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Conquered City (New York Review Books Classics) Paperback – January 11, 2011

by Victor Serge (Author), Richard Greeman (Translator, Introduction)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 23 ratings
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1919–1920: St. Petersburg, city of the czars, has fallen to the Revolution. Camped out in the splendid palaces of the former regime, the city’s new masters seek to cement their control, even as the counterrevolutionary White Army regroups. Conquered City, Victor Serge’s most unrelenting narrative, is structured like a detective story, one in which the new political regime tracks down and eliminates its enemies—the spies, speculators, and traitors hidden among the mass of common people. 

Conquered City is about terror: the Red Terror and the White Terror. But mainly about the Red, the Communists who have dared to pick up the weapons of power—police, guns, jails, spies, treachery—in the doomed gamble that by wielding them righteously, they can put an end to the need for terror, perhaps forever. Conquered City is their tragedy and testament.
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  1. Print length
    224 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    NYRB Classics
  4. Publication date
    January 11, 2011
  5. Dimensions
    4.9 x 0.61 x 8 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    159017366X
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1590173664
  8. See all details
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From the Publisher

Conquered City Memoirs of a Revolutionary Midnight in the Century Notebooks 1936–1947 The Case of Comrade Tulayev Unforgiving Years
Conquered City Memoirs of a Revolutionary Midnight in the Century Notebooks 1936–1947 The Case of Comrade Tulayev Unforgiving Years
Customer Reviews
4.6 out of 5 stars
23
4.8 out of 5 stars
62
4.6 out of 5 stars
26
4.7 out of 5 stars
27
4.4 out of 5 stars
201
4.7 out of 5 stars
49
Price $15.34 $18.50 $14.13 $24.95 $16.74 $14.74
About this book A novel set in 1912–1920, the darkest days of Petrograd during the Red and White Terror. Serge tells of his upbringing among exiles and conspirators, of his involvement with the notorious Bonnot Gang and his years in prison, of his role in the Russian Revolution, and of the Revolution’s collapse into despotism and terror. A searching novel about a group pf revolutionaries—true believers in a cause that no longer exists—living in unlikely exile among Russian Orthodox Old Believers, also suffering for their faith. Victor Serge’s intimate account of the last decade of his life gives a vivid look into the Franco-Russian revolutionary’s life. This panoramic vision of the Soviet Great terror is unquestionably the finest work of fiction ever written about the Stalinist purges. Serge presents an extraordinary picture of the approach of World War II in this terrifying journey into the disastrous, blazing core of the twentieth century.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Victor Serge was, and remains, unique: the only novelist to describe successfully, from the inside, the now long-lost milieu of the socialist movement in Europe, its Soviet product, and its destruction by Stalinism. He has been described by myself and others as a political Ishmael, comparable to the lone survivor of the wrecked vessel Pequod in Melville’s Moby-Dick.” —Stephen Schwartz, The New Criterion

A witness to revolution and reaction in Europe between the wars, Serge searingly evoked the epochal hopes and shattering setbacks of a generation of leftists. Yet under the bleakest of conditions, Serge’s optimism, his humane sympathies and generous spirit, never waned. A radical misfit, no faction, no sect could contain him; he inhabited a no-man’s-land all his own. These qualities are precisely what make him such an inspiring, even moving figure.” —Matthew Price, Bookforum

“I know of no other writer with whom Serge can be very usefully compared. The essence of the man and his books is to be found in his attitude to the truth. There have of course been many scrupulously honest writers. But for Serge the value of the truth extended far beyond the simple (or complex) telling of it.” —John Berger

“A special class of literature that has arisen out of the European political struggle.” —George Orwell

“The work of the writer Victor Serge faultlessly captures the labyrinth of bureaucratic incrimination into which the Soviet Union descended.” —The Atlantic

“Serge, who has been championed by Susan Sontag and many others, was born in Brussels in 1899 to émigré Russians who'd fled the Czar. He became a political activist, was jailed and arrived in Russia in 1919 to support the Bolshevik Revolution. He rose high in the Comintern before falling foul of Stalin and finding himself in jail and then exile. He was steamrolled by history, and out of this experience he crafted a series of extraordinary memoirs and novels." —Richard Rayner, Los Angeles Times

"Serge can recognize the range of experience and responses that make up the texture of life in even the most nightmarishly repressive system." --Scott McLemee

About the Author

Victor Serge (1890–1947) was born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich to Russian anti-czarist exiles, impoverished intellectuals living “by chance” in Brussels. A precocious anarchist firebrand, young Victor was sentenced to five years in a French penitentiary in 1912. Exiled to Spain in 1917, he participated in an anarcho-syndicalist uprising before leaving for Russia to join the Revolution. Arriving in 1919, after a year in a French concentration camp, Serge joined the Bolsheviks and worked in the press services of the Communist International in Petrograd, Moscow, Berlin, and Vienna. An outspoken critic of Stalin, Serge was expelled from the Party and jailed in 1929. Released and living in Paris, he managed to publish three novels (Men in Prison, Birth of Our Power, and Conquered City) and a history (Year One of the Russian Revolution). Arrested again in Russia and deported to Central Asia in 1933, he was allowed to leave the USSR in 1936 after international protests by militants and prominent writers like André Gide and Romain Rolland. Using his insider’s knowledge, Serge published a stream of impassioned, documented exposés of Stalin’s Moscow show trials and machinations in Spain, which went largely unheeded. Stateless, penniless, hounded by Stalinist agents, Serge lived in precarious exile in Brussels, Paris, Vichy France, and Mexico City, where he died in 1947. His classic Memoirs of a Revolutionary and his great last novels, Unforgiving Years and The Case of Comrade Tulayev (both available as NYRB Classics), were written “for the desk drawer” and published posthumously.


Richard Greeman, the translator of four of Victor Serge’s novels, has written a doctoral dissertation about Serge along with numerous other studies of his work and life. He blogs at Z-Space (www.zcommunications.org/zspace/rgreeman) and his Beware of “Vegetarian” Sharks!: Radical Rants and Internationalist Essays (Illustrated) was published by Praxis in 2007.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ NYRB Classics; Main edition (January 11, 2011)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 159017366X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1590173664
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.4 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.9 x 0.61 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 23 ratings

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
23 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Ex-Patty
4.0 out of 5 stars This is the novel to read if you really want to feel that you have "been there".
Reviewed in the United States on October 7, 2016
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The history of St. Petersburg, Russia during the "War Communism" days of 1919-1920 when workers were sent out into the countryside to confiscate food and the revolution takes on its truly dark and violent side. This is the first novel I've read by Serge, having read his "From Lenin to Stalin" and "Year One of the Russian Revolution" historical accounts in which he participated. I've found him an exceptional writer with a keen knowledge of history, a beautiful prose style and a way of getting to the bone of what he's describing. His prose is very rich and since he lived through these times and events, brings an unmatched reality, detail and intelligence to his writing. This is the type of novel to read if you really want to feel that you have "been there".
5 people found this helpful
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Fredric Henderson
4.0 out of 5 stars Not the best novel of Serge's but worth reading
Reviewed in the United States on September 8, 2017
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Not Serge's best but an important historical record of the Russian Revolution
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Lonya53
4.0 out of 5 stars "The revolution, like Saturn, devours its children."
Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2011
Attributed to Danton shortly before his date with a guillotine.

Early on in Victor Serge's "Conquered City" I came across a passage that I think sums up quite nicely the book's underlying message: "We have conquered everything and everything has slipped out of our grasp. We have conquered bread, and there is famine. We have declared peace to a war-weary world, and war has moved into every house. We have proclaimed the liberation of men, and we need prisons. . . We wanted to give each according to his strength and each to receive according to his needs, and here we are, privileged in the middle of generalized misery, since we are less hungry than others." Serge a committed revolutionary saw earlier than most of his colleagues that `his' revolution could also turn inward and begin to devour its own.

Serge was born in Brussels in 1890 to Russian émigré parents. He returned to Russia early in 1919 in order to support the newly created Soviet Union. He served as both a writer and journalist. However, Serge was one of the first of the old-line revolutionaries to oppose Stalin's concentration of power. He was arrested, expelled from the party, released, and arrested again. Finally, in 1936 after a public campaign by leading European political and literary figures (Andre Gide was one); Serge was released and deported to France. He eventually found his way to Mexico where he died, penniless, in 1947.

Written in 1931/1932, Conquered City is one of Serge's earlier works and it shows. It is not the better crafted writing that you see in  The Case of Comrade Tulayev (New York Review Books Classics)  and  Unforgiving Years , which I consider to be Serge's finest piece of fiction. Set in Petrograd (St. Petersburg/Leningrad) in 1919 the book takes us to a city on the brink (and over the brink) of collapse, famine, desolation and despair. WWI and the October revolution have left Petrograd in near ruins. As the story opens the Civil War is raging and the city, ostensibly controlled by the Bolsheviks (Reds) is a hotbed of anti-revolutionary activity in support of the counter-revolution (Whites). During the course of the book you see the first shoots of the apparatchik culture that was to come to dominate Soviet life. Serge writes of Commissars eating and dressing well at special stores while there is starvation all around. He also writes not just of the excesses of the Whites but also shows some of the justification for suppression of dissent that soon became the norm. This is very provocative stuff both because Serge spotted it so early on and because he wrote of it not out of any reactionary tendencies but because it struck him as a betrayal of revolutionary ideals.

That is pretty much it as far as plotting is concerned. The book takes a number of parallel story-lines, most of which do not connect in more than a tangential way. As a result the book is jarring, jolting and a bit disorienting. Although that was clearly Serge's intent and seems to convey accurately the chaos that covered the city like a Russian blanket of snow, it does make the reader work hard to keep his/her eyes on the picture Serge if painting. As I read it I thought it was a bit like watching a Robert Altman movie.

Ultimately, and despite the jumpiness of the text and some prose that felt a bit `flat'I found Conquered City to be a very worthwhile book. It wasn't an easy book but it was a good one. I find his later work to be more satisfying but this is an important introduction to Serge's writing and I do recommend it. My plan now is to read Bulgakov's  White Guard , a book set in Kiev that covers the same ground: a city at war with itself during the Russian Civil War in order to have some point of comparison, both as to the cities and the writing.

L. Fleisig
17 people found this helpful
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Autonomeus
5.0 out of 5 stars Revolutionary, besieged Petrograd in 1919 -- an amazing novel by one who was there
Reviewed in the United States on June 1, 2023
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The first Victor Serge (1890-1947) I read, in the Eighties when I was a young activist, was "Birth of Our Power," based on Serge's experience with Spanish anarchists in an anarcho-syndicalist uprising. I found it quite inspiring. "Conquered City" (1930-31) was written shortly afterward, and is based on Serge's experience having joined the Bolsheviks and participated in the revolutionary government in Petrograd.

Translator Richard Greeman provides superb history of and context for Serge's fiction, including identifying some of his key literary influences, especially Boris Pilniak.

I recommend this to any young radicals burning with the desire for a better world in the 21st Century!
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Top reviews from other countries

Hylas Maliki
5.0 out of 5 stars What exhilaration!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 22, 2019
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I read comrade tulayev as my first introduction to Serge's writing and was spell bound. I recognize now that that was a later instalment of a series of books. No matter. A book of that calibre can be read in a vacuum on its own and so could this one. Breath taking work. This author is one of the best writers I've ever read. Hes a combination of the intelligence Nabokov and poetry of Pushkin. To come across a jewel like him was a joy inexpressible. I highly recommend this book.
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding novel
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 19, 2020
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An outstanding novel of the Russian Revolution by Victor Serge.
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