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What Every Radical Should Know about State Repression: A Guide for Activists
This classic manual on repression by revolutionary activist Victor Serge offers fascinating anecdotes about the tactics of police provocateurs and an analysis of the documents of the Tsarist secret police in the aftermath of the Russian revolution.
With a new introduction by Howard Zinn collaborator, Anthony Arnove.
“Victor Serge is one of the unsung heroes of a corrupt century.” —Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold’s Ghost
As we approach the 100th anniversary of Victor Serge’s (1926) classic exposé of political repression, the specter of fear as a tool of political repression is chillingly familiar to us in world increasingly threatened by totalitarianism. Serge’s exposé of the surveillance methods used by the Czarist police reads like a spy thriller. An irrepressible rebel, Serge wrote this manual for political activists, describing the structures of state repression and how to dodge them—including how to avoid being followed, what to do if arrested, and tips on securing correspondence. He also explains how such repression is ultimately ineffective.
“Repression can really only live off fear. But is fear enough to remove need, thirst for justice, intelligence, reason, idealism…? Relying on intimidation, the reactionaries forget that they will cause more indignation, more hatred, more thirst for martyrdom, than real fear. They only intimidate the weak; they exasperate the best forces and temper the resolution of the strongest.” —Victor Serge
With a new introduction by Howard Zinn collaborator, Anthony Arnove.
“Victor Serge is one of the unsung heroes of a corrupt century.” —Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold’s Ghost
As we approach the 100th anniversary of Victor Serge’s (1926) classic exposé of political repression, the specter of fear as a tool of political repression is chillingly familiar to us in world increasingly threatened by totalitarianism. Serge’s exposé of the surveillance methods used by the Czarist police reads like a spy thriller. An irrepressible rebel, Serge wrote this manual for political activists, describing the structures of state repression and how to dodge them—including how to avoid being followed, what to do if arrested, and tips on securing correspondence. He also explains how such repression is ultimately ineffective.
“Repression can really only live off fear. But is fear enough to remove need, thirst for justice, intelligence, reason, idealism…? Relying on intimidation, the reactionaries forget that they will cause more indignation, more hatred, more thirst for martyrdom, than real fear. They only intimidate the weak; they exasperate the best forces and temper the resolution of the strongest.” —Victor Serge
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1925
16 people are currently reading
577 people want to read
About the author
Victor Serge
98 books224 followersVictor Lvovich Kibalchich (В.Л. Кибальчич) was born in exile in 1890 and died in exile in 1947. He is better known as Victor Serge, a Russian revolutionary and Francophone writer. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks five months after arriving in Petrograd in January 1919, and later worked for the newly founded Comintern as a journalist, editor and translator. He was openly critical of the Soviet regime, but remained loyal to the ideals of socialism until his death.
After time spent in France, Belgium, Russia and Spain, Serge was forced to live out the rest of his life in Mexico, with no country he could call home. Serge's health had been badly damaged by his periods of imprisonment in France and Russia, but he continued to write until he died of heart attack, in Mexico city on 17 November 1947. Having no nationality, no Mexican cemetery could legally take his body, so he was buried as a 'Spanish Republican.'
After time spent in France, Belgium, Russia and Spain, Serge was forced to live out the rest of his life in Mexico, with no country he could call home. Serge's health had been badly damaged by his periods of imprisonment in France and Russia, but he continued to write until he died of heart attack, in Mexico city on 17 November 1947. Having no nationality, no Mexican cemetery could legally take his body, so he was buried as a 'Spanish Republican.'
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
August 27, 2024
A very good, very readable republication which sadly doesn’t name its translator — a major oversight in my view. It should be noted that the last chapter’s thrust is “police and prisons are OK when they’re revolutionary police and prisons,” a position which did not age well, no matter how many otherwise right-thinking people still buy it. But the passion, wit, and rigor with which Serge presents his case, and the invaluable historical picture he paints in the process, are deeply worth the investment of time — and money; this is from Seven Stories Press, a publisher whose vital work merits support at every turn.
April 25, 2022
This book is often pitched as simple as its title suggests as lessons for how radicals can avoid police repression gleaned from Serge’s analysis of the documents of the Tsarist secret police in the aftermath of the Russian revolution. There is a lot of that—tips on how to avoid tails, don’t talk to cops, and some very fascinating anecdotes on police provocateurs in the revolutionary movement. However there is much more rich political analysis then how the book is billed. At its core there is a very nuanced approach to how the revolutionary’s approach to “legality” of struggle and towards the state dictates the important orientation of the legality of the state ALWAYs in the end being a material obstacle. Great read and under praised for its theoretical depth in such a slender book.
August 17, 2025
Ignore the marketable title, this is really a potted history of the "Okhrana", the Russian Tsar's secret police, whose archives in the wake of the October Revolution fell, with splendid historical irony, into the possession of those self-same revolutionaries its agents had spent the several preceding decades persecuting. This brief treatment of the Okhrana and its methods - shared in common with political police the world over (both then and now, in both autocracies and capitalist democracies) - is combined with some useful, if common-sensical, advice as to basic security consciousness, the role of agent provocateurs, and the debilitating effects of paranoia on radical organisations, all rounded off with a very formulaic (one might say 'Trotskyian') justification of the moral means and ends of the Red Terror in the early USSR.
The real interest here, beyond the fascinating factoids recounted by Serge about the Okhrana's methods and resources (apparently its agents wrote entire treatises, of scholarly quality, on the organisations they infiltrated and combated: raise your hand who else here wants to read the Okhrana history of e.g. the Socialist Zionist movement in the Russian Empire 1876-1913?), lies in a single short chapter titled "The Question of Illegality" measuring only a dozen or so pages, where Serge tackles the interesting (and then-extremely-current, circa 1925) dilemma of how revolutionary socialists approach the delicate task of achieving their stated goal of overthrowing (bourgeois or reactionary) governments and replacing them with proletarian rule, without being sucked into the twin pitfalls of provocative adventurism or the sort of benign legalism that left so many leftist parties disarmed in the face of the reactionary wave that arose across Europe in the early and mid '20s, even as Soviet rule in Russia - once so threatened under global capitalist blockade and military invasion - finally stabilized.
Here we find interesting echoes of Gramsci and Radek, two similar intellectual collossuses of the postwar communist milieu whom, akin to Serge, grappled with this thorny question of how to apply Leninism - its emphasis on professional revolutionism as sine qua non of membership: the maintenance of an illegal, underground, party apparatus at all times; its focus on a cataclysmic revolutionary rupture between the dual power centres of the workers soviet and the bourgeoisie parliament - judiciously and adequately, to the divergent political terrain of Western Europe and its much sturdier liberal traditions and institutions, as well as the novel phenomenon of Fascism. Serge's meditations here are perhaps all the more valuable given his intellectual descent from the literal "illegalist" wing of anarchism, once associated with notorious groups such as the Bonnot gang of bankrobbers in France: this is not a Stalinist functionary or grey social-democrat's view of politics: this is the nuanced vision of a romantic, vital, anarchist won to communism by the power and vigour of Lenin and Trotsky's theory and practice, and the magnificent, practical, example provided by the Russian masses.
In these intelligent passages Serge urges a flexible approach upon the new, often embryonic, communist parties of the Third International: they must combine a diligent persual of maximum legal and parliamentary reform while educating their supporters and members of the ultimate inadequacy of such measures, of the iron hand of coup, military repression, capital strike, guillotine and fascist mob nestled in the velvet glove of liberal democracy - a prophetic warning in the light of what was underway in Italy, and what was to come in Germany (and, later, Portugal and Spain). On the other hand, they should not fall prey to provocations and romantic, premature, coup: their success has to be rooted in a solid political majority within the working class, tacit sympathy among wider society and other oppressed classes, and the existence of a decisive political split within the military between its officer class and troops.
This perspective necessitates maintaining both an "above ground" party fully participant in the theatre of parliamentary and mediatic discourse, and a skeletal underground organisation (along with street fighting militia, able to defend the party and workers from physical threats), to which cadre can retreat in periods of persecution, capable of operating illegally in the face of police repression and perhaps even total proscription (as had occurred in Russia after the "July Days" and later took place in Hungary, Yugoslavia, Italy, and Germany) while carrying on its propaganda and potential military preparations.
While we may appear seemingly aeons away from these questions being of practical relevance to the contemporary resurgent socialist movement of the West, whose greatest hits so far - far from threatening revolutionary overthrow - have encompassed nobly losing two Presidential Primaries (Bernie and Mélenchon), two General Elections (Corbyn), and governing in sclerotic, hamstrung fashion across Europe's southern periphery as the "human face" of devastating austerity (SYRIZA, Bloco, Podemos, et al.) yet, in many ways, these questions are of timeless interest: they define how socialists view the state, capitalist democracy and its limitations (and the interrelationship between it and far right forces); and how we organise, propagandise, and judiciously invest our finite energies in an era of climate apocalypse, genocidal imperialism, rising fascist sentiment, and increasing "liberal totalitarianism" with its repression of benign speech and protest.
A large chunk of the abovementioned reborn socialist movement in the West today believes - in common with Bernstein, Kautsky, and much of pre-WW1 European social democracy - that socialism is a gradual step-by-step process, in which the limits of bourgeois democracy and legality are stretched to their natural limits, and only when capital or the state push back against a majoritarian social-democratic government are the working class entitled to employ defensive, extra-legal means to achieve objectives that parliament can't or won't. This approach, for anyone familiar with the history of the socialist and communist movements in the period in which Serge wrote and participated, can only be one of cynicism or blinding naiveté. Rather than honestly inform workers and young radicals on the facile nature of bourgeois democracy, on the inherently biased nature of its legal system, on the massive power of capitalist control of the media and communications, on the élite bias of the "permanent government" of the civil service, on the necessity of economic recession and imperialist war to restore capitalist profitability in times of crisis, and on the iron fist of physical repression and capital strike that awaits any elected leftwing government, a lot of the new socialist left wants to leave these life-and-death questions on the long finger, or to argue they have no practical relevance for how we organise on a day-to-day basis. This short chapter of Serge's is a refreshing tonic to this sort of ostrich-like attitude to the rising tide of fascist and police state repression in Europe and the US, the return of political violence to the centre stage of liberal democracy, genocidal visions on our streaming devices, and the convulsive, dialectical, manner in which political radicalisation and economic dislocation are proliferating unevenly across the West and wider world. It is also a reminder of the refreshing candidness which the leaders of the international socialist movement once used to address their supporters, sympathisers, and cadre: both deeply optimistic and vital, while being informatively cynical and honest as to the obstacles that stand in our way. In Serge's wonderful turn of phrase: "revolutionary work is too serious to be kept in a glasshouse".
Q U O T E S
On mechanical legalism: "If the worker knows that the state is a mesh of institutions designed to defend the interests of the property owners against the non-owners, that is, to maintain the exploitation of labour; that the law, always decreed by the rich against the poor, is enforced by magistrates invariably belonging to the ruling class; that the law is invariably enforced along rigorous class lines; that coercion, which begins with a quiet order from a policeman, passes via the lockup and the penitentiary, and ends with the fall of the guillotine – is the systematic exercise of legalised violence against the exploited, then the only way the worker can view legality is as a fact, whose different facets he should know about, with its different applications, traps and pitfalls (and also advantages, which should be made use of at certain points) but which should be nothing but a purely material obstacle to his class."
On the necessity of conserving and restoring liberal freedoms, without illusion:
"Nonetheless, it would be equally disastrous to ignore legality. The advantages for the workers’ movement are the greater the less one is fooled. The right to exist and to act legally is, for the organisations of the proletariat, something which must constantly be re-won and extended. We stress this because sometimes among good revolutionaries there emerges the diametrical opposite of fetishising legality – due to a kind of tendency to make the least political effort (it is easier to conspire than to lead mass action) they have a certain disdain for legal action. We believe that in countries where the reaction has not yet triumphed, destroying the previous democratic constitution, the workers will have to fight to defend every inch of their legal position, and in other countries fight to regain it."
On the necessity of the creation and maintenance of an illegal party apparatus:
"Faced by this wily adversary, powerful and cunning, a workers’ party lacking clandestine organisation, a party which keeps nothing hidden, is like an unarmed man, with no cover, in the sights of a well-positioned rifleman. Revolutionary work is too serious to be kept in a glasshouse. The party of the revolution must organise so as to avoid enemy vigilance as far as possible; so as to hide its most important resources absolutely; so as not – in the countries which are still democratic – to be at the mercy of a lurch to the right by the bourgeoisie or of a declaration of war; so as to train our comrades in the behaviour which is demanded by these imperatives."
The real interest here, beyond the fascinating factoids recounted by Serge about the Okhrana's methods and resources (apparently its agents wrote entire treatises, of scholarly quality, on the organisations they infiltrated and combated: raise your hand who else here wants to read the Okhrana history of e.g. the Socialist Zionist movement in the Russian Empire 1876-1913?), lies in a single short chapter titled "The Question of Illegality" measuring only a dozen or so pages, where Serge tackles the interesting (and then-extremely-current, circa 1925) dilemma of how revolutionary socialists approach the delicate task of achieving their stated goal of overthrowing (bourgeois or reactionary) governments and replacing them with proletarian rule, without being sucked into the twin pitfalls of provocative adventurism or the sort of benign legalism that left so many leftist parties disarmed in the face of the reactionary wave that arose across Europe in the early and mid '20s, even as Soviet rule in Russia - once so threatened under global capitalist blockade and military invasion - finally stabilized.
Here we find interesting echoes of Gramsci and Radek, two similar intellectual collossuses of the postwar communist milieu whom, akin to Serge, grappled with this thorny question of how to apply Leninism - its emphasis on professional revolutionism as sine qua non of membership: the maintenance of an illegal, underground, party apparatus at all times; its focus on a cataclysmic revolutionary rupture between the dual power centres of the workers soviet and the bourgeoisie parliament - judiciously and adequately, to the divergent political terrain of Western Europe and its much sturdier liberal traditions and institutions, as well as the novel phenomenon of Fascism. Serge's meditations here are perhaps all the more valuable given his intellectual descent from the literal "illegalist" wing of anarchism, once associated with notorious groups such as the Bonnot gang of bankrobbers in France: this is not a Stalinist functionary or grey social-democrat's view of politics: this is the nuanced vision of a romantic, vital, anarchist won to communism by the power and vigour of Lenin and Trotsky's theory and practice, and the magnificent, practical, example provided by the Russian masses.
In these intelligent passages Serge urges a flexible approach upon the new, often embryonic, communist parties of the Third International: they must combine a diligent persual of maximum legal and parliamentary reform while educating their supporters and members of the ultimate inadequacy of such measures, of the iron hand of coup, military repression, capital strike, guillotine and fascist mob nestled in the velvet glove of liberal democracy - a prophetic warning in the light of what was underway in Italy, and what was to come in Germany (and, later, Portugal and Spain). On the other hand, they should not fall prey to provocations and romantic, premature, coup: their success has to be rooted in a solid political majority within the working class, tacit sympathy among wider society and other oppressed classes, and the existence of a decisive political split within the military between its officer class and troops.
This perspective necessitates maintaining both an "above ground" party fully participant in the theatre of parliamentary and mediatic discourse, and a skeletal underground organisation (along with street fighting militia, able to defend the party and workers from physical threats), to which cadre can retreat in periods of persecution, capable of operating illegally in the face of police repression and perhaps even total proscription (as had occurred in Russia after the "July Days" and later took place in Hungary, Yugoslavia, Italy, and Germany) while carrying on its propaganda and potential military preparations.
While we may appear seemingly aeons away from these questions being of practical relevance to the contemporary resurgent socialist movement of the West, whose greatest hits so far - far from threatening revolutionary overthrow - have encompassed nobly losing two Presidential Primaries (Bernie and Mélenchon), two General Elections (Corbyn), and governing in sclerotic, hamstrung fashion across Europe's southern periphery as the "human face" of devastating austerity (SYRIZA, Bloco, Podemos, et al.) yet, in many ways, these questions are of timeless interest: they define how socialists view the state, capitalist democracy and its limitations (and the interrelationship between it and far right forces); and how we organise, propagandise, and judiciously invest our finite energies in an era of climate apocalypse, genocidal imperialism, rising fascist sentiment, and increasing "liberal totalitarianism" with its repression of benign speech and protest.
A large chunk of the abovementioned reborn socialist movement in the West today believes - in common with Bernstein, Kautsky, and much of pre-WW1 European social democracy - that socialism is a gradual step-by-step process, in which the limits of bourgeois democracy and legality are stretched to their natural limits, and only when capital or the state push back against a majoritarian social-democratic government are the working class entitled to employ defensive, extra-legal means to achieve objectives that parliament can't or won't. This approach, for anyone familiar with the history of the socialist and communist movements in the period in which Serge wrote and participated, can only be one of cynicism or blinding naiveté. Rather than honestly inform workers and young radicals on the facile nature of bourgeois democracy, on the inherently biased nature of its legal system, on the massive power of capitalist control of the media and communications, on the élite bias of the "permanent government" of the civil service, on the necessity of economic recession and imperialist war to restore capitalist profitability in times of crisis, and on the iron fist of physical repression and capital strike that awaits any elected leftwing government, a lot of the new socialist left wants to leave these life-and-death questions on the long finger, or to argue they have no practical relevance for how we organise on a day-to-day basis. This short chapter of Serge's is a refreshing tonic to this sort of ostrich-like attitude to the rising tide of fascist and police state repression in Europe and the US, the return of political violence to the centre stage of liberal democracy, genocidal visions on our streaming devices, and the convulsive, dialectical, manner in which political radicalisation and economic dislocation are proliferating unevenly across the West and wider world. It is also a reminder of the refreshing candidness which the leaders of the international socialist movement once used to address their supporters, sympathisers, and cadre: both deeply optimistic and vital, while being informatively cynical and honest as to the obstacles that stand in our way. In Serge's wonderful turn of phrase: "revolutionary work is too serious to be kept in a glasshouse".
Q U O T E S
On mechanical legalism: "If the worker knows that the state is a mesh of institutions designed to defend the interests of the property owners against the non-owners, that is, to maintain the exploitation of labour; that the law, always decreed by the rich against the poor, is enforced by magistrates invariably belonging to the ruling class; that the law is invariably enforced along rigorous class lines; that coercion, which begins with a quiet order from a policeman, passes via the lockup and the penitentiary, and ends with the fall of the guillotine – is the systematic exercise of legalised violence against the exploited, then the only way the worker can view legality is as a fact, whose different facets he should know about, with its different applications, traps and pitfalls (and also advantages, which should be made use of at certain points) but which should be nothing but a purely material obstacle to his class."
On the necessity of conserving and restoring liberal freedoms, without illusion:
"Nonetheless, it would be equally disastrous to ignore legality. The advantages for the workers’ movement are the greater the less one is fooled. The right to exist and to act legally is, for the organisations of the proletariat, something which must constantly be re-won and extended. We stress this because sometimes among good revolutionaries there emerges the diametrical opposite of fetishising legality – due to a kind of tendency to make the least political effort (it is easier to conspire than to lead mass action) they have a certain disdain for legal action. We believe that in countries where the reaction has not yet triumphed, destroying the previous democratic constitution, the workers will have to fight to defend every inch of their legal position, and in other countries fight to regain it."
On the necessity of the creation and maintenance of an illegal party apparatus:
"Faced by this wily adversary, powerful and cunning, a workers’ party lacking clandestine organisation, a party which keeps nothing hidden, is like an unarmed man, with no cover, in the sights of a well-positioned rifleman. Revolutionary work is too serious to be kept in a glasshouse. The party of the revolution must organise so as to avoid enemy vigilance as far as possible; so as to hide its most important resources absolutely; so as not – in the countries which are still democratic – to be at the mercy of a lurch to the right by the bourgeoisie or of a declaration of war; so as to train our comrades in the behaviour which is demanded by these imperatives."
June 24, 2025
Written 100 years ago in France, reflecting on what he learned from helping the Bolsheviks to take over the secret police headquarters in Moscow, the first part of this book walks through what most of us would probably consider the standard operating procedures of all modern states and their use of various law enforcement agencies and tactics. The one exception might be the part on provocation. This section was interesting really only insofar as it allows the reader to see the development of these policing and surveillance trends over the past 150 years or so.
The other sections seem to offer warnings and justifications to potential fellow revolutionary figures of the time. A rather illuminating section declares that just as capitalists/imperialists justify harsh and repressive means in order to achieve a certain end, that revolutionary idealists like the Bolsheviks were equally justified in doing so (fight fire with fire). A moral end justifies an immoral means.
Interestingly, later in his life he wrote novels that were absolutely scathing critiques of Soviet corruption and repression. Serge experienced such repression firsthand, serving several prison terms, exile, and deportation by Stalin. It is extremely interesting to me to see an author's ethics (and activism) develop over time. The ends no longer justified the means.
Ultimately, I take this little volume as a warning for libertarians and anarchists that when they align themselves with the autocratic state, the monopoly on force corrupts the cause. It's a side effect of human nature when put in that position.
The other sections seem to offer warnings and justifications to potential fellow revolutionary figures of the time. A rather illuminating section declares that just as capitalists/imperialists justify harsh and repressive means in order to achieve a certain end, that revolutionary idealists like the Bolsheviks were equally justified in doing so (fight fire with fire). A moral end justifies an immoral means.
Interestingly, later in his life he wrote novels that were absolutely scathing critiques of Soviet corruption and repression. Serge experienced such repression firsthand, serving several prison terms, exile, and deportation by Stalin. It is extremely interesting to me to see an author's ethics (and activism) develop over time. The ends no longer justified the means.
Ultimately, I take this little volume as a warning for libertarians and anarchists that when they align themselves with the autocratic state, the monopoly on force corrupts the cause. It's a side effect of human nature when put in that position.
April 11, 2022
كتاب ممتع من تأليف الثوري الماركسي الروسي فيكتور سيرج يعرض فيه نهج الشرطة السياسية القيصرية "اوخرانا" في محاولات اختراق وتفكيك صفوف الثوريين الشيوعيين، بناءا على أرشيف هذا الجهاز البوليسي الذي وقع بين أيديه وأيدي زملائه الشيوعيين بعد انهيار النظام القيصري، هذه المنهجيات تعتبر من أساسيات عمل الشرطة السياسية (المباحث/الاستعلامات) إلى اليوم في كل الدول ��لاستبدادية وحتى الديمقراطية. تستعملها الدول للقضاء على كل تحرك شعبي
ضدها سواء كانت ثورات شعبية أو احتجاجات أو حتى إضرابات عمالية.
وقد اختبرنا بحكم نشاطنا في الحراك الشعبي في الجزائر على مدى الثلاث سنوات الماضية بعض هذه الأساليب الخبيثة.
الكتاب أيضا لا يخلو من الفلسفات والأفكار الشيوعية وكذا تحليلات الكاتب لوقائع تاريخية متعلقة بالثورات والصراع الطبقي في أوروبا.
للأسف لا توجد طبعة عربية لهذا الكتاب حتى الآن، وحتى إن وجدت مستقبلا فستكون ممنوعة في دولنا حتما
ضدها سواء كانت ثورات شعبية أو احتجاجات أو حتى إضرابات عمالية.
وقد اختبرنا بحكم نشاطنا في الحراك الشعبي في الجزائر على مدى الثلاث سنوات الماضية بعض هذه الأساليب الخبيثة.
الكتاب أيضا لا يخلو من الفلسفات والأفكار الشيوعية وكذا تحليلات الكاتب لوقائع تاريخية متعلقة بالثورات والصراع الطبقي في أوروبا.
للأسف لا توجد طبعة عربية لهذا الكتاب حتى الآن، وحتى إن وجدت مستقبلا فستكون ممنوعة في دولنا حتما
July 16, 2025
un libriño curto moi recomendable.
A primeira parte consiste nunha descrición mais ben imprecisa e desordenada dos métodos de espionaxe e represión da policía zarista cara o movemento obreiro (descubertos polos bolxeviques ao tomar o poder). A verdade que simplemente acojona a cantidade de casos de axentes infiltrados e confidentes e a disposición a todo. Por outro lado, nada novo si non vives coa cabeza metida no cú.
A segunda parte, moito mellor escrita, trata temas como o da ilegalidade, consellos de seguridade (basicos pero que nunca estan de mais) e o debate da represión revolucionaria. As aprendizaxes que nestea capítulos se recollen si que son, pese a ser escritas hai un século, enormemente interesantes.
Finalizo con unha das moitas pasaxes que subliñei:
“En verdad, nadie -salvo tal vez algún fabricante de armas y municiones- tiene especial predilección por el uso de la metralleta. Pero la metralleta existe. Es una realidad. Hay que elegir entre estar delante de esta cosa real o estar detrás de ella, entre servirse de la simbólica máquina de matar o servirle de blanco. Nosotros preconizamos entre los trabajadores el uso de una tercera solución: tomar ese instrumento de muerte y volverlo contra sus fabricantes. (…)”
A primeira parte consiste nunha descrición mais ben imprecisa e desordenada dos métodos de espionaxe e represión da policía zarista cara o movemento obreiro (descubertos polos bolxeviques ao tomar o poder). A verdade que simplemente acojona a cantidade de casos de axentes infiltrados e confidentes e a disposición a todo. Por outro lado, nada novo si non vives coa cabeza metida no cú.
A segunda parte, moito mellor escrita, trata temas como o da ilegalidade, consellos de seguridade (basicos pero que nunca estan de mais) e o debate da represión revolucionaria. As aprendizaxes que nestea capítulos se recollen si que son, pese a ser escritas hai un século, enormemente interesantes.
Finalizo con unha das moitas pasaxes que subliñei:
“En verdad, nadie -salvo tal vez algún fabricante de armas y municiones- tiene especial predilección por el uso de la metralleta. Pero la metralleta existe. Es una realidad. Hay que elegir entre estar delante de esta cosa real o estar detrás de ella, entre servirse de la simbólica máquina de matar o servirle de blanco. Nosotros preconizamos entre los trabajadores el uso de una tercera solución: tomar ese instrumento de muerte y volverlo contra sus fabricantes. (…)”
January 14, 2025
as always, serge is incredibly prescient and precise. outside of historical interest for avoiding surveillance in states with robust surveillance capabilities, particularly in imperial russia. most likely had applicability throughout the 20th century too. relevant for today’s radicals too! to know what we must do, we must look to our collective history. trace the path we’ve already trodden, so we know where we actually are.
November 2, 2021
This is actually quite a strange volume, if one takes a step back to reflect upon it. The first half is almost entirely about police infiltration of revolutionary activity and the use of informants and provocateurs. As a historical document it's interesting, but there are quite a few more relevant works when it comes to the specifics of such infiltration into social movements today (anything detailing the FBI's involvement in the movements of the 60s, for instance, or in contemporary circles of BLM or environmental activists). Given this, the introduction by ACLU Dalia Hashad feels a bit odd; it's written with a sense of urgency in the post 9/11 era, and details police abuse of everyday citizens, not political groups attempting to subvert the capitalist class and take over the state. Yes, both are examples of excessive policing, but how is Serge's discussion on setting up clandestine organizations to maintain the party apparatus after a "liquidation" by secret police relevant to families racially targeted while just going about their daily lives?
The second half of the book opens up a bit and seems like it could be of potential use, but it's also swimming in heavy communist party ideology. For instance:
“A communist party, even if it is weak in numbers, always, by virtue of its ideology, represents the proletarian class. It incarnates the class-consciousness of hundreds of thousands, or millions of people. Its role is immense, since it is the role of the brain and of the whole nervous system, albeit inseparable from the aspirations, needs and activity of the whole proletariat—so that within it the designs of individuals, when they are not in line with the needs of the party (that is, of the proletariat), lose much of their importance.
In this sense, the communist party is, among all the revolutionary organizations history has produced up to now, the least vulnerable to the blows of provocation.” (p.47)
My translation of a comment like this: "Even if we haven't managed to attract very many people, we represent them all anyhow because we have the right ideas, and the needs of our party are more important than the needs of individuals, both those in the party but also those outside of it that we represent even if they don't claim us, and because we're so top notch with our ideas and our dedication to them we can't be infiltrated by other groups including the police."
Sure, dude. Sure.
My recommendation: Read the Serge if you're a political history geek, but if you want something practical on handling state repression in the current era, go read some Edward Snowden.
The second half of the book opens up a bit and seems like it could be of potential use, but it's also swimming in heavy communist party ideology. For instance:
“A communist party, even if it is weak in numbers, always, by virtue of its ideology, represents the proletarian class. It incarnates the class-consciousness of hundreds of thousands, or millions of people. Its role is immense, since it is the role of the brain and of the whole nervous system, albeit inseparable from the aspirations, needs and activity of the whole proletariat—so that within it the designs of individuals, when they are not in line with the needs of the party (that is, of the proletariat), lose much of their importance.
In this sense, the communist party is, among all the revolutionary organizations history has produced up to now, the least vulnerable to the blows of provocation.” (p.47)
My translation of a comment like this: "Even if we haven't managed to attract very many people, we represent them all anyhow because we have the right ideas, and the needs of our party are more important than the needs of individuals, both those in the party but also those outside of it that we represent even if they don't claim us, and because we're so top notch with our ideas and our dedication to them we can't be infiltrated by other groups including the police."
Sure, dude. Sure.
My recommendation: Read the Serge if you're a political history geek, but if you want something practical on handling state repression in the current era, go read some Edward Snowden.
March 31, 2007
The best part is the practical steps to keep the state from following you down the street.
February 12, 2023
Really good short read. The text is divided in two main sections: the repressive apparatus of the state, and the criticism of repression after a revolution. Serge explains clearly the illusions that can be held in regard to them.
The tsarist state seemed to have known better what was going on inside the revolutionary organisations in Russia pre-revolution. Yet that could not save it for it was a dying system incapable of developing the means of production and reproduction of life. This whole section dispels effectively, based on real facts, the myth of the omnipotence of the state.
Rpression of the counter-revolutionaries by the majority after a revolution is always brought up to argue against revolution. There are also those who argue against violence in general. But as serge explains violence is a fact. Many suffer and die from the violence of capitalist economic laws. Today children go hungry and two centuries ago they were chained to machines in the early days of capitalism (while also going hungry). Today countless are killed in the capitalists' wars, and from the class war (according to a 2021 oxfam report every 4 seconds someone dies of poverty). And in the days of the establishment of capitalism tens of thousands were killed to maintain the system (1848 rebellions and the Paris Commune were drowned in blood). This violence is never brought up but the Russian Civil War, for example, will always be used as an example. Though those who bring it up won't mention the pogroms carried by the white armies.
A third theme in the text, supplemented by a short pamphlet that the Ligue Communiste in France published for its members after 1968, also adresses briefly how revolutionaries should act on front of the police and when arrested. In short: don't lie, don't cooperate.
I first learned about Serge's shortcomings and was ready to brush him off (maybe forever) but throughout this short text his dedication to the cause of the working class is palpable. He might have lost his ways at some point, but at the time of writing he was an ardent communist whose every word is charged with the depth of experience. For many of the revolutionaries who've came before it's important to be able to sift through their work and keep what's valuable. It's hard not to paint these comrades (also applies to James Cannon) as all black, specially when you first learn about their shortcomings, but seeing them in all their complexity is vital to be able to learn from their experience that they generously left in writing.
The tsarist state seemed to have known better what was going on inside the revolutionary organisations in Russia pre-revolution. Yet that could not save it for it was a dying system incapable of developing the means of production and reproduction of life. This whole section dispels effectively, based on real facts, the myth of the omnipotence of the state.
Rpression of the counter-revolutionaries by the majority after a revolution is always brought up to argue against revolution. There are also those who argue against violence in general. But as serge explains violence is a fact. Many suffer and die from the violence of capitalist economic laws. Today children go hungry and two centuries ago they were chained to machines in the early days of capitalism (while also going hungry). Today countless are killed in the capitalists' wars, and from the class war (according to a 2021 oxfam report every 4 seconds someone dies of poverty). And in the days of the establishment of capitalism tens of thousands were killed to maintain the system (1848 rebellions and the Paris Commune were drowned in blood). This violence is never brought up but the Russian Civil War, for example, will always be used as an example. Though those who bring it up won't mention the pogroms carried by the white armies.
A third theme in the text, supplemented by a short pamphlet that the Ligue Communiste in France published for its members after 1968, also adresses briefly how revolutionaries should act on front of the police and when arrested. In short: don't lie, don't cooperate.
I first learned about Serge's shortcomings and was ready to brush him off (maybe forever) but throughout this short text his dedication to the cause of the working class is palpable. He might have lost his ways at some point, but at the time of writing he was an ardent communist whose every word is charged with the depth of experience. For many of the revolutionaries who've came before it's important to be able to sift through their work and keep what's valuable. It's hard not to paint these comrades (also applies to James Cannon) as all black, specially when you first learn about their shortcomings, but seeing them in all their complexity is vital to be able to learn from their experience that they generously left in writing.
June 1, 2022
"Pero una sociedad que ya no reposa en ideas vivas, aquella en la cual los principios fundamentales están muertos, sobrevive, cuando mucho, por la fuerza de la inercia".
December 1, 2024
A fascinating book written during the years between Soviet independence & just before Stalin’s consolidation of power. WWI hangs heavy in this account, symbolic of a pointless war grinding the working class in its maw. The revolutionary fervor that ends the book for the Soviet Republic will soon be dispelled in the 1930s.
Nonetheless, lots of great observations about state repression like its main aim being surveillance, not provocation. Living in the hellish repressive time in Florida, one can’t help but feel such observations more true than ever.
Nonetheless, lots of great observations about state repression like its main aim being surveillance, not provocation. Living in the hellish repressive time in Florida, one can’t help but feel such observations more true than ever.
December 31, 2012
Amazing both how much and how little things change - many of the concepts expounded upon by Serge are at work today in our society. Merely the techniques are different.
September 5, 2023
Good book to imagine you are a political dissident in the early 20th century. Practical advice may not be as relevant now but still interesting nonetheless.
June 12, 2021
Lectura obligada (y nada desactualizada) para aquellas personas que necesiten hacerse una idea de la envergadura, importancia y limitaciones del poder policial. Tanto para el lector convencido en su izquierdismo, como para el lector mas equidistante en busca de puntos de vista que le acerquen a ciertas realidades.
El libro deja sobre la mesa una cantidad ingente de temas sobre la violencia, el control y el estado muy intensos, y plantea mucho debate en el seno de la izquierda extraparlamentaria de hasta que punto todo lo que se menciona sobre los años 20 sigue estando vigente.
Para el lector mas lejano a la izquierda, se puede tratar de un libro que le ayude a visualizar ciertos puntos de vista respecto a la policia y el poder, muy complicados de entender cuando no se tiene relación directa con la politica o los movimientos populares.
Para los mas convencidos, puede resultar ademas una obra optimista, que ayuda (sin maniqueos ni extremismos innecesarios) a echar luz sobre cuestiones éticas y morales que son origen de emociones muy poderosas y contradictorias para uno mismo en pleno siglo XXI.
El libro deja sobre la mesa una cantidad ingente de temas sobre la violencia, el control y el estado muy intensos, y plantea mucho debate en el seno de la izquierda extraparlamentaria de hasta que punto todo lo que se menciona sobre los años 20 sigue estando vigente.
Para el lector mas lejano a la izquierda, se puede tratar de un libro que le ayude a visualizar ciertos puntos de vista respecto a la policia y el poder, muy complicados de entender cuando no se tiene relación directa con la politica o los movimientos populares.
Para los mas convencidos, puede resultar ademas una obra optimista, que ayuda (sin maniqueos ni extremismos innecesarios) a echar luz sobre cuestiones éticas y morales que son origen de emociones muy poderosas y contradictorias para uno mismo en pleno siglo XXI.
January 3, 2025
Este un libro que verdaderamente todo revolucionario o activista debe leer para superar la ingenuidad y la inocencia de lo que implica un cambio revolucionario en la sociedad.
Cabe señalar que hacía el final de sus días -al oponerse a Stalin- Serge cambió algunas de sus ideas sobre el papel del partido y el Estado, lo que le ha valido el mote de anarquista aunque esto no es del todo preciso.
Cabe señalar que hacía el final de sus días -al oponerse a Stalin- Serge cambió algunas de sus ideas sobre el papel del partido y el Estado, lo que le ha valido el mote de anarquista aunque esto no es del todo preciso.
November 4, 2024
Es, efectivamente, un libro para revolucionarios y realmente imparte la información básica sobre esta faceta característica del estado en general y del capitalismo en particular: la represión policial.
May 22, 2025
Una de las lecturas más interesantes y con algunos de los temas que quisiera conocer más a fondo.
"La revolución no escoge las armas. Recoge del campo ensangrentado las que la historia le ha forjado"
"La revolución no escoge las armas. Recoge del campo ensangrentado las que la historia le ha forjado"
July 12, 2025
Serge’s writing is excellently complemented by the introductions of the editor and translator. His discussions of the Okhrana are prudent and useful to understanding how revolutionary movements view their reactionary predecessors.
June 7, 2025
Still relevant 100 years on, Serge's expose of Tsarist policing tactics reads like a thriller. And we still work toward the goals of abolition of the state + prisons.
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