Victor Serge: A Biography

591 Pages·2013·11.212 MB·English

by  Susan Weissman

SUSAN WEISSMAN is a Professor of Politics at Saint Mary’s
College in Moraga, California. She is an award-winning
broadcast journalist, sits on the editorial boards of Critique and
Against the Current, and is the editor of Victor Serge: Russia
Twenty Years After and e Ideas of Victor Serge.
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is updated paperback edition first published by Verso 2013
First published by Verso 2001
© Susan Weissman 2001, 2013
All rights reserved
e moral rights of the author have been asserted
Verso
UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG
US: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201
www.versobooks.com
Verso is the imprint of New Left Books
ISBN-13: 978-1-84467-887-7
eBook ISBN: 978-1-78168-050-6
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
www.therunninghead.com
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To the memory of Roberto Naduris
whose bright smile is on every
page of this book,
to Eli and Natalia,
and to the memory of my parents,
Perle and Maurice Weissman
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Contents
Cover
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
List of illustrations
Preface to the Paperback eBook edition
Preface
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Part I In the orbit of revolution
Introduction
1 In the service of the Revolution: 1917–21
2 Blockaded in Berlin; neutralized in Vienna; and into the Soviet
fray
3 Back in the USSR – the Left Opposition struggles 1926–28
4 Stalinization 1928–33: the bureaucratic counter-revolution,
solitary struggles in precarious freedom
5 Orenburg 1933–36, interrogation and deportation: digging the
graves of the Revolution
Part II Another exile and two more: the final years
Introduction
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6 Out of Russia, cornered in Europe
7 From Paris to Marseilles, Marseilles to Mexico: the long, last journey
from nightmare to refuge
8 From Mexico, whither the USSR, the world?
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
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List of illustrations
1 Victor Serge in the early 1920s
2 Serge, Vlady and Liuba following his release from prison, 1928
3 Anita Russakova, Serge’s sister-in-law
4 Serge’s uncle Nikolai Kibalchich, executed for his role in the assassination
of Tsar Alexander II
5 e house at 33 Cavalry Street, Orenburg, where Serge and Vlady spent
three years in exile. Painting by Vlady
6 Vlady’s sketch of Serge in Orenburg, signed V.V. Serge, Orenburg, 20
March 1936. Vlady was sixteen at the time
7 Serge’s NKVD file from Orenburg
8 Boris Mikhailovich Eltsin, leading Left Oppositionist and former
chairman of the Soviet in Ekaterinburg, who was in Orenburg with
Serge. Painting by Vlady
9 Vlady’s sketch of a memorial to Stalin’s victims
10 Receipt from the Department of Censorship, dated 29 October 1934 for
Les Hommes perdus, Serge’s confiscated novel about pre-war France
11 Serge and Vlady, about 1936
12 Liuba, Jeannine, Serge and Vlady, Brussels, 1936 [Jeannine Kibalchich]
13 Liuba with Jeannine, France [Jeannine Kibalchich]
14 Safe conduct for Victor Serge and his party, issued by the French
government, 1940. Note that Serge’s nationality is given as
‘indeterminate’
15 Laurette Séjourné [Jeannine Kibalchich]
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16 Sketches of Serge in Marseilles, 1940, by Vlady
17 Charles Wolff, Victor Serge, Benjamin Péret and André Breton, standing
in front of Villa Air-Bel, spring 1941 [Chambon Foundation]
18 Varian Fry standing in the pond at the Villa Air-Bel, watched by Victor
Serge and André Breton (standing), Laurette Séjourné, and Jean
Gemahling (with a stick). Vlady has his back to the camera. November
1940 [Chambon Foundation]
19 Victor Serge, probably on board the Presidente Trujillo sailing from
Martinique to Santo Domingo [Chambon Foundation]
20 Victor Serge in Mexico, 1944
21 Laurette Séjourné in Mexico [Jeannine Kibalchich]
22 Leon Trotsky, Coyoacán, Mexico, 1940 [photograph A.H. Buchman]
23 Victor Serge in Mexico. Photo scratched, perhaps in anger?
24 Serge’s Mexican identity card
25 ‘My father’s hand, Mexico, 1947’, sketch by Vlady
26 Jeannine Kibalchich Russakova in 1982 [Jeannine Kibalchich]
27 Vlady and Irina Gogua, Moscow, 1989; their first reunion in fifty-seven
years [photograph Susan Weissman]
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