Memoirs of a Revolutionary (The Iowa Series in Literary Nonfiction) - Softcover

Serge, Victor

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0877458278 ISBN 13: 9780877458272

Publisher: University of Iowa Press, 2002

Synopsis

Victor Serge (1890-1947) was an anarchist who initially supported the Russian Revolution. He was also a writer of integrity. This memoir is his story of how the Russian Revolution unfolded, swept up an entire nation, and eventually failed.

About this title

Review

"An extraordinary time capsule from the darkest hours of the twentieth century. Although often compared to Orwell, Serge is a more noble and irreconcilable figure. This book--written as the GPU was exterminating the last of the Bolshevik old guard--is a fiery testament to political conscience and revolutionary hope. Through Serge, we know something of those gigantic but largely forgotten figures: the anarchist and communist opponents of Stalin."

About the Author

VICTOR SERGE (1890–1947) was born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich to Russian anti-tsarist exiles, impoverished intellectuals living “by chance” in Brussels. A precocious anarchist firebrand, young Victor was sentenced to five years in a French penitentiary in 1912. Expelled to Spain in 1917, he participated in an anarcho-syndicalist uprising before leaving to join the Revolution in Russia. Detained for more than a year in a French concentration camp, Serge arrived in St. Petersburg early in 1919 and joined the Bolsheviks, serving in the press services of the Communist International. An outspoken critic of Stalin, Serge was expelled from the Party and briefly arrested in 1928. Henceforth an “unperson,” he completed three novels (Men in Prison, Birth of Our Power, and Conquered City) and a history (Year One of the Russian Revolution), all published in Paris. Arrested again in Russia and deported to Central Asia in 1933, he was allowed to leave the USSR in 1936 after international protests by militants and prominent writers like André Gide and Romain Rolland. Using his insider’s knowledge, Serge published a stream of impassioned, documented exposés of Stalin’s Moscow show trials and machinations in Spain, which went largely unheeded. Stateless, penniless, hounded by Stalinist agents, Serge lived in precarious exile in Brussels, Paris, Vichy France, and Mexico City, where he died in 1947. His classic Memoirs of a Revolutionary and his great last novels, Unforgiving Years and The Case of Comrade Tulayev (both available as NYRB Classics), were written “for the desk drawer” and published posthumously.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Iowa Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0877458278
• ISBN 13: 9780877458272
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 442