‘Early on, I learned from the Russian intelligentsia that the only meaning of life is conscious participation in the making of history.’ In this line from the memoirs of Victor Serge – revolutionary, exile, implacable opponent of capitalism, critic and sometimes accomplice of Bolshevik terror – there is an entire worldview that is now as foreign to Serge’s admirers as to his enemies. Its animating question is about the relationship between an individual and the time in which he lives.
