Ronald Radosh, Spain Betrayed

Well, I managed to get my hands on a copy of this work which was published by Yale University's Annals of Communism series. The reason why I took an interest in this is because of the endless number of topics on RevLeft dealing with the Spanish Civil War, and I wanted to access something that had primary source material. Something that provides a balance to the Anarchist accounts of the war. We always hear about "Stalinist treachery," but we never get a serious analysis of what the Anarchists or the Trotskyists did during the war or the revolution, their errors, their shortcomings, their faults. I glanced through this book, thought it would be interesting to use, and I have read Grover Furr's review of it. I think the documents are interesting to look at.

Over a period of time, I'm going to add quotes from the book that came directly from the documents themselves. I'm not going to elaborate on what particular documents are being quoted, but I will give the page numbers to the book itself on the origin of the quotes. I shall begin with this first quote:

Page 11
DIMITROV. I believe that the policy carried out so far is correct. We cannot permit our comrades to approach the development of these events as if we were anticipating the destruction of the rebels and we were rushing ahead. We should not, at the present stage, assign the task of creating soviets and try to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat in Spain. That would be a fatal mistake. Therefore we must say: act in the guise of defending the Republic; do not abandon the positions of the democratic regime in Spain at this point, when the workers have weapons in their hands, that this has great significance for achieving victory over the rebels. We ought to advise them to go forward with these weapons, as we have done in other situations, seeking to maintain unity with the petty bourgeoisie and the peasants and the radical intelligentsia, establishing and strengthening the democratic Republic at the present stage through the complete destruction of the fascist counterrevolutionary elements, and then we can proceed from there, resolving concrete questions.

In other words, comrades, we believe that in the present international situation it is advantageous and necessary for us to carry out a policy that would preserve our opportunity to organize, educate, unify the masses and to strengthen our own positions in a number of countries- in Spain, France, Belgium and so on- where there are governments dependent on the Popular Front and where the Communist Party has extensive opportunities. When our positions have been strengthened, then we can go further.

We have been interested for some time in having a democratic regime like this, so that through the general pressure of the masses and the Popular Front

page 12

in a number of European countries (among which are the fascist countries- Germany, Italy, and so on), we [could] influence the mass of workers. The example of Spain shows how the masses operate, how the proletariat, the petty-bourgeois, radical intelligentsia, and peasants can form a common democratic platform against reaction and fascism. We have a number of examples in European circumstances where the masses, through the policy of the Popular Front, under pressure from fascism and reaction, are strengthening their position and are shaping conditions for the final victory of the proletariat. This is a somewhat different path than we had imagined earlier. But this path is closer to the German and Italian proletariat.

We should be able to influence the masses of these countries a great deal, and therefore the struggle in Spain has immense significance. It seems to me that we must push this point, and we hope that we will in fact be victorious over the enemies of the Popular Front, who desire the destruction and discrediting of the Popular Front.

It must be said that the Spanish comrades have a lot of temptations. For example, Mundo Obrero has appropriated Accion Popular's wonderful building. This is fine. But if our [people] begin to confiscate factories and enterprises and wreak further havoc, the petty bourgeoisie, the radical intelligentsia, and part of the peasantry may move away, and our forces are still not sufficient for a struggle against the counterrevolutionaries. Therefore, we must place before the proletariat and the broad working masses those tasks that suit the concrete conditions of teh present moment, that suit the strength of the party, the strength of the proletariat. Do not rush ahead and get carried away.

Here is my second quote:

Page 18
To Com. Voroshilov

From Madrid we have received the following telegram (dated 4/9) from Com. Diaz, the secretary of the C.P. of Spain, and Com. Duclos, the secretary of the C.P. of France.

"Despite our efforts, we were not able to avoid a Caballero government. We succeeded in placing Giral as minister without portfolio and also an expansion in the Esquerra cabinet in Catalonia and among the Basque nationalists. Number of Republicans of all shades- 4; three Socialists of every tendency, two Communists. CNT is making a declaration about supporting the government and is taking part in the commission's work. We found out...through very great difficulties, which might have important political and military consequences. To prevent that, we are acting to put an end to the government crisis today. Everyone emphatically insisted on the participation of the Communists in the new government, and it was impossible to avoid without creating a very dangerous situation. We are taking the necessary measures to organize the work of our ministers."

G. Dimitrov
8/9/36

Third quote:

Page 26
The head of Company's cabinet (I forget his name) assured me that FAI was weakening.

According to him, the day before yesterday the Guardias de Asalto and the Guardia Civil openly spoke out against the CNT (I ought to note that the Communists, confirming this fact, attribute it to his growing influence over the UGT). It is worth mentioning that the black-and-red flag was taken down from the courthouse yesterday. The anarchists threatened to start a row but gave it up.

I spoke with Garcia Oliver. He was also in a frenzied state. Intransigent. At the same time that Lopez, the leader of the Madrid syndicalists, was declaring to me that they had not permitted and would not permit attacks on the Union in the CNT newspaper, Oliver declared that they had said that they were "criticizing" the Union because it was not an ally, since it had signed the non-interference pact, and so on. Durruti, who has been at the front, has learned a lot, whereas Oliver, in Barcelona, is still nine-tenths anarchist ravings. For instance, he is against a unified command on the Aragon front; a unified command is necessary only when a general offensive begins. Sandino, who was present during this part of the conversation, spoke out for a unified command. They touched on the question of mobilization and the transformation of the militia into an army. Durruti made much of the mobilization plans (I do not know why- there are volunteers but no guns). Oliver said that he agreed with Durruti, since "Communists and Socialists are hiding themselves in the rear and pushing the FAI-ists out of the cities and villages." At this point he was almost raving. I would not have been surprised if he had shot me.

I spoke with Trueba, the PSUC (Communist) political commissar. He complained about the FAI-ists. They are not giving our men ammunition. We have only thirty-six bullets left per man. The anarchists have reserves of a million and a half. Col. Villalba's soldiers only have a hundred cartridges each. He cited many instances of the petty tyrannies of the FAI. People from the CNT complained to me that Fronsosa, the leader of PSUC [sic], gave a speech at a demonstration in San Boi in which he said that the Catalans should not be given even one gun, since the guns would just fall into the hands of the anarchists. In general, during the ten days that I was in Catalonia, relations between Madrid and the generalitat on the one hand, and that between the Communists and the anarchists on the other, became very much more strained. Companys is wavering; either he gravitates toward the anarchists, who have

Page 27

agreed to recognize the national and even nationalistic demands of the Esquerra, or he depends on the PSUC in the struggle against FAI. His circle is divided between supporters of the former and of the latter solutions. If the situation on the Talavera front worsens, we can expect him to come out on one or the other side. We must improve relations between the PSUC and the CNT and then try to get closer to Companys.

In Valencia our party is working well, and the influence of the UGT is growing. But the CNT has free rein there. The governor takes their side completely. This is what happened when I was there: sixty anarchists with two machine guns turned up from the front, as their commander had been killed. In Valencia they burned the archives and then wanted to break into the prison to free the criminals. The censor (this is under Lopez, the leader of the CNT) prohibited our newspaper from reporting about any of this outrage, and in the CNT paper there was a note that the "free masses destroyed the law archives as [part of] the accursed past."

A meeting of Catalan writers is now taking place with Bergamin, who came with me. I hope that on the intelligentsia front they succeed in uniting the Spanish and the Catalans. Tomorrow a mass meeting with ten thousand people will be held with this goal, at which I will give a speech from the secretariat of the International Union of Workers for the Protection of Culture.

As this letter has several vital corrections for what I gave you for Moscow, please send this as well to Moscow.

Day after tomorrow I am leaving for Paris. If you wish to communicate anything, please do it through our embassy.

Heartfelt greetings,
Ilya Ehrenburg

Postscript by Com. Rosenberg:
Thanks to dependence on the Spanish market, the vain attempt at an "independent" Catalonia has been held up by "dependence" on the general Spanish economy.
M.R.

Can you make a list of supposed bad list of anarchist action in Spain Civil War?

^
1. Wasting time with anarchism in the first place.


Thanks for the interesting passages MarxistLeninist.

^
true, anarchism is a gateway drugs for me at least.

If you can, get Arthur H. Landis' Spain: The Unfinished Revolution. It's an account of the Spanish Civil War from a M-L perspective, written in 1973. Another good book from a non-communist author is The Spanish Labyrinth: An Account of the Social and Political Background of the Spanish Civil War (written in 1943) by Gerald Brenan.

You know, I never really got a chance to follow up on this, and I apologize. There is a copy of "Spain Betrayed" available online from Google Books:

http://books.google.com/books?id=Smp...age&q=&f=false

Yeah, it's not complete, but it's a lot better than nothing.