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 IRE 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 fundamenta optimism, despite the twin defeats of fascism and Stalinism? [AN]
Biographical note: Victor Serve (18901947), historian, translator and novelist, was politically active in seven countries, participated in three revolutions, and spent more than ten years in various captivities. His parents were Kussian anarchists, who had found refuge in Belgium after 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 International Viewpoint, proposes a critical yet sympathetic interpretation of liberation theology, and analyses the rival religious projects in Latin America. [AN] *
October 1996 ÷281 35
The Lean Workplace: A Union Response
Dealing with programs like Total Quality Management and reengineering 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
"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."
• Paul McLennan, ATU Local 732
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.
Labor Notes School
November 21-24, 1996
Oakland, California
Management wants unions to schedules and speedup.
"participate" in programs that spell the loss of good jobs, and speedup for those that remain.
This ninth Labor Notes School will show how employee participation programs are connected to contracting out and
"quality" can be a code word for part-timing, and how speedup. We help participants develop responses to these programs based on their own situations. We outline the steps of union membership education and "mobilized involvement."
Topics include v the pitfalls of
"Protective
Involvement"
v double-talk in quality programs, management's psychological tools, (case studies).
v legal and local union strategies v modifying the lean system
V what "lean and mean" means for health care v quality programs and public employees
/ flexibility: overtime,
EMPLOYMEN part-time, 10-and 12hour schedules
BUREAL
Instructors include Mike
Parker and Jane
Slaughter, authors of
Working Smart: A Union
Guide to Participation
Programs and Reengineering. Mike and
Jane have organızed workshops for international and local unions across the U.S.
and Canada.
The Dutch Committee for a Different Europe invites you to take part in debates and actions for a social, green, democratic and feminist Europe.
• preparations for the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) are leading to the dismantling of public services and social security and rising unemployment in almost every EU member state.
• the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) has begun: the fifteen member states are negotiating to revise the Maastricht Treaty, the treaty that has propelled the European Union into its current credibility crisis. According to plan, these negotiations are supposed to end with the signing of a new treaty by the heads of government during their June 1997 Amsterdam summit.
Together the EMU and IGC will largely determine the character of the European Union and thus the daily lives of Europe's citizens. But discussion of these developments is going on mainly among politicians.
For the moment there is no broad debate under way about the threats posed by European integration, like the plans for an EU defense bloc with the "Europeanisation" of the nuclear arsenals of France and the United Kingdom. Our Europe must be a Europe that carries out a strong social and environmental policy, creates jobs, eliminates the democratic deticit, otters equal opportunities to women and men, sateguards the rule of law, is hospitable to refugees, is open to the East and in solidarity with the South, disarms in order to contribute to peace, and promotes sustainable development both inside and outside Europe.
Parallel to the June 1997 Amsterdam Summit, there will be an alternative conference, demonstrations and other activities. We invite all progressive parties, groups, NGO's and others to take part in this Summit for a Different Europe.
Get in touch!
Committee for a Different Europe, c/o A SEED Europe,
P.O. Box 92066, 1090 AB Amsterdam, The Netherlands
E-mail: ander.europa@aseed.antenna.nl
© (+31) 20/66.82.23.6
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Towards ent Europe! Alternative With Lots ordemonstrations ties