Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

This small book delivers somewhat less than its title promises-- only a few pages in the middle are devoted to sensible, if somewhat obvious advice for activists facing state repression (e.g, don't talk to police, operate on a need-to-know basis. The rest of the book falls into two parts: First comes a brief and fascinating report on what was learned about the Tsar's Okhrana, or secret police, when the police archives were opened after the revolution, revealing the staggering extent and level of coordination of police infiltration of rebel groups.

The later chapters of the book defend clandestine organizing and the use of violence in social movements. More troublingly, the last chapters Serge defends the use of _the same tools of repression employed by the Tsar_ by communists after the revolution. This lamentable position was taken by Serge shortly after the success of the October 1917 revolution. The writings of an older, more disillusioned Serge make it clear that he rejected this naive belief in "working class repression" once the abominable nature of Stalin's Cheka became clearer.

For a more useful, thorough guide to activist security culture in the age of electronic surveillance, see the chapter in Crimethinc's book "Recipes for Disaster".