Victor Serge?

[Rooster]

I occasionally see this guy's books in the second hand stores I visit and I was wondering if they were worth getting? I was considering getting Year One of the Russian Revolution. Also, any information regarding him or his ideas would be welcome.

[Joe Payne]

His fiction novels are actually really good. I think he's scum politically. Starting as an illegalist/individualist, then becoming a Bolshevik and top apologist for Chekist terror, then becoming a Trotskyist and getting purged, and ending his life as a right wing social democrat. I'm an anarchist, so I'd say fuck 'im.

But he is a damn good writer.

[Rooster]

I wasn't aware that he wrote fiction. Are his accounts of the Russian revolution not worth my effort then?

[Dr Doom]

year one of the revolution is worth reading as are his fiction novels, especially 'conquered city'.

[daft punk]

Take no notice, Serge is worth reading precisely because he was an anarchist who became a Bolshevik. He always tried to stay objective so he wasnt uncritical of the Bolsheviks.

Dunno if you know but he wrote a bio of Trotsky with Trotsky's wife.

It is from people like Serge that we are gonna get a pretty unbiased picture of what was happening.

[Caj]

How is From Lenin to Stalin, if anybody has read it?

[daft punk]

http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/254

review of a book about Serge, says it is a must-read

"The recent publication of Susan Weissman’s book, Victor Serge – The course is set on hope (Verso, 2001), is therefore a very welcome event. It should be read by all socialists and radical anti-capitalist youth, and by anybody who wants to comes to grips with one of the seminal events of twentieth century history – the October 1917 Russian Revolution and the Stalinist counter revolution."

[A Marxist Historian]

year one of the revolution is worth reading as are his fiction novels, especially 'conquered city'.

Yeah. Also The Case of Comrade Tulayev, which is the best novel about Stalin's Great Terror anybody ever wrote as far as I'm concerned. Midnight in the Century, on the same subject, is good too.

Year One of the Revolution is simply the best historical account of, well, Year One of the Revolution available in English.

He also wrote a Year Two, but the fucking Stalinists confiscated the manuscript and destroyed it. Hasn't even turned up now that the archives are opened.

He did vacillate politically and move rightwards after he broke with Trotsky, ending as a supporter of De Gaulle just before he died. But hey, it happens, nobody's perfect.

-M.H.-