Born in Belgium in 1890, son of anti-Tsarist Russian emigrants => adolescent anarchist revolutionary activity in France => sentenced to five years in prison to 17 years => expelled to Spain => exchanged for French soldiers, held by the Bolsheviks in 1919 => yes joins the Bolsheviks => participates in the civil war and works for the Comintern => joins the left opposition after the Kronstadt rebellion => arrested and imprisoned in Lublianka 1928 => released => member of the Trotskyist opposition => again arrested 1933 and exiled to Siberia => released after international protests and sent to France 1936 => joined the POUM and fought in Spain => fled to France after Franco’s victory => left France on a refugee ship to Mexico in 1941 => participates in Trotskyist activities in Mexico => dies in 1947.
How about a biography? Incredible, one might say. But not unusual for the people Serge moved and lived among. Their Notebooks [Notebooks: 1936-1947; Carnets: 1936-1947], which were not written for publication and were discovered only in the 21st century, are an attractive mix of historical reminiscences, reflections on Marxism and psychoanalysis, attacks on Stalinist totalitarianism (the term is often used), defense of democratic socialism, descriptions of Mexico, literary criticism and art history. Most of the entries are medium in size, one to three pages. They can be read separately, although the chronology is important, as we see how Serge’s thinking evolves with the war he watches from afar, in Mexico.
These voices contain the entire Who’s Who of the artistic and revolutionary world of continental Europe. There seems to be no significant revolutionary, writer or painter that Serge has not encountered during his forty years of feverish activity. Of the leaders of the Russian Revolution, Serge was closest to Trotsky. Although not always. He joined the Left Opposition after Kronstadt, but the attack on the rebellious sailors was led by none other than Trotsky. Serge also later did not agree with the formation of the IV International. Also in the Soviet Union he was imprisoned as a Trotskyist and in Spain he worked with the POUM, the Trotskyist militia. He arrived in Mexico after the assassination of Trotsky. Serge’s descriptions of the Coyoácan “tomb”, the compound where Trotsky lived and was assassinated, the utter desolation of the house which still had armed guards and turrets, with Natalia, Trotsky’s widow, emaciated, helpless, the children dead. are some of the most moving parts of the Notebooks.
The frenzied activity around Trotsky is described even after his death. Serge (we don’t know how he is) managed to meet Trotsky’s assassin in prison – where he receives princely treatment. Here is part of the description of Ramón Mercader (whose identity was unknown at the time): “Tall, well built, vigorous, flexible, even athletic. Thick neck… strong, well formed head. A man of animal vigor. A fleeting look, sometimes harsh and revealing. His features are sharp, fleshy, vigorous. Very well dressed; brown leather jacket; face. Underneath was a fashionable khaki silk sports shirt. Khaki gabardine trousers with pronounced crease; yellow shoes; good soles”.
The enemy brothers, Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera, are present throughout the book: the first, co-organizer of the failed assassination of Trotsky then fled to Chile thanks to Pablo Neruda; the second, inconsistent defender of Trotsky; both “united” in the Communist Party of Mexico which Diego Rivera joined after the war in the wave of pro-Stalinist enthusiasm that swept the world after the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany.
The Who’s Who of the Comintern (Willi Mūnzenberg, Franz Mehring, Otto Rūhle, Anton Pannekoek) is accompanied by the intellectual elite of Russia and continental Europe: Ossip Mandelstam, Anna Akhmatova, Maxim Gorky, Boris Pasternak, Andrei Tolstoy, André Breton, André Gide, Antoine de Saint Exupéry, Romain Rolland, Stefan Zweig, Pablo Picasso. Each of them is, often in passing, sketched out in a few paragraphs: Andrei Tolstoy, the amiable count who throws fabulous parties as famine rages and is driven around in Stalin’s private car; Anna Akhmatova, with “her huge brown eyes in the face of an emaciated child”; André Gide in search of popularity, complaining that Malraux tries to eclipse him, but with enough intellectual honesty to write return of the USSR; Romain Rolland, to whom Serge owes his release from Siberian exile, but who gradually adopts a pro-Stalinist stance and refuses to condemn the Moscow trials; the excessive vanity of André Breton, “a personality that is nothing more than a pose”; the petty bourgeois Stefan Zweig; Picasso painting for “art galleries that cater to bourgeois collectors fed on intellectual waste”. “
It’s a book of the dead. In an ideologically inspired orgy of murder that swept Europe, those who were not killed by Stalin were killed by Hitler, and those who survived died in the war or committed suicide. Hardly anyone died in their bed.
What about politics? Serge does not present a coherent view of it, nor is it expected to occur in a diary. For him, the world is made up of four political forces: the conservative capitalist, the Stalinist, the democratic socialist and the fascist. Defeat in the war seems to have eliminated fascism. The fate of Europe and the world depends on the interaction of the other three. Capitalism is ideologically bankrupt and the development of technology requires planning. Therefore, he is doomed. Stalinism rises. It destroys human freedom and soul and has tarnished all communist ideals. It must be resisted at all costs; without compromises. Democratic socialism is, according to Serge, the only humane alternative, but can it win when Stalin is about to conquer half of Europe? (Serge was right about this, even though he was often wrong in a number of predictions made during the war.) Like any contemporary observer and participant in this struggle, we are left with possibilities. Nobody knows which one will be correct.
However, the essential dilemmas and major forces that shaped the postwar era are described with remarkable clarity. If we look at the period 1945-1990, it can actually be described as the struggle between these three ideologies that have evolved over time: capitalism towards a more liberal state, democratic socialism towards a pro-capitalist position that Serge could not have imagined , and Stalinism towards a much milder variant of Brezhnev-like sovietism.
However, there are forces that Serge underestimated. Especially for the historical background of him. As the very partial list of people mentioned here should make clear, the ideological world in which Serge moved was that of continental Europe, that of five great nations: Russia, Germany, France, Spain and Italy. The Anglo-Saxon world is not very present; particularly absent is Great Britain. The Third World does not exist. In a few scattered comments, Serge strangely did not see the enormous revolutionary potential of Africa, India, China, Indonesia. These countries do not exist for Serge. His descriptions of Mexico as he travels the country are worth reading for his glimpses of rural and urban life in the 1940s, pyramids and lost civilizations, but they are tourist observations. While his commitment to Europe is close and passionate, his commitment to Mexico is reflected only through the role Mexico plays in European conflicts and, particularly, in the Spanish Civil War. There is a total dearth of political or social observations about Mexico itself.
I would like to conclude with Serge’s observations on two fascists he knew personally when they were communists: Jacques Doriot (“Zinoviev liked me”) and Nicola Bombacci. Both were killed in reprisal at the end of the war. Bombacci was one of fifteen executed alongside Mussolini. His transition from communism to fascism is explained by the need for restless activity, great organizational skills and ambition. But there is an interesting little ideological detail: both, Serge thinks, could have seen fascism within the Marxist scheme as a ruse of history in which decrepit capitalism adopts fascism as a way to save itself; however, fascism, by imposing strong state domination over the private sector, gradually transforms it and creates an economy which, in a future evolution, can be easily taken over by the workers. According to him, former Communists saw fascism as a way to end capitalism.
PD. The edition of the book borders on catastrophic (however the translation is good and smooth). Dozens of people mentioned by Serge are not identified; what they are, they are in minimalistic endnotes; many events alluded to in the Notebooks remain unexplained; the introduction is short and pointless. Clearly the publisher saved money.
Originally posted on the author’s blog.
