Why did the POUM not want to accept help from Stalin?

[The Man]

Can someone explain why the POUM was not willingly to accept help from the USSR during the Spanish Civil War?

[Aurorus Ruber]

Wasn't the POUM a Trotskyist faction? I imagine that would have something to do with it.

[Tim Finnegan]

Because all Soviet aid was funnelled via the Communist Party of Spain, giving them a hugely disproportionate level of clout, which the POUM, quite rightly, predicted as being used to violently bludgeon revolutionaries into submission- the PCE having both the popularity* and the nerve that the liberals and social democrats lacked- and thus indefinitely sustain Spanish capitalism .


Wasn't the POUM a Trotskyist faction? I imagine that would have something to do with it.
They were a merger of the Communist Left of Spain, a Trotskyist group, and the Workers and Peasant Bloc, part of the Spanish Right Opposition (something which Trotsky actually broke with the former over). The Trotskyist segment came to prominence both because it was the most militant in pursuing revolution in Spain, and because it met with the harshest reprisals from the Republican Government.

*[Edit: By which I mean, popularity among the militant working class, not as an absolute.]

[Sir Comradical]

Wait, wasn't the POUM refused arms? That's what I learned from 'Land and Freedom'.

[The Man]

Oh, well. I didn't know they were trotties.

[Kléber]

The POUM was not a Trotskyist party during the war, it was affiliated to the centrist London Bureau (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Revolutionary_Marxist_Centre). They wanted to join the Popular Front government and receive Soviet weapons, but the Stalinists insisted on kicking them out and repressing them because of their Trotskyist past and their line was slightly to the left of the PCE. The POUM's 3,000 soldiers on the front were slandered as "the rottenest unit" in the Republican army and its leader, Nin, was kidnapped and murdered by Soviet agents. As the Soviet bureaucracy launched the purges at home in 1936, Pravda openly declared its intentions in Spain: "the cleaning up of Trotskyist and Anarcho-Syndicalist elements there has already begun, and it will be carried out there with the same energy as in the U.S.S.R."

[Paulappaul]

Fuck Man, Soviet Commanders were a bunch of fucking dickheads.

[Devrim]

the PCE having both the popularity* and the nerve that the liberals and social democrats lacked- and thus indefinitely sustain Spanish capitalism .

*[Edit: By which I mean, popularity among the militant working class, not as an absolute.]

The PCE didn't have mass support within the working class. In 1936 they had about 30,000 members, which when compared to the anarchist organisations, which had over a million and a half at the time was very small. Crucial is also the class composition, which was historically weak anyway, and with its growth after July is became a party more and more dominated by the middle classes.

Devrim

[Geiseric]

Fuck Man, Soviet Commanders were a bunch of fucking dickheads.

lndeed. From what I understand, the P.O.U.M. Militia wasn't even that innefective, their system of voting in officers and stuff actually helped the soldiers. The P.S.U.C. Wasn't after a revolution, the U.S.S.R. Had to secure a deal with france and britain, and part of it was making sure the liberal government stayed in power in catalonian spain.

To answer the question, P.O.U.M. Was everything the U.S.S.R. Hated, an independent socialist group who defied the stalinist lines and tendencies.

[syndicat]

The PCE didn't have mass support within the working class. In 1936 they had about 30,000 members, which when compared to the anarchist organisations, which had over a million and a half at the time was very small. Crucial is also the class composition, which was historically weak anyway, and with its growth after July is became a party more and more dominated by the middle classes.



right. only 40 percent of the CPE's 250,000 members were workers. (this was when the membership was at its height in 1937-38.)

[B0LSHEVIK]

Who said Stalin 'offered' weapons to the POUM? On the contrary, he went to great lengths to make sure that Soviet aid STAYED OUT of the hands of the POUM and CNT.This is very well documented too.

[RATM-Eubie]

Im just glad the USSR stayed out of this.
Thank god :cool:

[Magón]

Also some history on pre-Spanish Civil War, Nin. He was Trotsky's personal assistant in Russian and elsewhere, before returning to Spain and forming POUM with Joaquin Maurin. I don't think POUM actually ever had a fixed Marxist ideological side the PSUC, PCE, etc. but obviously wasn't like by the authoritarian side of Marxism, who called them Trotskyists, traitors to the revolution, etc.