Orwell in Spain

by George Orwell

  1. Gen. Eoin O’Duffy (1892-1944) led an Irish Fascist movement, the Blue Shirts, founded by William Cosgrave (1880-1965), President of Eire until 1932. Most of O’Dufly s men in Spain were Blue Shirts. They fought for Franco. See Thomas, 592 and 602.

  2. See pp. 257–8.

  3. Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin (1814–76), Russian anarchist and political writer who opposed Karl Marx.

  4. Orwell refers to one of the famous, and more incongruous, myths of World War I. At a critical period on the Western Front, rumours abounded that Russian troops were being transferred there from the Eastern Front. The ‘evidence’ purported to be sightings of Russian troops travelling in darkened trains from the north of Britain ‘with snow on their boots’.

  5. This was written by Sir Walter Raleigh (1552?–1618) when he was imprisoned in the Tower of London; it was published in 1614. Orwell writes of Raleigh’s imprisonment and his History in ‘As I Please,’ 10, 4 February 1944 (2416), not included in the extract below.

  6. ‘Magna est Veritas’, lines 9-10, by Coventry Patmore (1823-96).

  [513]

  To Frank Jellinek

  20 December 1938

  Boîite Postale 48, Gueliz, Marrakesh, French Morocco

  Dear Jellinek,1

  Many thanks for your letter. I am extremely sorry that I attributed that note in the Manchester Guardian to you, but my reason for doing so was that the M.G. had not denied it. The facts were these. I was apparently semi-disabled by my wound (though actually it got all right soon afterwards) and had decided to go back to England, and on June 15 I went up to Siétamo to get my discharge-papers, which for some reason unknown to me one had to go up to the front to do. When I got there the P.O.U.M. troops besides the others in Siétamo were being got ready for an action which actually took place some days later, and it was only by a bit of luck that I did not get involved in the battle, though at the time I could hardly use my right arm. When I managed to get back to Barcelona on June 20, it was to find that the P.O.U.M. had been suppressed, everyone I knew was in jail or in hiding, I had to sleep two nights in the streets, and the police had been interfering with my wife in the most revolting manner. What really angered me about all this was that it had carefully been kept secret from the men at the front and even from people in Lérida (where I had been on June 20). On I forget which day I saw you in a café near the Hotel Oriente. I was going to cross the road and speak to you, but at this time, as was not unnatural in the circumstances] I was ready to believe that every Communist was a spy, and I simply walked on. Then later in England, when I went through the files of the M.G., I saw the note saying that the P.O.U.M. were not Fascists (or words to that effect), which I naturally attributed to you. I was greatly touched and wrote to the M.G. congratulating them and asking for your address. I suppose the man who replied didn’t know who had sent that message, and he merely said that you were in Mexico and they didn’t know your address. I am going to send a note to the New Leader saying I was wrong about who sent the message.2 If they don’t insert it, please believe it is only for lack of space.

  They are quite honest, though often no doubt mistaken, but with only 8 pages per week one hasn’t much space to spare.

  I am writing at the same time as this asking my agent to send you a copy of my book on the Spanish war. Parts of it might interest you. I have no doubt I have made a lot of mistakes and misleading statements, but I have tried to indicate all through that the subject is very complicated and that I am extremely fallible as well as biassed. Without answering in detail all the points in your letter, I might indicate more clearly than I could do in the book my position on one or two questions that inevitably come up in a controversy of this kind. I entirely agree with you that the whole business about the P.O.U.M. has had far too much fuss made about it and that the net result of this kind of thing is to prejudice people against the Spanish Government. But my position has always been that this kind of controversy could die a natural death and cause comparatively little harm if people would refrain from telling lies in the beginning. The sequence of events is approximately this. The P.O.U.M. preach a ‘line’ which may or may not make it more difficult to secure military efficiency for the Spanish Government, and which is also rather too like what the C.P. were saying in 1930. The C.P. feel that they have got to silence this at all costs, and therefore begin stating in the press that the P.O.U.M. are Fascists in disguise. This kind of accusation is infinitely more resented than any ordinary polemic could be, with the result that the various people and parties who could be described as ‘Trotskyist’ tend to develop into mere anti-Communists. What complicates it and enormously increases the feeling of bitterness it causes is that the capitalist press will on the whole throw its weight on the Communist side of the controversy. I know that Communists don’t as a rule believe this, because they have got into the habit of feeling that they are persecuted and have hardly noticed that since about 1936 (ie. since the change of ‘line’) the attitude towards them in the democratic countries is very different. Communist doctrine in its present form appeals to wealthy people, at least some wealthy people, and they have a very strong footing in the press in both England and France. In England, for instance, the News Chronicle and New Statesman are under direct Communist influence, there is a considerable press which is actually official C.P., and certain influential papers which are bitterly anti-Socialist nevertheless prefer ‘Stalinism’ to ‘Trotskyism’. On the other side, of course, there is nothing, because what is now called ‘Trotskyism’ (using the word very widely) has no appeal to anyone with over £500 a year. The result is that the most appalling lies can be printed and except in a few papers like the M.G. which keep up the old traditions it is quite impossible to answer them. One’s only resort is to start miserable little rags like the ones the Trotskyists run, which, necessarily, are nothing but anti-Communist papers. There is no question that appalling lies were published about the P.O.U.M., not only by the official C.P. press, but by papers like the N. C. and N.S. &N., which after publishing refuse to print any answers in their correspondence columns. I don’t know whether you have yet seen the accounts of the P.O.U.M. trial. The trial made it clear, as it was bound to do if fairly conducted, that there was no truth in the accusations of espionage, which were for the most part merely silly. One accusation, for instance, had been that several miles of the Aragón front had been entirely deserted for two months – this at a time when I was there myself. This witness broke down in the box. Similarly, after all the statements in papers of the type of the Daily Worker about ‘two hundred signed confessions’ etc., there was complete failure to produce any evidence whatever. Although the trial was conducted more or less in camera, Solidaridad Obrera was allowed afterwards to print a report, and it was made quite clear that the charges of espionage were dismissed and the four men who were sentenced were only convicted of taking part in the May fighting in Barcelona. In the face of all this the C.P. press printed reports that they had been condemned for espionage. In addition this was also done by some pro-C.P. papers, which significantly enough are also pro-Fascist papers. Eg. the Observer reported the verdict in such a way as to let it appear that the verdict was one of espionage, and the French press of this country, which of course is pro-Franco, reported the accusation, stated that it had been ‘proved’ and then failed to report the verdict. You must agree that this kind of thing is likely to cause resentment, and though in the heat of the moment it may seem ‘realistic’ to say ‘These people are obstructing us – therefore they might as well be Fascists – therefore we’ll say they are Fascists’, in the end it may do more harm than good. I am not a Marxist and I don’t hold with all this stuff that boils down to saying ‘Anything is right which advances the cause of the Party’. On the title page of my book you will find two texts from Proverbs3 which sum up the two prevailing theories of how to combat Fascism, and I personally agree with the first and not the second.

  I think you’ll find answers in my book to some of what
you say. Actually I’ve given a more sympathetic account of the P.O.U.M. ‘line’ than I actually felt, because I always told them they were wrong and refused to join the party. But I had to put it as sympathetically as possible, because it has had no hearing in the capitalist press and nothing but libels in the left-wing press. Actually, considering the way things have gone in Spain, I think there was something in what they said, though no doubt their way of saying it was tiresome and provocative in the extreme.

  I got over the wound with no ill-effects but now my lungs have been giving trouble and they sent me to spend the winter in this country. I think it’s doing me good, and I expect to be back in England in April.

  Yours

  Eric Blair

  (‘George Orwell’)

  P.S. I don’t agree with you that there was no persecution of P.O.U.M. militiamen. There was a lot – even, later on, in hospitals, as I learned from a man who was wounded later than I. I have today heard from George Kopp, who was my commandant at the front, and who has just got out of Spain after 18 months in jail. Making all allowance for exaggerations, and I know people who have been in those circumstances always exaggerate, there is no question he has been shamefully treated, and there were probably some hundreds of others in the same case.

  The chap who told you something about the I.L.P. militiamen signing some kind of statement was probably a man named Parker. If so it was probably a lie. Ditto if it was a man named Frankfort. If it was a man named Hiddlestone4 it was probably not a lie but might have been some kind of mistake. I know nothing about it as I came to Spain quite independently of them.

  1. Frank Jellinek wrote to Ian Angus, 10 June 1964, to explain that Orwell’s letter was prompted by his (Jellinek’s) protest that he had not falsified a despatch to the Guardian‘for propaganda purposes’, as suggested by Orwell in his review of The Civil War in Spain. He had left Barcelona well before 20 June 1937 and he wrote nothing for the Guardian about the suppression of the POUM. He believes the article in question ‘was more or less planted on the MG by F. A. Voigt’, who was a visiting correspondent in Barcelona. Voigt (1892-1957), an outstanding foreign correspondent, early drew attention to the dangers of Nazism; such was his analysis of the rise of National Socialism that he was unable to work for the Manchester Guardian in Germany again after Hitler’s accession to power in 1933. After his book Unto Caesar (1938) was published, he was grouped by Orwell among ‘The Pessimists’ in ‘The Intellectual Revolt’, 1, 24 January 1946 (see 2875). Orwell, in ‘Notes on Nationalism’, October 1945 (see 2668), grouped him with other Anglophobes who suddenly became violently pro-British. Voigt edited The Nineteenth Century and After from 1938 to 1946.

  2. See ‘A Mistake Corrected’, New Leader, 13 January 1939, p. 303 above.

  3. ‘Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him. / Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit’, Proverbs 26:4-5. Orwell gave the reference as xxvi, 5-6 in Homage to Catalonia. It was not corrected until the Penguin edition of 1989.

  4. Buck Parker, Frank Frankfort and Reg Hiddlestone were members of the ILP contingent linked to the 3rd Regiment, Division Lenin, POUM, of which Orwell was also a member. For Frankfort (Frankford), see Orwell’s reply to his accusations, 24 September 1937 (399).

  [535]

  ‘Release of George Kopp’

  Among Orwell’s papers were three issues of Independent News : a special number of, probably, late November or early December 1938 devoted to ‘The P. O. U.M. Trial in Barcelona’; No. 59,16 December 1938, with an article titled ‘After the P. O. U.M. Trial’; and No. 60, 23 December 1938, which included a report on George Kopp’s imprisonment and release. Kopp was Orwell’s commander in Spain, and Orwell and his wife visited him in prison (see pp. 15(–62[VI/171-8] ). The account given must have been derived from Kopp, who was not the most reliable of witnesses, but Orwell would have taken it at face value. It shows that Orwell had a close friend who had suffered at the hands of the Cheka (the Soviet secret police), knew about false confessions and had read of ‘torture by rats’ in a confined space. In view of its significance this account is given infull (with two or three slight styling corrections). It should be noted that Kopp was questioned in Russian and that an interpreter was required, which seems natural. Kopp, however, was born in Russia and went to Belgium only when he was ten. He may have been able to speak Russian but not have revealed this to his captors. Independent News, ‘Service de Presse Hebdomadaire du Bureau d’Informations Franco-Britanniques’, was issued from Paris; its editor was Lucien Weitz. It presented the POUM point of view.

  After an intensive campaign for the release of George Kopp our Belgian comrades have succeeded in saving one more revolutionary militant from the claws of the Spanish stalinists°.

  George Kopp has been saved but for a long time he will carry on his body the marks of the sadistic cruelty of these twentieth century inquisitors. When George Kopp came to Spain he was a robust strapping young man, radiantly healthy and strong. Today he has emerged from his long calvary, thin, feeble and bent, walking slowly with the aid of a cane. His body is covered with scabs and bruises, the marks of the diseases he has contracted in the subterranean dungeons of the Stalinist ‘checas’, in the damp, airless holds of the prison ships, and in the Forced Labour Camps.

  Kopp was arrested June 20, 1937 at the height of the P.O.U.M. repression. Arrested without a warrant, without the knowledge of any authority, he was released in the same manner, without an order from any Spanish Court, – but for the past year and a half he has been under the vigilance of the Communist Party watch dogs.

  During this time Kopp has been in the following jails, hideouts, secret prisons etc. First, upon his arrest he was taken to Police Headquarters; from there to the Hotel Falcon; then to the ‘checa’ of Puerta del Angel; from there to Vallmajor (clandestine prison). He was later sent to Segorbe (near Valencia) to a Forced Labour Camp; then back again to Vallmajor; then to the prison ship Uruguay; then to Falset (Labour Camp No. 6); then to the Palacio de Misiones; back again to the Uruguay; then to the Barcelona Seminary; afterwards to the Preventorium of Colell; then to Tamarite in Bonanova (suburb of Barcelona); and back to the Seminary. He was finally released December 7, 1938.

  In the ‘checa’ of Puerta del Angel he was interrogated 27 times during a total of ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY FIVE hours. The questions were put in Russian and the Russian Communist agents in charge had to use an interpreter both for the questions and the answers.

  When Kopp was taken to the Falcon Hotel (the POUM hotel stolen by the ‘unofficial’ police and turned into a prison), he was so exasperated with the entire situation and with his arbitrary arrest that he decided to go on a hunger strike as a protest. During 6 days he touched no food but was obliged to give it up as it only endangered his situation.

  In the Vallmajor prison the Stalinists put on their best performance. They started by cajoling, then intimidation and finally coercion and open threats. They placed before him three documents to sign, – one, his promotion to Lieutenant Colonel; another, his affiliation to the Communist Party; and the third, a ‘confession’ saying that the P.O.U.M. was a nest of spies and traitors. When Kopp refused to sign he was put in a coal bin without light, air, or food where enormous rats ran in and out of his legs. For 12 days he remained in the black pit, seeing no one, hearing no one until one day a voice called out, ‘Tonight we’re going to shoot you!’

  Kopp’s long martyrdom was his reward for a clean revolutionary record in the Workers’ Militia. He came to Spain from Belgium when the revolution broke out. He left immediately for the Aragón front with the Miguel Pedrola Column as ‘Centuria’ chief. He took part in the following military operations: Casetas (9–10–36); Huesca (21–10–36); Insane Asylum of Huesca (11–36); Vedado Zucra (5–12–36); Alcubierre (6–2–37); the Hermitage of Salas (13–4–37); Chimillas (13–6–37). He fought in this last battle only seven days before his arrest. At that time he was Major in t
he Popular Army and had occupied commanding posts in the 29th Division.

  [534]

  ‘Caesarean Section in Spain

  The Highway,1 March 1939

  When General Franco raised his rebellion in July, 1936, he threw a spanner into the works of a machine which was travelling in a fairly well-defined direction. How seriously he jammed it is still uncertain.

  The revolution of 1931 had got rid of the Spanish monarchy but had failed to solve any of the country’s fundamental economic problems. One of its effects, however, had been to create an atmosphere of liberalism and free speech in which ideas hitherto frowned upon could circulate widely. From then onwards it was clear to many observers that civil war in Spain was inevitable. The decisive moment came when a Government which could roughly be described as ‘left’ was returned by a rather narrow majority at the elections of February, 1936. This Government – the Government of the Popular Front – was not by any means under the control of extremists. It did not precipitate a crisis by violence towards its political opponents; on the contrary, it actually weakened itself by its moderation. A more rigidly ‘left’ Government would have dealt earlier with the military plot which everyone knew was being prepared, and would probably have made some promise of independence to the Arabs in Spanish Morocco, thus preventing them from throwing in their lot with Franco. Nevertheless the Government’s programme of reform menaced the big landowners and the Church, as any radical reform was bound to do. In the existing state of Spain it was not possible to move nearer to a real democracy without colliding with powerful vested interests. Consequently, the mere appearance of the Popular Front Government was enough to raise the most difficult problem of our time: the problem of making fundamental changes by democratic methods.