DECEMBER 30 — VICTOR SERGE
Russian anarchist, anti-Stalinist, literary conspirator.

Farewell to Andrès Nin by Victor Serge

1921, Moscow. The echoes of the cannons of Kronstadt are still in people’s spirits. It’s hard to get used to the first white bread of the NEP. The great wounded Commune seems to be convalescing. On beautiful summer nights we stroll among the bustling crowd of the boulevards. The trees surround us with a shadowy coolness. All is dark, for there are still no streetlights. My companion has come from Barcelona, and before that Cairo. Delegate of the CNT to the Communist International. He is young, slim, with abundant curly hair, laughing eyes circled in gold, a beautifully timbered voice full of laughter and , already, with firmness. Andres Nin explains to me that he is not at all an anarchist, but rigorously syndicalist. Nothing utopian about his ideas, only the wish to conquer and organize production.

DECEMBER 30, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
FESTIVAL OF ENORMOUS CHANGES AT THE LAST MINUTE.

ALSO ON DECEMBER 30 IN HISTORY…
1865 — British imperialist apologist writer Rudyard Kipling born.
1890 — Russian anarchist writer Victor Serge born, Brussels, Belgium.
2006 — Vanquished Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein hanged, Baghdad.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective. The 2010 Autonomedia Calender is now available on the Autonomedia site.