Victor Serge. Russia Twentv Years After. Translated by Max Shachtman. Newly edited by Susan Weissman. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1996. li, 345 pp. $19.95 (paper).

Whether or not a Serge "resurgence" is now taking place is too soon to confirm, but Susan Weissman's new edition of Russia Twenty Years Afterwill undoubtedly be a timely and important contribution. Victor Serge, actually Viktor Lvovich Kibalchich (1890-1947), published the original French version, Destin d'une Revolution: U.S.S.R.. 1917-1937 in Paris in 1937, which was translated by Max Shachtman into English and published in London as Destiny of a Revolution and in New York as Russia Twentv Years Alter. The present edition, prepared by Susan C. Weissman who teaches Rus- sian politics at St. Mary's College, Moraga, California, is a reproduction of the earlier American version and includes not only a new and extended index but most important Serge's essay, written just before his death, "Russia Thirty Years After," presented here for the first time in English. Furthermore, Weissman added a lengthy introduction, entitled "Victor Serge: The Forgotten Marxist," which offers a contextural summary of a multi-dimensional revolutionary's life and his various controversial and thoughtful contributions to Marxism and Left Socialism. Serge wrote Russia shortly after his release from three years of imprisonment in Stalin's GULag (1933-36) and after having participated in the Russian Revolution since February 1919, in close collaboration with Zinov'ev, as the organizer of the Executive Committee of the Comintern and as editor, author and translator, and eventually as a supporter of the Left Opposition Bolsheviks and of Trotsky. Expelled from the Party in 1927 and briefly incarcerated, Serge existed on the foreign earnings of his prolific writings of novels, journal articles, poetry and histories. Although never an insider, Serge was well placed to observe first hand the inner struggles and debates preceding the decisions and the actions taken during the "good years" of the revolution, 1917-27. Serge's book, therefore, expressed in its vehement denunciation of Stalinism, his per- sonal political disappointments and sufferings, but also and more significant, his utter abhorrence of a system which through its development and existence totally denied the earlier promises of the idea of Bolshevism for a better future. In twenty-four chapters, Serge packed facts, observations, analysis and arguments against every aspect of Stalinism. He reported in detail on the real oppressive and de- bilitating conditions of workers, peasants, artisans, male and female, and youth who faced low wages, high prices, fines and compulsory loans and levies, and lived in squalor and wretchedness. Workers were subjected to new methods of exploitation, i.e., Stakhanovism, and deprived of any voice in politics. Similarly, Serge subjected the operations of Stalin's system of oppression to a close analytical scrutiny. Drawing from personal experiences, he discussed the secret service, the camps, and peniten- tiaries, the deportations, the abominable treatment of groups and individuals and the element of irrationality which permeated the entire system of repression. Serge re- - minded the reader of the fate of countless anarchists, communists, oppositionists and capitulators as if to make sure that not a single victim of Stalin's terror was forgotten. Serge devoted one chapter to "The Cult of the Leader," the inanities of which not only completely replaced the Party's "internal democracy" prevalent in the days of Lenin, but turned "new" Party members into mere political marionettes who, when sum- moned, receive theirreports, cast theirvotes on decisions already executed and hap- pily repeated the Leader's slogans until he issued new ones. In the final part of his book, Serge celebrated first the early days of Soviet democ- racy, of the Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, who were "freely elected in the factories" (p. 139) and in military units, and then traced the changes which circum- stances forced upon the Bolsheviks and their revolution. "The genuine democracy," which emerged "because economic privilege no longer existed" (ibid.) and which al- lowed the peaceful competition of workers' political parties, fell victims to the demands of the political survival of the revolution and the Bolshevik Party which alone was des- tined and able to assure this historical feat. The Civil War decimated the ranks of the Bolsheviks, and its aftermath, i.e., Kronstadt, required further politically restrictive mea- sures, the permance of which was prolonged by the unexpected failure of the workers' international world revolution in Western Europe and China. In these years and events the seeds for the gradual rise of the new Soviet bureaucracy were sown and nutured by the Party's General Secretary, the "obscure Georgian" Stalin, who eventually out- maneuvred a "silent" Trotsky, waiting to assume Lenin's post on the summons of the Party. Without the guiding genius of Lenin, the Party and its followers were unable and unwilling to cope with the internal ideological controversies and real economic issues of the construction of modern Russia which required policy decisions on in- dustrialization, agriculture, and collectivization. When industrialization was decreed, Serge wrote, it "is directed like a march through conquered territory [with] ... firing lines, shock brigades, assaults ... Order of Lenin, insignia of honor. The collectiviza- tion is like installing an army in a conquered land, according to the worst rigors of war...." (p. 166) Serge castigated the implementation of both operations for lack of careful planning, ill-considered speed, faulty integration and for causing unnecessary hardship for workers and peasants. Instead of admitting failures, Stalin's bureaucrats falsified and manipulated their official reports or hurled accusations of sabotage upon innocent persons. Serge discussed the early purge trials from Kirov to Tukhachevskii at great length, especially the Zinov'ev-Kamenev-Smirnov trial. He viewed these trials as simply the fi- nal step in the destruction of the Old Bolsheviks of 1917, who-Serge asserted-hated Stalin and who hoped that by staying silent within the Party they would survive and be ready to serve once the Party decided to summon them. These Old Bolsheviks, steeped in Marxist thought and thoroughly political beings, rejected the notion of in- dividual terrorist acts as useless and inappropriate. Stalin's charges were absurd and nonsensical, but trials were theater most deadly. These men, Serge argued, served the Party and the revolution to their deaths and this alone explained their abject behavior and demeaning professions of guilt. Although Kirov's murder was an opportune chance to be turned into political action eventually, Serge believed that the subsequent trials became a carefully manipulated tool in the destruction of Trotsky, his movement and other independent Left Communist groups. In his analysis of Russian foreign policy, Serge lamented the failures of the workers' revolutions in Germany, especially, and in China. However, the main thrust of his crit-