TROUBLE WITH MOSCOW
The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) is a historical episode that brought anarchism, which had already stumbled to a considerable extent after the debacle in Russia, back onto the main historical stage. Unlike the revolution in Russia, where the role of anarchists was minimized by the victors (communists) in accordance with the saying that "history is written by the victors", in the Spanish case such manipulation was much more difficult to carry out, due to the mass of anarchist participation but also the de facto anarchist management of Catalonia . Nevertheless, even in Spain, the communist current (directly controlled from Moscow) continued its war against the anarchists. It could even be said that, at certain moments, and numerous historical sources and direct testimonies confirm such an assessment, it was more important for the pro-Soviet communists in Spain to defeat the anarchists than whether the social revolution would succeed.
The Spanish anarchists avoided the trap into which the Russian revolutionaries led by the communists fell twenty years earlier: that the drama of the situation and the necessity of defense at any cost pushed them into authoritarianism and statization. And in this we should look for part of the reason why the pro-Soviet communists, instead of welcoming such a broad and accepted revolution, began to dispute the achievements of the anarchists, calling them frivolous and accusing them of "undermining" the Republic.
When it became clear that the institutions of government were in fact unnecessary, Republican politicians found themselves in awe. Such a clear demonstration of the redundancy of the usual institutions was a message that could not be ignored. Orwell describes in the book "In honor of Catalonia" that he could not believe that the city services in Barcelona (public transport, city cleanliness, supply services) functioned so well, although there were no bosses and orders...
INTERNATIONALIZATION
While the first battles raged across Spain, the international repercussions of the war were enormous. There are several reasons for that. The powerful shadow of the coming world war was already clearly felt, so Spain was also a kind of experimental foreplay - Franko was strongly supported by Germany and Italy, while help to the republicans, the legal government, in fact, in accordance with the indecision and unpreparedness of the leading democratic states for all that was being prepared - was absent. Great Britain was not yet ready for a confrontation with Germany, as evidenced by the almost humiliating Munich Agreement of 1938. France, in which the Popular Front was in power, secretly helped the republicans, but, promised help, and even armed involvement in the conflict that was hinted at, they were absent - in France, the government trembled at the thought of a possible "Spanish" scenario on its own ground - the government of the left, in the event of a political offensive by the then very strong national right, would itself be in a similar situation to that in Spain. The United States recognized Frank as soon as the moment came: he was supported by the Catholic Church, and The Roosevelts the democrats expected many votes from the catholic communities. The USSR helped the legal government in Madrid, but that help was very counterproductive in several ways. Among other things, she created an international "halo" for Franko as a fighter against communism, which, in a significant part of conservative European public opinion, made him a much more acceptable figure.
Italy and Germany, the two fascist powers at their height, cruelly used the civil war in Spain as a testing ground for new weapons and new combat techniques, above all when it comes to aviation. There is no such idea of the type of attack by planes that they did not use, flying over a country that practically had no air force and destroying villages in that part of Spain that was controlled by the legal government.
One such experiment will make the name of a Basque village world famous. When German bombers razed the picturesque Basque town of Guernica to the ground, probably the most famous image of the twentieth century was created - Picasso "Guernica". It was exhibited for the first time at the World Exhibition in Paris, in the Spain pavilion, actually only a few months after the event itself. That's when Picasso's famous answer to the German official who came to visit the Spanish pavilion happened. Amazed by the painting, he approached the painter and asked: "Is this your work?", to which Picasso replied: "No, but yours!"
About a million people died in the Spanish Civil War, making it one of the most brutal wars ever seen. An astonishing cruelty was demonstrated on both sides: the fascists, as soon as they entered a place, would immediately shoot all the inhabitants whom they thought, for any reason, had any connection with the republicans. And since the "informants" in such actions were local activists, it is not difficult to imagine how someone's possible "connection" with the Republicans was widely interpreted. And the republican army, as soon as it entered a place, set fire to churches and shot the priests it found - and unfortunately, a significant share of such activity belonged to anarchists. Spanish anarchists were anti-clerical at least as much as Spain was a Catholic country, which is to say - incredibly much. Again, the involvement of the church, without a trace, on the side of the fascists and Franks, in those years did not in the least diminish that already enormous hatred.
Despite the reservations of the governments, which were certainly expected to give greater support to the democratic ideals that were contested and defended in Spain, an incredible phenomenon took place: thousands of volunteers from many countries of the world arrived in Spain ready to fight against the fascists. And it wasn't just any team: numerous journalists, writers, artists, photographers, idealists, anarchists, students, communists, Trotskyists... That's how the famous international brigades were created, which included people like Hemingway and Orwell. He told about one such volunteer, an Irish international, in "Tomb for Boris Davidovič". Danilo Kish an extraordinary story - "The sow devouring her farrowing". That story actually perfectly illustrates the mechanisms by which Moscow's agents operated in Spain.
"WE WILL SHOW THE BOLSHEVICS"
In fact, at one point it seemed that everything was going in the hands of the legalists - the support of the people was huge, the revolutionary enthusiasm was at its peak, the emotionally strong reaction of a good part of the world gave that war a media dementia that was unimaginable for similar events until then. Every day, the best photographers sent poignant shots of the Spanish drama, writers like Hemingway and Orwell wrote newspaper reports that created a public image of the war, in the end, all possible democratic principles on which, declaratively, Western civilization rests, were on the side of the Republicans.
Everything looked good, so how was the war lost? Unlike the right-wingers, who acted extremely compact, strong frictions quickly began on the left-wing pole, culminating precisely in the May 1937 events in Barcelona, when the anarchists together with the POUM (anti-Stalinist communists, in whose militia Orvel fought) came to armed conflict with republican authorities and pro-Soviet communists.
In the relationship of the Soviets to the anarchists in Spain, there was also the burden of the Bolshevik experience with the Ukrainian anarchists, then a natural resistance to the anti-authoritarian and critical thinking characteristic of anarchism, but also another episode from the recent past influenced the nature of their relationship. Namely, at the congress of the Comintern in 1921 and the founding congress of its branch - the Red Syndical International, Angel Pestanja he criticized fiercely from the podium Trotsky, the Spanish delegates secured the release of a group of imprisoned anarchists, and, most importantly - after returning from the USSR, Gaston Leval, who was also in that delegation - publicly exposed the nature of the Soviet regime. Leval's texts published in France had a certain specific weight for the broader leftist context, and soon the number of similar criticisms in the Western media increased tenfold. At that time, Trotsky was greatly annoyed by the performance of the Spaniards, so, although almost two decades had passed until the Spanish Civil War, the Russians did not forget the anarchist "sins" in unmasking the "first successful revolution".
Hence the polemical intonation in Duruti's answer to a Russian journalist - his statement ("we will show your Bolsheviks how to carry out a revolution") was not just a mere boast, but also a clear criticism of the Bolshevik revolutionary path, which, as it could be guessed, he, Duruti and his followers, intended to correct. Therefore, the Russians, in fact, wanted more than anything that - the kind of social revolution that Duruti talked about - would not succeed. They intended to continue to be the "only successful" revolution, and from that position continue to be in charge of the planetary labor and leftist movement.
SOVIET ACTIONS
Duruti's funeral is the zenith point of Spanish anarchism. This is the moment when support was the widest and when the denouement that will leave Spain in the hands of the fascists is not yet foreseen. Anarchists continue to fight splendidly on many fronts. Their columns cause the greatest fear among the fascists, but the communists were no less afraid of those columns.
The success of Duruti's communes in Aragon (based on the principle of voluntariness, without any acts of coercion against those who did not want to enter the communities) was sensational. All the real economic indicators, despite the fact that the country was devastated by a brutal civil war - were incredible. Even the exemplary capitalist press was buzzing about it in those years. British newspapers of the time reported the Labor statement Fener Brockwell, later Lord Brockwell, who visited the commune in the town of Segorbe, that "the mood of the peasants, their enthusiasm, the way in which they contribute to the common effort, the pride they feel in doing so, all this is amazing." Similar things, but suitable for an urban environment, happened in the industrial zones around the Catalan capital. Stalin felt uneasy at the thought that the survival of the republic would most likely mean the continuation of the social revolution. And that of the social revolution, which, judging by the first steps, was on its way to overcoming at least some of the main reasons that turned the Russian revolution into bare state terror. A particular thorn in the side of one of the cruelest faces of the twentieth century was the success of the anarchists with collectivization in Aragon. And very specific moves followed. Pro-Soviet communists pushed the government into conflict with the communes. Instead of waging war against the fascists, the government troops start breaking up the communes, and the coordinating body that manages the defense of Aragon is declared illegal.
Stalin's head of intelligence for Western Europe, Criminally, in the book In Stalin's Secret Service about the activities of the GPU in Spain, he writes: "The GPU had its own special prisons. Their units carried out murders or kidnappings. They killed in hidden dungeons and organized flying squads. The Minister of Justice had no authority over the GPU. They were a force before which even some of the highest officers trembled Caballeros government. It looked as if the Soviet Union wanted to seize loyal Spain, even though it was already in their possession".
DEFEAT AND LATIN AMERICAN "REPRISES"
From the moment when the communists and the government start a total offensive against the anarchists, their room for maneuver is getting smaller and smaller month by month. Duruti's communes in Aragon and workers' committees in large Catalan factories were destroyed (and which was the basis of economic independence, but also the great popularity of anarchists), but the even more devastating effect of such moves was the psychological one. Not only did such actions weaken the defense fronts against fascism, but they strongly demotivated people. Suddenly, the republican authorities looked miserable and just as oppressive as the army, the church and the monarchy before. After the destruction of the economic base of the social revolution, the revolution itself was more and more brutally attacked and its bearers were more and more ruthlessly slandered.
At the end of January 1939, Franco's troops entered Barcelona. Already on the fifth of February, something so predictable and common in such situations begins to happen: politicians from the government, republicans, yesterday's collaborators of the pro-Soviet communists and executors of Spanish anarchism, begin to approach Franco. This one, again, is now willing to play the role of "conciliator" of Spain and in the desire to give a semblance of legality to his own takeover of power, he "generously" accepts their cooperation. Of course, anarchists and communists are exempt from such dictatorial "grace". They will escape, mostly to South and Central America, or France. And many of them will play significant roles in their new environments and cultures. Poets Jimenez i Sernuda they lived and created in Mexico and traveled throughout the rest of Latin America, the poet Rafael Alberti he was an international literary star, crowned with the glory of the laureate of the "Golden Wreath" of the Struga Poetry Evenings during the SFRY. Fernando Arabal, the son of an anarchist, realized himself in French culture to which he made a huge contribution, and his path was similar Jorge Semprun, the writer whose novel it is based on Kosta Gavras recorded by the famous "Z". Genius Luis Buñuel he made films in Mexico and then in France. Along with the great painters who previously worked in Paris, such as Picasso, Miro, Dahlia, one could almost say that the whole of Spain, in the decades after the Second World War, culturally existed outside of Spain, all over the world, and everywhere played a significant role in artistic innovation, recognized for its lavish and unbridled imagination, a sign of rebellion, a particularly revolutionary energy …
Of course, along with those most famous names, there were many famous professors, writers, painters, musicians, intellectuals of various orientations who spread the spirit of the Spanish Revolution throughout Europe and both Americas. That spirit, so cruelly "imported" from Spain, had its share in all those new revolutions in culture that began in the sixties of the last century to irreversibly change the media and political face of the world.
Many intellectuals went to the countries of Latin America, and therefore it is not surprising that in the second half of the XNUMXth century that continent became the most revolutionary continent, where, as if on some gigantic stage, for decades, in constant shifts of leftist reformists and fascist military juntas (Strasner in Paraguay, somoza in Nicaragua, Saw in Argentina, Pinochet in Chile...) endlessly reproduced the story of the Spanish Revolution and the Civil War. And indeed, the scenario was similar everywhere - left-wing governments come to power democratically (in Cuba through a coup d'état and revolution), big capital and the military (a combination that always gives birth to fascism), supported, now not by Germany and Italy, but by the USA, respond military mutiny and coup. Which is the prelude to cruel executions, short-lived city confrontations and - another glorious failure of the dream of social justice. And Moscow, for the most part, behaved similarly in that South American reprise of Spain, that help was everywhere either counterproductive or calculating.
PLANETARY ECHO
The Spanish Civil War is certainly one of the modern wars with the greatest resonance in media and art. Therefore, in the consciousness of a huge number of people. Thanks to this, this war became a kind of planetary phenomenon - a kind of paradigm about the conflict of two irreconcilable consciousnesses - conservative and emancipatory.
Among the internationals were many writers, and Hemingway's novel "For Whom the Bell Tolls" is one of the most beautiful prose testimonies about wartime Spain. And many other writers, such as George Orwell, Andre Malroa, Mate Zalke, left numerous details and impressions from those harsh Spanish years in their books.
Those generationally close to the writer of these lines will remember numerous "Spanish" details from their childhood. In school, partisans were constantly mentioned, some of whom had the nickname "Spaniard", so we got an explanation very early on that some people from our region were also fighting somewhere in Spain. In the reading books, as mandatory reading, there was also a record from Spain of a Montenegrin revolutionary and publicist Veljko Vlahović, to whom, in some fifth or sixth grade, one school lesson was necessarily dedicated. Then already, in the years of growing up in the SFRY, he would come across an exciting novel by Hemingway, with wonderful words John Donne which stood at the beginning as a (warning) motto: "When the water washes away even the smallest cape, Europe is less... Therefore, never ask for whom the bells are tolling, they are tolling for you..." If someone skipped Hemingway, he would have already what a film with a clear appeal to Spain... Then, at the end of the seventies, Spain beat the SFRY national team (qualifiers for Argentina) (Ruben Cano gave, a Juanito received a hit, the nasty, Balkan, vengeful one, a sign of impotence, with a bottle to the head...), and the audience, in the name of that same impotence, at the packed Maracana (they missed Kustudić i Sushic) began chanting loudly - fascists, fascists... Although among the Spanish football players there were certainly sons of republicans, anarchists or some other leftist orientation. But all the audiences are the same... Franko also died in those years - they kept him on cell phones for weeks, and then someone said - well, that's enough... Somewhere at the end of that growing up, he will come The Johnnys lyrics - Pavel, do you remember Spain?...
That war was treated so much by the media - that its traces became an inseparable part of art, music, and pop culture. And the most famous painting of the XNUMXth century, Picasso's Guernica, is part of the cruel story of that war. By the way, and further in the zone of fine art, it seems that the modern political poster was born in that war. Even today, all over the world, in the most prestigious museums (and anarchism, when it reaches the museum, seems to have become its own parody), exhibitions of posters from the Spanish War and Revolution are held, since it was one of the most influential modes of engaged art in the XNUMXth century, anyway. rich propaganda engagements of various kinds. Orwell writes in the book "Homage to Catalonia": "Revolutionary posters were everywhere, flashing bright reds and blues, so that the few remaining advertisements looked like mud stains. Down the Ramblas, the wide central artery of the city, through which crowds of people continuously flowed to and fro, loudspeakers blared revolutionary songs all day long and well into the night”.
In addition to everything else, these are signs that hide the identity of the key actors of that story - Spanish and Catalan anarchists. People who told an amazing story of courage and vision.
Bonus video:
