How were the international brigades started?

[Skyhilist]

Obviously the international brigades grew to be quite large at one point. But how were they first implemented? I mean if I just came up to someone and said "hey want to start a brigade?" it likely wouldn't amount to anything. So how exactly did the international brigades first start and grow to be so large? In other words how did they navigate the obstacles (e.g. apathy) that so many organizers now face?

[Sasha]

They where in vast majority organized by the official CP of the respective countries the volunteers came from, even to the extent that many volunteers who where not communists (or at least not Leninist) joined because it was the only way to reach Spain.
As such the comintern had effective control over the brigades hence them ending up on the wrong side of history in Barcelona in may 1937.

[Hrafn]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Brigades#Formation_and_recruitment

[Skyhilist]

As such the comintern had effective control over the brigades hence them ending up on the wrong side of history in Barcelona in may 1937.

Could you clarify what you mean by this please (i.e. what happened and why comintern control was to blame, as well as what you think should have been done instead)? I'm not very good at history so the specific date and place isn't really ringing a bell.

[Thirsty Crow]

Could you clarify what you mean by this please (i.e. what happened and why comintern control was to blame, as well as what you think should have been done instead)? I'm not very good at history so the specific date and place isn't really ringing a bell.
Essentially, the International Brigades became a weapon in the hands of the Comintern supported CP of Spain and the Republican state, most dramatically coming to light in the violent dispersal of peasant communes and collectives of Aragon for instance (I'm not quite sure if they fought in Barcelona May Days though) which was necessitated by the official policies of the CP of the USSR (the CP of Spain was first and foremost socially based on the petite bourgeoisie and the middle classes; the said destruction of the collectives was also dictated by the Popular Front strategy).

[Ismail]

There's a 1975 Soviet work which details how the brigades were formed in various countries, and a short history of how they operated within Spain: http://web.archive.org/web/20120506144526/http://leninist.biz/en/1975/ISSR389/index.html

The goal of the Brigades was to assist in the defeat of Fascism. Many realized that the war going on in Spain was a precursor to a wider war across Europe, hence the participation of non-communists.

[Skyhilist]

So in other words the problem of the brigades lied in their top-down structuring and lack of openness to debate and reason by the people they affected most directly (I.e. soldiers and the Spanish anarchists)?

How do you feel international support for a revolution could be organized and mobilized differently so as to prevent what eventually happened with the international brigades?

[Geiseric]

The international brigades were purged by Comintern actually, I've never read anywhere that they attacked the peasant communes. Another interesting thing is that they were organized by Tito, he was the guy in charge of the entire operation. They had people who were dedicated to the revolution more than the P.S.U.C's more or less "secret police," militia, who were more than glad to kill various anarchists and socialists who were working togather during the May days to overthrow the republican government, whom more than anybody was responsible for the failure of the civil war.

The international brigades were always on the front though, they didn't really have much influence on the politics of the revolution. Their members along with CNT-FAI leaders as well as the members of POUM were often tortured to death by the Stalinists.

[blake 3:17]

An interesting obit of the last Canadian vet of International Brigades.

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/op-ed/Paps+fought+fascism+their+last+dies+unnoticed/8889754/story.html

[blake 3:17]

At the OP -- the fight against fascism was widely recognized as a legitimate and honourable duty. Spain was one of the few places where it could be fought. It's worth noting the double role of the Popular Front -- yeah yeah it downplayed certain kinds of radicalism, but it was POPULAR.

The Mac-Paps from Canada and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade from the US were amongst our finest moments in international struggle. But there were also volunteers to China, the anti-fascist motivations of many in the Second War, and a whole wack of solidarity efforts since then. When I was first active in the Left, Trucks To Nicaragua was a big thing. People would drive a truck down with medical and school supplies, leave it there, and come home. That's solid.

[Thirsty Crow]

At the OP -- the fight against fascism was widely recognized as a legitimate and honourable duty. Spain was one of the few places where it could be fought. It's worth noting the double role of the Popular Front -- yeah yeah it downplayed certain kinds of radicalism, but it was POPULAR.

Downplayed? Man what sweet words.
I think you mean, imprisoned, tortured, killed radical workers and destroyed any embryonic development towards social revolution (but then again, the proponents of the view of "fight fascism first" unequivocally viewed workers' revolution as an obstacle, and not as a vital condition for the struggle against fascism). Not much of a surprise given that a capitalist state does that kind of nasty stuff.

And yes, the revolutionary working class was wedded to the popular front in the end. Which should mean...what exactly?

[Ismail]

Downplayed? Man what sweet words.
I think you mean, imprisoned, tortured, killed radical workers and destroyed any embryonic development towards social revolution (but then again, the proponents of the view of "fight fascism first" unequivocally viewed workers' revolution as an obstacle, and not as a vital condition for the struggle against fascism). Not much of a surprise given that a capitalist state does that kind of nasty stuff.Spain did experience revolutionary charges and there's no reason to think the war's end would have halted that process, which is why all the right-wing, Francoist, and even a number of "leftist" sources whine that the Comintern and PCE "controlled" everything in the end, that Negrín was a "puppet," that the Republic was "subservient" to "Moscow," etc.

Of course it wouldn't be your type of "revolution," just as October 1917 wasn't the "revolution" advocated by the likes of Makhno. But that's not important.

As for the "vital condition for the struggle against fascism," a comment from someone obviously not sympathetic to the PCE:

"The much-publicized disunity on the Government side was not a main cause of defeat. The Government militias were hurriedly raised, ill-armed and unimaginative in their military outlook, but they would have been the same if complete political agreement had existed from the start. At the outbreak of war the average Spanish factory-worker did not even know how to fire a rifle (there had never been universal conscription in Spain), and the traditional pacifism of the Left was a great handicap. The thousands of foreigners who served in Spain made good infantry, but there were very few experts of any kind among them. The Trotskyist thesis that the war could have been won if the revolution had not been sabotaged was probably false. To nationalize factories, demolish churches, and issue revolutionary manifestoes would not have made the armies more efficient. The Fascists won because they were the stronger; they had modern arms and the others hadn't. No political strategy could offset that."
(George Orwell. A Collection of Essays. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc. 1981. pp. 203-204.)


And yes, the revolutionary working class was wedded to the popular front in the end. Which should mean...what exactly?That the working-class understood the danger of fascism and sought to combat it in the most effective way possible.