READING THE RUNES New Perspectives on The Spanish Civil War ...

<strong>READING</strong> <strong>THE</strong> <strong>RUNES</strong><strong>New</strong> <strong>Perspectives</strong> on The Spanish Civil WarArchival and related research on the historiography of theSpanish Civil War since the death of FrancoStephen SchwartzIn an unexpected coincidence, the fall of the Communistregimes and opening (in some cases temporary) of theirarchives, beginning in the 1990s, followed a similar processof documentary disclosure in Spain, regarding the civil warof 1936-39, in which Communism played a central role. TheSpanish archival disclosures were better organized,more complete, and more thorough than those, for example,in Russia. Generalísimo Francisco Franco died in1975 and the dictatorship he created dissolved during asix-year transition to democracy overseen by King JuanCarlos.The opening, publication, and study of archival material,however, lagged behind the republication and issuance ofnew works on the history of the radical Republicans inSpain, including the anarcho-syndicalist movement (NationalConfederation of Labour and the Iberian AnarchistFederation – CNT-FAI), the Spanish Socialist Workers Party(PSOE), the Workers Party of Marxist Unification (POUM),and the Catalan Republican Left (ERC). The most usefulSpanish archival releases and new historiographical volumeshave mainly dealt with these parties. By contrast, little freshcommentary on the “official” Spanish Communist Party (PCE)has been produced in Spain, and aside from documentationon the relations between the PCE as Communist International(CI) Communists and their main leftist adversary, the POUM,which considered itself Communist but anti-Stalinist, archivalmaterial on the PCE has generally been drawn from Russianholdings, releases from which are limited, althoughexceptionally valuable. A single volume of Soviet records onthe Spanish war, Spain Betrayed 1 , described below andoriginally issued in English, then in Spanish, has greatlycontributed to new perspectives on the war.113

<strong>New</strong> <strong>Perspectives</strong> On The Spanish Civil WarPOUM’s governmental suppression in 1937. Tragically, thePOUM’s co-founder, Andreu Nin i Pérez (1892-1937), aprominent Catalan writer and labour figure, and conseller(minister) of justice in the revolutionary Catalan Generalitat(regional government) of 1936, was murdered by Stalinists.The appointment of an alleged and unrepentant “Trotskyite” tothe justice portfolio in Catalonia at the onset of the worstMoscow purge trials was a powerful repudiation of the claimsof the Russian authorities and must have been perceived bythe Stalin leadership with exceptional horror. While the POUMwas not Trotskyist in official terms, its anti-Stalinism kept itvery close to the Trotskyist movement, some Trotskyists foughtin its ranks, and it did not denounce Trotsky or his acolytes inthe Stalinist manner. But the full roster of POUM, Trotskyist,and anarchist victims in Spain, killed within the country, orkidnapped and liquidated elsewhere by Communists, wasprobably no more than 30 people. Trotskyist claims aboutwholesale murder of the POUM and anarchists seem to havereflected spite, in that the POUM had rejected the politicaladvice of Trotsky and his few Spanish, as well as hisinternational, followers. More important, however, both thePOUM and, unquestionably, the anarchist movement, weredeeply rooted in Catalonia and could not be done away witheasily.The third historical error, which continues to be repeated, isthe belief that Nin himself, a Soviet functionary from 1921 to1930, was a “secretary” for, or otherwise attached to the staffof, Leon Trotsky during the latter’s period of stateresponsibilities. 3 Nin occupied a high post in the RedInternational of Labor Unions (Profintern) as well as serving inthe leading structures of the CI and the Spanish CommunistParty. During the internal struggle in the Russian CommunistParty (Bolsheviks) he became a member of an InternationalCommission of the Oppositional Center, but did not workdirectly with or under Trotsky. Victor Serge recalled, “InMoscow I took part in the International Commission set up bythe Oppositional Centre, together with [Grigori] Zinoviev’sspokesman [Moisei Markovich] Kharitonov, Fritz Wolf (whosoon capitulated, which did not stop him being shot in 1937),Andrés Nin, the Bulgarian Lebedev (or Stepanov, a clandestineOppositionist who betrayed us and later worked as aComintern agent during the revolution in Spain) and two orthree other militants whose names I have forgotten.” 4115

on anarchists in fiction116Downgrading of Nin, considered a major revolutionarypersonality in his own right, to a bureaucratic positionsubordinate to Trotsky, reflects the ignorance of foreignauthors who do not know of his prominence in the Catalanjournalistic and labor milieux, even before his departure forRussia.The late Catalan author Pere Pagès (1916-2003), known asVíctor Alba, who was my mentor in writing about the POUM 5 ,had demonstrated inexhaustible energy in seeking to“rehabilitate” the party’s reputation by publishing books on it,even in Catalonia at the end of the Franco era. It was thereforeunsurprising that two of the earliest volumes of republisheddocumentation on the POUM, after Franco’s death, were issuedin 1977-78 at his instance. The first was La Nueva Era (The<strong>New</strong> Era), a collection of articles from a revolutionary anti-Stalinist journal printed in Spain from 1930 to 1936. Moreuseful, however, was a compendium of all the basic theoreticaland political documents of the POUM produced during thecivil war, and titled La Revolución española en la practica (TheSpanish Revolution in Practice). 6 The latter book providedhistorians with their first primary source, after many years, onthe activity of the party during the civil war.Opening of the Spanish archivesThe official process of archival release was slower. Unlike theformer Communist governments, the post-Franco regime hadno “reasons of state” that would block the opening of most oftheir holdings, especially on the civil war. The organisationand preparation of documents for scholarly use was carriedout with admirable thoroughness, professionalism, andtransparency – which made for a relatively long period ofwork by archival staffs.Some archives were, nevertheless, subjects of controversy.For example, the Franco state had established a GeneralArchive of the Civil War in Salamanca, to support a massivejudicial investigation charging the civil war left with assortedcrimes, and evidence from which was utilized in individualcases against opposition personalities after the war. TheSalamanca facility included the archives of the Generalitat ofCatalonia, which, like other Republican source materials, hadbeen seized by the victors at the end of the war. TheGeneralitat demanded the reversion of these resources to itscontrol, and after a process lasting some 20 years, in whichboth the city government of Salamanca and the conservative

<strong>New</strong> <strong>Perspectives</strong> On The Spanish Civil WarPopular Party opposed the breakup of the collection, transferof the materials from Salamanca to Barcelona was effected in2006. 7Other institutions became involved in the debate, which wasresolved by a decision of the Spanish legal system. Theseincluded the successor to the Catalan section of the PCE, nowknown as Initiative for Catalonia —The Greens (ICV), whichcalled for restitution of the entire corpus of documents inSalamanca to all their original possessors. The CNT protestedthat its documentation should not be returned to theGeneralitat, but to the anarchist organisation, and the JewishCommunity of Barcelona, the archives of which had also beenseized in 1939, similarly wanted them returned to its ownhandling rather than that of the Generalitat. But whiledifferent interests disagreed over the disposal of the archives,no attempts were disclosed to prevent scholars from usingthem freely, as have been seen in Russia.At the same time, nevertheless, official files on Francoistexecutions during the civil war have not been opened, assecret police files on the Stalin-era purges have been handedover to family members of Russian victims — a practice thatbegan under Soviet rule in the late 1950s. Materials describingrecent surveillance of anarchists, Basque extremists, and othersstill considered enemies of the state have not been released inSpain, a practice different from that in such countries asGermany and the former Yugoslavia, where dossiers on therecruitment of informers and observation of dissidents againstCommunism have been made accessible to the general publicand even, in the ex-Yugoslav case, printed and offered for sale.In addition, some archives held abroad by left groups weretransferred to universities and foundations in Spain. Forexample, the Centre for International Historical Studies (CEHI)at the University of Barcelona received a considerablecollection of POUM documents, and even inaugurated aMaurín-Nin Hall dedicated to the party’s main founders. 8In 1988, a major event took place, when the CEHI received,from the National Historical Archive in Madrid, the dossier ofthe Republican authorities on the 1937-38 trial of the POUMleadership (exclusive of Nin, who had been killed) by theSpecial Tribunal for Espionage and High Treason. The SpecialTribunal had been established hastily by the SpanishRepublican authorities in 1937. The POUM leaders wereindicted for allegedly provoking the disorders in Barcelona117

on anarchists in fiction118known as the “May events” of 1937 (described by Orwell onthe basis of his eyewitness) with the aim of carrying out amilitary insurrection. They were further charged with desertionfrom the Aragón front in support of the Barcelona protests;subversive propaganda; illegal possession of secret militaryinformation; unlawful possession and trafficking in arms withthe intent of organizing an uprising; smuggling money andobjects of value to France; use of secret codes, andmaintenance of relations and communications with suspiciousforeigners. Some of the prosecutorial information read as ifborrowed directly from similar documents in the Moscowpurge trials.The dossier turned over to CEHI also included interrogatorytranscriptions taken down from Nin during his period ofimprisonment; materials from the 1938 trial of the POUMmilitary commander Josep Rovira i Canals (1902-68), chargedwith disloyal activities in the same matters treated by theearlier trial, and numerous ancillary memoranda on the POUMcomposed by secret police investigators. There was noevidence of who had killed Nin or where his body wasburied. 9 The most sensational item in the dossier comprisedinvestigators’ notes on none other than George Orwell himself(born Eric Blair and described in the document as “Enric”, aCatalan form of “Henry”) and his wife Eileen Blair. In Homageto Catalonia, Orwell had somewhat light-heartedly describedhis pursuit by Spanish secret police agents in Barcelona. Butthe notes found in the POUM dossier revealed that theinvestigation of the Blair couple was anything but innocuous.The anonymous investigators described Eric and Eileen Blairas “pronounced Trotskyists],” which they most certainly werenot; and liaison agents between the British IndependentLabour Party and the POUM, also untrue. 10 The documentfinally included the phrase “Liaison with Moscow”, with nofurther explanation. The implication is clear: Orwell was amajor target, and would probably have been liquidated orkidnapped and sent to Russia if caught. He was in much moreserious danger than he ever admitted, or perhaps was unawareof how great a risk he faced. Discovery of the Orwelldocument caused a minor sensation in British media.The printed volume based on the POUM dossier, titled ElProceso del POUM (The POUM Trial), totaled 578 pages, andwas incomplete at that. 11 Investigative notes on otherforeigners were included in the documentary transfer but were

<strong>New</strong> <strong>Perspectives</strong> On The Spanish Civil Warnot published. The volume was, and remains, an indispensablesource for historians of the Spanish civil war and biographersof Orwell.The Legacy of MunisWhen Franco expired, Nin and Maurín, as well as Rovira andothers who had been tried in 1937-38, were dead, along withmost of the rest of the POUM leaders. Víctor Alba, although acourageous and tenacious defender of the party’s reputation,had been a minor figure in the party youth movement and itsjournalistic efforts during the civil war. But two aggressive anddisputatious figures involved in the POUM trial survived andcontinued publishing commentaries on historical events. Thesewere Juan Andrade Rodríguez (1898-1981) and ManuelFernández Grandizo Martínez (1912-1989), the latter known bythe pen-name “G. Munis.” Andrade had been a member of thePOUM Executive Committee and was a prominent sympathizerof Trotsky. He compiled several worthwhile books based onprimary sources, which were published posthumously. 12Fernández Grandizo, alias Munis, was born in Mexico butraised from childhood in the impoverished region ofExtremadura — the only part of Spain where, before the civilwar, Trotskyism was the dominant political trend. He had beenthe leader of the authentic Spanish Trotskyist group in thewar, known as the Bolshevik-Leninist Section and comprisingfewer than a dozen members. During the “May events” theydistributed a leaflet on the protestors’ barricades, as noted byOrwell. Fernández Grandizo appeared in the POUM trial as awitness, declaring that this group was unaffiliated with thePOUM. He and several members of his group were tried inBarcelona in 1938 for the murder of a Russian infiltrator intothe POUM, Lev Narvich, who assisted in the arrest of Nin andthe other POUM leaders. Narvich had, in reality, been killed inan act of revenge by the POUM. But Munis and his comrades,after being held in exceptionally bad conditions, were foundguilty, sentenced to death, and kept in prison until the fall ofBarcelona to the Franco forces and their escape, along withmany thousands of anarchists, POUMists, and otherrevolutionaries, across the French border.As “Munis,” Fernández Grandizo returned to his nativeMexico and in 1940 delivered the main eulogy at the funeralof Trotsky. In 1948, he published a polemical volume on thefailure of the Spanish revolutionaries, Jalones de derrota,promesa de victoria: Espana 1930-39 (Signposts of defeat,119

on anarchists in fiction120promise of victory: Spain 1930-39). This incomplete andundocumented but exceptional work was republished inFrance during the Franco era and then reset and republishedin Spain after the dictator’s death.Munis was strongly critical of the whole array of radicalleaders during the war. Although from a Marxist perspective,he expressed respect for the anarchist CNT-FAI as the onlysignificant revolutionary labour movement in Europe. Hisvigorous militancy and a certain cachet derived from hisinvolvement in the “May events,” as well as his unlimitedstream of published commentary about events of the day,made his work attractive to young Spanish and some foreignradicals during the post-Franco transition. Volumes of hisarticles continue to be published in Spain; his last writingsbefore his death were critical of Gorbachev as a false reformer.His case was unique; he was the last of the civil warrevolutionaries to actively address contemporary issues in atraditional, intransigently Marxist idiom.Anarchist documentationBeside POUM and Trotskyist sources, a much larger corpus ofanarchist documentation emerged in the post-Franco era. Ofthat mass of books and articles, one volume appears asuniquely valuable. It is related, in a specific and unusualmanner, with recruitment by Franco’s nationalist forces ofMoroccan volunteers, based on the anti-revolutionary leader’sformer service in the sector of Morocco then occupied bySpain. While it is an extremely obscure topic in thehistoriography of the civil war, the more radical defenders ofthe Spanish Republic — anarchists, anti-Stalinist communists,and Catalan nationalists — gave serious consideration tosupport for a nationalist uprising in Morocco. The intent wasto undermine the capacity of Franco to enlist Moroccantroops. The Catalan left were especially interested becausetheir region had been convulsed for decades by radicalopposition to Spanish military involvement in Morocco. Thelate Abel Paz (pseudonym of Diego Camacho Escámez, 1921-2009), the leading contemporary historian of Spanishanarchism, mined official Catalan as well as radical-leftarchives to show the serious character of the Spanishrevolutionary attempt to provoke a rebellion in Morocco. In2000 he published La Cuestión de Marruecos y la RepúblicaEspañola (The Moroccan Question and the Spanish Republic). 13He reported that Simone Weil, the French philosopher then

on anarchists in fiction122Río, the assassin of Trotsky, and including interviews withSpanish Communist exiles in Russia. 15The effect of these broadcasts was devastating for thereputation of the Spanish Communists, in showing theirresponsibility for two of the most notorious politicalassassinations in 20th century history. In Operació Nikolai, Ninwas restored to his proper reputation as a Catalan literaryfigure, and Soviet agents were clearly identified as the authorsof the defeat of the revolutionary movement on theRepublican side during the civil war. But Operació Nikolai didnot name the agents who killed Nin, while Asaltando losCielos described the dreadful effects of Soviet secret policeservice on the Mercader family, and the sufferings of SpanishRepublican émigrés in Russia, sent to labor camps for allegedanti-Soviet activity.In addition to the release of the dossier on the POUM trial,and broadcast of Operació Nikolai, a considerable program ofacademic and publishing activity has been accomplished bythe Andreu Nin Foundation (FAN), created in 1987 (the 50thanniversary of Nin’s murder) and which maintains a websiteincluding a monthly bulletin. 16 The FAN tracks the availabilityof archival resources as well as the continued publication ofdocuments, memoirs, and scholarly works dealing with themovement. A sustained interest in civil war history has beendemonstrated by publication of a tourist guidebook distributedby the FAN, describing the main sites of revolutionary actionduring the conflict. 17Outside Spain, a publishing enterprise in English, dedicatedto preserving the historical memory of Spanish anarchism, hasbeen established by the Scots anarchist Stuart Christie, aformer political prisoner in Spain. Christie’s main work hasbeen the publication in translation of the three-volumecomplete history of the CNT during the civil war by JosepPeirats Valls (1908-89), the outstanding anarchist chronicler,whose work is especially valuable for its transparency as wellas its basis in primary sources. (Peirats’ papers are held at theInternational Institute for Social History in Amsterdam.) 18All such contentious works, however, as well as newanalyses of the fate of the Spanish Republic, some of thembased on archival research and discussed further on, have hadless impact than a single volume of documents released fromthe Russian State Military Archive (RGVA) and the RussianInstitute of General History of the Russian Academy of

<strong>New</strong> <strong>Perspectives</strong> On The Spanish Civil WarSciences, supplemented by the collection of Russian secretservice messages intercepted and decrypted by the British, andknown as “Mask.”Mentioned at the beginning of this article, Spain Betrayed:The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War, was edited by theAmerican historians Ronald Radosh and Mary R. Habeck incollaboration with the Russian expert Grigory Sevostianov. Ithas been published in the U.S. in the “Annals of Communism”series, and in Spain, and has caused a literal revolution instudies of the civil war. It is the only volume in the “Annals ofCommunism” series with a visible impact outside the U.S. 19Comprising 538 English-language pages of documents andbrief commentary, Spain Betrayed provided unimpeachablesources on nearly every significant issue in Soviet relationswith the Spanish Republic during the civil war. The textsinclude a CI directive from Moscow to the SpanishCommunists as soon as the military insurrection against theRepublic commenced on July 17, 1936. This first such messagesent to the PCE, and the first printed in the volume, settles themost contested question of civil war history: the intentions ofthe Soviet government toward their anarchist and other rivalsin the Spanish revolutionary movement. Therein, Moscowstated that if the anarchist leadership refused to submit tounification demands by the Spanish Communists, theanarchists — then counting two million members, comparedwith a few thousand Communists — should be denounced as“strike breakers of the struggle against fascism in the workingclasses.” 20This blunt language dramatically but definitively refuteslong-standing claims by the Spanish Communists and theirapologists that the Communists worked for a benevolent unityin the Popular Front (FP), with the sole aim of a Republicanvictory. It should be noted, however, that the anarchist CNTdid not affiliate with the prewar FP, and the very large andradical Spanish Socialist party, while a signatory to the FPelectoral pact of 1936, refused to participate in the governmentproduced by its victory at the polls. Somewhat paradoxically,the POUM had been drawn into the FP and gained a seat inthe Cortes [national parliament] from Barcelona for itscofounder Maurín, who unfortunately was caught behind theFrancoist lines at the beginning of the war and was eventuallyimprisoned. 21Spain Betrayed further revealed that less than a week after123

on anarchists in fiction124the triumph of the left in the main cities of Barcelona, Madrid,and Bilbao, with revolutionary euphoria having swept themasses, CI leader Georgi Dimitrov called on the Communiststo prevent radical measures in Spain, with the intention ofsupporting FP governments in France and Belgium, whichwere based on the integrity of the bourgeois order. Whileimprovised leftist militias had already departed Barcelona forthe front in Aragón, Dimitrov called for preservation of aRepublican army of the ordinary kind. These aspects of Sovietand Spanish Communist policy have been central to historicaldebate over the fate of the Republic since the publication ofworks by Orwell and Borkenau, who described Communistpolicy as counter-revolutionary.The documents in Spain Betrayed also outline thebackground for the delay in the decision of Stalin to directlysupport the Spanish left with arms and “advisers” — an actionthat did not begin until September 1936. The same collectionincludes reports by the main Soviet and CI personalities whowent to Spain, including the writer Ilya Ehrenburg (1891-1967), the French CI functionary André Marty (1886-1956), themilitary intelligence (GRU) officer Vladimir Gorev, the leadingBolshevik activist, diplomat, and former Trotskyist, VladimirAntonov-Ovsyeyenko (1883-1939), Iosif Ratner, a militaryattaché, and the economic administrator Artur Stashevsky(1890-1937).But for a larger reading public, both in Spain and abroad,the most affecting revelations in the volume had to do withthe destiny of the International Brigades (IB), the Sovietrecruitedarmed detachments sent to strengthen theRepublican military. Spain Betrayed showed that Stalin’s purgeapparatus had been extended to the ranks of the IB. Onesentence leaps out of an anonymous, confidential report sentto Moscow in mid-1937: about the XIIIth InternationalBrigade, it stated, “This brigade is not destroyed; it has beenmurdered.” 22 An exceptionally long, detailed, and candid reportsubmitted to Moscow at the end of 1937 by the Soviet militaryintelligence agent Moshe Zalmanovich (Manfred) Stern, widelypraised in Communist propaganda worldwide as “GeneralKléber” before his recall to Russia and disappearance in thepurges, revealed that the XIIIth IB, with a large Balkanrepresentation, “fled from the front.” The judgment of theSoviet officers in Spain on the XIIIth IB had been a subject ofdebate in memoirs and historical works prior to Franco’s

on anarchists in fiction126delivered a powerful blow to the image in Spain of the Sovietsand other Communists in the civil war. This was not the leastbecause much of them originated with Świerczewski, whobecame deputy defense minister in the Polish Communistregime after the second world war, and had the credibility ofcandor as well as Moscow’s long-standing approval.Finally, Spain Betrayed included a document that, for manyin Spain, has resolved the still-continuing historical argumentover the “May events” of 1937. An anonymous report writtenonly weeks before the May combat, sent to General KlimentYefremovich Voroshilov (1881-1969), with the endorsement ofDimitrov, described increasing polarisation between theCommunists and non-Communists on the left. Rather than waitfor the crisis to turn into direct confrontation, the reportrecommended that the Communists “hasten it, and ifnecessary, provoke it.” 28 This has been interpreted, especiallyby Catalan historians — and not merely the defenders of theanarchists and POUM — as proof that the “May events” werethe product of a deliberate Communist plan conceived at thehighest reaches of the Kremlin. In sum, Spain Betrayeddemolished entirely the historiographical edifice on which adefense of Spanish Communist conduct in the civil war hadbeen erected, and vindicated the critical authors who,beginning with Orwell, had accused the Soviet government ofsubverting the Republican cause.The Comintern in Latin AmericaBecause they spoke Spanish, many Latin American CI agentswere sent to the peninsula during the war. In 2004, theRussian historians Lazar and Viktor Kheifetz, father and son,assisted by the Swiss historian Peter Huber, issued in Russiaand Switzerland a limited edition volume, La InternacionalComunista y América Latina, 1919-1943: DiccionarioBiográfico (The Communist International and Latin America,1919-1943: Biographical Dictionary). 29 Based in large part onarchival research in Russia by the Kheifetz pair, this bookrevealed that Andreu Nin, once he had gone to Moscow, hadbecome popular among the Latin American Communistleaders, and served as the Kremlin’s expert controller of CImember parties from Mexico to Argentina.Many more fascinating figures appear in the Kheifetz,Kheifetz, and Huber universe of Bolshevik colonization inLatin America. The incredible Iosif RomualdevichGriguliavicius was born in a Karaite family — members of a

<strong>New</strong> <strong>Perspectives</strong> On The Spanish Civil Warheterodox Jewish sect — in Lithuania under the tsars in 1913,and died in Moscow in 1988. In between, his exploits includedgetting a Sorbonne degree, editing Communist periodicals inPolish, breaking Communist leaders out of jail in Brazil, andworking in Spain as a Soviet assassin implicated in the murderof Nin. He was sent back to Russia before returning to theWestern Hemisphere as an auxiliary in the murder of Trotsky;his task was to establish backup networks for that group ofkillers, in California as well as Mexico. Grigulevich, as he ismore generally known, fled to California after the Trotskyslaying. His espionage tradecraft, and particularly his skill inreinventing himself, is so flamboyant as to seem doubtful. AfterWorld War II he was, using a false identity, named ambassadorto the Vatican and Yugoslavia by the leftist but anti-CommunistFigueres regime in Costa Rica! He used this post to plot themurder of Tito, although no attempt was carried out. In 1950he returned to Russia where he took up an academic post.Grigulevich has gained a belated prominence in works on thehistory of Soviet espionage. In the same year the Kheifetz,Kheifetz, and Huber dictionary was published, a biography ofGrigulevich by the Costa Rican journalist Marjorie Ross waspublished. 30Other <strong>New</strong> WorksA few other books in the bibliography of the Spanish civil warpublished after the death of Franco are worthy of specialattention. Two outstanding volumes deal with whatincreasingly is a perennial theme of authors on the conflict,the “May events”. The first was printed in 2003 in Barcelonaand dealt with the role of a much cited and little-understoodanarchist grouping, the Friends of Durruti, mentioned byOrwell. The Friends of Durruti was considered the main nodeof anti-Communist militancy in the CNT-FAI, and was led bythe journalist Santiago María (Jaume) Balius Mir (1904-80). Agreat deal of speculation about the group was put in print, inseveral languages, but little solid documentation apart from itsown periodical, El Amigo del Pueblo (The Friend of the People),its “manifesto,” Hacía una nueva revolución (Toward a FreshRevolution), and a small number of interviews with Balius.A book titled La Revolución Traicionada (The RevolutionBetrayed), authored by a young anarchist and situationistwriter, Miquel Amorós, presents a definitive biography ofBalius, and is an indispensable source for Spanish warhistoriography. 31 Amorós drew from all the relevant archives127

on anarchists in fiction128throughout Spain and internationally. Balius was a child of themiddle class and was pursuing medical studies when he wasstruck by poliomyelitis. Balius, the radical anarchist figure, andhis friend the POUM military commander Josep Rovira, two ofthe most remarkable and best-remembered among theirpeople, if secondary and least-studied figures in the civil war,had begun their political lives in Estat Català, the mainnationalist cadre fighting for Catalan independence. Like manyearly 20 th century nationalist movements, Estat Català hasbecome firmly respectable in Catalan public memory. Baliusformulated the exceptional proposition that the proletariat andthe bourgeoisie formed separate nations in every country. Butthe movement drifted to the right during the 1930s, wasexcluded from the regional government of the Generalitat afterthe events of 1936, and was considered an equal enemy of theanarchists, POUM, and Communists. Its leaders, labeled asfascists, fled to France. Balius and Rovira evolved toward theWorkers’ and Peasants’ Bloc (BOC), a predecessor of thePOUM led by Maurín, although Balius ended up firmlyaffiliated with the CNT-FAI.A final, new and important accession to the bibliography ofthe Spanish civil war is a collection of letters by an AmericanTrotskyist woman active in the POUM, Lois Cusick Orr (1917-80s), published with supplementary materials by her husbandCharles Orr and edited by Gerd-Rainer Horn, a historianemployed at Warwick University. 32 Lois Orr, as a strict Marxist,was hostile to Catalan nationalism; even offensively so, with aparticularly provincial American manner. She worked in theEnglish-language press and radio department of the POUM.On September 27-30, 1936, she wrote a letter to her family inthe U.S., in which she noted that while all mail leaving theSpanish Republic was supposed to be censored, POUMcorrespondence abroad avoided the censor because the partysent a twice-weekly automobile to France to use the postalservice there. In a sentence profoundly anticipatory of thetotalitarian future of Communism and its collapse, whiledeeply affecting in the sentiments it evokes, Lois Cusick Orrwrote, “POUM does not believe in censorship”. 33Notes1. 0See Ronald Radosh, Mary R. Habeck, andGrigory Sevostianov:Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War,<strong>New</strong> Haven 2001; España Traicionada, Madrid 2002.2. 0See George Orwell: Homage to Catalonia, London 1938,

<strong>New</strong> <strong>Perspectives</strong> On The Spanish Civil Warreprinted and translated in many editions; Franz Borkenau:The Spanish Cockpit, London 1937; Gerald Brenan: TheSpanish Labyrinth, Cambridge, UK 1943.3. 0See, for example, Bertrand M. Patenaude: Stalin’s Nemesis,London 2009.4. 0Victor Serge: Memoirs of a Revolutionary, London 1963, p.216. Stepanov, bornStoyan Mineff (1891-1959) and also knownas Stefanov, was assigned the revolutionary alias “Moreno”(“dark”) while active as leading Comintern representative inSpain. See the not-always-reliable work of Branko Lazitchand Milorad M. Drachkovitch: Biographical Dictionary of theComintern, Stanford 1986 (second edition.)5. 0Víctor Alba and Stephen Schwartz: Spanish Marxism vs. SovietCommunism: A History of the P.O.U.M., <strong>New</strong> Brunswick, NJ,USA 1988.6. 0Víctor Alba, ed.:La Nueva Era (The <strong>New</strong> Era), Madrid 1977;La Revolución espanola en la practica) The SpanishRevolution in Practice), Madrid 1978.7. 0Anonymous: “Els papers de Salamanca són ja a Barcelona,segons el Ministeri de Cultura,” (“The Salamanca Papers arenow in Barcelona, according to the Culture Ministry,”Europa Press [agency], Madrid, January 31, 2006.8. 0Joaquím Maurín Juliá (1896-1973), a former CI official, was thecofounder of the POUM with Nin. See CEHI printedcatalogue: História del POUM, Documents per el seu estudi(History of the POUM, Documents for its study) Barcelona,19859. 0It should be noted that in both the main POUM trial andthe Rovira trial the Spanish Republican judiciary found thedefendants innocent of “high treason and espionage,” butguilty of involvement in the “May events,” resulting in minorpenalties. Notwithstanding the argument of certainhistorians that the Spanish Republic had been completelytaken over by the Russians, significant parts of the stateremained independent of their control. The trivial sentencesimposed on the POUM leaders illustrate this fact; in Russiaor a completely Russian-dominated state, they would havebeen executed.10. Víctor Alba, Marisa Ardevol, et al., eds.: El Proceso del POUM:Documentos Judiciales y Policiales (The POUM Trial:Judicial and Police Documents), Barcelona 1989, p. 75.11. Víctor Alba, Marisa Ardevol, et al., eds.: El Proceso del POUM,op. cit.129

on anarchists in fiction13012. See, for example, Juan Andrade: Notas sobre la Guerra civil(Notes on the Civil War), Madrid n.d. [1986?]13. G. Munis: Jalones de derrota, promesa de victoria: Espana1930-39 (Signposts of defeat, promise of victory: Spain1930-39), Madrid 1977; Revolución y contrarevolución enRusia (Revolution and Counterrevolution in Russia),Llerena [Extremadura] 1999; Internacionalismo, sindicatos,organización de clase (Internationalism, Tradc Unions,Class Organization), Llerena 2009.14. Abel Paz: La Cuestión de Marruecos y la República Española(The Moroccan Question and the Spanish Republic), Madrid,2000.15. M. Dolors Genovès, director, and Llibert Ferri, investigator/screenwriter: Operació Nikolai (Operation Nikolai), Barcelona1992 (documentary film).16. Javier Rioyo and José Luis López-Linares, directors: Asaltando losCielos (Storm the Skies), Madrid 1996 (documentary film).17. See www.fundanin.com.18. Eladi Romero: Itinerarios de la guerra civil española (Guíadel viajero curioso) (Spanish Civil War Itineraries – Guidefor the Curious Traveler), Barcelona 2001.19. See www.christiebooks.com. José Peirats: The CNT in theSpanish Revolution, 3 vols., Hastings (UK) 2001, 2003,2006.20. Ronald Radosh, Mary R. Habeck, andGrigory Sevostianov, op. cit.For a selection of the “Mask” intercepts, see Nigel West:Mask: MI5’s Penetration of the Communist Party of GreatBritain, <strong>New</strong> York 2005.21. Spain Betrayed, op.cit.,p.8.22. (Much detail on the internal nature of the FP was onlyavailable to foreign historians before 1975 thanks to thecited work of Munis.)23. Spain Betrayed, op. cit., p. 243.24. See Stephen Schwartz: Sarajevo Rose: A Balkan JewishNotebook, London 2005 for a discussion of the XIIIth IB.25. Spain Betrayed, op. cit., p. 437.26. Spain Betrayed, op. cit., p. 444.27. Spain Betrayed, op. cit., p. 453.28. Spain Betrayed, op. cit., p. 450.29. Spain Betrayed, op. cit., p. 194.30. Lazar Jeifets, Victor Jeifets, Peter Huber, eds.: La InternacionalComunista y América Latina, 1919-1943: DiccionarioBiográfico (The Communist International and Latin

<strong>New</strong> <strong>Perspectives</strong> On The Spanish Civil WarAmerica, 1919-1943: Biographical Dictionary)Moscow/Geneva 2004.31. Marjorie Ross: El secreto encanto de la KGB: Las cinco vidasde Iósif Griguliévich (The Secret Game of the KGB: The fivelives of Iosif Grigulievich), San José, C.R. 2004.32. Miquel Amorós: La revolución traicionada (The RevolutionBetrayed). Barcelona 2003.33. Lois Orr with Charles Orr, edited by Gerd-Rainer Horn: Lettersfrom Barcelona. London 2009. On the Orr couple also seeAlba and Schwartz, op. cit.34. Letters from Barcelona, p.72.131