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Friday 7 November 2014

Conquered City by Victor Serge: Introduction




I dedicate this book to my
Comrades in France and Spain,
For we must try to rescue the
true face of the Revolution from
oblivion and legend;
This is necessary to purge
our strength,
to obey the highest necessity more
freely,
not to ask it to justify
our errors,
to better accomplish what
must be accomplished,
And so that man will be reborn
one day in every man.
V.S.



I'm a regular user and uploader to the website LibCom, and in addition to reading up on Labour history, revolutionary moments and the odd bit of theory I've been keenly working my way through the sites working class literature list. My reading list has grown quite a bit since discovering and adding to it. One book I was very eager to read was Conquered City by Victor Serge a Anarchist based in France and Spain, imprisoned several times who in 1917 became a Bolshevik and thought in the Russian Revolution, before becoming disenchanted with the Bolsheviks dictatorial turn. Conquered City was his fictional account of the first year of Bolshevik rule in the city of Petrograd. It was written at a time when Serge found himself increasingly under pressure from the Soviet authorities and had to emigrate back to France.

The Marxist Internet Archive had posted the first four chapters but had uploaded since 2004, the first four chapters were very intriguing, and being unable to find another online version of the book I went out and bought it. As luck would have it, my copy is the same as the one used for the Marxist upload and since the book is one of my favourites I've decided to write up the rest of the chapters. I've completed up to chapter 7 and I'm currently in the middle of Chapter 8. I'm uploading them on LibCom but don't see any reason not the repost them here too.

I'm doing this a chapter at a time so it will be awhile before I'm finished though hopefully not another ten years.

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty


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