A New York Review Books Original. Victor Serge is one of the great men of the tw
entieth century, anarchist, revolutionary, agitator, theoretician, historian of
his times, and a fearless truthteller. He was also a great writer, the author of
dazzling works of fiction, including the novel The Case of Comrade Tulayev, per
haps the finest book to emerge from the crucible of Stalinist terror, and of the
se no less extraordinary memoirs.
Here Serge describes his upbringing in Belg
ium, the child of a family of exiled Russian revolutionary intellectuals, his ea
rly 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 regim
e'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 Me
xico. 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 al
l, it captures the sensibility of Serge himself, that of a courageous and singul
arly appealing advocate of human liberation who remained undaunted in the most t
rying of times. Peter Sedgwick's fine translation of Serge's Memoirs of a Revolu
tionary 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.
