A Belgian-born Russian, Serge was 28 when he first set foot in Russia in 1919. An active anarchist, who had already served two jail terms and taken part in the Spanish insurrection of 1917, he soon joined the Bolsheviks, went on to participate in the first three Congresses of the Comintern, and fought in the siege of Petrograd. Dissenting with the Party's terror and bureaucracy he became an active Left Oppositionist, and finally after many years in prison fied to France in 1936 and to Mexico in 1940. Throughout his life he wrote prolifically of his times: novels and short stories, biographies of Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky, and an enormous archive of unpublished work including correspondence and polemics. Susan Weissman's biography is the first to reveal the extraordinary commitment and hope of this great political writer and to reveal views that reflect the significant historical struggles of our own time.
Author Biography
Susan Weissman is Professor of Politics at St. Mary's College of California. She is a member of the editorial boards of Critique and Against the Current and is editor of Victor Serge: Russia Twenty Years After and The Ideas of Victor Serge.
