"It is often said" wrote Victor Serge, "that the germ of all Stalinism was in Bolshevism at its beginning". Bolshevism also contained many other germs and this book, an eye-witness account, shows the many germs, the many new possibilities, that were present as a result of the workers" revolution of 1917. While Serge reveals the forces that were to produce the Stalinist dictatorship, he also shows how this was far from inevitable. For in the first year of the Russian revolution, the tremendous energy, enthusiasm and creativity of the working class was the motive force behind the first attempt to organize a socialist society.