Notes

[1] Translated and introduced by Richard Greeman (Oakland: PM Press, 2014).

[2] Translated and introduced by Richard Greeman (Oakland: PM Press, 2014).

[3] Later named Leningrad and now again St. Petersburg.

[4] Translated by Ian Birchall in Serge, The Revolution in Danger: Writings from Russia, 1919–1921 (Chicago: Haymarket, 1997).

[5] All the Right Enemies is the title of Dorothy Gallagher’s biography of another political maverick, Serge’s comrade Carlo Tresca, assassinated in New York by Fascists, Communists, Mafiosi, or all three in 1943. It would have suited Serge’s biography just as well.

[6] See Richard Greeman, “Victor Serge and Leon Trotsky,” in Greeman, Beware of Capitalist Sharks! Radical Rants and Internationalist Essays (Illustrated) (Moscow: Praxis Center, 2008).

[7] See Richard Greeman, “Victor Serge’s Political Testament,” New Politics 14, no. 3 (Summer 2013), online at http://assets.nybooks.com/media/doc/2012/07/02/Greeman-Serge.pdf.

[8] “Anarchism,” undated manuscript found among Serge’s posthumous paper in Mexico. Victor Serge Papers, box 3, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

[9] See Jean-Luc Sahagian, Victor Serge, l’homme double, preface by Yves Pagès (Paris: Libertalia, 2011), http://www.archyves.net/html/Documents/Serge-HommeDouble-JLSahagian.pdf. (An approximate translation of l’homme double is “the duplicitous” or “double-dealing man.”)

[10] See, for example, Sedgwick’s essay “Victor Serge and Socialism” International Socialism 14 (Autumn 1963): 17–23; and his fragment “Victor Serge: Unhappy Elitist,” posthumously published in History Workshop Journal 17 (Spring 1984), http://www.marxists.org/archive/sedgwick/.

[11] Serge, Resistance (Poems), translated by James Brook (San Francisco: City Lights, 1989). The original phrase “le cap est de bonne espérance,” is a play on the French homonym cap meaning both “course” and “cape,” and on the Cape of Good Hope.

[12] Author’s conversation with Marcel Body, the French anarchist soldier who went over to the Revolution in 1917, worked, like Serge, as a translator of Lenin, headed up the French Communist Group in Moscow, and became the lover and secretary of Alexandra Kollontai. Body was allowed to return to France in 1927, remained briefly in the French CP for a while and ended translating Bakunin’s complete works into French. After such a career, it is difficult to understand Body’s negative anarchist attitude toward Serge.

[13] George Woodcock, “At Once Archaic and Fresh,” review of Birth of Our Power, The New Leader 50, no. 18 (September 4, 1967).

[14] Guérin, Anarchism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970), 97.

[15] “Anarchism,” Victor Serge Papers, box 3, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

[16] It was in this Sergian spirit that in the former Soviet Union a group of veteran dissidents from the perestroika period—anarchists, syndicalists, critical Marxists and Greens—opened the Victor Serge Library in Moscow, with thousands of donated radical books previously banned under the totalitarian regime. Organized around the Victor Serge Library, the Praxis Center began holding public forums—beginning with the first critical discussion of the Spanish Revolution of 1936 ever held in Russia. Praxis also translates and publishes books by anarchists (for example Volin’s history of the Makhnovist movement), critical Marxists (Raya Dunayevskaya, Maximilien Rubel), and of course Serge. For more information, go to http://www.praxiscenter.ru/about_us/english/ and consider attending an annual international conference.

[17] “Émile Henry,” Le Communiste, May 13, 1908.

[18] Quoted in Jean Maitron, “De Kibalchiche à Victor Serge,” Le Mouvement Social 47, 1964.

[19] “La Haine,” l’anarchie, September 9, 1909. See “Hatred,” in this collection, 32.

[20] “Les Hauts-Criminels,” l’anarchie, January 25, 1912. See “The Real Criminals,” in this collection, 111.

[21] “Par l’audace,” l’anarchie, October 6, 1910. See “By Being Bold,” in this collection, 68.

[22] “Noter antisyndicalisme,” l’anarchie, February 24, 1910. See “Our Antisyndicalism,” in this collection, 38.

[23] “Une Expérience Révolutionnaire,” l’anarchie, March 30, 1911. See “A Revolutionary Experience,” in this collection, 81.

[24] “L’Illusion Révolutionnaire,” l’anarchie, April 28, 1910. See “The Revolutionary Illusion,” in this collection, 43.

[25] “Une Expéreince Révolutionnaire” (“A Revolutionary Experience”).

[26] “Les Fédérés,” l’anarchie, March 28, 1912. See “The Communards,” in this collection, 120.

[27] “Une Expérience Révolutionnaire” (“A Revolutionary Experience”).

[28] “L’Individualisme facteur du Progrès,” Par-delà la Mêlée 16, 1917. See “Individualism, a Factor of Progress,” in this collection, 132.

[29] “L’Individualiste et la Société,” l’anarchie, June 15, 1911. See “The Individualist and Society,” in this collection, 78.

[30] “Je Nie,” l’anarchie, February 17, 1910. See “I Deny!” in this collection, 55.

[31] Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, trans. Peter Sedgwick (New York: NYRB Classics, 2012), 23.

[32] “Révolutionnaires? Oui, Mais Comment?” l’anarchie, December 14, 1911. See “Revolutionaries? Yes, but in What Way?” in this collection, 101.

[33] “L’Individualiste et la Société” (“The Individualist and Society”).

[34] “Deux Russes,” l’anarchie, December 29, 1910. See “Two Russians,” in this collection, 72.

[35] “Une Tête va Tomber,” l’anarchie, May 12, 1910. See “A Head Will Fall,” in this collection, 58.

[36] Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own, (New York: Libertarian Book Club, 1963), 238.

[37] “Un Honnête Monsieur,” l’anarchie, June 15, 1911.

[38] “Le Bon Example,” l’anarchie, January 27, 1910. See “A Good Example” in this collection, 51.

[39] “Les Illegaux,” Le Communiste, June 20, 1908. See “The Illegalists,” in this collection, 15.

[40] “Anarchistes et Malfaiteurs,” l’anarchie, February 1, 1912. See “Anarchists and Criminals,” in this collection, 114.

[41] “Les Bandits,” l’anarchie, January 21, 1912. See “The Bandits” in this collection, 104.

[42] “Contre la Faim,” l’anarchie, September 21, 1911. See “Against Hunger,” in this collection, 92.

[43] Quoted in Jean Maitron, “De Kibalchiche à Victor Serge,” Le Mouvement Social 47, 1964.

[44] Richard Parry, The Bonnot Gang (London: Rebel Press, 1987), 168.

[45] Maitron, “De Kibalchiche à Victor Serge.”

[46] “Lettre d’un Emmuré,” La Mêlée, February 1, 1919.

[47] “Les Tendances Nouvelles de l’Anarchisme Russe,” Bulletin Communiste no. 48–49, November 3, 1921. See “New Tendencies in Russian Anarchism,” in this collection, 177.

[48] Clément Duval (1850–1935), French anarchist illegalist, leader of the group called La Panthère des Batignolles; Vittorio Pini (1850–189?), Italian anarchist illegalist active in France.

[49] The bomb Henry placed in the offices of the factories of Carmaux exploded in the commissariat on the rue des Bons-Enfants when the police removed it.

[50] Marius-Alexander Jacob (1879–1954), head of a band of anarchist illegalists.

[51] “Widow-maker” was a slang expression for the guillotine.

[52] The public executioner.

[53] On this subject consult: Varenne De Ravachol à Caserio; Jean Dubis: Le Peril anarchiste; M. and A. Leblond: La société française d’après la littérature contemporaine [Note by Serge in the original].

[54] Jules Guesde (1845–1922), socialist leader; Gustave Hervé (1871–1944), left-socialist antimilitarist writer.

[55] Familiar name for the guillotine.

[56] The first robbery by the Bonnot Gang on December 21, 1911.

[57] Ernest Caby was the messenger wounded in the robbery.

[58] Armand refused to publish this letter in l’anarchie.

[59] André Lorulot.

[60] Alexander Moissievich Atabekian (1868–1933).

[61] Appolon Andreievich Kareline (1863–1926).

[62] Abba Gordin (1887–1964).

[63] Germann Karlovich Askarov (1882–ca. 1935).

[64] Vladimir Vladimirovich Barmach (1879–ca. 1938).

[65] Markus Naumovich Oradovsky (ca. 1895–?).

[66] Arthur Lessiga (ca. 1889–?).

[67] Since certain of the attacks to which I allude have come from the anarchist press, permit me here to spell out my ideas with the help of a recent example. The comrades of POUM and the CNT having been persecuted and murdered with impunity in the Spanish Republic, at a time when the CNT participated in various ways in a bourgeois government, the CNT obviously bears a part of political responsibility for these crimes against the working class movement, for which it would nevertheless be unfair to hold its leaders personally responsible [Note by Serge in the original].

[68] This section was later used in a slightly different form in Serge’s Memoirs of a Revolutionary. This passage is excerpted from Peter Sedgwick’s translation (New York: NYRB Classics, 2012), 23–25.