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that transpires the actual defeat of the insurrection. In Petrograd, the theme of power takes on an entirely new, and terrifying, aspect; the question implicit in the Barcelona chapters—“Can we seize power?”—is replaced by another, truly awesome question—“What will we become when we do take power?”
    The collective “we” of these questions brings up another important facet of Serge’s work. “The word ‘I,’” wrote Serge, “is repellent to me as a vain affirmation of the self which contains a large measure of illusion and another of vanity or unjustified pride. Whenever it is possible, that is to say when I am able not to feel myself isolated, when my experience illuminates in some manner that of the men to whom I feel tied,I prefer to use the word ‘we,’ which is more general and more true.” The word “Our” in Serge’s title reveals this preoccupation. And it is the opposition of “them” and “us,” of “their city” and “ours,” that in fact forms the basic framework for, and gives a consistent point of view to,
Birth of Our Power.
“We”—the collective hero of Serge’s novel—are the men to whom the narrator is tied, the poor, the exploited, the downtrodden, the rebels of all places and all times; “they” are the exploiters and the complacent. However, the former are never idealized, and the latter are often treated with great delicacy. Moreover, the basic opposition becomes richly ironic in the final section of the novel when “we” have at last taken power in Russia, and the narrator discovers that “the danger is within us.”
    With
Birth of Our Power,
Serge created both a compelling portrait of modem revolution and a probing examination of the problems that attend it. The novel captures in a lyrical, yet powerfully direct, manner the enormous vigor and excitement of the revolutionary spirit of our century, and it is at the same time an historically valuable study of humanity at the crucial moment of upheaval and social change—a study that speaks with the eloquence of deeply felt experience and is full of important implications for our times. For Victor Serge, the revolution did not end with the defeat of the revolution of 1917 or of 1936 in Spain (or with the transformation of the Russia of 1917 into its opposite); in
Birth of Our Power
he wrote, “Nothing is ever lost…. Tomorrow is full of greatness. We will not have brought this victory to ripeness in vain. This city will be taken, if not by our hands, at least by others like ours, but stronger. Stronger perhaps for having been better hardened, thanks to our very weakness. If we are beaten, other men, infinitely different from us, infinitely like us, will walk, on a similar evening, in ten years, in twenty years (how long is really without importance) down this
rambla,
meditating on the same victory. Perhaps they will think about our blood. Even now I think I see them and I am thinking about their blood, which will flow too. But they will take the city.”
    Let us hope that, after years of exile, Serge’s works find the audience they deserve: those “other men, infinitely different from us, infinitely like us” who are carrying on the struggle today.
    Richard Greeman
    New York, 1966

ONE
This City and Us
    A CRAGGY MASS OF SHEER ROCK — SHATTERING THE MOST BEAUTIFUL OF HORI zons—towers over this city. Crowned by an eccentric star of jagged masonry cut centuries ago into the brown stone, it now conceals secret constructions under the innocence of grassy knolls. The secret citadel underneath lends an evil aspect to the rock, which, between the limpid blue of the sky, the deeper blue of the sea, the green meadows of the Llobregat and the city, resembles a strange primordial gem … Hard, powerful, upheaval arrested in stone, affirmed since the beginning of time