Trotsky on Spain

chapter 2 Trotsky on Spain For Trotsky, the 1930s were years of personal tragedy, constant danger, hurried departures and bitter struggle against his bête noire, Stalin. Yet they were also highly productive. Following his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1929, he devoted most of his energy to overseeing the work of the International Left Opposition and, later on, to founding the Fourth International. His writings from this period include The History of the Russian Revolution, The Stalinist School of Falsification, and The Revolution Betrayed, as well as numerous pam- phlets, articles and letters (many of which are now collected in the 14-volume Writings of Leon Trotsky). To the list of published works we must add his writings on Germany, France and Spain, as well as unfinished biographies of Lenin and Stalin. Given his many and varied literary and political activities, it is a testament to the significance of events in Spain that Trotsky devoted so much valuable time to analysing them.1 1 In September 1937 Trotsky communicated to his literary agent his eagerness to write a book on Spain which would include ‘not only a general analysis of the Spanish Revolution and its development, but also a merciless condemnation of the Stalinist leadership of the revolution and of the attitude of the so-called European “democracies”’. However, the book did not materialise other than as a much shorter article under the title ‘The Lessons of Spain: The Last Warning’. See the extracts from Trotsky’s letters to Charles Mumford Walker of 17, 28 and 30 September and 6 October 1937 in Blanco Rodríguez 1982, pp. 115–17. Trotsky’s writings on Spain between 1930 and 1940 are collected in Trotsky 1973a. Various articles refer- ring to Spanish events are also to be found in the fourteen-volume collection (Trotsky 1970–9). Trotsky’s involvement with Spain has received its most sympathetic treatment from the French historian Pierre Broué (1966; 1967; 1975; 1982; 1988). Other contributions from a Trotskyist perspective are the introductions: L. Evans 1973, Orozco 1977. Also from a Trotskyist perspective, see Hassel 1982. Critics of Trotsky’s writings on Spain are headed by the POUM veteran Ignacio Iglesias. He produced two books or, rather, the same book twice: Iglesias 1976 and 1977. Other articles of interest are Rovida 1980 and Thornberry 1982; an interesting refer- ence to Trotsky’s analysis of the Primo dictatorship is Pastor 1978. Of lesser interest are Velarde Fuentes 1968 and Thornberry 1978. The standard works on Trotsky devote little space to his involvement with Spain. For example: Deutscher 1963; Howe 1978, pp. 128–31; Hallas 1979, pp. 71–5. I am indebted to the Fundación Andreu Nin in Madrid for putting at my dis- posal the unpublished transcript of a Mesa redonda (roundtable) discussion on Trotsky and Spain. Participants include Javier Maestro (historian), Juan Pablo Fussi (director of the © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��4 | doi ��.��63/9789004�70565_��3 60 chapter 2 Trotsky’s writings on Spain, which span the 1930s, fall into distinct phases in both their volume and political intensity. This fact reflects the way in which events in other countries often took precedence over those in Spain as well as Trotsky’s growing dissatisfaction with the actions of his Spanish followers. During the first phase, 1930 to 1932, Trotsky outlined the situation in Spain, which he believed would produce a momentous revolutionary opportunity. He argued that this would have massive implications for the world proletarian revolution and the struggle against fascism and dictatorship in Europe. His writings of this period occupy nearly half of the volume of collected works devoted to Spain. Most of these pieces were intended to assist dissident Spanish communists such as Andreu Nin, who looked to Trotsky for political guidance.2 However, between 1933 and 1935, he wrote little about Spain. This lapse is probably explained by his preoccupation with the European situation following Hitler’s rise to power and his own change of political direction, which took him away from attempts to rescue the Third International and toward building a new international organisation. It was also a particularly unsettled period in Trotsky’s life. In July 1933, he moved to France from Turkey, where he had been in exile from the Soviet Union since February 1929; then from France to Norway in June 1935; and, finally, to Mexico in January 1937. During this time he was engaged in writing his major critique of Stalinism, The Revolution Betrayed, and was subject to increasingly violent attacks by Stalin’s agents. When, in 1936, he returned to the issues of the Spanish Revolution, he was faced with a situation that had altered dramatically in the space of less than two years. In addition to the problems of a country in revolutionary turmoil, there were the questions of the Popular Front, the POUM and the Civil War.3 Biblioteca Nacional), Wilebaldo Solano (an ex-POUM leader), and the French historian Pierre Broué (Fundación Andreu Nin, n.d.). 2 Between May 1930 and December 1932, Trotsky wrote more than 60 letters, articles, pam- phlets and Left Opposition bulletins which dealt wholly or partly with Spanish matters. These include 36 letters to Nin, which Trotsky later published along with some of Nin’s letters. Since the Trotsky-Nin correspondence was stolen by GPU agents in November 1936, and given comments by Trotsky to this effect, there was certainly much more than what has sur- vived. See Reed and Jakobson 1987, pp. 363–75. 3 Biographical information on Trotsky relies heavily upon the following works: Deutscher 1954, 1959 and 1963; Segal 1983; Thatcher 2003; Swain 2006; and Service 2009. However, it seems that little written by or about Trotsky is uncontroversial. The three latest biographies are heavily critical of Deutscher. Yet they themselves have been criticised from within the Trotskyist movement; significant parts of Service’s biography have been seriously challenged for factual accuracy by some (non-Trotskyist) Eastern European specialists. A key critic from .

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