Publisher's Synopsis
This is one of the most important documentary accounts of the Stalinist system written by the revolutionary novelist and historian Victor Serge. This was his first major work, written just after his harrowing release and expulsion from the Stalinist gulag, where he spent three years as an intransigent oppositionist to the Stalinist regime. Stalin nearly stilled Serge's voice, and in exile he, along with Leon Trotsky, took up the defence of those who were falsely accused and silenced. Twenty years before Krushchev's secret speech about Stalin's crimes, Victor Serge tried to alert the world to what Stalin was doing in the name of socialism in the USSR, to analyse how the Russian Revolution, which had been a beacon of hope for humankind, was in the process of devouring itself. Included in this edition is Serge's never before published (in English) retrospective of the Russian Revolution on its thirtieth birthday, "Thirty Years After the Russian Revolution", Serge's most eloquent summary and analysis of the Stalinist counterrevolution. The introductory essay by Susan Weissman, "Victor Serge: The Forgotten Marsixt", introduces the reader to Serge, evaluating his contribution to current understanding of the former Soviet Union. Susan Weissman also updates Serge's accounts of the fate of various oppositionists with information from the newly opened Soviet archives.
