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.
—If the republic had won, I’m sincerely convinced that Juan Negrín, Caballero’s socialist successor as prime minister, would have got rid of the communists immediately. None of this could be said, of course, for the simple reason that we couldn’t afford to alienate the only country that was helping us. There were many opinions about Soviet aid, but one thing must not be forgotten: the show trials were being held in Moscow. Most of us found these trials repugnant …
Irritation, if not anger, at communist political ‘monopolization’ affected liberal republican militants also. Andrés MARQUEZ, left republican youth leader and political commissar, found that the continuous and insistent propaganda about leading communist figures, the ‘ostentatious symbols’, the big portraits of Stalin and Lenin created an atmosphere in which only the communist party appeared to exist. The communist policy of respect for petty bourgeois property he saw as a tactic to attract this class to the party which, at the same time, in its meetings and newspapers, ‘always spoke of the triumph of the revolution and communism’.
—I had no doubt that if we won the war the communists would come out, above everything and everyone, for a ‘second Russia’ of a Stalinist type …
* * *
We renounce everything except victory.
Durruti (August 1936)
We want the revolution here, in Spain, now and not perhaps tomorrow after the next European war.
Durruti (September 1936)
We are carrying on the war and the revolution at the same time.
Durruti (Madrid, September 1936)
* * *
The reformists, the republicans also say they want to make the revolution. But they tell you that they want an orderly, well-made revolution; Lenin also came up against people who wanted a revolution in Russia made by well-educated, clean workers. These people think the revolution is like a train which arrives on time at the station, and then the station-master says: ‘gentlemen, we have reached the social revolution.’
Revolution is not, cannot be, like that …
Andreu Nin (Barcelona, April 1937)
* * *
The only dilemma is this: either victory over Franco through a revolutionary war, or defeat.
Camillo Berneri, Italian anarchist (Barcelona, November 1936)
* * *
The libertarians lacked the rigorous certainties of the communist party on the crucial issues of war and revolution. Durruti’s statement, ‘We renounce everything except victory’, was often adduced to mean that the revolution must be sacrificed to win the war. Given his other statements of the time, it was dubious that he meant to go so far. Rather – as the first anarchist leader to realize that the working class was facing a civil war – he was aware that sacrifices in traditional libertarian aspirations would have to be made if the war were to be won.
A range of opinion, from those like Eduardo de GUZMAN, CNT journalist in Madrid, who believed that only by making the revolution was it possible to win the war, to others who took Durruti’s ‘everything’ to include any further revolutionary advance, co-existed within the libertarian movement. GUZMAN was convinced that only the people’s revolutionary élan had crushed the military in Barcelona and Madrid, and saved the capital in November. ‘It was the grave mistake of all working-class organizations, including the CNT, to sacrifice the revolution in order to win the war.’ The libertarians in Barcelona had made a serious error in not taking power from the start, in overlooking the fact that the state apparatus had considerable weight, even when disarmed.
—The petty bourgeoisie was inevitably opposed to the proletariat. The communists were recruiting in this class, and in alliance with the petty bourgeois republicans were bound to gain strength if the Generalitat and the central government were reconstituted …
The CNT had failed to push home the idea of setting up a trade union government in the first couple of months when there was no effective government at all; a revolutionary moment of great promise had been lost, he thought. This was due perhaps to the CNT’s insufficient politicization; to be a-political, anti-political, did not mean to have no political sense. It meant simply not to participate in the farce of elections. ‘Like it or not, politics existed – and revolutionary politics doubly so!’
In his view, none of the working-class organizations had matched the historic demands made of them. There was, in the working class, a great desire for unity, a desire ‘to carry through the total revolution’. At the very least, total working-class democracy, in which all working-class parties and organizations would have participated on an equal footing.
From the moment the Catalan anarchists had accepted collaboration with the Popular Front forces in Barcelona, Lorenzo IÑIGO, libertarian youth councillor for war industries on the Madrid defence junta, had not believed it would be possible to make the libertarian revolution. But what he did believe was that it would be possible to make partial revolutionary conquests of a libertarian nature which would ensure, when the war was over, that the pre-war petty bourgeois republican regime could not return to power. Meanwhile, the communist party’s stand for a ‘democratic republic’ appeared to him as no more than a political ‘slogan’.
—Designed to attract to the party and to keep within its ranks the petty bourgeoisie; to attract the bourgeois democratic powers; and to combat the experiment in self-management on which we libertarians were engaged …
In Barcelona, libertarian views were as divided as elsewhere. Andreu CAPDEVILA, CNT acting president of the Economics Council, expressed the view that ‘having made half a revolution, we of the CNT wanted to finish making the revolution and win the war, while the communists said: “Just win the war –”’ In the opinion of Joan MANENT, ex-treintista and CNT mayor of Badalona, not even the most extremist FAI militant in Catalonia believed that the total social revolution could be made while the war was being fought. Once the war had started, the people’s will was geared to winning the war, not to making a revolution.
—The first aim had to be to win the war; the revolution could come later. The collectives which had been created stood as the libertarians’ revolutionary stake in the future when the republic would emerge victorious from the war …
Durruti’s companion and successor as leader of his column, Ricardo SANZ was convinced that the war had to be waged and won as rapidly as possible before the social revolution could be carried to fruition.
—I can’t count the times I rebelled against those in the rearguard who wanted to enjoy the fruits of the revolution without thought of those at the front. Almost from the start, the people who triumphed in the rearguard didn’t give a damn about the future of a people, a nation. And with them triumphed not disorganization but discouragement, demoralization of all those who could contribute to the triumph of the social revolution. The rearguard! Combatants who went on leave returned – if they returned at all – disgusted with the life they had seen. The low life people were living, it was much worse than had existed under the capitalist regime …
The contradictory currents in the libertarian movement were summed up by an Aragonese libertarian leader, Macario ROYO, who had experienced the collectivization in his native region and was about to serve on the CNT national committee.
—We knew – it was so obvious, we all said it – that if the war were lost everything would be lost. Durruti’s statement is but one example, and it has no more significance than that. On the other hand, if we of the CNT came out and said that making the revolution was not our concern, the enthusiasm of libertarians in fighting the war would have been entirely dissipated. Why? Because, ideologically, all libertarians were convinced anti
-militarists. To have to serve in an army was the biggest contradiction they could face. Their only hope, therefore, was that if the war were won thanks to their sacrifice, society would be transformed. Everyone of us held these two images simultaneously in his mind …
It was in the military field that the gap between these two simultaneously held but unsynthesized concepts was most rapidly revealed. Should the militias, which had been incapable of holding back the Army of Africa on the Madrid front, or of advancing further on the Aragon front, be ‘militarized’, converted into the Popular Army the communist party was demanding? For Miguel GONZALEZ INESTAL, the CNT fishermen’s union leader who had returned to Madrid from San Sebastián soon after the start of the war, there could be no doubt: militarization was an inevitable necessity.26 In the Basque country, with the enemy on top of them almost from the first day and the sound of artillery fire clearly heard, there was not even time to discuss it. The libertarian militias might be well supplied with food, medical supplies and light arms thanks to their powerful trade unions, but they would receive no heavy arms, which were coming from the Soviet Union and were controlled by other political forces, including the communists, unless they were part of an organized army. The CNT national committee accepted militarization, and GONZALEZ INESTAL was appointed to visit all the fronts to convince the CNT columns of the need. Everywhere he put forward the same argument.
—‘You can’t expect to be equipped with heavy machine-guns, artillery, etc. when your column is not trained to use them and you lack the personnel with the skills to serve them. You cannot plan offensives without overall planning, and without such offensives how do you expect us to carry on a war?’ When I spoke to them man to man, comrade to comrade, they understood. I had difficulties convincing the Durruti column in Aragon and the del Rosal column on the Madrid front; with the Iron Column before Teruel I failed …
The del Rosal column, which had tried to turn back some of the government ministers when they left Madrid the day before Franco’s forces launched their offensive on the capital, accepted militarization only under great pressure. Manuel CARABAÑO, the fifteen-year-old libertarian youth member who had participated in the assault of the Montaña barracks and fought in the defence of Madrid, was amongst the opponents. Even though the column had accepted orders from the military command during the fighting in the capital, it was a completely different matter to become a military unit, CARABAÑO fought with all his energy against it: anti-militarism was an essential aspect of libertarian ideology, something revered and respected in the organization.
—A professional army, moreover, would lead to the creation of a state and any state was an oppressor. Militarization went hand-in-hand with the hierarchical type of communist organization. We weren’t defending the democratic republic, which was essentially a bourgeois republic, we were fighting it. The war for us was a revolutionary war against fascism and the bourgeois republic …
Discussions on the matter continued in the column until February 1937. Then one day military forces arrived, cleared them out of their positions on the Teruel front, and took them in lorries to Cuenca. The CNT national committee threatened to expel them if they continued to refuse militarization. Cipriano Mera, the leading anarchist on the column’s war committee, had accepted militarization after initial opposition. (Although his bitter sarcasm at the CNT Saragossa congress just before the war had contributed to the defeat of García Oliver’s proposal to create a libertarian militia force that could crush a military uprising, he went on to become one of the leading anarchist military commanders and disciplinarians of the war.) The men were given leave passes which stated that, on their return, they would be ‘totally militarized’. They accepted because the majority had already done so. CARABAÑO, moreover, had begun to think that their fight was misdirected: it should have been concentrated on the call for a disciplined political Popular Army.
—We weren’t waging a simple military war, we couldn’t form a purely military army; within the revolutionary context in which we were fighting, it had to be a political army. But it had to be disciplined. The libertarian movement took a long time to realize this. We didn’t think it necessary to have a central military staff to give us orders; we thought that strategy and tactics could be decided by our own organizations …
He added three years to his age to make him eighteen and was appointed a lieutenant, surely one of the youngest officers in the Popular Army. When he and his companions went to a Madrid hotel on their return from leave to hear their appointments, the first name to be read out was that of a man who had been a waiter; he was appointed a major. ‘Major of the mother who bore you,’ he shouted, ‘I’m a good anarchist!’ There was uproar. He refused his appointment (only to be promoted lieutenant on the field of battle later). Many others also refused to become officers. However, there were few desertions, unlike in the Durruti column where a large proportion of men abandoned the front, many with their arms, rather than be militarized.
—We were enthusiastic enough in the end, although we never accepted formal army discipline. I refused to wear uniform; I sewed my officer’s insignia on to a black leather hunting jacket and wore corduroy trousers. We never saluted. We said hallo and good-bye; officers and soldiers continued to be friends, went on calling each other ‘tu’. An officer had always to remember that his actions would be judged by the organization. We had a highly developed sense of justice …
As CARABAÑO had sensed, the fight against militarization was a blind alley if no concrete and effective revolutionary alternative could be proposed. Here, as in other spheres, the libertarians reacted to events which the communists were already beginning to shape. Refusing militarization (and posts) meant that the CNT lost almost any chance of seriously influencing the shape of the Popular Army which, in the end, they had to accept. Macario ROYO, Aragonese representative on the CNT national committee, believed that this was the libertarians’ major error. Where they refused posts, others accepted them, not only in the army but in all the new organizations.
—The libertarians were making the revolution, carrying on the war, but refusing to take on positions of responsibility. They failed to understand that theory was one thing, practice in wartime another. When the first exams for political commissars were held, not a single CNT member passed. Illiterates had been sent, the CNT lacked men with education …
Illiterates could make fine revolutionaries, he reflected, but they were no good at the front reading a map. Some maintained that the CNT had been discriminated against, but this wasn’t the case. As a result, the organization started a ‘Durruti training school’ with CNT teachers and was soon turning out militants who passed the exam.
*
For the dissident communist POUM in Barcelona, the war and the revolution were ‘inseparable’; the party was opposed to the creation of the Popular Army. Ignacio IGLESIAS, political editor of the POUM paper La Batalla from early 1937 and veteran of the October 1934 rising in Asturias, expressed the party’s position. There could be no triumphant revolution unless the war was won; but the war would not be won unless the revolution triumphed. ‘No one in the POUM – or the CNT for that matter – ever claimed that the revolution had to take precedence over the war.’ The POUM’s opposition to the Popular Army was based on revolutionary postulates: it was wrong to create a regular army since to do so was to pose the war in the same terms as the enemy. This was what the communist party was doing. But it was not a classic war, the situation did not require a regular army with hierarchized commands which inevitably destroyed the revolutionary spirit of the working class, but a popular revolutionary army. If the premise were accepted that the war could be fought only in the traditional manner – which was why the question of guerrilla warfare was never properly considered – the simplistic but true conclusion had to be reached that the enemy was bound to win. He had an army, trained soldiers, superior arms. Moreover, the premise ignored the important question of self-reliance. Those who stood for making the
war and revolution simultaneously could not expect aid from Britain and France.
—How could we? Logically, international capital stood closer to Franco than to us; and within the republican zone, closer to the republicans and communists than to the anarchists and POUM. But the anarchists, with their utopianism and their complaisant attitude towards petty bourgeois republican parties and politicians, whom they had always favoured over working-class political parties, failed to understand this …
Hostility to the creation of the Popular Army27 stemmed also from the fear that the communist party would dominate it. At the same time, the POUM was aware that the militia system had failed to create the revolutionary force under a single command which was so vitally needed to win the war. The party proposed a ‘red army’ on the Bolshevik model, with soldiers’ committees to ‘control the officers and prepare the army politically’, in Juan ANDRADE’S words. Unlike the communist party, which dissolved its 5th Regiment into the nascent Popular Army, of which it then formed the political nucleus, the POUM continued to maintain its separate militia. Its call for the creation of a ‘red army’ in the first months of the war met the Catalan CNT’s opposition since for the latter the militia was a prolongation of the anarchists’ defence groups which had proved themselves so effective in urban settings (but less so in the open countryside). Moreover, the CNT had no need of revolutionary lessons from an ‘authoritarian marxist’ party which had been its main rival for the allegiance of the Catalan working masses before the war.
Failing to attract a large sector of the anarcho-syndicalist movement to its general positions on the prior need for the working class to take power to consolidate the revolution and win the war, the POUM and the revolution were bound to be isolated. To win over the libertarians, with their visceral aversion to ‘authoritarian marxism’ and their hostility to ‘power’, was no light task. POUM–CNT relations were cool; any CNT union threatened with falling under dissident communist domination had, in the recent past, been expelled; the POUM had set up its own trade union federation, FOUS (Federación Obrera de Unidad Sindical), in reply. But the CNT was where the mass of the workers remained.
Blood of Spain_An Oral History of the Spanish Civil War Page 50