Victor Serge was born on this date in Brussels. Serge was a novelist, poet, historian, & militant activist most well-known for his novel, “The Birth of Our Power.” In 1909 he moved to Paris, where he collaborated with Raymond Callemin on the newspaper L’anarchie. Callemin was executed in 1913 for his role in the Bonnot gang of anarchist bank robbers. Serge never participated in any of their robberies, but refused to denounce them in his paper. Consequently, he got five years imprisonment for his association with the gang. He wrote about this in his novel, “Men in Prison.”
Barcelona Uprising of 1917
After his release, in 1913, the French expelled him. He then moved to Barcelona and joined the CNT union. In Barcelona, he wrote for the CNT newspaper, “Tierra y Libertad.” He also participated in the General Strike and anarchist uprising of 1917. In 1918, he went to Russia, initially in support of the communists. However, he quickly became disillusioned with the repressive, autocratic rule, particularly the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion in 1921.
Throughout the 1920s, he was stationed in Berlin and Vienna. There he wrote for the Comintern journal International Press Correspondence and began associating with the Trotskyists. After his return to the Soviet Union in 1925, they kicked him out of the Communist Party. They later imprisoned him, where he began writing his most famous books. In the late 1920s-early 1930s, he completed “Men in Prison,” “Birth of Our Power,” and “Year One of the Russian Revolution.” These were published abroad, but suppressed in the USSR. The mainstream and Communist press mostly ignored or criticized his work.
Imprisoned by the Soviets
In 1933, he and his son were deported to a gulag in Orenburg, where they were nearly starved to death. Yet he still managed to write four more books while imprisoned there. An international campaign for his release was launched by friends abroad, including Magdeleine Paz, André Malraux and André Gide. In 1936, the Soviets granted him permission to leave. However, they confiscated all of his manuscripts and he had to rewrite them from memory.
Exile, Again
He fled to France, where he was under constant harassment by the left and the right. In 1940, he reached Marseilles, which was then a refuge for anti-fascist intellectuals and political militants seeking to escape Europe. He lived there briefly under the protection of American diplomat Varian Fry. There, he worked other anti-fascist artists and writers on the Emergency Rescue Committee. Then he fled to Mexico, where he lived until his death in 1947. Throughout his latter years in Mexico, he continued to be harassed by both the left and right. Some even accusing him of being a Nazi sympathizer. Many believe he was poisoned by the Soviet secret police. There is evidence that the MGB ran an assassination squad among Mexico City cab drivers. He also continued to write, publishing “Memoirs of a Revolutionary, 1901–1941,” “The Case of Comrade Tulayev,” and “The Long Dusk.”