Fernando Claudin

Spain
The Untimely Revolution

The Spanish revolution was the only revolution to take place in Europe during
the existence of the Communist International, with the transient exception of
the 1919 Hungarian soviet republic: but it took the leaders of the world party
unawares. In Manuilskys report to the Comintern Executive in February 1930,
he dwelt on the enormous prospects now opening up for transforming todays
revolutionary upsurge in the advanced capitalist and colonial countries into a
revolutionary situation. The revolutionary upsurge in the advanced capitalist
countries at that moment existed only in the mind of Stalins representative in
the Comintern, but shortly before the Executive meeting the dictatorship of
Primo de Rivera had fallen, and some of those present raised the question of
its significance. Manuilsky replied: Spain is not where the fate of the world
proletarian revolution will be decided . . . A single strike is of more importance
to the international working class than this Spanish-style revolution, which
has taken place without the communist party and the proletariat taking their
historic, leading role.1 The revolution nonetheless advanced stubbornly,
3

Spanish-style, despite Manuilskys failure to predict it, and despite the

fact that the party which should have had the historic, leading role
scarcely existed.
When the monarchy fell, in April 1931, the Spanish section of the
Communist International had scarcely 800 members. What was
worse, it had very little influence among the proletariat and a very
low theoretical level. This last factor was common to the whole of the
Spanish labour movement. Neither the socialists nor the anarchosyndicaliststhe two great tendencies between which the Spanish
proletariat had been divided since the 19th centuryhad a clear idea of
the nature of the revolutionary process which was beginning in 19301.
The socialists thought it was a purely bourgeois revolution and held to
their minimum programme; the bourgeois republican parties, they
thought, should take the helm of the republic. The most the socialist
party should do was to give them loyal co-operation in carrying out a
programme of reforms which would also be in the interests of the
Spanish working class. In a word, it was ready to follow the path of
European social democracy. The anarcho-syndicalists started from the
same assumption-that the revolution was purely bourgeoisbut their
conclusions for action were quite the reverse: there should be no
collaboration with the 14 April Republic. They should carry on to the
social revolution to establish libertarian communism. The communists
had no clear directives from Moscow in the early months, and improvised on the basis of the ultra-left general line of the Comintern in
this period. Their position was summed up in the slogans: Down with
the bourgeois republic of the capitalists, the generals and the Church!
and For the republic of workers, soldiers and peasants soviets!
The first slogan was typically Spanish, almost anarcho-syndicalist,
and the second was quite out of place.
Comintern Directives

The Spanish CP leadership had adopted its position in consultation with

the Comintern representatives,2 but Moscow put all the blame on the
Spanish leaders. The Comintern Executive Committee sent an open
letter, dated 21 May 1931, to the Central Committee of the PCE, pointing
out the partys mistakes. The most serious was that they had not understood the bourgeois democratic nature of the revolution and the
leading role the PCE should have played in such a revolution. Among
the directives given in the letter was the slogan for the creation of
workers, peasants and soldiers soviets; the soviets would be the
moving force in completing the democratic revolution and ensuring its
development into the socialist revolution. The PCE, according to the
letter, should use the furious resistance of the anarcho-syndicalist and
reformist leaders to show the counter-revolutionary nature of Spanish
reformism and anarcho-syndicalism. One of the most telling directives in
the document (which the PCE took as its guideline for 19312) was
1

D. Manuilsky, report and closing speech to the Enlarged Executive Committee

meeting of the Communist International, 1828 February 1930, in Inprecorr.
2 Humbert Droz and Rabat. There is an account of this by the then general secretary
of the party, Jos Bullejos, in his book Europa entre dos guerras, p. 135.
4

that the communist party should in no circumstances, or for a single

moment, make pacts or alliances with any other political force.
Evidently the Comintern had rather an odd way of correcting the
sectarianism of the PCE leadership. In April 1931 a struggle began
between the leadership of the PCE and the Comintern, and it grew
worse in the following months. Once the PCE had understood the
absurdity of its original positions, it took an orientation which in
some respects was quite close to Trotskys early analysis of the Spanish
revolution, at the same time showing a certain amount of independence
towards the representatives of the Comintern in Spain. (The foremost
of these, Codovilla, acted as if he was the real general secretary of the
party, which in effect he was and continued to be until the civil war,
when higher level functionaries came on the scene.) The struggle came
to a head with General Sanjurjos attempted coup dtat (10 August
1932). The PCE leadership called for the defence of the Republic,
and the Comintern leadership described this position as opportunist.
Shortly afterwards Bullejos (general secretary), Adame, Vega and
Trilla (who was the PCE representative to the Comintern) were expelled from the leadership and later from the party, charged with forming a sectarian opportunist group.
The core of Trotskys position was that there could be no bourgeois
democratic stage restricted to the liquidation of feudal survivals
under the hegemony of the proletariat, between the current stage of the
Spanish revolution under the hegemony of the bourgeoisie and petty
bourgeoisie and the proletarian stage under the hegemony of the
working class (the dictatorship of the proletariat). The history of the
Spanish revolution up to 1939 proved him right. In September 1932
he wrote: The immediate task of Spanish communists is not to seize
power, but to win the masses. In the coming period this struggle will
develop on the basis of the bourgeois republic, and largely under
democratic slogans.3
Revolution Spanish-style

The fact of the matter, however, was that no one in either Moscow or
Madrid knew what was going to happen. No sooner had the Church
republic been proclaimed than it seemed the graveyard of churches,
and the generals quickly turned to plotting against the generals
republic. The new Spanish Constitution attempted to clarify the
situation by declaring it to be a republic of workers of all classes.
But the upper-class workers were rushing to get their capital out of
the country, while the lower-class workers were declaring strikes and
invading the big estates, with the explicit aim of reducing it to a republic of one class only. The Constitution defined Spain as a single
State, but accepted the autonomy principle, so that the nationalities
on the periphery which had borne the weight of Castillian centralism
since the 16th century tended to break up the single State into three
or four. Azana announced the astounding news that Spain was no
3

La rvolution permanente (collection), Paris 1969, p. 344.

5

longer Catholic, while the Cortes, which had put Azaa at the head of
the government, elected the deeply devout Alcala Zamora as President
of the Republic. Araquistain confidently stated that no people is by
race [sic] so socialist as Spain, while Unamuno came out for the
fueros of Spanish individualism. No sooner had it come into the world
than the Spanish republic displayed a thousand faces. Ortega y Gasset
wisely said that The contours of the Republic must be straightened
out: and while every well-read lady admired the profundity of the
philosopher, the State police began straightening it out by gunning
down the peasantry. In a word, revolution Spanish-style appeared
somewhat complicated; but the Comintern did not hesitate to classify
it as the type of bourgeois democratic revolution dealt with in the
theory Lenin had developed forRussia at the turn of the century.
According to this theoryor rather, to the Cominterns dogmatic
version of it-a two-stage strategy had to be applied to the Spanish
revolution, as follows: the first stage would have to solve the problems
left over by the uncompleted bourgeois revolution; but as the
bourgeoisie was no longer revolutionary, the proletariat would have
to take the leading role in liquidating the feudal survivals (the
big estates, Church property, the military caste, the aristocracy, the
oppressed nationalities, etc). Only when these problems had been resolved could the proletariat take the offensive against private capitalist
ownership of the means of production, that is, pass from the bourgeois
democratic stage to the socialist stage, and establish the dictatorship
of the proletariat. Until the middle of 1934, the Comintern applied this
strategy in Spain with the fiercely sectarian tactics of the period of
social fascism. In the parliamentary elections of November 1933, for
example, the PCE platform was a call to the struggle for a soviet
Spain, with the declaration that the bourgeois democratic parties,
together with the specialists . . . have been and are the organizing
centre for all counter-revolution. Therefore, the document says,
if fascism is to be defeated there must be an implacable struggle
against the mutinous forces of bourgeois democracy which are encouraging and stimulating it.
Popular Front

Fortunately, the turn in the Comintern in the summer of 1934 allowed

the PCE to embark on a policy more in accordance with the realities
of Spain. It joined the Workers Alliance and established relations with
the Socialist Party. Its outstanding part in the Asturias insurrection in
October 1934 raised its revolutionary prestige. In April 1935, following the example of the French, the PCE proposed the creation of a
Popular Anti-fascist Bloc. The idea was successful, despite resistance
from the anarcho-syndicalists and the left wing of the Socialist Party
under Largo Caballero, both because there was heavy repression against
the proletariat after the Asturias insurrection and because the forces of
reaction were preparing to establish a dictatorship, to which not only
the workers organizations but the left republican parties would fall
victim. Anti-fascist unity was a good way of achieving an effective
front for defence against this threat, and of creating more favourable
conditions for a popular counter-offensive. Nonetheless it is unlikely
6

that it would have taken shape without the occasion of the February
1936 elections. The decisive question for the caballeristas was the
possibility of achieving amnesty for political prisoners, and annulling
other repressive measures, if the republican-labour bloc won the
elections. This made it possible for the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers
Party) and the UGT (trade-union federation) to take part in the Popular
Front and also swung the votes of a large part of the anarcho-syndicalist masses to the Popular Front candidates.
The Popular Front coalition was formed by the republican parties
under Azaa and Martinez Barrio, the Socialist Party, the Socialist
Youth, the UGT, PCE, Syndicalist Party and the POUM. Its programme
was basically that of the Azaa republicans. Under pressure from the
Caballero group, the PSOE had proposed the nationalization of land and
banking and workers control of industry, but this was opposed by
the republicans. They even refused another proposal by the socialists to
guarantee the right to strike. All the basic problems were avoided
and even the few timid reforms in the programme were ambiguously
formulated. The pact further implied a compromise, allowing the republicans alone to run the government. This was all that was needed
to open the way to the civil war, which in covert forms was already
being waged in Spain.
Togliatti and the Policy of Stages

The Comintern, however, had its own view of the Popular Front
policy. Togliatti, who was very influential in the orientation of the
PCEand even led it in practice during the civil warwas later to say
that the anti-fascist Popular Front was the particular form in which the
Spanish revolution was unfolding at that stage-that is, the bourgeois
democratic stage.4 The Comintern still held to the basic view of the
nature and course of the Spanish revolution described above, but the
particular form it now assumed had what one might have called a
moderating or softening effect-if events had not made it clear that
the effect was above all illusory. There was firstly a tendency to reevaluate the role the petty-bourgeois social and political forces, and even
certain nuclei of the bourgeoisie (especially in the nationalities on the
periphery), could play in the inevitable bourgeois democratic stage of
the revolution. A first concrete expression of this moderating turn was
the electoral programme of the Popular Front (which became the programme of the government after its victory): it went no further than
the traditional programmes of petty-bourgeois republicanism. It contained no real solutions to any of the basic problems of the stage
referred to. The land question, the most pressing of all problems, was
left to fester on again. The PCE promised to keep scrupulously to the
agreed compromise, which meant that the overworked stage was in
effect divided in two. The first sub-stage would be restricted to carrying
out this programme, and during it the party would support the government (a government of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois republican
parties only) which was entrusted with its implementation. In the
4
Sulle particolarit della rivoluzione spagnola, in Sul movimento operaio internazionale, Rome 1964, p. 181.

second sub-stage, the party would go ahead with all the forces prepared to bring the bourgeois democratic revolution to its completion.
Only after this completion would the hour of the proletarian revolution have arrived.
By contrast with the simplistic direct action plans of the anarchosyndicalists and the vagueness of Caballeros tactics, the tactical and
strategical plan drawn up by the Cominterns Spanish experts appeared
a model of correct method, with its clear distinction between stages
and phases; its concentration of forces in each against the main enemy;
and the corresponding listing of aims in the context of growing
radicalization. The PCE was careful to stress that it was giving up none
of its revolutionary aims: that the dictatorship of the proletariat was
still the ultimate goal and could follow no model but the soviet one.
The plan was prima facie faultless. But it had one rather important
disadvantage: it ran counter to the basic dynamics of the Spanish
revolution.
The revolution had, in effect, gone a long way since 19301. An extreme polarization of social and political forces had taken place. The
main nuclei of the bourgeoisie, including most of the medium bourgeoisie and important layers of the rural and urban petty bourgeoisie,
basically those exploiting wage labour, formed a de facto bloc with the
landowning aristocracy, the military and ecclesiastical castes and the
fascist groups. The bloc was undoubtedly composed of very disparate
elements, in terms of political tendencies as well as social composition,
but there was one common denominator: fear of the advance of the
revolution. It was united by the idea that the only way to save property,
order, the family, religion, the fatherland and similar eternal values
from the advance of the revolution, was a return to strong government, to a dictatorship. These social groups were right in their class
instinct, if not in their estimation of the objective situation, for the
proletariat had, in fact, overwhelmingly gone over to extreme revolutionary positions. Thoroughly disillusioned with the parliamentary
republic established on 14 April and with its liberal politicians, the
proletariat now trusted only in its own strength, its class organizations:
it no longer believed in the minimum programme or halfway measures.
It is no exaggeration to say that its minimum programme was now
social revolution.
The Spanish Lenin

However great the confusion in ideology, politics and tactics, one clear
idea prevailed: the capitalists and landowners, great, lesser and even
small alike, must be expropriated as soon as possible. (It should not be
forgotten that the economic structure of Spain at that time was such
that a large part of the industrial and agricultural proletariat was exploited by small and medium owners). By mid-1936, not only the
anarcho-syndicalist masses, but even the socialists and UGT members
to whom Largo Caballero was the Spanish Lenin, were in this frame
of mind. Urged on by the revolutionary atmosphere of the whole
country, and attracted by the evident resolution of the proletariat,
other social layers also took up radical positions: the great mass of
8

poor peasants, the rural semi-proletariat and some of the small peasants
who cultivated their tiny plots of land without the use of wage labour;
important sections of office workers and of the professions, that is, the
layers of the petty bourgeoisie not engaged in exploitation; and an
important section of student youth and of the intelligentsia. These
layers had also become disillusioned with the liberal Republican
politicians.
If the over-worked metaphor of the volcano as applied to socio-political
situations is very often used in too subjective a way, for Spain in
February 1936 it was strictly objective. As soon as the electoral victory
of the Popular Front was known the volcano began to erupt. The
contradiction of the first sub-stage envisaged in the Cominterns
tactical and strategic plan adopted by the PCE immediately became
apparent. The bourgeois and petty-bourgeois republican parties forming the government at once showed that they were the same as ever.
Their politics was identical with that of the period 19313, which had
disillusioned the masses and opened the door to the reactionary
counter-offensive. It was the masses who had changed; as the Soviet
historian Maidanik says, now trusting only in their own strength, they
took over the streets and, without waiting for the governments
decisions, began with revolutionary method to carry out from below
the programme of the Popular Front. They freed the political prisoners,
forced the employers to re-instate workers sacked for political reasons
and, in March of the same year, started land occupations. The middle
of March saw the beginning of strikes started by hunger, need, lock-outs
and fascist provocations. The strike movement grew each month.
Factories and workshops, building sites and mines came to a standstill;
businesses closed down. In June and July there were on average 10 or
20 strikes a day. There were days on which 400,000450,000 were on
strike. And 95 per cent of strikes taking place between February and
July were won by the workers. Massive workers demonstrations went
through the streets demanding bread, work, land, the smashing of
fascism and the total victory of the revolution. The first collective enterprises were set up. Meetings called out tens of thousands, and the
workers enthusiastically applauded the orators who announced that the
hour of the final overthrow of capitalism was at hand and made the call
to follow the Russian example. From strikes they went on to the
occupation of factories where the owners had declared lock-outs. The
occupation of the streets, the factories and the estates, and constant
strike action, threw the urban and agricultural proletariat into the
highest forms of political struggle.
All the historians of the period confirm that this eloquent description is
an accurate one. But what had this revolutionary explosion to do with
the carrying out of the Popular Front programme, which had no
room for land occupations, factory occupations or the liquidation of
capitalism, but rather aimed to preserve private property at every level?
Maidanik is, of course, obliged to reconcile the actual course of events
with a demonstration that the Cominterns policy was correct.5
5
K. L. Maidanik, Ispanski proletariat v natsionale-revolutsionnoi voini (The Spanish
proletariat in the national revolutionary war), Isd. Akademii Nauk, Moscow 1960
p. 645.

Triple Power

Between February and July there was in effect a triple-power situation

in Spain. Legal power was, in effect, very slight. The power of the
workers, their parties and trade unions became apparent in the way
described. And then there was the power of the counter-revolution,
which might have been manifest externally in the aggressive speeches
of its parliamentary representatives, in economic sabotage and in the
actions of the fascist shock-troops, but operated above all in secret,
in the operations rooms, carefully preparing the military coup. It
was an open secret; for the generals conspiracy was public knowledge,
denounced in parliament and an object of agitation in public meetings.
Anyone studying these crucial months of 1936 in Spain is obliged to
ask: Why did the workers parties and organizations fail to act in a
concerted and decisive way to nip the military uprising in the bud and
resolutely drive on with the revolutionary process? The proletariats
reply to the uprising, defeating it in the greater part of the country,
despite the fact that the conspirators had the initiative and the advantage of surprise, showed how favourable the relationship of forces
was to the peoples side. Why did the workers parties and the trade
unions not come forward? A rapid glance at their basic political
positions will allow us at least to grasp the fundamental reasons, if
not to clarify the problem totally.
In this period the reformists were definitely in the minority in the
Socialist Party and the UGT, although they kept the leadership of the
party because of their ability to control the party apparatus. Under
the leadership of Indalecio Prieto, they proposed to participate in the
government in order to collaborate with the republicans in the reformation of politics in the years 19313: to struggle on both fronts,
against reaction and against revolution. But the firm opposition of
most of the partys local organizations prevented them from actually
participating.
Caballeros Socialist Party

The great mass of workers belonging to the UGT, like most of the
members of the Socialist Party, followed the left leadership of Largo
Caballero. The Caballero tendency were in effect a separate party, and
they put forward the socialist revolution as their immediate objective,
criticizing the idea of an intermediary, anti-fascist bourgeois democratic stage defended by the PCE. They said that it was necessary to go
straight on to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. They did not
have a precise definition of the structure of such a dictatorship,
but affirmed that it would, of course, be led by the Socialist Party, as
the main political party of the Spanish working class. At the same time,
nonetheless, they were in favour of uniting with the communists to form
a single Marxist party. They also proposed to unite the two main trade
union confederations, the UGT and the CNT. Caballerismo was an expression of the revolutionary radicalization of the great mass of the
industrial and agricultural proletariat under the old banners of Spanish
socialism and their firm intention to finish once and for all with the
regime of capitalists and landlords.
10

The main weakness of caballerismo was its lack of tactics adequate for
the struggle to take power. It was waiting for the failure of the republican government to make the State fall into its hands like a ripe
fruit. It under-estimated the threat of the other power which was
plotting a counter-revolutionary attack. From April 1936, the caballeristas had their own daily paper, Claridad. In April the Madrid Socialist
Group passed a resolution reflecting the basic position of the left wing:
The proletariat must not restrict itself to the defence of bourgeois
democracy, but must by every means possible assure the conquest of
political power, and carry out its own social revolution on the basis of
this. In the period of transition from capitalist to socialist society, the
form of government will be the dictatorship of the proletariat. On
1 May 1936, the socialist youth demonstrated in uniform on the slogans
A workers government and A red army. The caballeristas had the UGT
firmly in their hands, and between February and July its membership
grew to one and a half million. The UGT incorporated the powerful
Federation of Land Workers, with a membership of several hundred
thousand proletarians and semi-proletarians.
The other main traditional current of the Spanish labour movement,
organized in the CNT unions, also had an extreme revolutionary
position. But its ideological basis made it very difficult for it to make
agreements with the Marxist parties, or even with the Marxist-oriented
trade unions in the UGT. The constant repression anarcho-syndicalism
had suffered at the hands of the republican governments, in which the
socialists participated, had increased their mistrust not only of political
parties in general, but of the workers parties in particular. The idea of a
State under the dictatorship of the proletariat was almost as repulsive to
the anarcho-syndicalists as the bourgeois State; and as for the latter,
they made little distinction between the parliamentary democratic and
fascist forms. This led them to under-estimate the threat of fascism, if for
different reasons from the caballeristas. The evolution of the Soviet
State, the fate of anarchism in it, and the reduction of the Soviet trade
unions to a mere bureaucratic arm of the State, had a considerable
influence in hardening the a-political anti-State conceptions of the
mass of Spanish anarcho-syndicalists and above all of the leading cadre.
Nonetheless, the experience of the failure of previous attempts at
revolution had produced a major change in the CNT: its congress in
May 1936 proposed a revolutionary pact with the UGT, in order
completely to destroy the political and social regime governing the
life of the country, leaving the question of the organization of the new
social order to free election by the free association of workers. None
theless, the conference elaborated a very detailed programme for the
structure and working of the libertarian communist society which
was to emerge from the revolution; and the CNT continued to be
opposed to any alliance with the political parties of labour.6
Trade-Union Unity

In the plan of tactics and strategy referred to previously, the PCE

proposed trade-union unity of the UGT and CNT, but on the basis of
6

See Jose Peirats, La CNT en la revolucin espaola, Toulouse 1951, p. 116.

11

totally different assumptions from those of the CNT. In the first place,
it was not a question of going on to the proletarian revolution, but
of defending and consolidating the republican parliamentary regime,
and putting pressure on the republican government to carry out the
programme of the Popular Front. In the second place, the leadership of
united proletarian action would have to be in the hands of the workers
parties and not of the trade unions. The party laid particular stress on
the urgency of developing the unity in action it had already established
with the Socialist Party, and at the same time looked forward to the
unification of the two parties into a single Marxist-Leninist party.
These perspectives for unity at all levels and in all spheres were the
strong side of CP policy, because they obviously answered the imperative needs of the objective situation, especially the threat of a counterrevolutionary coup. The party was more clearly aware of the seriousness
of this danger than any other political or trade-union group.
But at the same time the content of this unity perspective came into
conflict with basic elements of this same objective situation. The real
dilemma the situation implied was not one of establishment of a
counter-revolutionary dictatorship versus consolidation of the bourgeois democratic parliamentary republic. It was of counter-revolutionary dictatorship versus proletarian revolution, if only for the simple
reason that the sole force able to prevent counter-revolutionary dictatorship had not the slightest intention of afterwards supporting the
bourgeois democratic parliamentary republic. (This was a major
difference with the situation in Germany before fascism, for there the
majority of the proletariat was ideologically and structurally integrated into bourgeois democracy.) In posing the urgency of united
action on the basis of the first alternative, the PCE met with full agreement from the reformist minority of the Socialist Party, reticence if
not open rejection from the caballeristas and hostility from the anarchosyndicalists. The caballeristas and anarcho-syndicalists made a serious
error in failing to appreciate the extent of the fascist danger and not
taking the initiativelaying aside all differences in doctrine and
tacticsin resolute and concerted action against it. But their error in
substance was not to under-estimate the seriousness of this danger for
the bourgeois parliamentary republic, but rather to fail to understand
its seriousness for the proletarian revolution.
By not putting this aspect of the question to the fore, the PCE certainly
did not help the caballeristas and anarcho-syndicalists to understand
their error. On the contrary, it unwittingly contributed to their
persistence in error. So far did they confuse the question of nipping the
military conspiracy in the bud with the proletarian revolution in these
months, that for them the only real way of achieving the former would
have been to throw out the petty-bourgeois republican government
whose passivity if not cowardice had allowed the treason plot to be
wovenand establish a power which would allow the revolutionary
forces of the working class to take the bull by the horns. Between
February and July, the Spanish revolution had to confront a situation
increasingly similar to that of the Russian revolution on the eve of the
October days. Either the proletarian revolution took the initiative,
or it would be taken by the counter-revolution. Casares Quiroga was a
12

perfect Kerensky. But Spain had no Lenin. There was instead an

abundance of Comintern advisers. Genuine revolutionaries and
organizers like Jose Diaz and Pedro Checa, and popular orators of the
status of Dolores Ibarrurri, did not have the necessary theoretical basis
to oppose the Popular Front schemes of the Comintern, imported into
Spain with the French seal of approval. (We Spanish communists had
the same experience as the 19th-century liberals: we had no ideas of our
own, developed on the basis of an analysis of Spanish society. Instead
of using Marxism as an aid to the particularity of the Spanish revolution,
we used the Spanish revolution to serve the particular kind of Marxism
which had been valid for the Russian revolution. In 1936 we welcomed the Popular Front, in the Thorez or Togliatti version, as the
particular form of the Spanish revolution, until the time came for it to
assume the soviet form.)
Party Unity

During the whole existence of the Comintern, no other communist

party had such a good opportunity as the Spanish to achieve unity
with the left wing of social democracy and form a single Marxist
party. The possibility had been there since the end of 1934. The
left wing of the socialists decisively came over to Marxist ideas and was
in favour of unification. Of course, there was much that was dubious
and problematic about its positions, and not all the left wing leaders
were inspired by the purest of motives. Some of them (undoubtedly
Largo Caballero himself ) clearly went by partisan calculations and
were aiming for hegemony. But the Cominterns treatment of the
problem was not exempt from the same considerations. It was somewhat paradoxical, in the light of the role of the communist party in the
Soviet dictatorship of the proletariat, that one of the main points with
which the PCE reproached the caballeristas was their desire to be the
leading force in the dictatorship of the proletariat in Spain. But the
insuperable obstacle was the Cominterns belief that it possessed the
absolute truth of Marxism: that the proletarian revolution could now
be led only by the Comintern; that the soviet model was essential for
every country; that the Marxist-Leninist party had to be structured and
to work on the lines of the type of party created by the Comintern; that
the Comintern had the only correct theory of the Spanish revolution;
that the policy of the Popular Front was as suitable for Spain as for
France or Italy; that a Marxist-Leninist party had to consider Trotskyism the most pernicious of all heresies, and ban all criticism of the kind
of socialism being built in the Soviet Union, etc. Even if the leaders of
the left wing socialists had been the most angelic of revolutionaries,
they could clearly not have agreed to unification on this basis, and in
any case they showed no angelic predisposition. The creation of
a great revolutionary party of the Spanish proletariat was an exceptionally strong possibility between 1934 and 1936, but its basis in Marxism
was an open, problematic question. The Comintern, of course, could
not approach the question in this way without ceasing to be the Comintern. It is one of its heaviest historical responsibilities, for if such a party
had been created in time it would have considerably increased the probability of a victory of the Spanish revolution, and thereby modified the
course of events in Europe.
13

The July days plainly showed how ripe the proletarian revolution was
in Spain, and how favourable the relationship of forces was. The
counter-revolutionary coup had the advantages of being able to
choose its moment, of following a plan, being directed by a central
command, and relying on the main armed forces of the State. Yet it
was defeated in the best part of the countrythe decisive regions from
the economic and demographic point of viewby the resolute
counter-attack of the proletarian forces, despite their acting in a dispersed way, without any nationally co-ordinated plan or leadership,
and in most cases without even proper local leadership. The workers
organizations undoubtedly played a most important role, but the
spontaneous movement from the midst of the proletarian masses of
town and country was equally decisive. The republican State fell like a
pack of cards, and the passive, vacillating, if not frankly capitulationist
behaviour of the legal authorities and most of the petty bourgeois
republican party leaders was an important contribution to the few
successes of the counter-revolutionary forces. At the end of the first
few days of fighting the revolution had not won decisively, but the
relation of forces in the country as a whole was frankly favourable to it.
What would have been the course of events if legalism had been
superseded in the previous months? If instead of beginning by
attacking the barracks when the military had already taken the initiative, the working class had begun by attacking power-which had
been almost within its reach since 16 Februaryand used that power to
organize the attack on the barracks?
International Forces

If the civil war which was beginning had been fought only by the
Spanish antagonists, there would have been little doubt of the outcome.
But as the armed struggle was bound to be one between revolution and
counter-revolution in Spain, it automatically turned into an international problem.
Until this moment, the contradiction between the Cominterns
idea of the nature of the Spanish revolution and reality was not
directly determined by the requirements of Soviet foreign policy.
It undoubtedly had an indirect effect, in so far as the general line
adopted by the VIIth Congress of the Comintern, and in particular the
French version of the Popular Front policy, were, as we saw, heavily
conditioned by the European strategy of the Soviet leaders. But Spain
as such had not yet entered Stalins field of vision. The problem was
posed quite suddenly, and in difficult terms. The USSR could not
escape its duty of active solidarity with the armed struggle of the
Spanish people, at the risk of being discredited in the eyes of the
world proletariat. This duty coincided, on the one hand, with the antiHitler orientation of Soviet foreign policy at this period. But on the
other hand it came into conflict with the mechanisms, or should we say
tactics, of this orientation. At this level, the number one orientation of
Soviet policy was to consolidate the military alliance with France and
reach an understanding with England. But neither Blums bourgeois
France, nor Chamberlains conservative England, could countenance
the victory of proletarian revolution in Spain. For the Soviet govern14

ment, aiding its victory would mean breaking with both powers. The
only apparent possibility for reconciling aid to Spain with the
stated objectives of Soviet foreign policy, was for the Spanish proletariat to stop short at the maximum the French and English bourgeoisie could accept. And the most they could accept was that Spain
should have a democratic parliamentary republic, which could even be
anti-fascist and popular frontist, as far left as may be, as long as it was
bourgeois! It was even far from certain that the English Conservatives
would accept such a solution, but in any case it was the only way open
to Stalin to attempt to reconcile, as well as he could, the contradictory
demands history was again piling upon him, with his double historical
personality as the great, wise, trusted and tried leader of the Communist International (in Dimitrovs words to the VIIth Congress) and
the equally great and wise leader of the Soviet State.
Beyond the Limits

The problem was that the Spanish proletariat had left these reasonable
limits far behind. In the weeks after 19 July, the capitalist order
practically ceased to exist in the republican area: the means of production and political power in effect passed into the hands of the
workers organizations. All historians of the Spanish civil war are in
agreement on this point, except for those who do not aim for historical
truth, but to justify the policy of Stalin and the Comintern. These
latter historians continue to proclaim that the content of the Spanish
revolution never went beyond the bourgeois democratic stage,
because to say otherwise would be a recognition that Stalinist policy in
Spain was to hold back the revolution. The Soviet historian referred to
above was subjected to severe criticism for daring to contradict the
official line on this and other delicate questions: As I see it, he wrote in
his book The Spanish proletariat in the national revolutionary war, the
events of 19 July were the beginning of a qualitatively new stage in the
Spanish revolution. The action of the mass of the proletariat, and their
subjective attitude, confirm this conclusion. In July-August 1936, the
basic problems of the revolution were in effect solved: the problems of
power and of the ownership of the means of production. Local power
in practice passed into the hands of the armed proletariat. They, and
to a lesser extent the peasantry, also gained control of all the instruments and means of production belonging to the capitalists and landowners. A large part of the bourgeoisie, together with their state
apparatus, were liquidated in the areas held by the Republic. None of
this fits into the framework of a bourgeois democratic revolution.7
It did not fit indeed. But it had to be made to fit, so that Soviet aid
to the Spanish republic could in turn fit into Soviet foreign policy.
The hard Comintern team established in Spain to supervise the activity
of the PCE, together with the equally hard team of military advisers and
Soviet politicians, zealously applied themselves to making a success of
this troublesome operation. It was in fact exceptionally troublesome,
because what it involved was nothing less than forcing the proletarian
revolution back into the bourgeois democratic framework it should
7

Maidanik, op. cit., p. 103.

15

not have left. This was much more complicated than Thorezs being
able to call off a strike. For a start, it was necessary to deny the antibourgeois reality of the revolution, so that action aiming to restore
bourgeois reality could appear to be something other than what it was.
The Comintern, world party of the socialist revolution, could not take
the liberty of proclaiming the correction of the socialist contours of the
Spanish revolution as bare-facedly as the philosopher had proclaimed
the straightening out of the plebeian contours of the Azaa republic.
Certain forms had to be observed. For that it was necessary at the start
to proclaim urbi et orbi that the Spanish revolution was in essence a
popular, democratic, anti-fascist national movement, with the main aim
of defending the republic, freedom and sovereignty against fascist
rebellion and the brutal interference of Hitlers and Mussolinis
armies.8 Everything beyond this essence was an excess of caballerismo, anarcho-syndicalism, and of the masses who had not been adequately educated in Marxism-Leninism.
Togliatti wrote that one of the characteristics of the Spanish Popular
Front was that a series of extra difficulties was created for the struggle of
the Spanish people to defend the democratic republic by: the division of
the proletariat; the relatively slow taking up of the armed struggle by
the peasantry; the influence of petty-bourgeois anarchism and of
social democratic illusions, which have still not been totally overcome
and are today expressed in a tendency to miss out the stage of the bourgeois
democratic revolution.9
Saving the Legal Facades

The salvation of the essence of the revolution was accompanied by a

reaffirmation of principles and of symbols. The 1931 constitution,
embodying these principles, was still maintained. Parliaments functions were preserved; though half of the members had joined the rebellion and as for half of the remaining half (the republican Members)
there was no knowing who they represented in the revolutionary areas,
Azaa, President of the Republic, remained at his post. The republican
State was still the legal power, although the real powers were in other
hands. Legally, capitalist ownership of the means of production was
not abolished, while in practice it was virtually destroyed. Never place
too much trust in the stupidity of your opponents was Talleyrands
advice, and the politicians of the European bourgeoisie were obviously
not stupid. The legal facade of the Spanish republic did not deceive
them. They demanded the effective restoration of the bourgeois system.
But the facade was useful to Stalin and to the Comintern in various
ways. In the first place, it allowed them to present aid to Spain as
aid to the republican legal order defined by the 1931 Constitution.
Secondly, it helped to justify the theoretical fiction of the bourgeois
democratic character of the Spanish revolution. And thirdly, it provided an ideological, political and legal structure which could be used
both to promote and to encompass the methodical transformation of
this fiction into reality. Of course this last, essential operation could
8
Guerra y Revolucin en Espaa, Moscow 1966, Vol. 1, p. 256. This account was
compiled by a commission led by Dolores Ibarruri.
9
Op. cit., p. 196, n. 133. Emphasis is mine.

16

only be carried out with the support and collaboration of the Spanish
revolutionary forces themselves, which was a real problem. But Stalin
and the Comintern had one decisive weapon, or more precisely they
had weapons.
One thing was in fact obvious, independently of whether the course of
the revolution affirmed its already-established proletarian character, or
returned to its liberal bourgeois nature in the way the Azaas and
Prietos were hoping. If the military forces of the rebellious generals
and their Italian and German allies were not defeated, then every
possible course was doomed to run into disaster. To win militarily
the revolution urgently needed arms and the technicians to operate them.
It was immediately clear that these could only come from the USSR:
and equally clear that they would not come from the USSR if the
Spanish leaders did not adjust to the policy the Soviet leaders considered necessary if they were to harmonize aid to the Spanish republic
with Stalins general strategy. In the early months of the civil war all
the Spanish leaders, from Azaa to Nin, understood this condition
and tried to adapt to it, if in very different ways.
A Workers Government

In the first weeks of the war, the caballeristas, the anarcho-syndicalists

and the POUM were for the formation of a workers revolutionary
government. According to Rabassaire and Campoamor, 10 the project
was formalized in late August at a joint meeting of leaders of the
UGT and CNT. There was to be a Junta with Largo Caballero as President and representatives from the Socialist and Communist Parties, the
FAI, the CNT and the UGT. The republicans would be excluded. When
he learnt of the plan, Azaa threatened to resign. But the decisive
factor was the intervention of the Soviet ambassador, Rosenberg, who
had recently arrived in Madrid. Rosenberg argued the serious international consequences which would ensue if the friends of Spain
were deprived of the argument of the legality of the republican
government. He proposed that instead of a workers council there
should be a government under Largo Caballero, with representation
for the working-class forces but also for the bourgeois republicans.
Such a solution would make it possible for the USSR to send aid.11
For the PCE there was no problem, as the policy of the Soviet Union,
Comintern policy and its own policy were an indivisible whole. It was
an application of the general line of the VIIth Congress of the Comintern. To defeat the main enemy, fascism, the essential point was to
ensure the broadest possible unity of action among all its opponents.
There was no contradiction between the international policy of the
Soviet Unionfor alliance with the bourgeois states threatened by
Hitlers Germanyand the national policy of the communist parties
for alliance with the liberal sections of the bourgeoisie. Once fascism
was defeated the way would be open to go forward to the socialist
10
Rabassaire, Espagne, creuset politique, Paris 1938, p. 98; Clara Campoamor, La
rvolution espagnole vue par une rpublicaine, Paris 1937, 1435.
11
This version is accepted by Pierre Brou.

17

revolution. This was more certain in the case of Spain than in any
other, as the proletariat had hegemonic positions within the alliance.
Once the war was won they could go on to the next stage, and finally
to the dictatorship of the proletariat. But to win the war the decisive
thing was to maintain the anti-fascist alliance, nationally as well as
internationally. This meant that socialist objectives should not for the
moment be posed in Spain, the excesses of the revolution should be
corrected, and concessions to the bourgeois republicans and reformist
socialists even increasedto see if Blum could then be induced to help
the Spanish republic. The model was at first sight very coherent, but the
condition was that all those involved should be prepared to carry out
faithfully the role assigned to them. This was far from what actually
happened.
Azaas Strategy

The Azaa-type liberals and the Prieto-type reformist socialists were the
most willing, because this line of development closely corresponded
to their basic preoccupations: the restoration of the republican State,
the liquidation of extremism, a drawing near to the western democracies, etc. It was no accident that in the month and a half of the
Giral government (20 July4 September), consisting exclusively
of the bourgeois republican parties, the unifying, constructive
policy of the Communist Party, which subjected everything to the
needs of war, gained in influence over government measures; nor
that Azaa said to foreign journalists: If you want to get a real understanding of the situation, and know men who are certain what they
want, read Mundo Obrero.12 But Azaa was also very certain what he
wanted, and it was not to win the war in such conditions that the
Communist Party would gain hegemony and the way forward to the
dictatorship of the proletariat would be laid clear. As his Memoirs
show quite clearly, his aim was the restoration of the 14 April Republic, and his tactics were to use the Communist party in the first
phase as a barrier to caballerismo and anarcho-syndicalism and then, in a
second phase, to reduce the Communist Party to impotence (taking
advantage of the fact that the first phase would have brought it into
conflict with the main groupings of the revolutionary proletariat).
Prietos line, and even Negrins, was similar, and Azaas Memoirs
reveal the close collaboration of the Azaa-Prieto-Negrin troika
in the second stage of the war, which opened with the dissolution of
the Largo Caballero government in May 1937.
The Cuaderno de la Pobleta (1937) and the Pedralbes journal
(1938, 1939) in the Azaa Memoirs give extremely useful information
for the historic reconstruction of the Spanish civil war. They make it
clear that Azaa had a more important role than has generally been
attributed to him until now in the historiography of the period, above
all after the formation of the Negrin government. His basic orientation,
shared by Prieto and Negrin, hinged on two closely related aims:
take the restoration of the bourgeois republican State as far as possible,
and reach a compromise with the rebellious generals, with the blessing
12

18

Guerray Revolucin en Espaa, Vol. 1, p. 259.

of the great powers. On 31 August 1937, there is a note of the conversation he had that day with Negrin and Giral, after another with
Prieto, in which he writes: I went over my former points of view:
Peace, Republic, and a Pact to guarantee that there will be neither
Bolshevism nor dictatorship in Spain. If the essential of republican
institutions is preserved, many concessions are possible. It is necessary in
these conversations to assume the role of collaborators for peace, in
Spain as in Europe, and slip the word to the French government, on
the basis of the general convenience of peace. I think we ended in
agreement. Azaa is here referring to conversations Negrin was to have
in Geneva with representatives of various powers, mainly the French
and English, taking advantage of a League of Nations meeting. On 30
September he had a meeting with the cabinet. The diary reads: I
told them to go to the Cortes in the knowledge that this government,
and the policy it represents, has the support of the President of the
Republic. This government means for me that the anarchy is over,
and that the whole world can be made to come to reason, firstly by
argument and if that is not enough by the force of law. The only
weakness I see in the general policy of the government is that it is not
advancing as quickly as would be desirable. I stressed the need for
untiring pursuit of compensation for possessions, services, etc, expropriated by the State, and I repeated to the government my decision
not to sign anything tending to confirm these expropriations.13
The Communist Response

The Memoirs at various points record the communists favourable

reaction to his policies. On 31 May, soon after the Largo Caballero
government had been dissolved and the Negrin government formed,
Azaa wrote: They tell me that the communists support me enthusiastically. Especially Daz, though I was very hard with him on
the day of the crisis. He says I should be the leader of them all. . . The
occasion referred to was a meeting of the Popular Front leaders to
resolve the crisis of the Largo Caballero government. The republicans
and reformists in the socialist party here attempted to make the PCE
appear responsible for the elimination of Largo Caballero from the
government: he was insisting that if he was to form a new government he should also be minister of war, and the socialists and republicans accepted on condition that the communists agreed. The PCE,
however, took upon itself the responsibility for forming a government
in which the UGT and the CNT were not represented. Instead of Largo
Caballero it accepted Prieto as Minister of War, though he was already
in agreement with Azaaas the latters Memoirs show-that a
compromise peace should be sought, and guaranteed by what Azaa
called the five power pact (England, France, USSR, Germany and
Italy). The basis for this should of course be a bourgeois regime preserving the republican form, but making many concessions to the
rebels. Azaa and Prieto knew that this was also the line of the Soviet
government and so they were not risking much by a formal acceptance
of Caballeros conditions.
13

Manuel Azaa, Obras, Ediciones Oasis, Mexico 1968 (the Memoirs were unpublished until their inclusion in this series), Vol. IV, pp. 761, 808.
19

Once caballerismo and anarcho-syndicalism had been virtually put out

of action with the aid of the Communist Party, the policy of the
reformist leadership of the Socialist Party was to undercut the latters
positions in every sphere: the State apparatus, the army, the trade
unions, etc. The PCE might have given up, for more than a little while,
any idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat; but the reformists
in close alliance with the republicanshad not given up the aim of
restoring the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. This was their ultimate
goal.
The caballeristas themselves, meanwhile, had also adapted to Stalins
strategy, without giving up their own ideas and aims, the main weakness of which was still imprecision, vaguenessin short, the lack of a
coherent policy. As they reflected the will of the mass of the proletariat,
they were for preserving the socialist content of the revolution,
but they had no programme to give form to this content and no
effective tactics to struggle for it in the highly complex situation of the
civil war. They attempted to assume the leading role in the republican
labour bloc, but in practice they tailed the Communist Party on some
questions and anarcho-syndicalism on others. But these were precisely
the characteristics which made caballerismo the ideal grouping to take
the front of the stage in the first phase of the drama. Together with its
revolutionary reputation, and especially the myth of Caballero as the
Spanish Lenin, the vagueness of its beliefs made caballerismo representative of the most general expression of the revolution: neither
bolshevik revolution nor libertarian revolution, but the Revolution of
the Proletariat, with capital letters and no adjectives. Its largely syndical
nature facilitated an accord with the CNT. On the other hand, a group
which had no coherent politics nor a well-structured organization
was very useful to those who had both. For the proletariat, it was a
guarantee of the revolution to have Largo Caballero at the head of the
government. For Azaa and Prieto, and for Stalin and his representatives in Spain too, Caballeros premiership guaranteed that the revolution would collaborate in its own correction and in the restoration of
the bourgeois democratic republican State. For the anarcho-syndicalists it offered the possibility of maintaining the enclaves of libertarian
communism created in the areas where they were strongest. For
Caballero himself and for his followers, the alliance with the bourgeois
republicans was a kind of wartime manoeuvre to take into account the
international conditions in which the Spanish revolution was unfolding, while at the same time keeping their proletarian purity.
Caballeros Course

The caballeristas began by attempting to reconcile all parties to them,

but they came into conflict with each and every one. The further the
restoration of the republican State was taken, the greater an obstacle
they became to taking such a restoration to its logical conclusion.
There were growing pressures on Largo Caballero, not only from the
PCE, the Comintern delegates and the Soviet advisers, but even from
Stalin himself, who did not hesitate to intervene directly in the internal
political problems of Spain. A letter of 21 December 1936, signed by
Stalin, Molotov and Vorochilov, was addressed to Largo Caballero
20

by way of a little friendly advice. Part of the advice was: to bring the
small and medium urban bourgeoisie over to the side of the government, not to reject the leaders of the republican parties but to draw
them in and involve them in the common struggle of the government;
in particular ensuring that Azaa and his group support the government, doing everything possible to help allay their doubts. This is the
more necessary, Stalin added, to prevent the enemies of Spain from
seeing it as a communist republic, and so forestall any open intervention, which is the most serious danger facing republican Spain.
Another suggestion was that it is very possible that the parliamentary
road is a better way of carrrying out revolution in Spain than it was in
Russia.14 Caballero in effect replied that he was already carrying out
this advice, which in Spanish meant that the advice was unnecessary.
He took the liberty of making one objection: In reply to your allusion
to the subject, I should point out that whatever fate may have in store
for parliamentary institutions, they have few enthusiastic supporters,
even among the republicans let alone in our ranks.
Stalin stepped up the pressure. In late February 1937, he sent more
advice to Caballero, and this time it was urgent: the communist and
socialist parties must be unified immediately. Caballero refused.15
As Caballero stubbornly refused to act as a good secretary of a section
of the Comintern should, he had to be thrown out, which is what
happened to bad secretaries of sections of the Comintern. The operation was carried out, as recorded above, in late May.
The CNT and the POUM adapted to the international conditions, especially those imposed by the USSR, with reservations similar to those of the
caballeristas. But they were stronger by virtue of having hardened to
political positions less easily reconciled with the restoration of the
republican state. The libertarian revolution which the anarchosyndicalists had begun putting into practice in Catalonia and Aragon,
and were trying to extend elsewhere in republican territory, was
absolutely incompatible with the restoration of the bourgeois democratic republican state; but it was also incompatible with the most
elementary military and economic requirements of war.
Cleaning up Trotskyists and Anarchists

For the POUM the socialist nature of the Spanish revolution was evident,
and they were for establishing the power of the proletariat. Their forces,
though, were very small and virtually confined to Catalonia, where the
influence of anarcho-syndicalism was overwhelming in the main proletarian centres. At the same time they were harassed by the Communist
Partys implacable hostility. During the early part of the Spanish
civil war the physical extermination of the opposition was going on
in the USSR, and Stalin and the Comintern came to look on the POUM
as an agent of fascism to be exterminated, like Trotskyism. By denouncing Stalins crimes against the Old Guard of the Bolsheviks, the
14
Guerra y Revolucin en Espaa, Vol. 11, p. 1013, prints the full texts of Stalins
letter and Caballeros reply.
15
See Araquistains revelation of this in Peirats, op. cit., Vol. 11, p. 3756, n. 138.

21

became the dictators bte noire. In November the PCE insisted to

the other parties of the Popular Front that the POUM should not be
represented in the Madrid Defence Council. The socialist Albar informed the POUM leaders that Rosenberg had vetoed the idea.16 On 17
December Pravda wrote: So far as Catalonia is concerned, the cleaning
up of Trotskyists and anarchists has begun and it will be carried out with
the same energy as in the USSR.17 The PCE press began a virulent
campaign, with the constant incantation that the Trotskyists and
undisciplined elements (in Spain they could not openly say anarchists as Pravda did) were as much enemies of the people as the fascists.
The campaign was intensified up to the May events in Barcelona, when
there was an armed confrontation between government forces, mainly
of the PCE, and the POUM, with a section of the anarcho-syndicalists. On
the basis of German documents, the PCE maintained that the events
were mainly caused by the POUM leaders, who were inspired by Franco
agents. But as Brou correctly says, these documents do not prove that
the agents were using the POUM or only the POUM. NO agents provocateurs could have been successful if the objective conditions for the confrontation had not already been created,18 which was what the campaign directed against the POUM from Moscow had done.
POUM

It is my opinion that the POUMs political positions at this period

were an invitation to the provocations being set up for it, and which it
was well aware of. On 14 March 1937, Nin argued that although the
relationship of forces is less favourable than in the early months of the
revolution, it is still such that the proletariat could now take power
without recourse to armed insurrection.19 This was quite wrong.
The sections of the proletariat which might hypothetically have been in
agreement with Nin in that situationcertain sections of caballerismo
and anarcho-syndicalism, apart from the POUM itselfcould only have
tried to seize power by armed struggle against the forces of the PCE (and of
the republicans and socialists who agreed with it). And the PCE controlled a key part of the army. To pose the question as Nin did was
to head for civil war within the republican camp, which could only
hasten the victory of the fascist counter-revolution. On 28 September
1937 Trotsky wrote: The Negrin-Stalin government is a quasidemocratic obstacle on the road to revolution, but it is also an obstacle,
however unsure and temporary, on the road to fascism. Tomorrow or
the day after the Spanish proletariat will perhaps be able to sweep it
aside and take power. But although it might only be a passive aid,
if it were swept aside today its removal could only be used by fascism.20
This perceptive judgement was perfectly relevant to the situation in
March 1937though soon after Trotsky took other positions which
were not so perceptive. After the bloody May days the last, notorious
phase of the persecution against the POUM began.21I must add that the
repression of the POUM, and especially the terrible assassination of
16

See Brou, op. cit.

Quoted in Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, 1961, p. 363.
18
Brou, op. cit.
19
Reproduced in La Batalla, JulyAugust 1966.
20
Trotsky, Ecrits, 111, pp. 5289.
21
Among recent writings on these events, Juan Andrades article in La Batalla,
June 1967, is worth study.
17

22

Andres Nin, is the blackest page in the history of the Spanish Communist Party, which was an accomplice in the crime committed by
Stalins secret service. The PCE has still not made a self-criticism.
The Negrin Phase

The whole evolution of the internal situation in republican territory

during the civil war was conditioned by these basic factors, and by the
contradictions and conflicts resulting from them. There were two
marked phases in this evolution: the first lasting until the fall of Largo
Caballero in May 1937, and the second from then until the defeat
the Negrin phase. In the first period, the front of Azaa republicans,
reformist socialists and communists managed to pull the revolution
back into essentially bourgeois democratic channels and restore the
republican State on that basis, with the popular regular army as their
main instrument. In the second period, the front of Azaa republicans
and reformist socialists concentrated on methodically squeezing the
communists out of positions in the State apparatus, especially the army,
police and special services, and in the economic sphere. They put still
further limitations, in general political terms, on the progressive
aspects of the republic; and prepared the final capitulation. The
Comintern line on the Spanish revolution in the end came out against
the supreme objective for which it was supposedly imposed: the
winning of the war. Nonetheless, it had made it possible for the republic to put up such a prolonged and stubborn resistance.
This positive effect stemmed above all from the fact that the Comintern
and the PCE understood the decisive nature of the military problem
from the very beginning. With the help of Soviet technicians and
communist cadre from elsewhere, the PCE concentrated all its efforts on
solving this problem. Its structure, its mode of operation and the
formation of its cadre suited it particularly well for this task. The
PCE was a very strong organizing force. Because it had been shaped
according to the semi-military bolshevik model, the PCE was able to
turn rapidly into the military party of the Republic, as the organizing
nucleus of an army which had to be created quickly, and without
which the libertarian experiments, the republican State, parties, trade
unions and all the rest were doomed to extinction. The masses, moved
by basic common understanding, saw independently of all preference
for union or party that there was no hope for them without an army,
without a single command, discipline, war economy, without, in the
PCEs phrase, an iron unity in the van and the rearguard, and without
subordinating every other consideration to the urgent need to defeat
the advancing enemy troops. The forces of the Communist Party
and its chief auxiliary, the JSU (United Socialist Youth), grew very
rapidly in the early months of the war, as did its political influence and
authority. This was not because the proletariat thought the PCE more
revolutionary than the caballeristas or anarcho-syndicalists, but because it was more evidently capable of confronting the crucial problems
of the situation. Of course the prestige the USSR gained through its
aid to the republic had quite an influence in the rise of the PCE, but the
main factor is the one I have just pointed out. It was symptomatic that
the membership and influence of the party grew relatively little in the
23

unions, not to mention those of the CNT: that is, within the organized working class. Many petty-bourgeois elements came into the ranks
of the PCE, attracted by the partys fame as the defender of order,
legality and small property. Above all, the PCE received an influx
much of it through the JSUof youth with no formation in the unions
and traditional workers organizations, attracted by the partys
military virtues, and by a simplified ideology in which revolution was
identified with a mixture of anti-fascism and patriotism.

UGT

The PCE therefore made an exceptional contribution to the organization of the republican army, the Comintern created the International
Brigades and the Soviet Union was the main supplier of arms to the
Republic, as well as helping with the best military specialists. If war
was only a technical and military undertaking, it would be difficult
to fault the contribution of the PCE, Comintern and USSR to the struggle
of the Spanish people against fascism (if we lay aside for the moment
the question of the amount of arms supplied to the Republic by the
Soviet government). But it has been well known since the time of
Clausewitz that war is not merely a political act, but also a real
political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying
out of the same by other means.22 Particularly, it might be added, a
civil war. The PCEs position that if the war is not won, no revolution
is possible testifies to that; but the phrase that always went with the
first, when the war is won the revolution is made, was ambiguity itself. As we have already seen, each of the political and trade union
organizations in the republican camp had its own idea of the revolution, and fought for it, in continuity with its previous policy, from the
first day of the civil war.
War was not an autonomous part of the total struggle, which could
set aside the confrontation between the three main variations of
revolution: proletarian, bourgeois democratic and bourgeois liberal
revolution. The struggle at the front, and the directly military apparatus, were closely connected with particular types of social and political
organization. The whole future of the Republic would be strongly
conditioned by the type of social and political regime prevailing during
the civil war. The armed forces established by the PCE, the Comintern
and Soviet aid were basically serving two political objectives: military
resistance to the rebels, and ensuring that the bourgeois democratic
type of republic acceptable to the bourgeois republicans, and supposedly
acceptable to the western democracies too, would prevail. But as the
instrument of the second objective, the armed forces of the PCE,
Comintern and USSR came into conflict with the reality of the revolution and with the majority of the proletariat, who saw this reality as
their greatest gain. Such a conflict was bound to have a definite effect of
weakening the military power of the republic. The two political objectives of the armed forces were not complementary but contradictory.
The second outweighed the positive effects of the former. Events were
to demonstrate this very quickly.

22

24

Carl von Clausewitz, On war, 1873, p. 12.

PCEs Armed Hegemony

In the early months of 1937, the caballeristas, anarcho-syndicalists and

the POUM became convinced that their adaptation to the Moscow line
had had no positive effect on the attitude of the western democracies,
and had instead constantly pulled back the initial proletarian content
of the revolution and strengthened the PCE, reformist socialists and
bourgeois republicans in the political and military structure. They were
particularly disturbed by the hegemonic position the PCE had gained in
the army. The terror unleashed by Stalin on the opposition in the
USSR was the element which finally combined with strictly Spanish
questions to bring this disquiet to a head. The Stalinist terror seemed to
the caballeristas, anarcho-syndicalists and the POUM to be a premonition
of what awaited them if final victory was won in the civil war under
communist hegemony. The position the PCE had at once adopted was
not designed to calm their fears. Timed to coincide with the impact of
the Moscow trials, a call was issued for the extermination of the POUM,
and the caballeristas and anarchists who had denounced Stalins crimes
were accused of being enemies of the Soviet Union and accomplices of
fascism. Blindly believing in the Soviet leaders, the Spanish communists never doubted that enemies of the people and fascist
spies were being eliminated in Moscow. When a life and death struggle
was being waged against fascism in Spain, when the Soviet Union was
the only power helping the Spanish republic, the Spanish communists
reasoned that only other enemies of the people or secret agents of
fascism could come out in defence of those Stalin was suppressing.
Once the virus of mistrust, if not of hatred, was introduced, political
and doctrinal differences among the organizations and groups representing the revolutionary proletariat reached breaking point. Meanwhile, the bourgeois republican parties and the PSOE reformists observed a discreet silence about the drama taking place in Moscow.
The breach that opened between the PCE and the other tendencies in the
revolutionary proletariat made Azaa and Prieto arbiters of the
situation.
The May Crisis

The May crisis (1937) was the result of this whole process, caballerismo
and anarcho-syndicalism were excluded from the government, and
power was left in the hands of the reformist socialists, the bourgeois
republicans and the PCE. Police repression against the POUM began at
once, followed by a political offensive against Largo Caballero and his
party. While the PCE denounced them as accomplices of the POUM,
the Prieto group was manoeuvring to oust the caballeristas from their
positions in the PSOE and the UGT. At the same time, the most moderate
and reformist elements were strengthening their positions in the CNT.
A decisive step forward was therefore made in the difficult task entrusted to the Comintern by Stalin, that of integrating the Spanish
revolution back into the bourgeois democratic framework which it
should not have left.
The main beneficiary of the operation, however, was not the PCE
which had carried it out, but he bloc of bourgeois republicans and
25

reformist socialists who occupied the key posts in the government, and
in the administration, the army, foreign policy and the economy.
Of course the PCE controlled a major part of the army, but given that
the supreme principle of its policyStalins policywas to maintain
the alliance with the reformist bourgeois bloc, it was absolutely out of
the question for the PCE to use its military strength against its confirmed
allies. Prieto, in charge of the Ministry of Defence, could anyway
set about methodically reducing the specific weight of the communists
in the command of the armed forces and the Commissariat. Meanwhile
the governments general policy was rapidly moving to the right on the
domestic front, and orienting towards a negotiated settlement of the
war. It was definitely Azaas policy which was gaining ground.
The great social revolutions, the Spanish revolution among them,
either advance decisively to their ultimate conclusion, or they retreat
equally decisively, and lead to counter-revolution. Long before the
fascist troops broke into Barcelona and Madrid, counter-revolution was
silently being established in republican territory. The longer the civil
war dragged on, with its wake of deprivation and sacrifice, the more
the military relationship of forces changed in the enemys favour
(for they were receiving much more aid from Germany and Italy
than the Republic was receiving from the USSR), the more defeatism
and despair spread among the petty-bourgeois layers of town and
country, infecting groups of the proletariat too. Azaas and Prietos
capitulationist policy gained a broader and broader social base, while
the last ditch resistance advocated by the communists met an increasingly sceptical response. The PCE desperately tried to interrupt
this deterioration of the situation, but neither propaganda, nor its
attempts to strengthen the army or increase arms production, could
fill the void left by the evaporation of what had in the early months
been the decisive reservoir of the peoples combativity: its enthusiasm
for revolution. The most radical section of the proletariat felt rejected
and deceived, and within the Communist Party itself, doubt and
vacillation appeared behind an optimistic facade. Critical voices were
raised against the policy of alliance with the bourgeois republican
leaders and the PSOE reformists, and the idea was raised that the only
way out of the situation was for the party to take the conduct of the
war completely into its own hands. These tendencies were associated
with a conviction rapidly gaining ground among the communists that
the hopes placed in aid from the western democracies had proved
totally illusory. Why such reverence for the Spanish personification of
the Anglo-French democratic bourgeoisie and the social democracy
which were betraying the Spanish people? Why, for the sake of an
alliance with the capitulationists, should they sacrifice the remaining
possibilities for a revolutionary war policy, which could revive the
strength and combativity of the proletariat, impose iron discipline
and use existing resources to the full?
We want these states to help us

Such ideas were even echoed in one of the central organs of the PCE,
Mundo Obrero, which was published in Madrid and was therefore not
directly controlled by the party leadership (their centre was in Barcelona,
26

and the official organ there was Frente Rojo). In an editorial of 23

March 1938, Mundo Obrero wrote, We cannot, as another paper does,
say that the only possible outcome of the war is for Spain to be neither
fascist nor communist, because this is how France wants it (. . .) The
Spanish people will win though the capitalists oppose us. The reaction
of the PCE leadership was immediate. In a letter signed by Jose Diaz
and published in Frente Rojo on 30 March, the Mundo Obrero editorial
received a severe reprimand: The statement that the only possible
outcome of the war is for Spain to be neither fascist nor communist,
is absolutely correct and fully corresponds to the position of our party.
As for the theory that the Spanish people will win though the capitalists oppose us, this, wrote Jose Diaz, also has nothing to do with
either the situation or the policy of our party and of the Communist
International. In my report to the November Plenum of the Central
Committee, the general secretary continued, I stated that there are
grounds on which all the democratic States can unite and act together.
The grounds are the defence of our very existence against the common
aggressor, fascism: the grounds of defence against the war which
threatens us all. When I spoke of all democratic States I was not
thinking only of the Soviet Union, where there is a socialist democracy,
but also of France, England, Czechoslovakia, United States etc., which
are democratic countries, but capitalist ones. We want these states to
help us; we think they would be defending their own interests by
helping us; we struggle to make them understand this, and we are
asking for their help. The position you take in your article is very
different, and quite incorrect (. . .) It would inevitably make us narrow
the front of our struggle again, just when it is necessary to broaden
it.23
It had really been evident for a long time that democratic capitalism
would not lift a finger to help the Spanish republic, however much it
broadened its political meaningever since Blum, a few days after the
Spanish civil war had broken out, bowed down to the attitude of the
British Conservative government. Now, when this was crystal clear,
the Comintern, on Jose Diazs authority, was still indulging in the
fond illusionand spreading it among the Spanish troopsthat France,
England and the United States would help the Spanish people. It went
on spreading such illusions (and basing the whole policy of the
Spanish section on them) despite the fact that as Soviet historians
recognize, from the end of 1937 it was well known that the fascist
States were increasingly plotting with the United States, England and
France against the Spanish republic.24 In fact, a fortnight after
Mundo Obrero was reprimanded, England reached an agreement with
Mussolini for the withdrawal of the Italian volunteers once Franco
had achieved victory; in mid-June the French government closed the
frontier in the Pyrenees; and September brought Munich. Meanwhile,
the broadening of the front advocated in the letter took the form of a
formal renunciation (thereby recognizing the actual situation) of the
original revolutionary content of the struggle. As G. Jackson correctly puts it, Negrins 13 points which the PCE supported, pre23

Tres aos de lucha, pp. 4613.

Vsemirnaia Istoria, Vol. IX, pp. 34050. (World History, a series often volumes by the
most distinguished Soviet historians, 19561962.)

24

27

sented to world opinion the image of a regime whose aims and methods
were similar to those of the Western democracies. It was a supreme
effort to convince the Western governments of their own stake in the
survival of the Republic.25
Unlike the Comintern, the Western governments applied classical
criteria and found the best representative of Spanish capitalism to be
not the Negrin government but the Franco government. Democratic
capitalism would be content only when the Spanish proletariat was
totally defeated, and that meant the overthrow of a republic which for
the best part of a decade had been proving that it could not play the
historical role of a bourgeois democratic republic. The Western
governments might even be impressed by the unreal picture of the
situation in the Spanish republic which Negrin and the PCE tried to
present, but they were organically incompatible with the reality behind
the picturethe reality of a revolutionary proletariat, which would
rise up at the first opportunity. The dnouement of the drama came
about in the way class struggle and the classes involved (not the Cominterns dogma of the inevitability of a bourgeois democratic stage) had
posed the question in 1936: fascism or communism was the issue (taking
communism to mean what the whole world meant when it referred to
Spain: the particular form of proletarian revolution, with all its unique,
Spanish characteristics, which had swept the country like a hurricane in
the second half of 1936).
Demoralization and Capitulation

The only function of the reduction of the 13 points to 3, and the political and ideological concessions Negrin and the PCE made in the last
months of the war to ease the national unification of Spanish
patriots of both sides, was to convince the most optimistic that the
republic was on the brink of disaster. The capitulationist party
became the strongest on republican territory. Hence the catastrophic
downfall of Catalonia, and the success of the Casado plot, leading to
the final defeat. The PCE attempted to react at the last moment, putting
aside all respect for its bourgeois and reformist allies and all concern
for democratic capitalism, but it was too late. All the heroism and
sacrifice of the past three years came to nothing, together with a
policy which from the first day of the civil war had turned its back on
the essential dictates of the reality of the Spanish revolution, in order to
fit the dictates of Stalins international strategy.
The PCEs subjection to this strategy was an obstacle to the full development of the fighting forces, creative initiatives and ability to
perform miracles which every great social revolution has within it.
Within the limits imposed by this condition, the party, as I described,
acted in exemplary fashion in the organization of the army, in maintaining a fighting spirit, and exalting the struggle as one against
fascism and for national liberation. This was absolutely essential. But
the full development of the potential of the forces overwhelmingly
25

28

G. Jackson, The Spanish Republic and the Civil War 19311939, 1965, p. 454.

required that the proletariat, the decisive revolutionary force, should at

all times be clear that the life and death struggle they confronted was
the struggle which would free them from capitalist slavery. This
should not have been presented as some promise of a far-off stage, but
as the proclamation and development of the socialist content the
revolution had in practice shown since the July daysas the transformation of this element into a new order and new institutions,
and above all as the establishment of the power of the proletariat. All the
other elements of the revolutionary war were important and should not
have been underestimated, but only on the condition that they were
subordinated to the socialist nature of the revolution. On this basis the
proletariat could have understood the need to respect small property
which did not exploit the labour of others, and the need for alliance
with non-exploiting layers of the petty bourgeoisie and collaboration
with non-proletarian political groups prepared to join in the struggle
because of other aspects of the war (nationalism, the struggle against
fascism, etc.). On this basis, the defence of national independence
against Italian and German intervention would have meant more to the
proletariat than traditional patriotism: it would have meant the defence
of its own liberation.
It was the more imperative to recognize the absolute priority of the
proletarian, socialist nature of the revolution, strengthen it at every
level, and base the solution of all the problems of the war on it, because, it must be stressed, its essential nature had already been defined in
reality by the masses themselves, and every retreat could only create
distrust among them, weaken their morale, and bring them to the conclusion that the restoration of the Azaa republic was not worth such
enormous sacrifices. The spirit which made the defence of Madrid
possible was the spirit of the proletarian revolution, and the only
chance of victory lay in its preservation and development. It was therefore necessary to create revolutionary proletarian power, which would
leave no room for doubt about the aims of the struggle, and would unwaveringly start to deal with the tasks which the needs of war placed
in the forefront: the organization of the army and the production of
arms, provisions etc; and (something which was inconceivable to the
government of the restoration of the bourgeois democratic republican
State, increasingly dominated by Azaa, Prieto and company) the
large scale organization of revolutionary guerrilla forces in the area
occupied by the rebel generals. The political characteristics being
assumed by the government were reflected in a conventional view of
how to wage the war. But if the organization of a regular army, and
trench warfare with big detachments, were necessary in the actual
conditions of the Spanish civil war, guerrilla struggle was equally
necessary and possible. It simply needed a different kind of power. This
failure of the republic must be stressed, because it was quite influential
in the final outcome of the struggle. Large scale guerrilla action, for
which there were favourable conditions in wide areas of the country,
would not only have reinforced the military strength of the Republic
and the likelihood of victory, but would even, in the eventuality of a
defeat in conventional warfare, have laid the basis for continuing the
armed struggle for a long time and linking up with the resistance to
Hitler during the world war.
29

A United Revolutionary Party

The failure of the anarcho-syndicalists to understand the question of the

State and the tactical and organizational weaknesses of caballerismo
were of course a big obstacle to organizing the kind of revolutionary
power which civil war conditions inexorably required. But if the
Communist Party, which had a better understanding of the urgency of
these conditions, had based its criticisms of anarcho-syndicalism and
caballerismo on the position of proletarian revolution and the needs of a
revolutionary war, not in the name of petty-bourgeois democracy, it
would have met with a strong response from the mass of anarchosyndicalists and caballeristas and from many of their best cadre. Durruti
was not an exception, far from it. War and revolution were proving
very rapid teachers. In effect, important sections of anarcho-syndicalism
and callaberismo quickly understood the need for State power, an
army, discipline, etc. They would have understood still more quickly
and thoroughly if the PCE had not counterposed these tasks to the
socialist content of the revolution. In the early months of the war there
were great possibilities for uniting communists, caballeristas, Poumists
and anarcho-syndicalists in one great revolutionary party, or at least in
close collaboration in building the proletarian State. But what became
of these possibilities depended above all on the PCE firmly opting
for the revolution and abandoning its dogmatic models. Such a party
and such a State would have had to be quite independent of the
Comintern and the Soviet State. Only if this was the case could they be
accepted by other revolutionary sections of the Spanish proletariat.
It need scarcely be added that none of this was possible given the nature
of the Comintern and of Stalins policy. Even supposing that the PCE
had taken the road I have described in 1936, the international situation
of the hypothetical socialist republic would probably have been
desperate, in the face of opposition by Stalin and the Comintern. Of
course it could have done certain things which the Popular Front
republic, pledged to Stalins policy and a prisoner of its own pettybourgeois nature, could not. It could have aided the revolutionary
struggle of the French proletariat, by its own example and by direct
appeal (in the second half of 1936 the spirit of May and June was still
strong in France). It would have similarly called on Stalin. To refuse
aid to the Spanish proletariat, when its struggle found an immensely
sympathetic response even in the social democratic labour movement,
would have been tantamount to dealing a terrible blow at the Soviet
Unions prestige with workers of all countries. Although Stalins
international strategy was essentially based on manipulation of the
inter-imperialist contradictions, not on the development of the world
revolutionary movement, it could not dispense with the support of the
labour movement. It even needed this in order to manipulate the
contradictions (for example, to secure the French alliance and reach an
agreement with England, it required the respective working classes to
exert pressure on their own bourgeoisies). A Spanish socialist republic of the kind described, independent of Stalin and the Comintern
which it would have to bewould have had possession of the weapon
Stalin most feared: the weapon of open criticism, and the ability to
denounce to the world proletariat in no uncertain terms the behaviour
30

of the Moscow government should it refuse aid to the Spanish revolution. It is not unlikely that in the light of such a risk, Moscow would
have had to supply arms, perhaps at a more reasonable price26, as
Trotsky put it. But viewing the problem in the light of subsequent
events, in particular the German-Soviet pact and the condemantion
and abandonment of the Yugoslavian revolution in 1948, it is equally
likely that Stalin would have reacted by denouncing the alliance of our
hypothetical heretic Spanish communists with the anarcho-syndicalists,
Caballero and the POUM, as a sinister plot, organized by the Gestapo
under Trotskys direction, against the USSR and the Western democracies, to prevent them from coming to the aid of a legal, constitutional,
parliamentary Spanish republic.
New Soviet Historians

The only aim of this a-historic speculation, which I shall not continue,
is to emphasize essential aspects of what even some Soviet historians
describe as Stalins betrayal of the Spanish republic.27 These historians
agree with some from the West that Stalins military aid to the republic
was inadequate. My foray into hypothesis is an attempt to point out
the possibilities this betrayal forestalled, by preventing the creation of
a revolutionary power in the republican area, which would have
greatly increased the ability of the Spanish people to struggle. Stalins
policy, as applied by the Comintern and the PCE, gave hegemony of the
republic over to bourgeois and reformist forces which were moving
towards compromise with the enemy. It did not even respect the legal
order and sovereignty on which the respectability of the Republican
State in the eyes of the Western democracies was supposedly based.
Stalins secret service in fact operated in the republic as if it were the
Republic of Outer Mongolia.
The most scandalous, but not the only case involving them, was the
assassination of Nin after the failure of the attempt to use the POUM
leader to stage a Spanish version of the Moscow trials. The historian
G. Jackson has written: The Nin case was a terrible moral blow to the
credit of the Negrin government. Two months after taking office with
strong pledges for the restoration of personal security and justice, the
Prime Minister had been forced to tolerate the Communist outrage or
to fight back, at the risk of being destroyed as Largo Caballero had been
destroyed.28 His view is correct, with the exception that it was not a
Communist outrage but an outrage against communism, more than
against Negrins prestige.
These Soviet historians also single out very clearly the main aspect of
Stalins betrayal: the strangling of the revolution and the dependence
the republic was forced into were not even compensated by as much
aid as Francos generals received from Germany and Italy, despite the
26

Ecrits, 111, p. 545.

Especially Alexandre Nekritch, 22 June 1941, published in Russian in 1965
(French edition by Grasset, Paris, is called LArme Rouge Assassine), which provoked intense discussion and found considerable support in Moscow academic
circles in 1966, though there has since been a strong Stalinist campaign against it.
28
Op. cit., p. 338.
27

31

fact that Soviet arms were well known to be paid for in advance and in
gold through the Banco de Espaa. The question of inadequate supplies
cannot be finally clarified until the relevant Soviet archives are opened.
Only then can we know how far this inadequacy was due to the
technical difficulties the aid encountered (because of the distance, the
blockade, etc.), and how far to planned inadequacy, following the
dictates of foreign policy. What seems certain is that this last aspect
did exist. Stalin could not, without radically changing his international
strategy, help the Spanish republic more than was compatible with his
policy of alliance with the Western democracies. And they could by
no means accept that this aid should go so far as to give a decisive
military advantage to the republic. This was well understood by Azaa
and by the republics ambassador in Moscow (Marcelino Pascua, a
member of the Socialist Party). Azaa wrote in his note book after a
conversation with Pascua on 13 August 1937: I saidIt seems to me
that contrary to the general belief here, there is a restriction on Russian
co-operation, and it is not the possibility of a blockade, but the official
friendship with England. I do not think the USSR will do anything for us
that would jeopardize their relations with England, or compromise
their position in the policy of the Western allies. Pascua repliedthat is
undoubtedly the case. For the USSR the Spanish question is a pawn.29
Stalin helped the Spanish republic, not so that it would win, but so that
it could resist long enough to reach a compromise solution acceptable
to the Western democracies within the framework of a system of
alliances against Hitler.
This conclusion, drawn from the facts and from an analysis of Stalins
foreign policy, at the time seemed to be the most monstrous slander of
all time to the communists, and to many anti-fascist Spaniards who
were not communists. But subsequent events have clearly shown that
Stalin would not hesitate to sacrifice to reasons of State not just the
possibility but the actual reality of a victorious revolution, even when
it was close to the Soviet frontier and there were no technical difficulties in the way of providing the necessary aid against imperialist intervention. The case of the Greek resistance at the end of the Second
World War is evidence enough. Between the two world wars, Stalins
Spanish policy, as applied by the Comintern and the PCE, was the most
obvious case of the subjugation of a revolution actually taking place to
the reasons of state of the Soviet Union.

29

32

Memorias de Azaa, Vol. IV, p. 734.