Serge’s master theme is revolution and death: to make a revolution one must be pitiless, one must accept the inevitability of killing the innocent as well as the guilty. There is no limit to the sacrifices that the revolution can demand. Sacrifice of others; sacrifice of oneself. For that hubris, the sacrificing of so many others in revolution’s cause, virtually guarantees that eventually the same pitiless violence will be turned on those who made the revolution. In Serge’s fiction, the revolutionary is, in the strictest, classical sense, a tragic figure — a hero who will do, who is obliged to
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