Memoirs of a Revolutionary
$32.99
- Paperback
576 pages
- Release Date
15 January 2012
Summary
A New York Review Books Original
Victor Serge is one of the great men of the 20th century—and one of its great writers, too. He was an anarchist, an agitator, a revolutionary, an exile, a historian of his times, as well as a brilliant novelist, and in Memoirs of a Revolutionary he devotes all his passion and genius to describing this extraordinary—and exemplary—career.
Serge tells of his upbringing among exiles and conspirators, of his involvement with the notorious B…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781590174517 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 1590174518 |
| Author: | Victor Serge, Peter Sedgwick |
| Publisher: | New York Review Books |
| Imprint: | NYRB Classics |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 576 |
| Edition: | Main |
| Release Date: | 15 January 2012 |
| Weight: | 555g |
| Dimensions: | 127mm x 202mm |
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Critics Review
This is a republication of the 1963 Oxford University Press edition prepared and translated by Peter Sedgwick from Serge’s original French text, and the new edition retains Sedgwick’s introduction, along with a post-Soviet essay on Serge by Adam Hochschild, a usefully expanded glossary of short biographies and a number of charming and accomplished pencil sketches of Serge and his friends by his artist son Vladimir. The Guardian
Victor Serge
Victor Serge (1890-1947)
Victor Serge was born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich to Russian anti-Tsarist exiles in Brussels. A precocious anarchist, he was sentenced to five years in a French penitentiary in 1912. Expelled to Spain in 1917, he participated in an anarcho-syndicalist uprising before joining the Revolution in Russia.
After being detained in a French concentration camp, Serge arrived in St. Petersburg 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 arrested in 1929. Despite this, he completed three novels and a history, which were 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. Using his insider knowledge, Serge published exposes of Stalin’s Moscow show trials and machinations in Spain. Stateless and 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 last novels, Unforgiving Years and The Case of Comrade Tulayev, were published posthumously.
Peter Sedgwick (1934-1983)
Peter Sedgwick translated and wrote introductions for Victor Serge’s Memoirs and Year One of the Russian Revolution. A lifelong activist and a founding member of the New Left in Britain, he wrote seminal essays on Serge. In addition to his journalism and political writings, he authored the book Psycho-Politics.
Adam Hochschild
Adam Hochschild has written for numerous publications and is the author of books including King Leopold’s Ghost and To End All Wars. He teaches at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.
George Paizis
George Paizis is the author of Marcel Martinet: Poet of the Revolution, Love and the Novel: The Poetics and Politics of Romantic Fiction, and, with Andrew N. Leak, The Holocaust and the Text: Speaking the Unspeakable. He is a longstanding member of the Socialist Workers Party and was Senior Lecturer in the French Department at University College London.
Richard Greeman
Richard Greeman has translated and written introductions for five of Serge’s novels. A veteran socialist and co-founder of the Praxis Center and Victor Serge Library in Moscow, Russia, Greeman is the author of Beware Of “Vegetarian” Sharks: Radical Rants And Internationalist Essays.
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