A Comment on Recent Literature on Soviet and Comintern Involvement in the Spanish Civil War
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Rev29-03 26/2/08 12:29 Página 205 Frank Schauff* A comment on recent literature on Soviet and Comintern involvement in the Spanish Civil War In many spheres of twentieth century history, the end of the Soviet Union and the partial opening up of a lot of archives in Moscow and other capitals of the former Social- ist bloc have admitted to improve the base for research. Nonetheless, if talking about the former Soviet archives, there have to be made some restrictions to this reappraisal of the situation. First, some of the main Moscow archives have at least partially closed their material again after a short period of nearly complete openness in the first half of the 1990s. Then some of the major archives were either more or less closed as the Presiden- tial Archive or major parts of the archives were made unavailable for researchers because of national security deliberations. Historians could not be quick enough to use the win- dow of opportunity during these two or three years. This situation has not changed very much since the mid-nineties. The second problem is simply a practical problem. Certain- ly, historians of Russia and the Soviet Union were able to make use of the material, but historians – as in our case on Spanish history – had more problems in using the archives for the lack of Russian (and in the Communist International’s case also German) lan- guage knowledge. This implied that only a few of those who were interested in Spanish history and especially the Civil War would be able to use the vast amount of material available even under the aforementioned restrictions. A third problem lies in the interdis- ciplinary approach needed in order to analyse the Soviet Union’s and the Communist International’s policies towards Spain in the period 1936–1939. It is hardly possible to give a sound judgment on the USSR’s foreign policy without detailed knowledge of the fast-moving historiography on that period. The first historian to use the newly accessible archives was Pierre Broué who pub- lished his book Staline et la Révolution. Le cas espagnol in 1993.1 The book, however, failed to improve the historiographical situation very much, since it quoted only a few new documents from archival funds, which were to be closed anew soon afterwards. * Moscow, MSc (Econ), Dr. phil. (Cologne) in Eastern European History, Chief Executive Officer of the VIII, 29 (2008) Association of European Businesses in the Russian Federation; author of Der verspielte Sieg. Sowjetu- nion, Kommunistischer Internationale und Spanischer Bürgerkrieg. Frankfurt/M.: Campus 2005 (in autumn 2008 to be published in Spanish under the title La victoria frustrada by Editorial Debate, Madrid). e-mail: [email protected]. 1 Pierre Broué: Staline et la Révolution. Le cas espagnol. Paris: Fayard 1993. Iberoamericana, Iberoamericana, Rev29-03 26/2/08 12:29 Página 206 206 Frank Schauff Additionally, it was mainly written to support the author’s Trotskyist interpretation of the Stalinist policies in the Spanish Civil War, which he had consistently put forth for decades. The nineties on the whole brought very little progress regarding the Soviet and Com- intern involvement in this matter. The only other independent publication to come out was the work of the Russian historian Mikhail Novikov, who would be able to look at quite some unknown archival documents, but who would nonetheless fail to draw a com- prehensive image and who would remain ideologically tied to the former Soviet interpre- tation of the Spanish Civil War.2 The last remark is even more true for Yurii Rybalkin’s Operatsija »X« published in 2000.3 Colonel Rybalkin, who gives some valuable infor- mation on the military side of the Soviet intervention in the Spanish Civil War, concen- trates very much on the question of arms deliveries. He does this always with the conno- tation to save the prestige of the Red Army. He does say hardly anything about the domestic circumstances of the Soviet military intervention. Antonio Elorza and Marta Bizcarrondo in contrast have concentrated more on the Communist International’s intervention. Since both are specialists in Spanish history of the 20th century, and in spite of the title their book resulted more into a history of the PCE from its inception till the end of the Civil War, than a history of the Comintern in relation to Spain.4 Nonetheless, this book can be seen as the first serious attempt at understanding and outlining the policies of the Comintern and certainly also the Soviet leadership towards the Spanish Republic at War. This analysis is based on some of the Moscow material, although one has to state again that this has not happened on a com- prehensive basis of the available documents. They take a very important step forward in getting rid of some of the myths and legends surrounding the Communist International’s involvement in the Civil War. So they do not follow the conventional wisdom that Prime Minister Largo Caballero became a victim of Communist machinations, contemplated in Moscow, but stumbled mostly over his own incapacities and his tactical awkwardness. On the other hand, they would practically ignore the Soviet background of the Com- intern policies, which makes it hard to understand some developments. Thus they would certainly be mistaken in stating that the Comintern’s advisor Codovilla would not be subject to Stalinist repression, since he was not easy to replace. Since the beginning of this decade some more new books have appeared on the mar- ket. Amongst them a collection of documents taken mostly from the Russian State Mili- tary Archive (RGVA) in Moscow under the title Spain Betrayed. Certainly the documen- tation is correct, but the editors of the archival material are ideologically biased in their comments and the reader very often asks oneself, why these comments say virtually the contrary from what can be read from documents itself. The editors are making an effort to make sense of the title, which they can hardly achieve with the documentation they VIII, 29 (2008) 2 Michail Vasil’evich Novikov: SSSR, Komintern i Grazhdanskaja voina v Ispanii. 2 volumes. Yaroslavl’ 1995. 3 Yurii Rybalkin: Operatsiya »X«. Sovetskaya voennaya pomoshch’ respublikanskoi Ispanii (1936-1939). Moscow 2000. 4 Antonio Elorza/Marta Bizcarrondo: Queridos Camaradas: La Internacional Comunista y España, 1919-1939. Barcelona 1999. Iberoamericana, Iberoamericana, Rev29-03 26/2/08 12:29 Página 207 A comment on recent literature on Soviet and Comintern involvement 207 themselves put together. Nonetheless, this documentation is certainly a very important source of information.5 Since then some more movement has come into published documents and historio- graphical works on the Soviet and Comintern involvement in the Spanish Civil War. Beyond the Russian language edition of Comintern documents Komintern i grazhdanska- ya voina v Ispanii, which came out in 2001,6 and which will be ignored here, one has to mention Ángel Encinas Moral’s edition of the final report by Stoyan Minev of his activi- ties and observations during his stay in Spain in 1937-1939. Moral has found and edited an interesting document for the debate on the Communist policies during the Spanish Civil War. Minev, advisor for the Comintern in Spain from January 1937 till the end of the conflict, comments broadly on the problems of the Spanish Republic and its political forces during his stay in the country. Minev’s report is the second of a Comintern advisor, after Togliatti’s final report was published some years ago. The editor assumes that also at least Codovilla has written a similar account, which has not been found yet. In contrary to Togliatti’s report Minev is less polemic and does not emphasise the existence of ene- mies and spies. Minev goes more systematically into detail. He starts his account with the period before the Civil War, but his account certainly becomes interesting, after he him- self has entered the country. In principle, most of the information conveyed by Minev’s report is not very original. He describes the organisational insufficiencies of the Spanish Republic, the lack of coordination, the political infighting and the weak mobilisation of human and productive resources for the war effort. But Minev relates some interesting evaluations from the Communist side, questioning some of the conventional wisdom emphasised by some scholars dealing with the Spanish Civil War. First, Minev makes clear that the process against the leadership of the POUM, which was evolved after the May 1937 events in Barcelona, was insufficient. As also Togliatti has indicated, the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) was outraged about the lengthy preparations of the process, which was postponed several times. When it finally took place in autumn of 1938, the judgment was far below the expectations and infuriated the Communists. Secondly, Minev describes it as a mistake that the Communist Party subjected itself to Negrín’s leadership. This stands contrary to Bolloten’s thesis, that the Prime Minister was an agent or at least a puppet of the PCE. Minev sees the Communists following Negrín’s leadership and cooperating closely with him, but thereby losing their own room for manoeuvre. The Communists tied themselves to Negrín’s fate, since there was no alternative. This happened although the Communists found Negrín’s measures for the mobilisation of resources unsatisfactory and saw the declaration of martial law in Janu- ary 1939 as a major mistake, which harmed their own party most. This is closely related with a third interesting interpretation. Contrasting with most of the historiography on the Spanish Civil War, Minev indicates that the Communist Party VIII, 29 (2008) 5 Ronald Radosh/Mary R.