Introduction
This book has been brought together to right an
historic wrong: not the wrong of the betrayal and sabotage done to the Spanish
working people, for that can only be righted by their assuming sovereign power,
but the wrong kept alive by two generations of liberal and Communist historians
— let us call them the Left Establishment — in misrepresenting the cause for
which they fought, and the reasons for their defeat.
Not much of the myth of ‘democracy versus Fascism’
about the Spanish Civil War remains on the European mainland, where the facts
are too well known for it to be entertained by serious enquirers any more. But
the British deep-rooted empiricist distaste for going into serious political
questions, and the romantic mythology never absent from fashionable causes in
Britain, have combined to confine historical comment in these islands to a
superficial level. Two books, it is true, one old (Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia) and one newer
(Bolloten’s The Spanish Revolution)
stand out like beacons in the English speaking world, and the adjustments made
to the third edition of Thomas’ The
Spanish Civil War show that some of their light is finally shining over the
ivory towers. But little of it ever illuminates the ramparts of the
professional practitioners of ‘Labour History’.
Over 50 years ago Leon Trotsky pointed out that the
‘witnesses, victims and participants’ of the ‘innumerable crimes committed on
the Iberian peninsula by the international scoundrels in Stalin’s employ’ would
‘carry with them everywhere their testimony’, and that ‘truth will become
accessible to broad circles of the population in all countries’. Our aim is to
let them speak through these pages. Only one of these accounts has ever
appeared before in English. The contributions range across the whole spectrum
of what can be loosely described as dissident Marxist — Trotskyist (both
official and dissenting), Brandlerite, POUM left, Italian Maximalist, and left
wing Social Democrat, together with a number of studies by modern investigators
who do not toe the official pro-Communist ‘line’. And whilst the Spanish left
itself has not been neglected, we have deliberately concentrated upon the
accounts of international observers — Italians, Germans, Austrians, French,
Americans and Belgians — who were able to bring a wider grasp of the politics
of Europe to their understanding of what was going on before them. We have not
included any Anarchist accounts, not out of any myopic factional motives, but
because a number of excellent books telling their story are readily available,
and largely confirm the picture presented here.1
The general lines of the picture are all too clear.
A revolution did take place behind the Republican lines, which was the real
target of Franco’s uprising, and it was reversed by the policies of domestic
and international Stalinism. In political terms this was accomplished by the
politics of the Popular Front, which placed in power the puppet government of
Doctor Negrín, and the large scale operations of the murder and torture squads
of the NKVD, which demoralised the workers and peasants. In economic terms it
was effected by the sabotage of the collectivised land and industry, and by the
blockade enforced by the ‘non-intervention’ policy of another Popular Front
government, that in France. All this was made clear at the time by the analyses
of Trotsky2 and of Felix Morrow3, and our own compilation here is intended
to serve as a companion to the study of these books.
Various indications have not been wanting that
Stalinists themselves were well aware of what they had done, and why they did
it. In 1960 an illuminating admission came from a Soviet historian, KL
Maidanik:
‘It seems to me that the events of 19 July marked
the beginning of a qualitatively new stage in the Spanish revolution. The
activity of the proletarian masses and their subjective outlook both support
this conclusion. July-August 1936 saw settled, in fact, the basic problems of
the revolution, those of political power and ownership of the instruments and
means of production. Local authority passed, in practice, into the hands of the
armed proletariat. Also into their hands, and to a lesser extent into those of
the peasants, passed all the instruments and means of production belonging to
the capitalists and landowners. A large part of the bourgeoisie and its state
machine was liquidated on the territory held by the Republic. All this went
beyond the limits of a bourgeois-democratic revolution.’4
Even the Spanish Stalinists themselves have begun to
admit some of what they have done. Santiago Carrillo thought it ‘possible’ in
1974 that Nin ‘was executed in our zone’,5
and in 1987 the present General Secretary of the Catalan Communist Party
(PSUC), Rafael Ribó, accepted the complicity of his party in his kidnapping and
murder, whilst the former leading Communist novelist Jorge Semprún recalled
Nin, ‘whom we ourselves tortured and murdered’.6
Whilst glasnost in foreign policy has now come
around to admitting the truth about the secret codicil to the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which divided Poland between the Soviet Union and
Germany, the Katyn Forest massacre, and the Soviet refusal to assist the Warsaw
Uprising, it has so far been strangely reticent about the Spanish Civil War.
But even if the secrets of Soviet policy were brought into broad daylight, it
would be years before the British Communists admitted that they were in
existence, for they have always been doggedly determined to hang onto the lies
they told, and to accept the minimum modification once the truth became
painfully obvious.
Readers of the eyewitness accounts of Bortenstein
and Bolze about the Huesca front will be amused to see that in the 1970s the
view was that ‘the Aragon front, through the fault of the Catalan Anarchists,
was inactive’, but by 1986 we learn that ‘the attack on Huesca had petered out,
partly through lack of arms and partly because the Anarchist and POUM militias
were unwilling to press the assault’.7
As for the Barcelona May Days, first we were told that
‘Fascists in some parts at least of Republican territory were advised to join
the POUM’, and that there was ‘a very strong indication that Fascist agents
were involved in the putsch’.8
Then we were equally solemnly informed that:
‘The Fascists... used their agents to stir into
revolt perfectly genuine and sincere Anarchist “Friends of Durruti”, members of
the leftist POUM and such few direct supporters as Trotsky had in Barcelona.
These people acted in what they believed were ways which would serve the
proletarian revolution and a consequent disintegration of the Fascist army. In
fact, they were being manipulated by Franco for the purpose of taking pressure
off his army and helping to consolidate his position.’9
By 1985 this had become modified into ‘shortly
afterwards, allegations that the POUM leaders were conscious traitors acting on behalf of the Fascist Franco began to
receive credence’.10
A cursory glance over the heated polemics directed
by the Trotskyists against the POUM should melt into thin air the remarks about
that party’s alleged ‘Trotskyism’. Nevertheless, the 1970s version considered
that ‘the problem of the extent to which the POUM was Trotskyist or just
“leftist” would make an interesting subject for a thesis’; by the 1980s we
could read that the POUM was ‘deeply critical of the Soviet Union and in general shared Trotsky’s views’.11
The first reaction to the authentic reports of
Soviet assassins and torturers at work in Spain was simply to brazen it out:
‘Stories about “NKVD agents” in Spain, especially in
relation to the fight against Trotskyism, have been propagated so widely that
one meets them almost everywhere, and this includes works by progressive
historians. The authors of this article are inclined to think that most of them
are apocryphal.’12
By 1982 these ‘horror stories’ about ‘Communist
repression’ were being traced back to deserters, even if ‘there were inevitably
some unjust arrests, imprisonments and even executions on the Republican side.
However, they were rare and atypical...’13
The changing tone of these slanders brings discredit
upon them as a whole, but other myths have so far escaped public repudiation.
Readers of our collected testimonies will surely know what to make of
assertions that the Barcelona May Days were an ‘unsuccessful putsch carried out
by a section of the Anarchists and the members of the POUM’, doomed ‘by the
fact that it never had the support of the mass of the working class members of
the CNT, who remained neutral and passive’;14
that Juan Negrín was ‘not the kind of human material out of which puppets are
made’;15 that ‘the majority of the leaders of the
FAI in Catalonia were favourable towards the idea of seizing power in Catalonia
by means of a coup d’état’;16
or that production at the Hispano-Suiza works was in a mess because ‘the CNT
was not cooperating with the government’s drive to increase industrial
production, especially in the war industries, and the CNT leaders in the
factory resented the presence of Socialist foreigners...’.17
A good example of what happens when you try to put a
bold face on things is the following edifying tale about Wally Tapsell’s
mission to Barcelona after reports about the May Days began to sow disquiet
among the British International Brigaders:
‘It was known that the British group sent out by the
Independent Labour Party had left the Aragon front and was in Barcelona, so
Walter Tapsell was sent there from Albacete to try to extricate it from its
links with the POUM... It appears that none of the group took an active part in
the uprising, but they did provide an armed guard for the POUM headquarters,
and were shocked and bewildered by the events.’18
Unfortunately for the credibility of this piece, its
writer had forgotten that it had been blown sky high 34 years ago by Fred
Copeman:
‘It was decided that Wally Tapsell should make an
enquiry on behalf of the Brigade. On his return he reported what he had found,
being fully aware of the serious political repercussions. He was of the opinion
that the Spanish Communist Party were not unconnected with the uprising, and
that the POUM were being used as a blind.’19
It would be foolish, of course, to assume from this
sorry catalogue that lies are the property of the Stalinist movement alone, and
still more foolish to assume that lies are confined to politicians. But
Anarchist discussions of the history of the Spanish Civil War have always in
the past been characterised by a very different standard of integrity. It is
all the more disappointing, then, that we should have to read in an article
written on the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Civil War that the
international Trotskyist movement was ‘arguing that the Spanish workers did not
need arms’, that ‘their line was that arms weren’t necessary’, that ‘the rump
of the German and mid-European Trotskyist intelligentsia buzzed around the POUM
like flies, taking no part in its militia but offering their propaganda
services’, that the Spanish Trotskyists ‘did not make any resistance’ to the
terror of the Stalinist torturers, and that Ramon Mercader del Rio, Trotsky’s
own murderer, had been a member of the Spanish Trotskyists.20 The purpose of these slanders appears to
be the pretence that the Fourth International was acting in secret agreement
with the Third International, all the more embarrassing for our Anarchist since
this was the propaganda line of Josef Göbbels at the time:
‘...were the Trots in Spain working for Stalin, not
Hitler? It was not beyond Stalin’s cynicism, and without their active
cooperation he could not have framed the POUM.’21
There are several good reasons for publishing this
book. The first is to rehabilitate the memory of all those who sacrificed their
lives and liberties to fight for Socialism during the Spanish Civil War, to
refute the slander that those who did not toe the Stalinist party line were
‘wreckers’ and ‘agents of Franco’, and to show that there were alternatives to the Popular Front policies of the Social
Democrats and Stalinists, and that these alternatives were put forward by principled
and devoted fighters for the cause of the working class. These voices have been
unheard, and have never been mentioned in the liberal and/or Stalinist versions
of history served up by Britain’s Left Establishment.
Even more important is the fact that our views of
the past colour our understanding of the present, and influence the decisions
we make today. Without an adequate understanding of the past we cannot fully
understand the present. False assumptions perpetuated on a false interpretation
of the past can lead to a repetition of the errors that led to defeat then and
can lead to new defeats today. The slogan on the cover of each issue of Revolutionary History reads: ‘Those who
do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.’ We should add that we have
no objection to repeating successes. But, alas, so far, the defeats and errors
have outweighed the successes, and it is the repetition of the former we must
avoid.
We have deliberately used the plural and spoken of
alternative policies, not of one alternative policy, because this book is a
symposium of contributions from a wide spectrum of views. We do not expect that
everyone will today draw exactly the same lessons and conclusions from the
Spanish events of the 1930s in their approach to current politics. Nor has it
ever been the intention of the Editorial Board to impose a monolithic
application of the lessons of the past to the politics of today. We are not
purveyors of ‘the revealed truth’. The Board itself represents a broad range of
views.
We offer this book in memory of Sam Bornstein, as
our contribution towards an informed evaluation of the past which, we hope,
will help the present generation solve the tasks of the present.
As for us, it only remains to offer our thanks to
all those who made the book possible: to our contributors Don Bateman, Andy
Durgan and Hans Schafranek; to Pierre Broué for the extensive use we have made
of the Cahiers Léon Trotsky, chiefly
nos 3 and 10, and of his definitive edition of Trotsky’s La Révolution espagnole; to Mike Jones and John Sullivan for
crucial areas of our research as well as translation work, and to our other
translators Paolo Casciola, Angela Giumelli and Esther Leslie. Ted Crawford was
responsible for translating Hans Schafranek’s article and for editing the
translations of Rous and Bortenstein’s pamphlets, whilst Paul Flewers undertook
the exhausting labour of production work. Al Richardson had overall
responsibility for the editorial work.
Finally
we must thank Sam Bornstein’s admirers for their financial help.
Socialist
Platform
Revolutionary History
*******************************
Notes
1. Vernon Richards, Lessons
of the Spanish Revolution, London, 1953 (third edition, 1973); Sam Dolgoff,
The Anarchist Collectives, New York,
1974; Gaston Leval, Collectives in the
Spanish Revolution, London, 1975; Abel Paz, Durruti: The People Armed, Montreal, 1976; Murray Bookchin, The Spanish Anarchists, New York, 1977;
José Peirats, Anarchists in the Spanish
Revolution, Detroit, 1977; Albert Meltzer (ed), A New World in Our Hearts, London, 1978; Augustin Souchy Bauer, With the Peasants of Aragon, Orkney,
1982; Emma Goldman, Vision on Fire,
New York, 1983; Freedom Press, The May
Days in Barcelona, 1937, London, 1987; Freedom Press, Spain 1936-39: Social Revolution and Counter-Revolution, London,
1990.
2. LD Trotsky, The
Spanish Revolution 1931-39, New York, 1973.
3. F Morrow, Revolution
and Counter-Revolution in Spain, second expanded edition, New York, 1974.
4. KL Maidanik, Ispansky
proletariat v natsionalnoye-revolyytsionni voiny, 1936-37gg, Moscow, 1960,
cited in F Claudín, The Communist
Movement, New York, 1975, p224.
5. S Carrillo, Dialogue
on Spain, London, 1976, p53.
6. PS, ‘No vivimos solo de verdades, dice Vargas Llosa’, El País, 18 June 1987; Xavier Domingo,
‘El lider del PSUC reabilita a Nin’, Cambio
16, 3 August 1987, cited in Victor Alba and Stephen Schwartz, Spanish Marxism Versus Soviet Communism,
New Brunswick, 1988, pp217-8.
7. Nan Green and AM Elliott, Spain Against Fascism, 1936-39, nd (1970s), p20; Jim Fyrth, The Signal was Spain: The Spanish Aid
Movement in Britain, 1936-39, London, 1986, p59.
8. Green and Elliott, op cit, pp19, 21.
9. Monty Johnstone, Trotsky
and World Revolution, London, 1976, p13.
10. Noreen Branson, History
of the Communist Party of Great Britain: 1927-41, London, 1985, p244.
11. Green and Elliott, op cit, p20; Bill Alexander, British Volunteers for Liberty: Spain
1936-39, London, 1982, p19. (Our emphasis)
12. Green and Elliott, op cit, p22.
13. Alexander, op cit, pp81, 27.
14. Green and Elliott, op cit, pp 17, 21. That the story has not
been dropped since is shown by Alexander’s remarks that ‘the people of
Barcelona — the heartland of Anarchism — did not support the POUM revolt
against the Republic in May 1937’ (Alexander, op cit, p25).
15. Green and Elliott, op cit, p12.
16. Ibid, p20.
17. Alexander, op cit, p220.
18. Ibid, pp108-9.
19. Fred Copeman, Reason in
Revolt, Blandford, 1948, p119. Copeman uses the word ‘uprising’ in respect
of the Stalinists’ assault upon the Barcelona Telephone Exchange, whereas
Alexander uses it in respect of the working class response to the Stalinists’
provocation.
20. Albert Meltzer, ‘Hidden History of the Trots in Spain’, Black Flag, nos 194, 195, October and
November/December 1989. Apart from what appears below on this topic, cf LD
Trotsky, ‘Answers to Questions on the Spanish Situation’, 14 September 1937, The Spanish Revolution 1931-39, op cit,
pp284-5. The material in this book is a sufficient refutation of this nonsense
that Trotsky had been killed by one of his own disgruntled followers, but it is
interesting to note that this line was in fact the explanation of the
Stalinists at the time, which they have been obliged to abandon since: ‘The
various Trotskyite sects throughout the world waged fratricidal war against
each other and the recent attack on Trotsky may well have been an incident in
that war.’ (JR Campbell, ‘A Counter-Revolutionary Gangster Passes’, Daily Worker, 23 August 1940) Ramon
Mercader had never been a Trotskyist; he was a member of the PSUC, a fact
established as long ago as 1950 by Gorkin and since confirmed by Mercader’s
surviving relatives.
21. ‘It is curious that Nazi propaganda in this period [of the Moscow Trials] alleged that in spite of appearances the Fourth International was a secret agency of the Third, operating on the basis of a division of labour.’ (Brian Pearce, ‘The British Stalinists and the Moscow Trials’, Essays on the History of Communism in Britain, London, 1975, p225) Given the scale of Meltzer’s lying, it would be futile to pick him up on more trivial remarks, such as that Albert Weisbord was a ‘Trotskyist’ when he went to Spain, or that a ‘Trotskyist’ called Cordera of whom nobody seems to have heard ‘became a Fascist labour organiser’. Perhaps he means Gomilla, cf Andy Durgan’s account below, p50, n55.