Memoirs of a Revolutionary
by Victor Serge
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"A New York Review Books Original Victor Serge is one of the great men of the twentieth century: anarchist, revolutionary, agitator, theoretician, historian of his times, and a fearless truthteller. Here Serge describes his upbringing in Belgium, the child of a family of exiled Russian revolutionary intellectuals, his early life as an activist, his time in a French prison, the active role he played in the Russian Revolution, as well as his growing dismay at the Revolutionary regime's ever show more more repressive and murderous character. Expelled from the Soviet Union, Serge went to Paris, and barely escaped the Nazis to find a final refuge in Mexico. Memoirs of a Revolutionary describes a thrilling life on the frontlines of history and includes brilliant portraits of politicians from Trotsky and Lenin and Stalin to major writers like Alexander Blok and Andrey Bely. Above all, it captures the sensibility of Serge himself, that of a courageous and singularly appealing advocate of human liberation who remained undaunted in the most trying of times. Peter Sedgwick's fine translation of Serge's Memoirs of a Revolutionary was cut by a fifth when it was first published in 1963. This new edition is the first in English to present the entirety of Serge's book"--Provided by publisher. "Victor Serge is one of the great men of the twentieth century, anarchist, revolutionary, agitator, theoretician, historian of his times, and a fearless truthteller. Here Serge describes his upbringing in Belgium, the child of a family of exiled Russian revolutionary intellectuals, his early life as an activist, his time in a French prison, the active role he played in the Russian Revolution, as well his growing dismay at the Revolutionary regime's ever more repressive and murderous character. Expelled from the Soviet Union, Serge went to Paris, and barely escaped the Nazis to find a final refuge in Mexico. Memoirs of a Revolutionary describes a thrilling life on the frontlines of history and includes brilliant portraits of politicians from Trotsky and Lenin and Stalin and of major writers like Alexander Blok and Andrey Bely. Above all, it captures the sensibility of Serge himself, that of a courageous and singularly appealing advocate of human liberation who remained undaunted in the most trying of times. Peter Sedgwick's fine translation of Serge's Memoirs of a Revolutionary was cut by a fifth when it was first published in 1963. This new edition is the first in English to present the entirety of Serge's book. "--Provided by publisher. show lessTags
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Mémoires d'un revolutionaire par Victor Serge was first published in 1951. I read the English translation by Peter Sedgwick published in 1963. It is a long time since I have read such a fascinating autobiography. Serge was an anarchist, a Bolshevik, a Trotskyist, a revisionist Marxist; he was a journalist, a poet, a pamphleteer, a historian, an agitator and a novelist, but more importantly when he arrived in Russia in 1919 he was put to work in the newly formed Comintern and became friendly with the leading Bolsheviks who worked directly to Lenin. After the death of Lenin he became a leading figure in the opposition to the rise of Stalinist leadership in Leningrad working closely with Trotskyist supporters. He was expelled from the show more communist party in 1927 and shortly after arrested and imprisoned for a couple of months. On his release from prison he was no longer able to take an active part in politics. In March 1933 he was arrested again by the Soviet secret police and after a long period of solitary confinement and interrogation he was deported to Orenburg in the Ural region where he endured extreme hardship due to famine and constant surveillance. Following an international campaign organised by friends in Paris he was granted leave to exit the Soviet Union. He engaged in intense correspondence with the exiled Trotsky which led to disagreements, but he also assisted anti-Stalinist refugees and anti fascists in Paris. With the fall of France in 1940 he fled Paris with his son and lived a precarious existence in Marseilles before finally obtaining passage to Mexico. He continued to be harassed by various communist parties and was in fear of his life at the hands of the Soviet secret service.
His story is a fascinating one on its own but his steadfast character and his courage under intense provocation are qualities that I admired. In 1944 he wrote to Tolstoy's daughter and said;
"There is nobody left who knows what the Russian Revolution was really like, what the Bolsheviks were really like and men judge without knowing, with bitterness and basic rigidity"
He was there, he saw it all, and a key phrase in the letter is "there is nobody left" because many of his colleagues disappeared into the Gulags, or were executed or died from hardship. He himself reflected that he had spent a third of his adult life in prison (as a young man he had spent five years in prison in Belgium for his connection with an anarchist group).. He was against much of the violence handed down by the communist leaders, but realised it was necessary at certain times to take action. He documents the hardship of living in Russia at the time of the revolution, the struggle to find enough to eat, the lack of most creature comforts, even basic clothing was difficult to obtain and Russian winters are cold. The revolutionary governments struggling to accommodate themselves in the grand palace's of St Petersburg, when they could not even find means to keep warm. He also tells of incidents in the civil war between the red and white armies and Trotsky's decisive actions in leading the red army.
In addition to the story of his life and the pen portraits of the leading players, he also thinks deeply about the course of the revolution and the mistakes that were made and also of the difficulties the revolutionaries faced. The memoirs end with Serge reflecting on his life and his continued optimism for the future, even though the left and socialism were already in retreat in 1947. He fiercely castigates those communists who would not admit to the horrors of the Stalin regime.
"I have outlived three generations of brave men, mistaken as they may have been, to whom I was deeply attached, and whose memory remains dear to me. And here again, I have discovered that it is nearly impossible to live a life devoted to a cause which one believes to be just; a life, that is where one refuses to separate thought from daily action................... I must confess that the feeling of having so many dead men at my back, many of them my betters in energy, talent and historical character, has often overwhelmed me; and that this feeling has been for me also the source of a certain courage, if that is the right word for it."
He also says that his experiences have taught him that the evils of intolerance and the drive towards the persecution of dissent comes from a belief in the ruling elite that they have absolute possession of the truth, grafted on doctrinal rigidity and that led them to a contempt for the man who was different who thought differently and had a different way of life. He warns about the dangers of tyrants and the fascist way of shouting louder than everyone else to get their way.
"The end far from justifying the means commands its own means"
Reading this book gave me pause for thought. At the moment I am of the opinion that the third world war has already started with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israeli's genocide in Gaza. We are faced with dealing with tyrannical regimes in China, Russia, and America which will result in a fractured Europe, with the rise of the far right. Perhaps therefore Victor Serge's optimism for the future is misplaced and once again we will have learned nothing from history. This does not mean that we should stop reading powerful autobiographies like this one from Victor Serge and so 5 stars. show less
His story is a fascinating one on its own but his steadfast character and his courage under intense provocation are qualities that I admired. In 1944 he wrote to Tolstoy's daughter and said;
"There is nobody left who knows what the Russian Revolution was really like, what the Bolsheviks were really like and men judge without knowing, with bitterness and basic rigidity"
He was there, he saw it all, and a key phrase in the letter is "there is nobody left" because many of his colleagues disappeared into the Gulags, or were executed or died from hardship. He himself reflected that he had spent a third of his adult life in prison (as a young man he had spent five years in prison in Belgium for his connection with an anarchist group).. He was against much of the violence handed down by the communist leaders, but realised it was necessary at certain times to take action. He documents the hardship of living in Russia at the time of the revolution, the struggle to find enough to eat, the lack of most creature comforts, even basic clothing was difficult to obtain and Russian winters are cold. The revolutionary governments struggling to accommodate themselves in the grand palace's of St Petersburg, when they could not even find means to keep warm. He also tells of incidents in the civil war between the red and white armies and Trotsky's decisive actions in leading the red army.
In addition to the story of his life and the pen portraits of the leading players, he also thinks deeply about the course of the revolution and the mistakes that were made and also of the difficulties the revolutionaries faced. The memoirs end with Serge reflecting on his life and his continued optimism for the future, even though the left and socialism were already in retreat in 1947. He fiercely castigates those communists who would not admit to the horrors of the Stalin regime.
"I have outlived three generations of brave men, mistaken as they may have been, to whom I was deeply attached, and whose memory remains dear to me. And here again, I have discovered that it is nearly impossible to live a life devoted to a cause which one believes to be just; a life, that is where one refuses to separate thought from daily action................... I must confess that the feeling of having so many dead men at my back, many of them my betters in energy, talent and historical character, has often overwhelmed me; and that this feeling has been for me also the source of a certain courage, if that is the right word for it."
He also says that his experiences have taught him that the evils of intolerance and the drive towards the persecution of dissent comes from a belief in the ruling elite that they have absolute possession of the truth, grafted on doctrinal rigidity and that led them to a contempt for the man who was different who thought differently and had a different way of life. He warns about the dangers of tyrants and the fascist way of shouting louder than everyone else to get their way.
"The end far from justifying the means commands its own means"
Reading this book gave me pause for thought. At the moment I am of the opinion that the third world war has already started with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israeli's genocide in Gaza. We are faced with dealing with tyrannical regimes in China, Russia, and America which will result in a fractured Europe, with the rise of the far right. Perhaps therefore Victor Serge's optimism for the future is misplaced and once again we will have learned nothing from history. This does not mean that we should stop reading powerful autobiographies like this one from Victor Serge and so 5 stars. show less
‘Memoirs of a Revolutionary’ is slightly mis-named, as it doesn’t read like a memoir. Instead, it reads like a piece of extended, on-the-ground reportage and analysis from the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, chronicling the civil war and subsequent slide into totalitarianism and terror. As such, it’s absolutely fascinating. Serge writes compellingly and the French has been well translated. I enjoyed phrases like, ‘pot-bellied peace’ and this anecdote about buying arms for the Reds using tsarist roubles: ‘Obviously the recipients of the Imperial bank notes were taking out a mortgage on our deaths, at the same time furnishing us with the means of our defense’.
Serge makes an excellent commentator on events, as he is show more both insider and outsider. Although for much of the book he lives in Russia, is part of the communist party, and works for the government, he is not Russian and retains strong links throughout Europe. He evidently had incredible skill at networking, as the memoirs are stuffed with names (however did he remember them all?) of the many figures he encountered over the years. Footnotes helpfully inform the reader when Stalin had each of them shot, as seems to have been the case with most. Serge was thus close enough to events, yet critical enough of the path they took, to offer fascinating insights. He remains something of a phantom within his own book, but gives the impression of urbane competence and analytical yet humane intelligence.
His diagnoses of how the revolution went wrong are very convincing. He is not greatly inclined to blame individuals - indeed, even Stalin does not come in for much personal rebuke. He is much more interested in institutional and circumstantial reasons behind events, such as wrong decisions that resulted in worse decisions. Indeed, his conception of history has very little of Marxist structuralism and quite early on he becomes concerned about the ‘theoretical intoxication bordering on delusion’ of leading Marxists. This absolute faith in doctrine appears to have been a precursor of cults of personality. In fact, Serge’s analysis reminded me of something I read about the French revolution (in [b:Ending the Terror|640628|Ending the Terror|Bronisław Baczko|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347467826s/640628.jpg|21464302]) - that those involved never agreed to disagree. As Serge phrases it: ‘The Party is the repository of truth, and any form of thinking which differs from it is a dangerous or reactionary error. Here lies the spiritual source of its intolerance.’
What I found especially striking and sad throughout the narrative was the parade of disillusioned revolutionaries, the author obviously being one such and knowing many more. At least Serge was willing and able to live elsewhere. As the situation become worse and worse, terror gripped Russia and the ideals of the revolution where betrayed, many former revolutionaries committed suicide. They were unable to reconcile themselves to the horrors of the communist regime, yet they could not bear to leave their home, their tattered political ideals, and live under capitalism once more. After devoting so much of themselves to the revolution, indeed subsuming any personal identity to it, their sense of self seems to have been shattered by the famines, purges, and repressions. Although Serge was evidently an idealist, he tempered this with an admirable pragmatism and espoused a socialism that was international in nature. He was determined to survive in order to publicise what was happening. As he repeatedly comments, outside Russia people either did not want to know what happening, did not believe things could possibly be as bad as he said, or both.
There is a great deal to admire in these memoirs. Serge does not lose his faith in socialism, despite the privations and persecution he and his comrades suffer. His viewpoint is perhaps best expressed here:
His comments on Marxism are also well worth quoting:
Serge makes an excellent commentator on events, as he is show more both insider and outsider. Although for much of the book he lives in Russia, is part of the communist party, and works for the government, he is not Russian and retains strong links throughout Europe. He evidently had incredible skill at networking, as the memoirs are stuffed with names (however did he remember them all?) of the many figures he encountered over the years. Footnotes helpfully inform the reader when Stalin had each of them shot, as seems to have been the case with most. Serge was thus close enough to events, yet critical enough of the path they took, to offer fascinating insights. He remains something of a phantom within his own book, but gives the impression of urbane competence and analytical yet humane intelligence.
His diagnoses of how the revolution went wrong are very convincing. He is not greatly inclined to blame individuals - indeed, even Stalin does not come in for much personal rebuke. He is much more interested in institutional and circumstantial reasons behind events, such as wrong decisions that resulted in worse decisions. Indeed, his conception of history has very little of Marxist structuralism and quite early on he becomes concerned about the ‘theoretical intoxication bordering on delusion’ of leading Marxists. This absolute faith in doctrine appears to have been a precursor of cults of personality. In fact, Serge’s analysis reminded me of something I read about the French revolution (in [b:Ending the Terror|640628|Ending the Terror|Bronisław Baczko|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347467826s/640628.jpg|21464302]) - that those involved never agreed to disagree. As Serge phrases it: ‘The Party is the repository of truth, and any form of thinking which differs from it is a dangerous or reactionary error. Here lies the spiritual source of its intolerance.’
What I found especially striking and sad throughout the narrative was the parade of disillusioned revolutionaries, the author obviously being one such and knowing many more. At least Serge was willing and able to live elsewhere. As the situation become worse and worse, terror gripped Russia and the ideals of the revolution where betrayed, many former revolutionaries committed suicide. They were unable to reconcile themselves to the horrors of the communist regime, yet they could not bear to leave their home, their tattered political ideals, and live under capitalism once more. After devoting so much of themselves to the revolution, indeed subsuming any personal identity to it, their sense of self seems to have been shattered by the famines, purges, and repressions. Although Serge was evidently an idealist, he tempered this with an admirable pragmatism and espoused a socialism that was international in nature. He was determined to survive in order to publicise what was happening. As he repeatedly comments, outside Russia people either did not want to know what happening, did not believe things could possibly be as bad as he said, or both.
There is a great deal to admire in these memoirs. Serge does not lose his faith in socialism, despite the privations and persecution he and his comrades suffer. His viewpoint is perhaps best expressed here:
A French essayist has said, ‘What is terrible when you seek the truth, is that you find it.’ You find it, and then you are no longer free to follow the biases of your personal circle, or to accept fashionable cliches. I immediately discerned within the Russian Revolution the seeds of such serious evils as intolerance and the drive towards the persecution of dissent. These evils originated in an absolute sense of possession of the truth, grafted upon doctrinal rigidity. What followed was contempt for the man who was different, of his arguments and way of life. Undoubtedly, one of the greatest problems which each of us has to solve in the realm of practice, is that of accepting the necessity to maintain, in the midst of intransigence that comes from steadfast beliefs, a critical spirit towards these same beliefs and a respect for the belief that differs. In the struggle, it is the problem of combining the greatest practical efficiency with respect for the man in the enemy; in a word, of war without hate.
His comments on Marxism are also well worth quoting:
I do not, after all my reflection on the subject, cast any doubt upon the scientific spirit of Marxism, nor on its contribution, a blend of rationality and idealism, to the consciousness of our age. All the same, I cannot help considering as a positive disaster the fact that a Marxist orthodoxy should, in a great country in the throes of transformation, have taken over the apparatus of power. Whatever may be the scientific value of a doctrine, from the moment that it becomes governmental, interests of state will cease to allow it the possibility of impartial enquiry; and its scientific certitude will even lead it, first to intrude into education, and then, by the methods of guided thought, which is the same as suppressed thought, to exempt itself from criticism. The relationships between error and true understanding are in any case too abtruse for any one to presume to regulate them by authority; men have no choice but to make long detours through hypotheses, mistakes and imaginative guesses, if they are to succeed in extricating assessments which are more exact, if partly provisional: for there are few cases of complete exactness. This means that freedom of thought seems to me, of all values, one of the most essential.show less
What a book this is - Serge was the child of exiled Russian Revolutionaries, raised in Belgium; he became an anarchist and went to stir up the revolution in pre-WW1 France (spending most of the war in prison for his troubles). He then went to fight with anarchists in Spain before heading for Russia in 1919 to join the Bolsheviks. He was in the thick of things with the Bolshevik leadership and knew the major players well, before his disagreements with Stalin led to his isolation and eventual arrest, imprisonment in the Lubyanka for four years, and then internal exile to Kazakhstan. Friends abroad helped him be allowed to leave the USSR just in advance of the show trials that did for Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin et al in the 1930s, and he show more spent time in Belgium and France writing and trying to further the cause of an anti-Stalinist communism before the Nazi invasion chased him down to Marseilles, where he was able to use other foreign contacts to secure passage to Mexico, where he died in exile.
Serge isn't a hero, he remained a committed Marxist to the end and failed to disown the 'good Terror' at the start of the revolution which he manages to divorce from the 'bad terror' that followed it. He also regularly notices that people in capitalist countries live far better than in the USSR, and that even a little bit of free market in Russia is enough to cheer people up and avoid pesky things like famines, without reconsidering whether this communism business is really all that. Nonetheless, he was fully opposed to Stalin and championed individual freedom of thought and conscience when it put his own neck on the line and almost everyone around him crumbled, so there is a lot to be said for him too. This is a ludicrously interesting book, well written (he was also a novelist), and a view of history from a man on the inside of some of the biggest moments of the 20th century. Great stuff. show less
Serge isn't a hero, he remained a committed Marxist to the end and failed to disown the 'good Terror' at the start of the revolution which he manages to divorce from the 'bad terror' that followed it. He also regularly notices that people in capitalist countries live far better than in the USSR, and that even a little bit of free market in Russia is enough to cheer people up and avoid pesky things like famines, without reconsidering whether this communism business is really all that. Nonetheless, he was fully opposed to Stalin and championed individual freedom of thought and conscience when it put his own neck on the line and almost everyone around him crumbled, so there is a lot to be said for him too. This is a ludicrously interesting book, well written (he was also a novelist), and a view of history from a man on the inside of some of the biggest moments of the 20th century. Great stuff. show less
La memoria es sesgada, selectiva; adorna, tamiza los hechos con el barniz del tiempo volcando las emociones e ideas del presente en los sucesos pasados.
Como todo libro de memorias, éste de Víctor Serge es, con seguridad, un ejercicio de desmemoria. No siempre consciente, no por falta de honestidad; es el tiempo transcurrido, la perspectiva los que transforman los hechos recordados.
Aún así, Serge nos ofrece unas estampas vívidas, por vividas, de la revolución rusa, de sus protagonistas (Lenin, Bujarin, Trotsky, Zinoviev,...), de los críticos, de la disidencia, del gulag. También de los movimientos revolucionarios en España, del frente populismo en Francia. Las páginas destilan amargura, desilusión, ironía al contemplar la show more ingenuidad pasada pero "¿Cuántos nombres, cuántas siluetas de un mundo desaparecido, la piedad del recuerdo quisiera retener aquí!"(pág. 185)
Junto a esta piedad la creencia en el ser humano, la esperanza, aún virgen pese a los acontecimientos vividos, en un futuro mejor "Con esta condición única, convertida en imperativo categórico: no renunciar jamás a defender al hombre contra los sistemas que planean la aniquilación del individuo" (pág. 461) show less
Como todo libro de memorias, éste de Víctor Serge es, con seguridad, un ejercicio de desmemoria. No siempre consciente, no por falta de honestidad; es el tiempo transcurrido, la perspectiva los que transforman los hechos recordados.
Aún así, Serge nos ofrece unas estampas vívidas, por vividas, de la revolución rusa, de sus protagonistas (Lenin, Bujarin, Trotsky, Zinoviev,...), de los críticos, de la disidencia, del gulag. También de los movimientos revolucionarios en España, del frente populismo en Francia. Las páginas destilan amargura, desilusión, ironía al contemplar la show more ingenuidad pasada pero "¿Cuántos nombres, cuántas siluetas de un mundo desaparecido, la piedad del recuerdo quisiera retener aquí!"(pág. 185)
Junto a esta piedad la creencia en el ser humano, la esperanza, aún virgen pese a los acontecimientos vividos, en un futuro mejor "Con esta condición única, convertida en imperativo categórico: no renunciar jamás a defender al hombre contra los sistemas que planean la aniquilación del individuo" (pág. 461) show less
Victor Serge was born in exile in Belgium in 1890 and died in exile in Mexico in 1947. In between, he was jailed at least three times (once in France, twice in the Soviet Union) and internally deported to Orenburg in the the Ural Mountains, fled Paris just ahead of the Nazis, and barely made it out of occupied France. Also in between, he participated in the innermost circles of the Russian Revolution, fighting in one of the fiercest battles of the civil war, going on foreign missions for the Communist Party, and having access to both Lenin and Trotsky, before becoming disillusioned by the totalitarian turn the Communists took and, ultimately, by that same authoritarian trait in Trotsky. Throughout all this time, he was writing, with his show more work mostly published in western Europe.
Born of Russian parents who fled to the west because of their own revolutionary activities, Serge became interested in socialist and anarchist politics as a teenager and began his life-long connections with most of the European activists and revolutionaries of the first part of the 20th century. After being jailed in France, he traveled to Spain and met Catalan rebels, returned to Paris, and wound up in St. Petersburg (then Petrograd, later Leningrad), at the Finland Station, in 1919. In the course of his years in the Soviet Union, he not only clearly saw the perils and evils of the path the Bolsheviks were taking, but spoke up about them, as a member of the so-called Left Oppositionists that initially clustered around Trotsky. The inevitable happened: he was jailed, then released, jailed again, and then sent to Orenburg, where he was allowed his books and his family, but where starvation was never far away. Because of his western citizenship, and because his writing was published in France and elsewhere, the Soviets were under pressure to release him, and he was ultimately expelled to the west. Once there, his life was made difficult not only by the anti-communists but also by the left, because he was persona non grata for having criticized what was going on in the Soviet Union and both Stalin and Trotsky. Nonetheless, he maintained his connections to a vast network of socialists and others who, like him, believed in democracy, free speech, and the rights of the individual as well as social revolution.
What makes this book so fascinating, in addition to Serge's presence at some of the seminal events of the last century and in addition to his sparkling writing (also evident in his excellent novels), is his amazingly clear perception of what was really taking place, when the vision of so many others was clouded by wishful thinking; his total commitment to tolerance and individual freedom; his ability to continue to look to the future despite the horrors he personally endured; his remarkable prescience and psychological/political insight (e.g., of why Stalin had to kill off the entire first generation of Bolshevik revolutionaries, and of the direction the second world war would take); his sharp portraits of dozens and dozens of people, some I'd heard of and many more I hadn't; and the broad perspective it opened up for me of the extent of the revolutionary activity in Europe and the mixed reaction to that by the Soviets (e.g., they appeared to help the republicans in the Spanish Civil War by sending them arms, while at the same time killing all the leaders who didn't toe the Stalinist line).
Serge clearly saw that the world had changed after the First World War, and that it was once again heading to disaster with the Second. Nonetheless, he believed in progress, perhaps slow and halting, but inevitable. As he says in the final section of his memoirs:
"The men of my generation -- those born around 1890 -- above all the Europeans among them, cannot help the sensation of having lived on a frontier where one world ends and another begins. . . . I have seen the face of Europe change several times. . . .
"Here we are, with the nightmare of war behind us, but without peace having been made, without a feeling of man's deliverance, without even a vague reawakening of the great hopes that signaled the end of the First World War. We feel trapped between the aggressive crushing power of a totalitarianism born of born of a victorious socialist revolution and the routines of an old society committed, in spite of itself, to changes it refuses to recognize. On both sides, primitive man, barbaric and narrow-minded, greedy and mendacious, is working against better man. . . .
"The future seems to me, despite the clouds on the horizon, to be filled with possibilities vaster than any we have glimpsed in the past. The passion, the experience, and even the errors of my fighting generation may perhaps illumine the way forward, but on one condition, which has become a categorical imperative: never to give up the defense of man against systems whose plans crush the individual." pp. 446- 447, NYRB edition
The NYRB edition I read is the first complete translation of this book; the publisher of an earlier edition forced the translator to cut a significant portion of the text because he thought it was too long. For this edition, a new translator uncovered the deleted portions and retranslated them, but I couldn't tell where one translation merged into another. The edition is also enhanced by a lengthy glossary of people and revolutionary movements and by drawings by Serge's son Vlady, an artist, as well as by photographs. show less
Born of Russian parents who fled to the west because of their own revolutionary activities, Serge became interested in socialist and anarchist politics as a teenager and began his life-long connections with most of the European activists and revolutionaries of the first part of the 20th century. After being jailed in France, he traveled to Spain and met Catalan rebels, returned to Paris, and wound up in St. Petersburg (then Petrograd, later Leningrad), at the Finland Station, in 1919. In the course of his years in the Soviet Union, he not only clearly saw the perils and evils of the path the Bolsheviks were taking, but spoke up about them, as a member of the so-called Left Oppositionists that initially clustered around Trotsky. The inevitable happened: he was jailed, then released, jailed again, and then sent to Orenburg, where he was allowed his books and his family, but where starvation was never far away. Because of his western citizenship, and because his writing was published in France and elsewhere, the Soviets were under pressure to release him, and he was ultimately expelled to the west. Once there, his life was made difficult not only by the anti-communists but also by the left, because he was persona non grata for having criticized what was going on in the Soviet Union and both Stalin and Trotsky. Nonetheless, he maintained his connections to a vast network of socialists and others who, like him, believed in democracy, free speech, and the rights of the individual as well as social revolution.
What makes this book so fascinating, in addition to Serge's presence at some of the seminal events of the last century and in addition to his sparkling writing (also evident in his excellent novels), is his amazingly clear perception of what was really taking place, when the vision of so many others was clouded by wishful thinking; his total commitment to tolerance and individual freedom; his ability to continue to look to the future despite the horrors he personally endured; his remarkable prescience and psychological/political insight (e.g., of why Stalin had to kill off the entire first generation of Bolshevik revolutionaries, and of the direction the second world war would take); his sharp portraits of dozens and dozens of people, some I'd heard of and many more I hadn't; and the broad perspective it opened up for me of the extent of the revolutionary activity in Europe and the mixed reaction to that by the Soviets (e.g., they appeared to help the republicans in the Spanish Civil War by sending them arms, while at the same time killing all the leaders who didn't toe the Stalinist line).
Serge clearly saw that the world had changed after the First World War, and that it was once again heading to disaster with the Second. Nonetheless, he believed in progress, perhaps slow and halting, but inevitable. As he says in the final section of his memoirs:
"The men of my generation -- those born around 1890 -- above all the Europeans among them, cannot help the sensation of having lived on a frontier where one world ends and another begins. . . . I have seen the face of Europe change several times. . . .
"Here we are, with the nightmare of war behind us, but without peace having been made, without a feeling of man's deliverance, without even a vague reawakening of the great hopes that signaled the end of the First World War. We feel trapped between the aggressive crushing power of a totalitarianism born of born of a victorious socialist revolution and the routines of an old society committed, in spite of itself, to changes it refuses to recognize. On both sides, primitive man, barbaric and narrow-minded, greedy and mendacious, is working against better man. . . .
"The future seems to me, despite the clouds on the horizon, to be filled with possibilities vaster than any we have glimpsed in the past. The passion, the experience, and even the errors of my fighting generation may perhaps illumine the way forward, but on one condition, which has become a categorical imperative: never to give up the defense of man against systems whose plans crush the individual." pp. 446- 447, NYRB edition
The NYRB edition I read is the first complete translation of this book; the publisher of an earlier edition forced the translator to cut a significant portion of the text because he thought it was too long. For this edition, a new translator uncovered the deleted portions and retranslated them, but I couldn't tell where one translation merged into another. The edition is also enhanced by a lengthy glossary of people and revolutionary movements and by drawings by Serge's son Vlady, an artist, as well as by photographs. show less
Uneven, mostly because Serge is so good at inhabiting his own past, and so determined to record facts, many of which are related better by others. When those two things come together, it's quite difficult to get on board: here's a long explanation of Bolshevik politics, in which Serge plays a role, and with no obvious reflection. But soon enough he's on the outs with the Bolsheviks, he reflects more, and you start to wish that Lenin had been assassinated after all, and Serge had somehow managed to get himself to the top of the greasy pole. Far superior to all the right-wing 'end of an illusion' books, because Serge matures from an incorrect certainty to an astonishing clarity of mind, rather than 'maturing' from one incorrect certainty show more to another. show less
"I have outlived three generations of brave men, mistaken as they may have been, to whom I was deeply attached, and whose memory remains dear to me. And here again, I have discovered that it is nearly impossible to live a life devoted wholly to a cause which one believes to be just; a life, that is, where one refuses to separate thought from daily action. The young French and Belgian rebels of my twenties have all perished; my syndicalist comrades of Barcelona in 1917 were nearly all massacred; my comrades and friends of the Russian Revolution are probably all dead EÂÂE any exceptions are only by a miracle. All were brave, all sought a principle of life nobler and juster than that of surrender" the bourgeois order; except perhaps
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What a tale! In the first place, Serge is by far the best writer to occupy so high a position in the Bolshevik apparatus. Lunacharsky, onetime Commissar of Culture, of whom they were once so proud, was an amateur and dilettante by comparison. Serge was the author of several moving novels, and a man of great humanity and sensitivity. So his book is simply better written than any that might be show more compared with it...
It could be called an orgy of name dropping — Stalin drops the names into the cork-lined cellars, and Serge records them, on and on, the roster of the Revolution. Generals, poets, professional assassins, agents and double and triple agents, scientists, scholars, artists, beautiful girls and bewhiskered cranks — we all know the story, but Serge knew the people. They come alive, seen not with Trotsky’s epigrammatic malice, but with pity and understanding, and then they die, and Serge feels each death himself. show less
It could be called an orgy of name dropping — Stalin drops the names into the cork-lined cellars, and Serge records them, on and on, the roster of the Revolution. Generals, poets, professional assassins, agents and double and triple agents, scientists, scholars, artists, beautiful girls and bewhiskered cranks — we all know the story, but Serge knew the people. They come alive, seen not with Trotsky’s epigrammatic malice, but with pity and understanding, and then they die, and Serge feels each death himself. show less
added by SnootyBaronet
Memoirs is a document that is essential, above all, as a denouncement of oppression, an eye-witness account, written in heat and at speed, but with the talent of the true writer, of what it was like to be at the heart of the machine – and to stand up to it.
added by wandering_star
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Author Information
83+ Works 3,542 Members
Victor Serge (1890-1947), best known as a novelist, was an active participant in the anarchist movement before becoming a committed Bolshevik once he reached Russia in 1939. An eloquent critic of tyranny no matter its form, Serge was a leading member of the Left Opposition in its struggle against Joseph Stalin, a cause that ultimately resulted in show more his exile from Russia. Ian Birchall is an independent writer and translator. His translations from the French include the writings of Victor Serge and Alfred Rosmer. He is on the editorial board of Revolutionary History and is a long-standing member of the British Socialist Workers Party. show less
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Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Memoirs of a Revolutionary
- Original title
- Mémoires d'un révolutionnaire, 1901–1941
- Original publication date
- 1951; 1978 (2nd) (2nd)
- People/Characters
- Victor Serge
- First words
- Even before I emerged from childhood, I seem to have experienced, deeply at heart, that paradoxical feeling which was to dominate me all through the first part of my life: that of living in a world without any possible escape... (show all), in which there was nothing for it but to fight for an impossible escape.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)The passion, the experience, and even the errors of my fighting generation may perhaps help illumine the way forward, but on one condition, which has become a categorical imperative: never to give up the defense of man against systems whose plans crush the individual.
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- Biography & Memoir, Nonfiction, History, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 947.084 — History & geography History of Europe Eastern European Counties and Russia Russian & Slavic History by Period 1855- 1917-1953 ; Communist period
- LCC
- DK254 .S39 .A313 — History of Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania Russia. Soviet Union. Former Soviet Republics – Poland History of Russia. Soviet Union. Former Soviet Republics History House of Romanov, 1613-1917
- BISAC
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