Diaries from Spanish Civil War and/or Paris Commune

[Bitter Ashes]

Just wondering if anyone could reccomend any reading to do with first hand accounts of workers who lived in the Parish Commune, and/or the Anarchist held areas of the Spanish Civil War. Diaries would be great, but anything really that's got a first hand account of day to day life in these places would be helpful. I can imagine there's not much out there like this though, because unlike Anne Frank, I'd imagine that publishers would be reluctant to publish anything that is really damning to thier image. So, is there such things in circulation, either online or as a book?
Thanks for any help :)

[Pogue]

For the Paris Commune, Live Working or Die Fighting.

[Anarkiwi]

for spain,
granny made me an anarchist-stuart christie is a alright one
he was not there but read it its got a lot of info on the conflict.
id love to know more about both aswell

[eyedrop]

You should check out your local library. When I went there and asked around they managed to find an old and dusty book written, by a female norwegian journalist who had been in spain most of the war, right after the war. They probably got lot of old books stoved away in the storeroom that are impossible to get hold of otherwise.

[Pogue]

Theres loads of stuff on Spain by AK press, if you ever go to London go to Freedom bookshop, they have a shelf on it.

Obviously there is Homage to Catalonia.

Live Working or Die Fighting as I mentioned is the most extensive on Paris COmmune I have read, loads of quotes, first hand perspectives etc.

[mykittyhasaboner]

Homage to Catalonia is available online for free. (http://www.george-orwell.org/Homage_to_Catalonia/index.html)

[x359594]

Diaries by workers who participated in the Spanish Revolution in English are few. There is Red Spanish Notebook by Juan Brea and Mary Low. In the realm of ex-post facto oral histories there's Blood of Spain by Ronald Fraser.

[Random Precision]

Besides Homage and The Blood of Spain, The Spanish Cockpit by Franz Borkenau, an Austrian journalist, is really good. Although by that time he had abandoned Marxism for liberalism, he still makes a number of sharp observations and his account is invaluable to understand the interplay between the different Republican factions.

[Bitter Ashes]

Just to clarify, what I'm most intrested in is the life of those who kept working, more than the militias and the war itself. Not that I'm not intrested in that side of things, but I'm trying to get an impression of what it was like to be a worker in a post-capitalist society.

[Pogue]

Just to clarify, what I'm most intrested in is the life of those who kept working, more than the militias and the war itself. Not that I'm not intrested in that side of things, but I'm trying to get an impression of what it was like to be a worker in a post-capitalist society.

Although the Spanish Revolution could provide you with that sort of information, the Paris Commune wont. There was very little taking over and running of factories, the events were mainly focused around street fighting.

[Random Precision]

Just to clarify, what I'm most intrested in is the life of those who kept working, more than the militias and the war itself. Not that I'm not intrested in that side of things, but I'm trying to get an impression of what it was like to be a worker in a post-capitalist society.

The Blood of Spain is what you're looking for then. I posted an essay here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/working-class-saddle-t104674/index.html?t=104674) that incorporates a lot of its accounts on the takeover of industry. Also good is The Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War by Robert Alexander, which has a few chapters detailing the extent of workers' control.

Of course, neither of these are diaries. Sorry.

[The Ungovernable Farce]

Yeah, Blood of Spain is what you want. It's an amazing book, tonnes of first-hand accounts from all different perspectives.
Also, I've never read Gaston Leval's Collectives in the Spanish Revolution (http://libcom.org/library/collectives-spanish-revolution-gaston-leval), but it sounds like the kind of thing you're looking for. See also libcom's further reading guide (http://libcom.org/library/spanish-civil-war-further-reading-guide), and this bibliography (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/spancivwar/spancivwarbiblio.html) might come in useful as well. So yeah, look round libcom, they've got loads of Spain stuff.

[Intelligitimate]

I recommend Arthur Landis' Spain! The Unfinished Revolution. He was an actual participate in the war, though this isn't a diary. He later become a historian of the war and wrote a few books on it, his most famous being his book on the Lincoln Brigade.

They Shall Not Pass is also good. It is the autobiography of La Pasionaria, who was a major player in the Republic.

[bricolage]

Anymore from the Paris Commune?

[x359594]

...I've never read Gaston Leval's Collectives in the Spanish Revolution (http://libcom.org/library/collectives-spanish-revolution-gaston-leval), but it sounds like the kind of thing you're looking for...

It's his eye-witness account of urban and agrarian collectives, their structure, productivity, distribution of goods, etc. with many snippets of conversations with various individuals.

Neither Arthur Landis nor Dolores Iburruri were Spanish workers, but if you extend you reading to foreign participants in the Civil War and politicians then you might as well read William Herrick's autobiography Jumping the Line.

About the Commune, I personally haven't read any diaries or contemporary accounts by actual participants, but the standard English language histories are The Paris Commune of 1871 by Frank Jellinek (published 1937)and The Paris Commune 1971 by Stewart Edwards (published 1972.) Jellinek refers to an eye-witness account by one Lissagaray (no other name) a journalist who wrote a history based on what he saw said to have been translated into English by Eleanor Marx Aveling.

In French there is Jules Guesde's Ca et la and Maxime Vuillaume's 10 volume collection of eye-witness reports Histoire de la Guerre Civile de 1871.

[The Ungovernable Farce]

Memoirs of Louise Michel? Not that I've read them, but they must have some Paris Commune stuff.

[The Author]

I would like to read Spain Betrayed by Ronald Radosh to find out just what sort of documents and content material on the Spanish Civil War can be found in this source. I never read it, but I would like to see the documents in it. Not really a diary, but something close to primary source material.

[PRC-UTE]

Peadar O'Donnell the Irish republican socialist wrote a book on Spain, and sympathetically described the collectives, and compared the teaching methods used by the libertarians to Padraig Pearse. I don't know how much he goes into daily life, but there's obviously some. Anarchists such as the WSM like to reference it. It's not easy to find, I believe.

Another good book to check out, but quite rare, is called 'With the Peasants of Aragon'. It does describe daily life, and the "prisons" used for fascist prisoners which werne't run like prisons at all- they were incorporated into some agricultural collectives. When I've extra time I could scan some pages and put them on here.

For more info on collectives, but not too much on daily life, check out Jose Peirats "Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution". He goes into some detail about the collectives, and he was official historian of the CNT. Will be easy to find in England, where the English edition was published.

[Random Precision]

For more info on collectives, but not too much on daily life, check out Jose Peirats "Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution". He goes into some detail about the collectives, and he was official historian of the CNT. Will be easy to find in England, where the English edition was published.

Thanks for mentioning this, can't believe I forgot to. It's actually an abridgment of his three-volume history of the CNT during the Civil War, still sadly untranslated from Spanish and pretty hard to find these days. :(

[pastradamus]

There's a lot of stuff like this which can be found in your local library. Though No diary/book of the spanish civil war is more famous than Homage to catalonia by orwell.

[x359594]

Although the Spanish Revolution could provide you with that sort of information, the Paris Commune wont. There was very little taking over and running of factories, the events were mainly focused around street fighting.

There was more to the Commune than that. For example, Gustave Courbet was elected minister of culture and proposed sweeping changes to the educational system that were briefly implemented, the was a mass literacy program started up, the bakers of Paris formed a collective, etc. These were all short-lived of course, but enough nascent social change took place to inspire Marx, Bakunin, Kropotkin and other socialists to write thoughtfully about the achievements of the Commune from that time to the present.