Victor Serge

He began work at the age of 15 as an apprentice photographer, then went on to work as a designer and a typographist, learning this trade in an anarchist printing works. He was strongly influenced by the works of the Russian anarchist Kropotkin and became an active journalist and translator in the revolutionary press. In 1912 he was wrongly accused of participating in the Bonnot Gang, a group of bohemian bank robbers. Several of his comrades were executed: Serge was given a five year jail sentence in solitary confinement, followed by five year's exile.

Freed in 1917, he went to Barcelona to work as a typographer, and also took part in the popular insurrection there. In 1918 he volunteered for service in Russia, but was arrested and imprisoned without trial in Paris, because of the ban on his staying there. Then he was exchanged for an officer of the French military mission being held in Russia.

In 1923 he took part in the communist insurrection in Germany. Around this time he became increasingly critical of Soviet government. He joined with Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman to complain about the way the Red Army treated the sailors involved in the Kronstadt Uprising. A libertarian socialist, Serge protested against the Red Terror that was organized by Felix Dzerzhinsky and the Cheka. Following this he joined the Left Opposition group along with people such as Leon Trotsky and Karl Radek.

Serge was an outspoken critic of the authoritarian way that Joseph Stalin governed the country and is believed to be the first writer to describe the Soviet government as 'totalitarian'. Because of this, Serge was expelled from the Communist Party in 1928. He was now unable to work for the government and over the next few years he spent his time writing Year One of the Russian Revolution (1930) and two novels Men in Prison (1930) and Birth of Our Power (1931). These books were banned in the Soviet Union but were published in France and Spain. He wrote in French. Besides being the preferred language of Russian intellectuals of his generation, French assured him an international audience.

Protests against Serge's imprisonment took place at several International Conferences. The case caused the Soviet government considerable embarrassment and in 1936 Joseph Stalin announced that he was considering releasing Serge from prison. Pierre Laval, the French prime minister, refused to grant Serge an entry permit. Emile Vandervelde, the veteran socialist, and a member of the Belgian government, managed to obtain Serge a visa to live in Belgium. Serge's relatives were not so fortunate: his sister, mother-in-law, sister-in-law (Anita Russakova) and two of his brothers-in-law, died in prison.

When the Germans invaded France in 1940, he left Paris and travelled to Marseilles, and in 1941 left on the same ship as Andre Breton and Claude Levi-Strauss. His destination was Mexico - the only place which would grant him a resident's visa. As soon as he settled there he became the object of violent articles and threats to his life from refugee Stalinists - who had recently assassinated Leon Trotsky.

His last years were full of poverty, malnutrition, illness, police surveillance, slander and isolation. Yet he continued to publish novels such as The Long Dusk and his masterpiece, The Case of Comrade Tulayev. His autobiography, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, was first published in the United States in 1945. Serge's health had been badly damaged by his periods of imprisonment in France and Russia. However, he continued to write until he died of a heart-attack in Mexico City on 17th November, 1947.