Anarchists Never Surrender : Essays, Polemics, and Correspondence on Anarchism, 1908–1938

Notes
Translated and introduced by Richard Greeman (Oakland: PM Press, 2014). Translated and introduced by Richard Greeman (Oakland: PM Press, 2014). Later named Leningrad and now again St. Petersburg. Translated by Ian Birchall in Serge, The Revolution in Danger: Writings from Russia, 1919–1921 (Chicago: Haymarket, 1997). 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. See Richard Greeman, “Victor Serge and Leon Trotsky,” in Greeman, Beware of Capitalist Sharks! Radical Rants and Internationalist Essays (Illustrated) (Moscow: Praxis Center, 2008). See Richard Greeman... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 46 : The Life of Victor Serge
The Life of Victor Serge 1890 Victor Lvovich Kibalchich (Victor Serge) born on December 30 in Brussels to a family of sympathizers with Narodnik terrorism who had fled from Russia after the assassination of Alexander II. 1908 Photographer’s apprentice and member of the socialist Jeunes-Gardes. Spends a short period in an anarchist ‘utopian’ community in the Ardennes. Leaves for Paris. 1910–1911 Becomes editor of the French anarchist-individualist magazine, l’anarchie. Writes and agitates. 1912 Serge is implicated in the trial of the anarchist outlaws known as the Bonnot Gang. Despite arrest, he refuses to turn informer and is sentenced to five years in prison. Three of his co-defendants were guillotined. (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 45 : Serge in English
Serge in English FICTION Men in Prison (Les hommes dans la prison, 1930). Translated and introduced by Richard Greeman. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1969; London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1970; Middlesex: Penguin Books Ltd., 1972; London and New York: Writers and Readers, 1977; Oakland: PM Press, 2014. A searing personal experience transformed into a literary creation of general import. Birth of Our Power (Naissance de notre force, 1931). Translated by Richard Greeman. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1967; London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1968; Middlesex: Penguin Books Ltd., 1970; London and New York: Writers and Readers, 1977; Oakland: PM Press, 2015. From Barcelona to Petersburg, the conflagration of World War I ignites the spark of revolution, and poses a new problem for the revolutionaries’ power. (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 44 : Anarchist Thought
Anarchist Thought The Origins: The Industrial Revolution of the Nineteenth Century The most profound revolution of modern times, carried out in Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century, is almost unnoticed by historians. The French Revolution cleared its path, and the political upheavals that for the most part occurred during the period between 1800 and 1850 contributed to hastening it. The significance of the historic development of that period can be clearly seen: a new mode of production was established equipped with a new technique. In truth, the Industrial Revolution under the First Empire began with the first steam machinery. The locomotive dates from 1830. Looms, which appeared at the beginning of the century, had already led to the formation of an industrial proletariat in centers like Lyon. In a few decades the bourgeoisie, armed with machinery, transformed—often literally—the surface of t... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 43 : Kronstadt 1921 Trotsky’s Defense, Response to Trotsky
Kronstadt 1921 Trotsky’s Defense, Response to Trotsky In a note published in America at the end of July, Leon Trotsky has finally spelled out his responsibilities in the Kronstadt episode. The political responsibility, as he has always affirmed, belongs to the Central Committee of the Russian CP, which took the decision to “reduce the rebellion by force of arms if the fortress couldn’t be brought to surrender first by peaceful negotiations, and later by an ultimatum.” Trotsky adds: “I never spoke of that question [Kronstadt 1921], not that I have anything to hide but, on the contrary, precisely because I have nothing to say…. Personally I didn’t participate at all in the crushing of the rebellion, nor in the repression that followed.” Trotsky recalls the differences that separated him from that time on with Zinoviev, the chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. “I remained,” he wri... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Letters to Émile Armand
Letters to Émile Armand PARIS, FEBRUARY 12, 1917 For insertion My dear Armand, I have just left prison. I spent five years there. The comrades know why and under what circumstances. I had to answer for the triple crime of being a foreigner, an anarchist, and not wanting to become a fink. But that’s all in the past now. I return to life with the same ideas that formerly guided me. I was harshly struck—unjustly, but does social prosecution ever do otherwise? I was tortured for years. Experience thus confirmed me in our criticisms and resolutions. And yet my concept of our fight has changed quite noticeably. I no longer believe that the anarchist formula can be contained in one formula alone; I grant much less importance to ... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Revolutionaries? Yes, but in What Way?
Revolutionaries? Yes, but in What Way? DISCUSSION IS DIFFICULT, DEMANDING KNOWLEDGE AND FORCING YOU INTO argumentation. This is why our usual enemies prefer slandering, mocking, and declaiming to refuting our theses. One of the epithets they like to apply to us without discussion is that of nonrevolutionary, if not antirevolutionary. To hear them speak, we individualists profess a profound aversion for everything revolutionary. Some so well feign belief in this that, in contrast to us, they have baptized themselves revolutionary anarchists. Well then, let’s talk about this one more time. Do we not have to ceaselessly reexamine these questions so that they are finally clear to a few people of good faith? Every anarchist is, by definiti... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The Mona Lisa Was Stolen
The Mona Lisa Was Stolen THE PORTRAIT OF MONA LISA WAS STOLEN, THE LADY WITH A PEERLESS SMILE. A crook, perhaps one of those crooks with whom revolutionaries are embarrassed to be confused, dared to put a profaning hand on da Vinci’s painting. In the same way someone would take money from a cash register or take shoes from a cobbler, a thief took the Gioconda and fled for an unknown destination. Unanimous and international desolation. I’m not terribly sorry about this, though I’m not insensitive to the charm of a work of art. But I’m one of those who didn’t have the time to go see it very often, and I have more compassion for the living Mona Lisas, whose smiles are withered every day by honest, legal, and honor... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The Religious or the Secular?
The Religious or the Secular? AFTER THE OBSCURANTISTS OF THE CHURCH, HERE COME THE STUPEFYING charlatans of the secular. What we see going on around kids is an ignoble dispute between parties and sects. They hold the future in their frail little hands, and people are afraid they don’t want to keep to the straight and narrow road and stay within the routine. And everyone attacks them in a dispute to see who will mold their nascent intelligent to his profit, so that tomorrow they’ll be the sustaining herd, the docile herd of slaves to be sheared and killed. In the end this is nothing but a fight to exploit this source of wealth. Who will these children be the slaves of? Which dogma, which party will exploit them? Who will they exp... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The Old Mole of Individual Freedom
EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: The Old Mole of Individual Freedom VICTOR SERGE IS BEST KNOWN AS AN OPPONENT OF STALINISM, AN ALLY OF Trotsky who was sent to a Soviet prison camp and who, thanks to a western campaign in his favor, was able to leave the Soviet Union, where he carried on his fight against the Soviet dictator. Far less well known is Serge’s anarchist period, which began in an embryonic form in Belgium in 1906 and lasted at least until his departure for the Soviet Union in 1919. The lessons he learned as an anarchist, and more particularly the anarchist defense of individual freedom, would not only play a key part in Serge’s thought and action during his directly anarchist period but would also inflect his Bolshevik ac... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)