-1947), historian, translator and novelist, a Belgian-born Russian, was politically active in seven countries, participated in three revolutions, and spent more than ten years in various captivities. He was born in political exile of Russian anarchist parents who had been implicated in the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, and he died in exile in Mexico. Russia Twenty Years After, his first major work, was written just after his harrowing release and expulsion from the Stalinist gulag, where he had spent three years as an intransigent oppositionist to the regime. It is still one of the most important documentary accounts of the then-emerging Stalinist system. Stalin almost stilled Serge's voice, but in exile Serge, along with Leon Trotsky, took up the defense of those falsely accused and silenced and tried to alert the world to what Stalin was doing in the name of socialism in the USSR, and to analyze how the Russian Revolution, which had been the hope for humankind, was in the process of devouring itself. This edition also includes Serge's "Thirty Years after the Russian Revolution," his eloquent summary and analysis of the Stalinist counterrevolution that has never before been published in English. The introductory essay by Susan Weissman introduces the reader to Serge, evaluating his contribution to our current understanding of the former Soviet Union. She also updates Serge's accounts of the fate of various oppositionists with information from the newly opened Soviet archives.

Préface de Richard Greeman Textes inédits, choisis et annotés par Anthony Glinoer

Exposé of the surveillance methods used by the Czarist police that describes the structures of state repression and how to dodge them and that explains how such repression is ultimately ineffective. This broad discussion on the oft-recycled tools of harassment and provocation is as relevant today as it was in pre-revolutionary Russia. – from publisher information.

Summary:Startlingly human and unflinchingly honest, this thinly veiled fictionalized firsthand account of talented political writer Victor Serge's time in prison is an important addition to the canon of prison writing as well as an unfiltered view of humanity in the early 20th century. Rejecting the opportunity to present political propaganda, Serge's portrayal of imprisonment is instead an insightful and emotionally wrought tale of repression. The depraving brutality that Serge experienced behind bars is at once a mirror of a society at war and a deeply personal question of purpose. Originally publis

Dans Paris, à la veille et au début de l'Occupation allemande, l'auteur trace d'amples tableaux où passent, s'agitent des personnages très finement observés qui vivent leurs derniers instants de liberté.

"Providing a complete picture of Victor Serge’s relationship to anarchist action and doctrine, this volume contains writings going back to his teenage years in Brussels, where he became influenced by the doctrine of individualist anarchism. At the heart of the anthology are key articles written soon after his arrival in Paris in 1909, when he became editor of the newspaper 'l'anarchie.' In these articles Serge develops and debates his own radical thoughts, arguing the futility of mass action and embracing 'illegalism.' Serge’s involvement with the notorious French group of anarchist armed robbers, the Bonnot Gang, landed Serge in prison for the first time in 1912. The book includes both his prison correspondence with his anarchist comrade Émile Armand and articles written immediately after his release. The book also includes several articles and letters written by Serge after he had left anarchism behind and joined the Russian Bolsheviks in 1919. Here Serge analyzed anarchism and the ways in which he hoped anarchism would leaven the harshness and dictatorial tendencies of Bolshevism. Included here are writings on anarchist theory and history, Bakunin, the Spanish revolution, and the Kronstadt uprising. Anarchists Never Surrender anthologizes Victor Serge’s previously unavailable texts on anarchism and fleshes out the portrait of this brilliant writer and thinker, a man I. F. Stone called one of the 'moral figures of our time'"--From Amazon.com.