—A great mistake was being made in thinking that the war could be waged with classic strategies. This wasn’t a traditional war – it was a civil war, a political war. A war between democracy and fascism, certainly – but a popular war. Yet all the creative possibilities and instincts of a people in revolution were not allowed to develop …
This, he believed, was firstly because some government leaders lacked faith in ultimate victory, and secondly because some socialist leaders were more frightened of a revolutionary triumph, which would have meant a major communist advance, than they were concerned about winning the war. The government was made up essentially of bourgeois elements representing capitalist interests who were always hoping that England and France would intervene to secure victory and hand them back the bourgeois republic on a plate. Indeed, as long as help was expected from England and France the fact that a revolution was being made could not be admitted.
—It was as though we had to be ashamed of the revolution, as though we were frightened they would get wind of it abroad. The pre-war republic was still supposed to exist. That was a shamefaced way of making a revolution. It tried to turn us into ‘good boys’ who didn’t want to go any further than the re-establishment of the bourgeois democratic state. The principal factor that conditioned everything, I believe, was expecting help from England and France. It meant the limitations on legalizing revolutionary conquests, respect for certain types of property – some of which, of course, had to be respected – the use of traditional military strategy, the creation of a new army on regular army lines …
Until the end of the war, when he crossed the Catalan frontier into France and saw train-loads of arms held up by the Non-Intervention committee, he firmly believed that, out of self-interest if for no other reason, England and France would help the republic. But when he saw the trains he began to think that the republic should have relied solely on its own efforts.
—Found other ways of fighting the war – and of fighting to win. For if we hadn’t been convinced that the democratic countries would come to our aid, different forms of struggle would have developed. If we had realized from the start that we were alone – even opposed to the bourgeois democracies which were boycotting us – it would have become a popular, revolutionary war …
One of the forms of popular war would have been guerrillas. How was it possible, in a country which had invented the word, not to have sustained a proper, coordinated and coherent guerrilla in the enemy rearguard? It was a question he had often asked himself during the war. It was a major revolutionary failure. The only explanation he could find was that the war was being fought in a traditional military manner rather than as a political, civil war. Irregular warfare, supported by a popular revolution, instead of pitched battles, would have considerably reduced the effectiveness of German and Italian aid to Franco, which was designed for regular warfare, he thought.
There was no doubt in his mind also that the revolutionary energy and spirit needed to maintain such a war was eroded by the fact that, apart from agrarian reform, no laws institutionalizing the revolution were approved.
—Fighting and dying, we sometimes thought: ‘All this – and for what?’ Was it to return to what we had known before? If that was the case then it was hardly worth fighting for. The shamefaced way of making the revolution demoralized people; they didn’t understand. I think the communist party demonstrated the most correct understanding of what the war was about …
It could not have done much more; it did not have the strength, he believed. To have got rid of the bourgeois elements in government and developed the revolution’s full potential would have required an alliance with the revolutionary sectors of the socialist party, ‘would have meant taking over the government and displacing all the other forces’. But the party’s growth was largely due to its position on how the war should be waged – as a continuation of the Popular Front policy. And he believed this was correct because it was essential to retain the petty bourgeoisie in the anti-fascist alliance.
—In the last analysis, a revolutionary leader was needed who could understand how the people felt, who would not take the war as a military exercise. Someone who didn’t believe the war could be won by creating the same sort of army as the enemy army, by fighting the same sort of traditional war …
The failure to fight a different revolutionary war was in itself part of a larger problematic, thought Paulino GARCIA, a communist student who had been one of the first political commissars in the 5th Regiment and supported his party’s call for the creation of an army in place of the militias: the need to put politics in command.
—It was easy to say that the war was being lost because Germany and Italy were helping Franco, and England and France were not helping the republic. Who could deny the importance of this? But it was not the sole answer. We had to be asking what lay in our power to do, what possibilities were there which we hadn’t seized, what tasks hadn’t we carried out …
First, the evident need to mobilize popular energy in a united effort to win the war made it essential that working people should be able to see that their sacrifices were going to lead to what they wanted to achieve. This, in his view, meant making the revolution in order to win the war.
—‘But a more revolutionary course will only frighten the democracies,’ people said. What nonsense! The capitalist democracies were frightened enough already by what was happening in Spain. ‘Stalin won’t agree,’ said others. But was that the case? Would Stalin not have had to do what he did anyway – and a lot more, perhaps – if we had pursued a more revolutionary course? Could he afford to be seen betraying a proletarian revolution? …
Here, he thought, the communist party had failed its role, had failed to see how to overcome the historic tragedy of the Spanish working class – its ideological and organizational divisions. By leaning towards the reformist sectors of the socialist party and UGT, the communist party poisoned its relationship with the CNT and lessened the possibility of unity. And the most combative, revolutionary sectors of the Spanish working class were in the CNT; to overlook them, to ignore the greatest human potential a revolutionary party could hope to enlist, was an error of incalculable consequence.
This error, in his view, was conditioned by the communist party’s excessive dependence on the Soviet Union. The latter (correctly or incorrectly was not of concern in this context) was pursuing a policy of alliance with the bourgeois democracies to confront fascism. It was correct that communist parties everywhere should link their policies to this Soviet policy; but it was not correct that they should subordinate their national policies to the USSR’s supposed international interests. The Chinese, who defended the Soviet Union’s and their own national and revolutionary interests, showed the way.
—Could we not have done something similar? The Spanish problem was so enormous that Stalin would still have been obliged to send arms. But we didn’t do it, I believe, because we lacked a leadership with a profound theoretical understanding of the situation. This lack of theoreticians, common to the whole Spanish working-class movement, led to the communist party’s blind obedience to the Soviet Union. This in turn reinforced its hostility to the CNT …
There was a large sector of the libertarian movement with which it would have been possible, he thought, to have reached understanding. It was necessary to explain to its more politicized sectors (as well as to the revolutionary sectors of the UGT) that neither libertarian communism nor socialism was possible at that moment.20 A powerful enemy stood before them and there were many democratic forces prepared to fight it.
—We had to explain that these limitations must be taken into account, but that at the same time we had to set ourselves firmly on a revolutionary course – a long-term one. We had to conquer positions that could not later be taken from us. Had this been done we would have avoided the situation in which the communist party put the war before everything else and the libertarians made the revolution their prime concern. Such a policy wou
ld have neutralized both the extremist elements and the reformists. Instead, the communist party chose a way of posing the problem which ensured that a solution was impossible; when it didn’t choose yet another course, that of drowning its opponents – in blood, as often as not …
*
The Popular Army was being built in the mould of the anti-fascist Popular Front regime which, under socialist leadership and with the participation of the other working-class forces (less the POUM), was bringing the revolution ‘under control’. In reaction to the uncoordinated militias under their different political commands, the new army was to be a regular, disciplined, hierarchized force under professional command. As such it fought with great bravery, winning some important battles but no decisive victories. It represented the people in arms, but it did not develop a strategy of people’s war.21 The failure was political. The implementation of the Popular Front’s complementary policies of aligning the petty bourgeoisie nationally, and the bourgeois democracies internationally, in the anti-fascist struggle, precluded such a revolutionary development.22
In the absence of the former ruling classes, the regime which was emerging was patently not the pre-war bourgeois republic, although the republican constitution remained in force. With the exception of the first six weeks, every cabinet throughout the war was dominated by working-class organizations led by the socialists. As the communist party’s options and influence gained ground (and especially after Largo Caballero was ousted as premier), the regime could with some justification be called a ‘democratic republic’ – a labile regime in which, despite working-class governmental domination, no class was yet totally dominant. The decisive moment of filling in the contours of the democratic revolution remained, in the communist view, still to come.
First, victory in the war. The communist concentration on building the instrument to achieve victory – the Popular Army – was not divorced from its position on the revolution. In order to consolidate the latter once victory had been won, it was necessary for the proletariat to become the hegemonic power in the course of the war.
—An important element of power is the military. Having an army of proletarians formed in the war, with proletarian officers in command, a proletarian police force, this hegemony would be assured as long as there was no foreign intervention, explained Pere ARDIACA, editor of the PSUC’s paper Treball. The people’s total identification with this process would, in itself, be an obstacle to such intervention, we believed. With the military and police in proletarian hands, the government would be able to start on the road to socialism …
Very rapidly, the Popular Army’s crack forces were communist-led, the political commissariat was communist-dominated,23 Soviet aid and influence were political facts.24 When the moment came to embark on the next revolutionary stage – the march towards socialism, which, in the Comintern’s book, could only be led by one of its national sections – communist domination of these forces would be a critical factor. Were it not for this, hegemony of the proletariat could have been consolidated in the first weeks of the revolution.25
The near exclusive emphasis on the war at the front, on military victory, gave rise to a failure which, in a civil war, no people’s army could afford. It neglected the rear.
—The communist party sent its best militants to the front; its dedication to the war effort was admirable. But as a result – and I think this was its major error – the party at certain periods lost its very important ties with the masses in the rear, recalled José SANDOVAL, communist party organizer of Lister’s 11th Division. This was particularly noticeable at the end of the war in Madrid; the links which the party had forged with the capital’s population during the glorious days of November 1936, had been undone. A large part of the rearguard was undermined by defeatism. The communist party was so dedicated to the war effort that it did not sufficiently consider the possibility of defeat …
Morale at the front remained high; defeat seemed impossible. But failure to understand the threat from the rear was, ultimately, failure to understand the conditions of victory at the front. It meant relying on the technical strength of an army (which was almost always inferior to the enemy in technical means), not on the strength of the masses, the revolutionary fusion of civilians and armed forces. It overlooked the lessons of the defence of Madrid, in which the communist party had played such a notable role, consecrating the dichotomy which set ‘the war’ above everything. In the midst of the terrible privations in the rear, it reflected the way the revolution had been forced back. Reaction to the excesses of the ultra-left revolution, which had done its share of demoralizing sectors of the rearguard, now led to a different form of demoralization: depoliticized defeatism.
—There was virtually no politics in the rearguard at all, remembered Antonio PEREZ, socialist youth militant of the JSU who in the last days of the war joined the communist party. We were all so absorbed in our tasks at the front that it was left to a few political leaders to express their parties’ views in the rear. There was almost no mass political involvement. That made us very vulnerable. The decomposition in our ranks occurred in the rear, not at the front …
The real evidence of this was yet to come. There were other reasons involved, as some communist militants recognized.
—Whatever the communist party proposed should be done was taken by the other organizations as a threat; they always feared that we intended to seize power, that Soviet aid was designed to strengthen us, when in fact it was for the republic’s defence, explained Francisco ABAD, communist soldier. This fear remained alive throughout the war. It resulted in a ferocious anti-communism reflecting an accumulation of hatred towards the Soviet Union. For this state of affairs, which undermined the possibilities of resistance and defence, we were all responsible. At such a critical moment in history, we were unable to lay aside our political and personal interests for the common interest of the people …
They hadn’t been able to do what the enemy, with less material and human resources at his command, had done: put everything at the service of the war effort. Instead, he lamented, they had engaged in a constant internecine political struggle. But even when the communist party made concessions, they were seen as some obscure plot directed by the USSR to take power. ‘And due to the Soviet Union’s direct presence in Spain this distrust increased day by day.’
Sócrates GOMEZ, Antonio Pérez’s comrade in the Madrid socialist youth, came to the conclusion that it was, paradoxically, the communist party’s failure to subordinate everything to the overriding needs of the war that caused the demoralization in the rear.
—The communist party tried to absorb, monopolize everything, acting with the wildest sectarianism. Instead of unity, there was the opposite. The war was being fought for the freedom of Spain, not to win a victory which would hand the country over to the communists who, in turn, served the interests of another nation. But from the propaganda, the large posters of Stalin, etc., the impression was gained that Spain was in the Soviets’ hands. That only alienated large sectors of the population on our side and helped the enemy …
He was no anti-communist, couldn’t call himself a marxist if he were. He believed that, as marxists, it was necessary to find points of convergence with the communist party to begin the march towards socialism. But when he thought that such collaboration was both possible and necessary during the war he found the opposite.
—To be a socialist where the communist party or JSU was dominant was virtually equivalent to being a criminal. Instead of unity, anyone who protested – as I did at the communist party’s domination of the JSU–was slandered, blackened and sometimes physically eliminated. The communist party never attempted to take account, calmly and coolly, of differences of political opinion; they launched instead into insults, slanders, defamations …
The communist party gathered strength, he observed, because it opened its doors to virtually anyone. The socialist party, on the other hand, excluded new members for a considerable time,
believing that the war was not a time for ‘party building’. The formation of the Popular Army meant there were posts and jobs to be handed out.
—Accept a communist party membership card – and promotion. I don’t say this lightly, I know what I’m talking about. The communist party grew strong on this procedure. A membership card, a post. It made a big impact on people who had no particular political loyalty. Had the communists acted with sense and loyalty there would have been no problems, I believe. Even some of the party’s leaders – and I don’t mean the renegades – subsequently came to recognize that the party’s sectarianism had been outrageous. The ‘morale’ front, which is as important, if not more important, than the actual fighting front, was demoralized by the communist party …
A communist youth member of the JSU national committee and a FUE leader, Ricardo SALER, corroborated some of the charges. While he firmly believed in the revolutionary transformation of society during the war, he came to believe later that the communist party’s constant calls for unity in the republican camp were made for tactical rather than any other reasons.
—I don’t believe that we sincerely ever thought that a socialist or a republican could think like us. Let alone an anarchist or, even worse, a trotskyist. Our real purpose was to absorb the other parties. So much so, that in the youth organizations we had members who, while officially representing republican parties, were in fact communist party members or very close to our positions …
A moderate socialist, the art historian José LOPEZ REY, who had been seconded to the foreign ministry in Valencia, believed that there was a general desire to be rid of the Russians and even the communists. The latter fought bravely, were dedicated to the war effort. But a large majority of republicans, he believed, would not have accepted an unqualifiedly communist regime.
Blood of Spain Page 49