What Every Radical Should Know about State Repression: A Guide for Activists

by Victor Serge

"Victor Serge is one of the unsung heroes of a corrupt century."--Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold's Ghost

Serge's expos of the methods of surveillance and harassment of political activists by the czarist police reads like a spy thriller. But as Dalia Hashad points out in her introduction, this book will have a resonance with political activists today who face a new wave of repression under the Patriot Act and racial profiling...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1920888179
• ISBN13: 9781920888176
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: Ocean Press
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.4" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

As valuable a read for activists today as it was nearly a hundred years ago

What Every Radical Should Know About State Repression: A Guide For Activists is a manual written by an outspoken Russian activist Victor Serge, born in 1890 and forced into exile for opposing Stalin's rule. His discussion of the government's tools of harassment, and his methodologies for dodging state repression are as vital to today's era of racial profiling and abuses of the Patriot Act as they were in Czarist Russia. Chapters discuss the abuses of Russia's secret police and the methods they employed, practical means to protect oneself from being followed, what to do if arrested, an overview of the lessons of history, and more. "In social conflict there is no truth in common between the exploited classes and the exploiters," warns Serge, decrying impulses to denounce the system when one is under arrest or on trial; his fiery opinions do not detract from the solid advice on how to comport oneself when fomenting political change. As valuable a read for activists today as it was nearly a hundred years ago.