Witness to the German Revolution

Victor Serge

feb 2020 · Haymarket Books

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Dispatches from a workers' revolt by the Memoirs of a Revolutionary author, "one of the most compelling of twentieth-century ethical and literary heroes" (Susan Sontag, winner of the National Book Award).

Following in the wake of the carnage reaped across Europe by World War I, German workers undertook a struggle that would prove decisive in determining the course of the entire twentieth century. In 1923, the fledgling Comintern (The Communist International) dispatched Victor Serge, with his peerless journalistic skills, to Berlin to expedite the German Revolution and write these moving reports from the battlefront.

Praise for Victor Serge

"He was an eyewitness of events of world historical importance, of great hope and even greater tragedy. His political recollections are very important, because they reflect so well the mood of this lost generation . . . His articles and books speak for themselves, and we would be poorer without them." — Partisan Review

"I know of no other writer with whom Serge can be very usefully compared. The essence of the man and his books is to be found in his attitude to the truth." —John Berger, Booker Prize–winning author

"The novels, poems, memoirs and other writings of Victor Serge are among the finest works of literature inspired by the October Revolution that brought the working class to power in Russia in 1917 . . . His articles—like the work of John Reed, his American friend—let us follow revolutionary events as they unfold, as seen through the eyes of an exceptionally alert journalist." —Scott McLemee, writer of the weekly "Intellectual Affairs" column for Inside Higher Ed

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Victor Serge: Victor Serge (1889-1947) is best known as a novelist – with two of his works recently republished by the New York Review of Books – and for his Memoirs of a Revolutionary. Originally a participant in the anarchist movement, Serge became a committed bolshevik upon arrival in Russia during 1919 and lent his considerable talents to the cause of spreading the revolution across Europe. An eloquent critic of tyranny no matter its form, Serge was a leading member of the Left Opposition in its struggle against Stalin, a cause which ultimately resulted in his exile from Russia.