Victor Serge, Russian historian and author (born 1890)

Victor Serge was a Belgian-born Russian revolutionary, novelist, poet, historian, journalist, and translator. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks in January 1919 after arriving in Petrograd at the height of the Russian Civil War. He worked for the Comintern as a journalist, editor, and translator and was an early critic of the emerging Stalinist regime. Serge joined the Left Opposition in 1923 and was expelled from the Communist Party in late 1927 or early 1928. He was imprisoned by the Soviet regime in 1928 and again from 1933 to 1936.