Revolutionary novelist Victor Serge is one of the most compelling figures of Soviet history. First published in 1926 as Les Coulisses d’une Sûreté générale, Serge set forth a manifesto which exclaimed “the epoch of civil wars has begun.”

Much like living in America in a post 9/11 world, living in in the aftermath of the Decembrist revolt brought a certain paranoia to the Russian regime. So deep was the neurosis that in 1833 Sergey Uvarov-the Minister of Education of Russia-presented the following statement of ideology: