Birth of Our Power (1929-30). Gollancz, 1969. (A novel of the Barcelona uprising and the early days of Red Petrograd.
The case of Comrade Tulayev (1942). Penguin, 1968. (A novel about the purges in the USSR during the 1930s.)
Memoirs of a Revolutionary (1942-43). Oxford University Press, 1968.
From Paris to Petrograd Victor Serge's life followed one of his favourite mottoes: As long as social injustice lasts we hall remain in a state of permanent revolution." He was born in Belgium in 1890, the child of Lussian revolutionary exiles. His legacy of dealism and intimate experience o poverty led him to the des erate anarchism-individualism of the pre-World War I days in Paris. His comrades saw no solution but to blast their way out of a "world without escape." They died in shootouts with the police, by their own hands, and on the guillotine.
Serge was editing an anarchist review, determined to prevail and to resist the emptation of dying for no purpose, but fo relating to as holice Prior tve years in prison as an "accomplice" oughened him and refined him and refined his Ideas. Auer mis release ne worked as a uno typist in Barcelona, joined the syndicalist labour union, Confederaction Nacional de Trabajo, and fought in the workers' uprising of July 1917. When the uprising was crushed he set off for Russia to serve the victorious revolution.
Four Exiles: Seven Flights After a stay in a French concentration camp he made it to Petrograd, served as a machinegunner in a defence battalion during the Civi Var, helped found the Communist and translated Bolshevik writings into French. He joined the Communist Party and then, with Trotsky and others, formed the Left Opposition, which demanded the return of Soviet Democracy. When the Opposition was crushed by Stalin, Serge was not shot, but was expelled from the Party and deported to central Asia in 1933. After three years he was issued a port and went to France, where he continued his work as an Oppositionist until the Nazi takeover. He then made his way to Mexico, where he died in 1947.
During his last twenty years: four exiles, seven flights, each time the loss of all his books and papers. And he still managed to turn out some twenty books and pamphlets.
Despite this extraordinary range of expenture Unike normany hiers as reing an on Revolutionary Experiences, he never places himself above his situation. He rejects the notion of a literary consciousness rising above history to some heavenly place. And unlike that other school, the literary hatchet-men of the revolution, he refuses to dissolve himself into official mythology. He has no fear of saying "l", but he has no need to justify himself, or parade around as someone as who was right when everybody else was wrong. What matters to him is: what happened, and what does it mean to our lives? Because he refuses to play the traditional literary games, he is an absolutely trustworthy writer. You don't have o keep an eye on him to see what he's getting Ip to behind the facade of words The People Take Power Serge never romanticises or abstracts his material. The people of Barcelona and Petrograd don't represent any lofty principle beyond the simple and profound respect due to them as human beings. They are being denied the a necessary physical and spiritual conditions of life. They have got to become conscious of thei force, demolish the structures which oppress them, and "it will cost whatever it costs The meaning of the revolution to Serge and his comrades is expressed in sixteen words, a dialogue on the eve of his departure for Russia:
LIC CEM With the people.
The police!
No more police.
The prisons?
Burned.
The power?
Us.
Thermidor It's hardly news that the October Revolution lidn't continue along these lines, It turned ackward country into an industrial giant provided work and bread and education. But the democratic impulses of the early days the direct control of the masses over their own more and more counter-revolutionary over the years.
In the Memoirs and Tulayev Serge shows this really tragic process at work more clearly and sympathetically than anyone ever has or will. There couldn't have been a more terrible experience for a revolutionary than watching the revolution being taken over by those whi wanted to control it and get fat off it. Or seeing the old "cohort of iron", the giants of October, confess to being paid agents of the fascists, saboteurs, enemies of the revolution. The strong and the weak alike were hemmed in on all sides, and went under. One of the characters in Tulayeu, just before his arrest, puts it with chilling clarity: "What are the poor eople to do? What are we to do?..Marx and akunin lived in the age of simple problems; they never had enemies behind them." Philistinism in the West The reactionary phase of the revolution was greeted by a chorus of applause from left-wing writers and intellectuals in the West. These men might have had some influence on the course of events, but when Serge presented them with irrefutable facts, they'd pat him on the shoulder and tell him not to be so bitter, advise him gainst writing anything. Living in the vulga nd oppressive atmosphere of bourgeois society they were completely carried away by the spectacle of men who spoke the language of their own ideals exercising power over a whole country. They needed this so much that they could not bring themselves to take a good hard look at the actions accompanying the words.
wrote in 1937:
"So many literary men have succeeded in keeping silence, gaily, with a supreme revolutionary elegance. They have found it possible to publish weeklies and monthlies and whole books without letting the truth glimmer through. That is the sign of great artistry. And it is a terrible danger. The Revolution Need Not Lie To Itself We mustn't be afraid ever to admit and discus the failures of any revolution, no matter how valuable it may be to us. As soon as a word of criticism leaks out, the trained fleas of the existing order take to the air, buzzing, "See! See! Even the leftists admit that revolation is no good!" Let them caper while they can. We don't need to win debates with them. We do need to be so confident of our ideals and insights that we have nothing to fear from the entire truth about any situation. We have to face the fact that the most heroie achievement have, through human weakness and the inertia of events been dangerously corrupted. If we cover it p and try to forget, we're bound to make the same mistakes all over again. But if ve are strong enough to grapple with the tru nd not lose the courage or the will to right t hings that oppress us, then everything we lea however depressing, deepens and sharpens an heightens the consciousness. Certainly the en be an essential fact about this time and ens enemy is behind us too, but that just hap ...it's not the nineteenth century any more. Phil Koslow (LNS)
At long last-Krupskaya's Memories of Lenin (Panther History series, 8/-). Send 8/- plus 1/- postage to:
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