Victor Serge
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Victor Serge  |
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| Born | 1890 Brussels, Belgium |
| Died | 1947 Mexico City, Mexico |
Victor Lvovich Kibalchich (В.Л. Кибальчич) (1890-1947) better known as Victor Serge was a Russian revolutionary. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Russian Communist Party on arriving in Petrograd in February 1919 and worked for the newly founded Comintern as a journalist, editor and translator. He was openly critical of the Soviet regime, but remained loyal to the Bolsheviks.
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[edit] Early life
Serge was born in Brussels to a Russian Polish family of Narodniks - his father, an officer in the Imperial Guard, was a member of the Land and Liberty group, and was related to Nikolai Kibalchich of the People's Will; after the arrest of Kibalchich as a result of the assassination of Alexander II in 1881, Serge's father fled the country. He eventually found work as a teacher at the Institute of Anatomy in Brussels.
The family moved to France where they became involved in the radical Russian émigré community. Serge found work as a photographer's apprentice in Paris and later worked as a draughtsman. He read a great deal and was influenced by the political theories of Peter Lavrov.
Serge was initially a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, but by age eighteen he had abandoned socialism in favor of anarchism. His first article was penned in September of 1908. Under the pen name "Le Rétif" ("The Restless"), Serge wrote many articles for Le Révolté and, starting in 1909, L'Anarchie. He was an outspoken supporter of individualist anarchism and illegalism, frequently clashing with L'Anarchie's editor, André Roulot (aka "Lorulot"), who favored less inflammatory rhetoric. In 1910, following a schism in L'Anarchie, Lorulot departed and Serge was named as the new editor of the paper.
He was later judged to be involved in acts of terrorism and received a five-year prison sentence in solitary confinement for his involvement in the Bonnot Gang. Several of his comrades were executed.
[edit] Serge in Russia
Serge was in prison on the outbreak of the First World War. He immediately forecast that the war would lead to a Russian Revolution: "Revolutionaries knew quite well that the autocratic Empire, with its hangmen, its pogroms, its finery, its famines, its Siberian jails and ancient iniquity, could never survive the war."
In September, 1914, Serge was in a prison on an island in the Seine, twenty-five miles or so from the Battle of the Marne. The local population, suspecting a French defeat, began to flee, and for a while Serge and the other inmates expected to become German prisoners.
On his release in 1915 he went to live in Spain. He returned to France and after the overthrow of Nicholas II in February, 1917, Serge attempted to get to Russia to join the revolution. He was arrested and imprisoned and held without trial. In October, 1918 the Danish Red Cross intervened and arranged for Serge and other revolutionaries to be exchanged for Bruce Lockhart and other anti-Bolsheviks who had been imprisoned in Russia.
When Serge arrived in Russia in 1919 he joined the Bolsheviks. For a while Serge worked for Maxim Gorky, at the Universal Literature publishing house. Soon afterwards he was employed by Gregory Zinoviev who had been appointed as President of the Executive of the Third International. Serge's knowledge of languages enabled him to organize international editions of the organization's publications.
Serge soon became disillusioned with the Soviet government. He joined with Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman to complain about the way the Red Army treated the sailors involved in the Kronstadt Uprising. A libertarian socialist, Serge protested against the Red Terror that was organized by Felix Dzerzhinsky and the Cheka.
In 1923 Serge became associated with the Left Opposition group that included Leon Trotsky, Karl Radek, and Adolf Joffe. Later Gregory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev joined in the struggle against Joseph Stalin. Serge was an outspoken critic of the authoritarian way that Joseph Stalin governed the country and is believed to be the first writer to describe the Soviet government as "totalitarian".
In 1928 Serge was expelled from the Communist Party. He was now unable to work for the government and over the next few years he spent his time writing Year One of the Russian Revolution (1930) and two novels Men in Prison (1930) and Birth of Our Power (1931) and translating in French Vera Figner's Memoires. These books were banned in the Soviet Union but were published in France and Spain.
Serge was arrested and imprisoned in 1933. Most of the Left Opposition that were arrested were executed but as a result of protests made by leading politicians in France, Belgium and Spain, Serge was kept alive. The Communist Secret Police (GPU) obtained a confession from his sister-in-law, Anita Russakova, that she and Serge had been involved in a conspiracy led by Leon Trotsky. Serge knew from his contacts in the Communist Party that if he signed the confession he would be executed.
Protests against Serge's imprisonment took place at several International Conferences. The case caused the Soviet government considerable embarrassment and in 1936 Joseph Stalin announced that he was considering releasing Serge from prison. Pierre Laval, the French prime minister, refused to grant Serge an entry permit. Emile Vandervelde, the veteran socialist, and a member of the Belgian government, managed to obtain Serge a visa to live in Belgium. Serge's relatives were not so fortunate: his sister, mother-in-law, sister-in-law (Anita Russakova) and two of his brothers-in-law, died in prison.
[edit] Later life
On his arrival in France in 1936, Serge resumed work on two books on Soviet communism, From Lenin to Stalin (1937) and Destiny of a Revolution (1937). He also published several novels and a volume of poetry, Resistance (1938) about his experiences in Russia.
When France was invaded by Germany in 1940, Serge together with his son Vlady Kibalchich, managed to escape to Mexico where he continued to publish novels such as The Long Dusk and The Case of Comrade Tulayev. His autobiography, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, was first published in the United States in 1945.
Serge's health had been badly damaged by his periods of imprisonment in France and Russia. However, he continued to write until he died of a heart-attack in Mexico City on 17th November, 1947.
[edit] External links
- Year One of the Russian Revolution from the Victor Serge Internet Archive on Marxists Internet Archive 2005. Translation, editor's Introduction, and notes © 1972 by Peter Sedgwick. Retrieved April 5, 2005.
- "Victor Serge and the IVth International". Statement criticising Serge by the editors of the Bulletin of the Russian Opposition, writing in Quatrième Internationale April 1939. Source: Victor Serge & Leon Trotsky, La Lutte Contre le Stalinisme. Maspero, Paris, 1977 Translated for Marxist Internet Archive by Mitch Abidor in 2005. Retrieved April 28, 2005.
- The Unhappy Elitist: Victor Serge’s Early Bolshevism by Peter Sedgwick. History Workshop Journal 17, Spring 1984. Reprinted online by What Next? Marxist journal. Retrieved May 11, 2005.
- CRITIQUE 28/29: The Ideas of Victor Serge: a Life as a Work of Art Edited by Susan Weissman (Introduction on-line. Retrieved March 14, 2007.]
