Notebooks, 1934-1947

by Victor Serge, Mitch Abidor (translator), Richard Greeman (translator)

An NYRB Classics Original

Victor Serge’s Notebooks provide an intensely personal account of the last decade of the legendary Franco-Russian writer and revolutionary. Begun after Serge was liberated from Stalin’s Russia, they evoke Popular Front France, the fall of Paris, the “Surrealist Château” in Marseille, and the flight to the New World. They are replete with vivid life portraits (Gide, Breton, Saint-Exupéry, Lévi-Strauss), and moving evocations of fallen revolutionary comrades (Gramsci, Nin, Radek, Trotsky) and of doomed colleagues among the Soviet writers (Fedin, Pilniak, Mandelstam, Gorky).

Serge’s Mexican notebooks provide a fascinating account of his exploration of pre-Columbian cultures, his preoccupation with earthquakes and volcanoes, and his sympathetic curiosity for the indigenous peasants. They also portray political and cultural figures in Mexico City, from the exiles’ psychoanalytic circle, to painters like Dr. Atl and Leonora Carrington and poets like Octavio Paz. These writings paint a vivid self-portrait and convey the intense loneliness Serge also felt in these years, cut off as he was from Europe, deprived of a political platform, prey to angina attacks, and anxiously in love with a younger woman.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, Russia, Literature, Classics

640 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Victor Lvovich Kibalchich (В.Л. Кибальчич) was born in exile in 1890 and died in exile in 1947. He is better known as Victor Serge, a Russian revolutionary and Francophone writer. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks five months after arriving in Petrograd in January 1919, and later worked for the newly founded Comintern as a journalist, editor and translator. He was openly critical of the Soviet regime, but remained loyal to the ideals of socialism until his death.

After time spent in France, Belgium, Russia and Spain, Serge was forced to live out the rest of his life in Mexico, with no country he could call home. Serge's health had been badly damaged by his periods of imprisonment in France and Russia, but he continued to write until he died of heart attack, in Mexico city on 17 November 1947. Having no nationality, no Mexican cemetery could legally take his body, so he was buried as a 'Spanish Republican.'

Reviews

[Paul H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

(4.5 stars.) The Notebooks are among the best nonfiction written in the twentieth century -- similar to Orwell's diaries covering the same years but significantly better.

In short, an Old Bolshevik -- who also happens to be a solid but not-world-class poet and novelist -- somehow escapes Stalin's purges in the mid-1930s, flees to Mexico via transatlantic voyage, and spends 12 years writing near-perfect nonfiction in a series of notebooks, which consist of:

-- 20% belletristic descriptions of Mexico (daily life, Toltec temples, bullfighting, etc.), which are insanely good;

-- 15% poetic/philosophical reflections on a wide variety of topics, which are very good;

-- 15% standard diary entries about his interactions, life, family, etc., which are very good;

-- 10% play-by-play descriptions of WW2 as it happens (+ wildly inaccurate predictions about the post-WW2 liberal order; Bolsheviks aren't exactly known for their deep understanding of society or human nature), which are very good;

-- and then, unfortunately, his main preoccupation and the primary weakness of the work, 40% inside-baseball stuff about internecine conflicts among Communists/Socialists etc., splinter groups of Bolsheviks, GPU spies, etc.

Some of these latter entries, particularly his reminiscences about the October Revolution, Trotsky, etc., are quite interesting, but a fair amount of it drags, and NYRB really needed an editor to take a firm hand and improve the work; no one on earth wants or needs to read Serge spending five pages figuring out which tiny-circulation socialist newspaper should publish his latest polemical article.

And yet, somehow, even in these passages, Serge is often compelling, probably due to the fact that he is an impossibly interesting person who knew, apparently, every famous writer in Europe -- there are priceless first-hand accounts of Zweig, Breton, Gide, Weil, Mandelstam, Blok, Gramsci, Gorky, Bely, Levi-Strauss, St.-Exupery, Bergson, et al., and every Communist of note, including Trotsky, Lenin, and Stalin -- and he never expresses himself in a lazy or secondhand way.

[Jonfaith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is worth it for Serge fans and other Bolshies who fear the game was rigged when Trotsky was booted out and Koba changed the playbook. The six hundred pages serves three chief functions: a) detailing what happened to not only the opposition to Stalin within the ComIntern b) an interesting travel account of Serge's exile in Mexico c) a likewise pulsating account of experiencing the Second World War abroad, bristling with all the uncertainty about the events and ultimate outcome. The portraits of Gide, Breton and dozens of minor figures are brilliant.

I sat on this for over six months and then read the final 160 pages today.

2.5 stars

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think Victor Serge is one of the most fascinating characters of the last century. He led a thoroughly cosmopolitan, revolutionary, and artistic life. His novels are excellent, his memoirs unforgettable. His purely political prose is less remarkable: its didactic quality is just slightly less exciting than the other work. These journals are worth reading, but they are perhaps less original than so much of his other work. If you’re thinking of jumping into Serge’s books, I would end rather than begin with this book.

[Luke Pickrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Something special. A fascinating human who lived through an important part of history. The writings are wide-ranging and hugely interesting.

[Neil Rogall · Rating 5 out of 5]

I discovered Victor Serge when I was 18 at the first meeting of the international socialists that I went to in Leeds. Peter Sedgwick, the original translator of ‘Memoirs of a Revolutionary’ was the speaker. Serge’s (son of Russian Narodniks who had fled to Belgium) political commitment took him from the Belgium Socialist Youth, then to the individualist anarchists (think Bonnot Gang) of pre- WW1 France which landed him in prison, then to Barcelona for the 1917 uprising. From there he ended up via a stay in a French POW camp in Revolutionary Russian arriving in the dark bleak and hungry winter of 1919 during the height of the civil war. He joined the Bolsheviks and later worked for the Comintern in Germany but never abandoned his libertarian politics. A supporter of the Left Opposition he was imprisoned in the late 1920s and his fate would have been that of tens of thousands of other revolutionaries in Stalin’s prison camps but for a successful campaign in Western Europe to free him from a certain death in the years of the Moscow Trials. He was in France when the Nazis invaded and he managed to get a boat along with Andre Breton to Mexico where he spent his last years.
It was as the great chronicler of the Russian Revolution and Counter- Revolution that we know him best. I read the Memoirs when I was 20, a book so full of victories and defeats, of tragedies that make you dizzy but a book that made sure I was an anti-Stalinist Marxist for my entire adult life. But alongside this, Year One of the Russian Revolution is one of the most gripping accounts you can ever read of 1917-1918.
The Notebooks, his diaries from 1936 in Marseille to his death in Mexico in 1947, are 600 pages chronicling his life in exile. There are wonderful descriptions of the Mexican countryside and of life there, of meetings with fellow exiles including of course with Natalya Trotsky. There are discussions of contemporary art and his visits to galleries and museums. All these are punctuated by his anger at the endless assassinations of his comrades and the persecutions of himself and fellow oppositionists by agents of Stalin and the Mexican Communist Party. Despite his poverty and that of his family and of the tragedies all around him he stills keeps his head.
Yes there are weaknesses in some of his views - especially a certain condescension towards indigenous Mexicans and a lack of understanding of Mexican culture something not uncommon amongst much of the European left at the time. Nonetheless it was a wonderful read. I now wonder whether there will be any other discoveries of Serge’s writing thought lost.
I wouldn’t suggest the Notebooks as an introduction to Victor Serge’s writings. If you are new to Serge, I would suggest either trying his novels - my favourites are ‘The Case of Comrade Tulayev’ and ‘Midnight in the Century’ about the Stalinist purges, ‘Birth of our Power’ and ‘Conquered City’ about the revolutionary year of 1917 and 1919. Or alternatively of course his ‘Memoirs of a Revolutionary’, a book that has been a companion my whole adult life

[Ian Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

I regard Victor Serge as one of the great writers of the Twentieth Century and having read most of his novels and a large chunk of his non-fiction I was delighted to receive this book for my nth birthday. The notebooks were only discovered in 2010 and it’s taken a while to get them translated into English.
As notebooks go, they are fairly polished, which might reflect Serge’s writing abilities, but they’re clearly not meant for publication. If you were expecting shopping lists and doodles – like my notebooks – you’d be pleasantly surprised. They cover the period from when he was allowed to leave the Soviet Union to a few days before his death in the back of a taxi in November 1947. In between we get Serge’s flight to Mexico with his son Vlady in 1941; the arrival of his partner and daughter in Mexico the following year; World War II; and the start of the Cold War. Many of the notes read like diary entries as they have a date and they recount Serge’s activities or thoughts for a particular day. Others refer to events in Europe or the US, especially where Serge is following the course of the war and speculating on what will happen when it ends. There are recurring themes: Trotsky and his assassination in Mexico City in 1940; the machinations of the Soviet secret service and its stooges in the Mexican Communist party; Mexican history and culture; the deaths – natural or otherwise – of old comrades. Especially in the last couple of years you get a strong feeling that Serge’s days are numbered, whether by an incipient heart condition or his bouts of breathlessness (he blames Mexico City’s high altitude but I understand he was a lifelong smoker) or by some shadowy assassin sent by Moscow. Another theme is art. I had not seen any material about art in his writing, but in the notebooks, it becomes clear that Serge is an art connoisseur and knew many contemporary artists and appreciated – or not – their work. Regarding Trotsky’s assassination, many of the entries dwell on the assassination itself, events leading up to it and Serge’s deteriorating relationship with Trotsky’s widow, Natalia. Serge is quite distressed by that as it seems to be rooted in suspicion and distrust stoked by Stalin’s agents. Serge spends a great deal of time pondering Trotsky’s ice-axe wielding murderer. When he died the true identity of Trotsky’s assassin was still not known, although by that time the convicted murderer had been sitting in a Mexican jail for seven years. Yet Serge notes that “Jackson” – or whatever his real name is – is enjoying a rather decent quality of prison life thanks to substantial financial resources made available by a foreign government.
This edition has a useful glossary of names, and you need it because Serge writes about a fascinating range of people: secret agents, assassins, artists, writers, Communist fellow-travellers, traitors and general hangers-on.
One thing you don’t get in these notebooks is self-pity. Serge just didn’t go in for it. He writes articles, novels, poetry but no one wants to publish his material. He and his family are living in dire poverty. His comrades are dying in mysterious circumstances but not once does he moan. He’s angry at times, but there’s no whingeing. I read somewhere that when Vlady arrived at the police station where his father’s body had been taken, the first thing he noticed was the holes in his father’s shoes. He started and ended his life dirt poor. Anyone who thinks that makes him a failure needs to read this book.

[Jake · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly remarkable collection of Serge’s notes covering his exile from Europe to what ended up being the last period of his life spent in Mexico. Although you might expect that 500 plus pages of somewhat random reflections about current events and details about Serge’s daily activities would grow old, you would be wrong, because Serge happened to be a truly excellent writer, capable of sketching his extraordinary acquaintances and friends (he seemingly knew almost every significant cultural and political figure in Europe) with artistic detail.
Serge’s discussions with his fellow defeated leftist exiles could easily be the basis of numerous works of political theory, but you also get to experience Mexico’s cultural heritage through Serge’s eyes, as he travelled to the country’s ancient monuments and lost cities with his family. Serge’s observations are always worthwhile and this was an enriching experience to read.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

These notebooks record the final decade in the life of the revolutionary and writer Victor Serge. They cover his final months in France, his voyage to the Americas with fellow émigrés and his final years in Mexico. They showcase his strengths as writer: observation, scrutiny and a wide range of reference. There are some excellent pen portraits of fellow militants and artists: Andre Breton, Diego Rivera (whom Serge had a low opinion of), Leonora Carrington and, above all, Trotsky. There are continuous attempts to understand the political situation in Europe: some astute, some not so. There is also a surprising amount about the landscape of Mexico, which Serge uses to express his ideas about materialism and pantheism.

Although most of the pieces look outward, these are personal writings. The portrait of Serge that emerges is of an intelligent and cultured man cast adrift from the action and drama of his early life, concerned for the future of European socialism, and deeply paranoid about the reach of Stalinism.

[Barry Smirnoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection of writings that discuss a wide variety of topics. Serge was an activist of Belgian origin, and was active in the Left Opposition in Russia and was sent to the gulag. In 1934 he was freed and he moved to France and later participated in the Spanish Civil War. He fled to Mexico after the fall 0f France and stayed there with other European Socialist exiles. He remained politically engaged and was harassed by the Stalinists as a Trotskyist. These writings deal with these issues, political personalities, and his life and travels in Mexico. A very interesting man, with a great deal of explanatory notes.