The Urban Revolution in Victor Serge

Abstract

The Russian Revolution was an example of what one of its participant-witnesses, John Reed, called “intensified history.” At the same time as Ten Days That Shook the World was published, another of the Russian Revolution's witness-chroniclers was documenting the transformations of space in Red Petrograd under the name of Victor Serge (1890–1947). By analyzing the space of the city and the condition of urban revolution in the writings of Victor Serge, we can explore the historical–geographical restructuring of spaces of state power within conditions of revolution and counterrevolution. With a specific focus on Conquered City (Serge [1932] 2011a) in the context of Red Petrograd and The Case of Comrade Tulayev (Serge [1948] 2004), set during the Great Terror in Moscow and Soviet Russia, my focus highlights the struggle between revolution and counterrevolution reflected in these works that both address in different and connected ways the struggle for space, the spatial logistics of the state, and how the modern state organizes space relevant to geographical studies. In Conquered City and The Case of Comrade Tulayev, such spatial awareness is intensely present, including a focus on the logic of repressive space, to reveal how the state separates, disperses, forces, and constrains the historical geographies of space.

俄国革命是其参与者与见证人之一——约翰．瑞德称之为 “加剧的历史” 之案例。⟪震撼世界的十天⟫出版之际, 另一位俄国革命见证人、同为编年史学家, 正在以韦托．西区之名 (1890–1947), 记录红彼得格勒(圣彼得堡)中的空间变迁。通过分析韦托．西区书写中的城市空间与城市革命的形式, 我们得以探讨革命与反革命境况中, 国家权力空间的历史地理再结构。我特别聚焦红彼得格勒脉络中的⟪被佔领之城⟫(西区[1932] 2011a) 以及设定于苏维埃与莫斯科恐怖统治期间的⟪杜拿耶夫同志血案⟫(西区[1948] 2004), 强调这些作品中的革命与反革命斗争, 两者皆以不同但相互连结的方式, 处理空间争夺、国家的空间逻辑, 以及现代国家如何组织与地理研究相关的空间议题。在⟪被佔领之城⟫与⟪杜拿耶夫同志血案⟫中, 此般空间认知极度在场, 包括聚焦压迫空间的逻辑, 以揭露国家如何分隔、驱散、强迫、以及限制空间的历史地理。

La Revolución Rusa fue un ejemplo de lo que uno de sus testigos y participantes, John Reed, denominó “la historia intensificada”. En el momento en que fue publicado “Diez días que estremecieron al mundo”, otro de los cronistas testigos de la Revolución Rusa estaba documentando las transformaciones del espacio en Petrogrado Rojo bajo el nombre de Víctor Serge (1890–1947). Analizando el espacio de la ciudad y la condición de la revolución urbana en los escritos de Víctor Serge, podemos explorar la reestructuración histórica y geográfica de los espacios del poder del estado dentro de condiciones de revolución y contrarrevolución. Con un enfoque específico sobre “La ciudad conquistada” (Serge [1932] 2011a), en el contexto de Petrogrado Rojo, y “El caso del camarada Tulayev” (Serge [1948] 2004), ubicado durante la época del Gran Terror en Moscú y la Rusia Soviética, mi centro de interés destaca la pugna entre revolución y contrarrevolución reflejada en estos trabajos, que abordan de maneras diferentes y conectadas la lucha por el espacio, la logística espacial del estado y el modo como el estado moderno organiza el espacio que es relevante para los estudios geográficos. En “La ciudad conquistada” y “El caso del camarada Tulayev”, tal conciencia del espacio está intensamente presente, incluyendo la concentración sobre la lógica del espacio represivo, para revelar cómo el espacio separa, dispersa, impone y constriñe las geografías históricas del espacio.

Key Words:

• Henri Lefebvre
• literary geography
• Russian Revolution
• Victor Serge
• state power

关键词：:

• 亨利．列斐伏尔, 文学地理, 俄国革命, 韦托．西区, 国家力量。

Palabras clave:

• geografía literaria, Henri Lefebvre, poder del estado, Revolución Rusa, Víctor Serge

Acknowledgments

This article was presented in the Sydney Democracy Network (SDN) Democracy Futures Series, University of Sydney (15 March 2017); at the American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, Boston (5–9 April 2017); at the Sixth Annual Historical Materialism Australasia Conference, “Capital and the Revolt Against Capitalism,” Sydney (7–8 December 2017); and in the Thinking Space Seminar Series in the School of Geosciences, University of Sydney (18 April 2018). Thanks are due to John Keane for inviting me to present in the SDN series, Kurt Iveson for enabling me to present in the Thinking Space Series, and Brendon O'Connor for inviting me to deliver two highly enjoyable consecutive years of classes on the Faculty Scholars Program (FASS2001). My focus in those classes was on teaching urban space and Victor Serge and thanks are due to the students involved in that coquestioning exploration. Their enthusiasm and feedback helped greatly to hone and focus the arguments contained herein, as did the pointers from Andreas Bieler, Gareth Bryant, Sheila Fitzpatrick, Chris Hesketh, Bill Marshall, and Cemal Burak Tansel, in addition to the outstanding feedback from the peer reviewers and Nik Heynen on my submission for this journal.

Notes

1 There are, of course, a few additional novels outside this schema that include Unforgiving Years (Les années sans pardon; Serge [1946] 2008) and the two lost novels, assumed destroyed by the GPU, The Lost Men (Les hommes perdus) on the anarchist bandits in Paris in 1911 and The Whirlwind (La Tourmente), which is thought to be on the apogee of the Russian Revolution in 1920.

2 For this reason, Merrifield (2006, 80) established an affinity between Lefebvre on urban revolution and Gramsci on passive revolution, the contradictory process whereby radical demands are both partly accomplished and supplanted (see also Kipfer 2008; Morton [2011] 2013).

3 References to the two main novels at the center of the analysis to follow will be abbreviated. Hence, Conquered City will be hereafter CC (in the English edition) and VC (in the French edition) and, likewise, The Case of Comrade Tulayev will be TCCT (in the English edition) and LAT (in the French edition) (see Serge [1932] 2011a; Serge [1932] 2011b; Serge [1948] 2004; Serge [1948] 2009).

4 Churchill was also, remember, a powerful advocate for the use of chemical weapons and planned and executed a sustained chemical attack on northern Russia against the Bolsheviks in 1919. See Milton (2013).

5 “Value, therefore, does not have its description branded on its forehead; it rather transforms every product of labour into a social hieroglyphic”; to producers “their own movement within society has for them the form of a movement made by things, and these things, far from being under their control, in fact control them”; and “they also find out that the independence of the individuals from each other has as its counterpart and supplement a system of all-round material dependence” (see Marx [1867] 1990, 167–68, 202–03).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Adam David Morton

ADAM DAVID MORTON is Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests include political economy, historical sociology, and geographical studies.