by Victor Serge
Whites: blanket term for all counter-revolutionary forces during civil war.
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a An excellent study of Martinet has been published in English by George Paizis, entitled Marcel Martinet: Poet of the Revolution (Francis Boutle, 2007). —Translator’s Note
b The Social Revolutionary Sazonov assassinated the Tsar’s Prime Minister von Plehve. [Translator’s note]
c Contrast the very different account of Gorky in Memoirs of a Revolutionary. [Translator’s note]
d Area of Western France, scene of a counter-revolutionary royalist rising 1793-96. [Translator’s note]
e Counter-revolutionary troops from Versailles crushed the Paris Commune of 1871. [Translator’s note]
f Jacques-René Hébert (1757-94), revolutionary journalist, editor of Le Père Duchesne; Jacques Roux (1752-94), revolutionary priest, leading enragé. [Translator’s note]
g Serge writes October 28, but that was a Tuesday in 1919. [Translator’s note]
h Muslims from the Southern Urals. [Translator’s note]
i In Memoirs of a Revolutionary B. is identified as Kolabushkin. [Translator’s note]
j Russian defeats in the Russo-Japanese war (1904-05). [Translator’s note]
k Stephen Pichon (1857-1933); French Foreign Minister 1917-20; a signatory of the Versailles Treaty. [Translator’s note]
l Brigadier General Frank Graham Marsh (1875-1957). [Translator’s note]
m Zimmerwald (September 1915) and Kienthal (April 1916) were international conferences organized by socialists in opposition to World War I. [Translator’s note]
n This is probably one of the articles published by Serge in Le Libertaire in 1919–21.
o French Swiss section of the First International, under the influence of Bakunin. [Translator’s notes]
p The Directory (1795–99) and Consulate (1799–1804) were the French governments between the fall of the Jacobins and Napoleon’s Empire. [Translator’s note]
q Confédération Générale du Travail—the main French trade union body, founded 1895. [Translator’s note]
r Revolutionary assembly which governed France 1792–95. [Translator’s note]
Printed with permission from the Victor Serge Foundation.
Translation © 1997 Ian Birchall
This translation first published in 1997 in London by Redwords.
This edition published in 2011 in Chicago by Haymarket Books.
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