Russia twenty years after (includes Thirty years after the Russian revolution) Victor Serge
Victor Serge is probably best known as a revolutionary novelist. But he was also a revolutionary historian. From 1919 to 1936 Serge lived the Russian revolution, the Left Opposition, and the Stalinist gulag.
Serge documented his experiences in both fiction and histories, sometimes blurring the line between the two. In his autobiography, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, he confessed that his fiction sought to communicate the inner truth of those tumultuous political struggles in a way which historical articles could not. In a similar way, this collection of historical articles bears the stamp of his artistic prose. This is what makes his work so powerful, and, in a way, so Russian.
Reprinted here are two of his most valuable, and previously neglected works. Russia twenty years after was first published in 1937, and serves as a companion volume to Trotsky's The Revolution betrayed, which Serge was translating into French at the same time. Serge's piece is both a social-scientific survey, and a passionate polemic against Stalin's embezzlement of the revolution's promise. He sums up the crash industrialisation of the first five year plan in two phrases. "Build, build, build, export, shoot, build" and "industrialisation is directed like a march through conquered territory."
Serge devotes six chapters to those who struggled and resisted Stalin's crushing of the revolution. As he told Trotsky in May 1936, *this is part.... of a practical discovery of what worker's democracy means.. providing that we are not in anyway the kind of people who build an enormous prison for anyone who disagrees with us."
Serge develops these same ideas in the second piece in this collection, Russia thirty years after, which first appeared in 1947 in a far-left French publication with a tiny circulation. The author died an exile's lonely death in Mexico ten days after publication. This is its first publication in English Serge struggles to go beyond left orthodoxy in understanding the new world order after the war. No shibboleth was too sacred to leave unscrutinized, even the revolution itself. How
INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATION • 48 bed conference centre with six channel interpretation system, library and television room, ten minutes from the centre of Amsterdam and 2 minutes from a park • Contact Robert Went or Peter Drucker to discuss holding your event at the IIRE tel. (+31) 20/671 7263 fax 673 2106 PO Box 53290, 1007 RG Amsterdam Netherlands. e-mail <iire @ antenna.nl
Book notes to salvage revolutionary Marxism from the wreckage of Stalinism? How to draw out its essential humanism, and its fundamental optimism, despite the twin defeats of fascism and Stalinism ? [AN]
Biographical note: Victor Serve (18901947), historian, translator and novelist, was politıcally actıve in seven countres, participated in three revolutions, and spent more than ten years in various captivities. His parents were Kussıan anarchists, who had found refuge in Belgium atter being implicated in the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. Serge himself died in exile in Mexico. * New edition prepared and introduced by Susan Weissman. Original translation from the French by Max Shactman. Humanities Press, 1996, 400 pp. $19.95 (in USA): ISSN 0-391-03885-9 (paperback) The war of gods Religion and politics in Latin America Michel Löwy Verso, 1996
Löwy traces the intimate relationship between religion, politics and social issues in Latin America over the last three decades, as liberation theology has re-interpreted the vocation of the Catholic Church and as Protestantism has made inroads on traditional Catholic strongholds.
In the 1960s liberation theology addressed itself to the problems of a continent racked by poverty and oppression. Comprising a network of localised communities and pastoral organisations, it soon became something much more than a doctrinal current. Liberationist Christianity defined itself in a multitude of social struggles, particularly in Brazil and Central America. Many of the most momentous events in the continent's recent history — the Nicaraguan revolution. the development of the Brazilian Workers Party (PT), the tortuous ascent of President Aristide in Haiti and the uprising in Chiapas. Mexico - have born witness to the influence of a distinctive liberationist Christianity.
Löwy, a regular contributor to Internatonal Viewpoint, proposes a critical yet sympathetic interpretation of liberation theology, and analyses the rival religious mrninte in Tatin Amorin TANA projects in Latin America. [AN] *
October 1996 #281 35
Labor Notes School
The Lean Workplace: A Union Response
Towards art
November 21-24, 1996
Europe!
Oakland, California
Dealing with programs like Total Quality Management and reenaineerina is one of the biggest challenges unions face in the 1990s. So are other parts of management's "lean and mean" strategy: contracting out, job cuts, 10- or 12-hour work
Aternative with lots
Management wants unions to schedules and speedup.
"participate" in programs that spell the loss of good jobs, and ties speedup for those that remain.
This ninth Labor Notes School will show how employee participation programs are connected to contracting out and
The Dutch Committee for a Different Europe
"quality" can be a code word for invites you to take part in debates and actions for a part-timing, and how speedup. We help participants develop responses to these social, green, democratic and teminist Europe.
programs based on their own situations. We outline the steps of
• preparations for the Economic and Monetary union membership education and "mobilized involvement."
Union (EMU) are leading to the dismantling of public services and social security and rising
Topics include unemployment in almost every EU member state.
the pitfalls of
• the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) has
"Protective begun: the fifteen member states are negotiating to
Involvement"
revise the Maastricht Treaty, the treaty that has v double-talk in quality propelled the European Union into its current programs, managecredibility crisis. According to plan, these ment's psychological negotiations are supposed to end with the signing tools, (case studies).
of a new treaty by the heads of government during
/ legal and local their June 1997 Amsterdam summit.
union strategies
Together the EMU and IGC will largely
/ modifying the lean determine the character of the European Union and system thus the daily lives of Europe's citizens. But v what "lean and discussion of these developments is going on mean" means for mainly among politicians.
health care
For the moment there is no broad debate under v quality programs way about the threats posed by European and public employees integration, like the plans for an EU defense bloc,
/ flexibility: overtime, with the "Europeanisation" of the nuclear arsenals
EMPLOYMEN part-time, 10-and 12of France and the United Kingdom. Our Europe hour schedules
BUREAL must be a Europe that carries out a strong social and environmental policy, creates jobs, eliminates
Instructors include Mike the democratic deficit, offers equal opportunities to
Parker and Jane women and men, safeguards the rule of law, is
Slaughter, authors of hospitable to refugees, is open to the East and in solidarity with the South, disarms in order to
Working Smart: A Union
Guide to Participation contribute to peace, and promotes sustainable development both inside and outside Europe.
Programs and Reengineering. Mike and
Parallel to the June 1997 Amsterdam Summit,
Jane have organized there will be an alternative conference, demonworkshops for interstrations and other activities. We invite all prognational and local ressive parties, groups, NGO's and others to take unions across the U.S.
part in this Summit for a Different Europe.
and Canada.
Get in touch!
"Labor Notes schools are the only source of education and training on cooperation programs from and rank-and-file point of view. I attended last years's school and this time our executive board is sending a delegate."
Committee for a Different Europe, c/o A SEED Europe,
•Paul McLennan, ATU Local 732
P.O. Box 92066, 1090 AB Amsterdam, The Netherlands
E-mail: ander. [email protected]
© (+31) 20/66.82.23.6
Open to all unionists and labor educators, this four-day intensive school will run from 2 p.m. Thursday, November 21 through 12:30 p.m.
Sunday, November 24. Registration of $325 includes training materials and lunches. Scholarships are available. To register, or for more information, contact Leah Samuel at (1-313) 842-6262.