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﻿<title﻿>﻿New Socialist Magazine, Victor Serge - Socialism From Below﻿</title>﻿
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﻿<b﻿>﻿Victor Serge
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by Suzi Weissman ﻿<br﻿>﻿
﻿<i﻿>﻿New Socialist Magazine, June - July 1998﻿</i>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿
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From the detritus of the disintegrated Soviet Union there is little that can be salvaged for socialism. If we go back, however, to the early period before the Stalinist counter-revolution took hold, we find that there were those from the generation of Marxists who refused to surrender and who struggled so that their ideas would escape Stalin's attempt to exterminate them. Victor Serge was one of the few who survived. 
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Who was Victor Serge? He was a revolutionary novelist and historian, erstwhile anarchist, Bolshevik, dissident Communist, Left Oppositionist - one of the blank pages in Soviet political history. Though he is still practically unknown in the former Soviet Union, he was one of the most lucid observers of its early political developments, chronicling in his many works its brutal departure from the ideals of the revolution of 1917. 
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Born Victor Kibalchich, son and nephew of Russian revolutionary populists, Serge spent his first fifteen years in Belgium in dire poverty. He was politically active in seven countries, participated in three revolutions, spent more than ten years in captivity, published more than forty books and left behind thousands of pages of unpublished manuscripts, correspondence and articles. He was born into one political exile and died in another. He was hounded and imprisoned. A sort of permanent political oppositionist, he opposed capitalism as a socialist; he opposed certain Bolshevik practices with his anarchist leanings; he opposed Stalin as a Left Oppositionist; and finally opposed fascism and capitalism's Cold War as an unrepentant revolutionary Marxist. 
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Serge wrote from deep within the Soviet revolutionary experience as both a political actor and a victim of the degeneration of the revolution. As an insider, he knew the men and women who made the revolution and those who destroyed it. He wrote of them in his political works and fleshed them out in his novels. Serge was not a dispassionate objective reporter, but an ardent Left Oppositionist whose political outlook framed his exposition. His writing is passionate and honest and sometimes poetic; but always remains critical, and always retains his allegiance to the ideas of the revolutionary generation of Bolsheviks. 
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His written legacy includes seven novels, two volumes of poetry, three novellas, a collection of short stories; more than thirty books and pamphlets of history and politics including biographies of Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky; an autobiography, his diary or personal notebooks, and scores of journalistic articles, and essays on a variety of themes. 
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Serge's political experience led him not to renounce socialism once Stalin had triumphed, but to bring to it a declaration of human rights, enriching socialist goals. He opposed the one party system, declaring as early as 1918 and again in 1923 that a coalition government, although fraught with dangers, would have been less dangerous than what was to transpire under Stalin's dictatorship of the secretariat and the secret police. His proposals for economic reform included "workers democracy" and a "communism of associations" instead of rigid, top-down, anti-democratic "plans." 
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Reading Serge's body of work on the USSR is indispensable for anyone who wants to get a feel for the atmosphere of the 20s and 30s inside the Soviet Union and the Communist movement; a testimony to his literary achievement, his political acumen and his resolute honesty. 
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Serge died in absolute poverty in Mexico in 1947. He left behind him a lifetime of struggle, a commitment to the truth no matter how uncomfortable, "a victorious revolution and massacres in so great a number as to inspire a certain dizziness," and a certain confidence, born of his critical intelligence, in the possibilities of the future. His historical optimism was based on an understanding of human history and social processes which led him to affirm that the conditions of the modern world would create imperatives that "combine with the desire for social justice and a new found freedom to once again place the economy at the service of the community." The ball is in our court. 
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﻿<font﻿ ﻿size="1"﻿>﻿Suzi Weissman is editor of THE IDEAS OF VICTOR SERGE: A LIFE AS A WORK OF ART (Critique books, 1997) and the forthcoming VICTOR SERGE: THE COURSE IS SET ON HOPE (Verso). She teaches at Saint Mary's College of California and broadcasts a weekly program on KPFK-Pacifica Radio. Visit the Serge web site at ﻿<http:﻿ ﻿users.skynet.be﻿ ﻿johneden﻿/﻿>﻿. ﻿</font>﻿</font>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

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