Serge, Victor

(1890–1947)

   Born Victor Lvovich Khibalchich in Brussels to Russian émigré parents, Serge developed into a journalist, novelist and revolutionary activist. Initially he was a member of the Jeunes Gardes socialist faction, but grew intolerant of their commitment to reformism and began, while in Paris, to embrace libertarian anarchism. Having played a part in the unsuccessful Barcelona uprising of syndicalists, Serge moved on to the Soviet Union in 1919, joining the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) on arrival in St. Petersburg, and using his editorial, linguistic and journalistic skills to gain employment with the First International. Having been instrumental, alongside Grigori Zinoviev, in the formation of the Comintern, in the autumn of 1923 Serge helped plan the aborted insurrection in Germany through his role as a representative of that body in Berlin and Vienna. Serge returned to the Soviet Union in 1926 and joined the Left Opposition to Josef Stalin. Accordingly, he was ejected from Stalin’s CSPU in 1927, and in 1930 exiled to Central Asia, before being expelled from the Soviet Union altogether in 1936. In subsequent years Serge dedicated his life to using the power of literature to agitate against the Soviet Union, authoring novels exposing the purges, for example The Case of Comrade Tulayev (1950). Having initially moved to France, Serge fled to Mexico following the Nazi advance on Paris. He died there in 1947.

   Serge’s autobiography, Memoirs of a Revolutionary 1901–1941 (1980), offers little in the way of theory, but does provide a meticulous insight into early 20th-century radicalism in Russia and Europe. Here, and elsewhere, Serge advanced a critique of Soviet Marxism for its apparent contempt of individual human rights, suggesting that the outcome of the Bolshevik revolution had merely been a reaffirmation of the necessity of democracy, and he became one of the earliest critics to label the Soviet Union totalitarian.