The Communist Party (PCE)
in Spain was founded in November, 1921 by dissident members of the
Socialist Party, the National
Confederation of Trabajo (CNT) and the Union
General de Trabajadores (UGT).
As the country had several
powerful left-wing groups and it remained fairly small in size. By
1936 it had a membership of only 40,000 people.
On 15th January 1936, Manuel
Azaña helped
to establish a coalition
of parties on the political left to fight the national elections
due to take place the following month. This included the Communist
Party, the Socialist Party (PSOE), and
the Republican Union Party.
The Popular
Front, as the coalition became known, advocated the restoration
of Catalan autonomy, amnesty for political prisoners, agrarian reform,
an end to political blacklists and the payment of damages for property
owners who suffered during the revolt of 1934. The Anarchists
refused to support the coalition and instead urged people not to vote.
Right-wing groups in Spain
formed the National Front. This included the CEDA
and the Carlists. The Falange
Española did not officially join but most of its members
supported the aims of the National Front.
The Spanish people voted
on Sunday, 16th February, 1936. Out of a possible 13.5 million voters,
over 9,870,000 participated in the 1936
General Election. 4,654,116 people (34.3) voted for the Popular
Front, whereas the National Front obtained 4,503,505 (33.2) and the
centre parties got 526,615 (5.4). The Popular Front, with 263 seats
out of the 473 in the Cortes
formed the new government.
The Popular
Front government immediately upset the conservatives by releasing
all left-wing political prisoners. The government also introduced
agrarian reforms that penalized the landed aristocracy. Other measures
included transferring right-wing military leaders such as Francisco
Franco to posts
outside Spain, outlawing the Falange Española
and granting Catalonia political and administrative autonomy.
As a result of these measures
the wealthy took vast sums of capital out of the country. This created
an economic crisis and the value of the peseta declined which damaged
trade and tourism. With prices rising workers demanded higher wages.
This led to a series of strikes in Spain.
On
the 10th May 1936 the conservative Niceto
Alcala Zamora was
ousted as president and replaced by the left-wing Manuel
Azaña.
Soon afterwards Spanish Army officers, including Emilio
Mola,
Francisco
Franco, Gonzalo
Queipo de Llano and
José
Sanjurjo,
began plotting to overthrow the Popular Front government. This resulted
in the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War
on 17th July, 1936.
President Manuel
Azaña appointed
Diego Martinez Barrio as prime minister
on 18th July 1936 and asked him to negotiate with the rebels. He contacted
Emilio
Mola and
offered him the post of Minister of War in his government. He refused
and when Azaña
realized that the Nationalists
were unwilling to compromise, he sacked Martinez Barrio and replaced
him with José Giral. To protect the
Popular Front government, Giral gave orders for arms to be distributed
to left-wing organizations that opposed the military uprising.
In September 1936, President
Azaña appointed
the left-wing socialist, Francisco
Largo Caballero
as prime minister. Largo Caballero also took over the important role
of war minister. Largo Caballero brought into his government two members
of the Communist Party: Jesus Hernández
(Education) and Vicente Uribe (Agriculture).
The May
Riots in 1937 severely damaged the Popular
Front government. Communist members of the Cabinet were highly
critical of the way Francisco
Largo Caballero handled
the disturbances. President Manuel
Azaña agreed
and on 17th May he asked Juan Negrin to
form a new government. Negrin was a communist sympathizer and from
this date Joseph Stalin obtained more
control over the policies of the Republican government
Negrin's government
now attempted to bring the Anarchist
Brigades under
the control of the Republican Army. At first
the Anarcho-Syndicalists
resisted and attempted
to retain hegemony over their units. This proved impossible when the
government made the decision to only pay and supply militias that
subjected themselves to unified command and structure.
Negrin also
began appointing members of the Communist
Party (PCE) to important military and civilian
posts. This included Marcelino Fernandez, a communist, to head the
Carabineros. Communists were also given control of propaganda, finance
and foreign affairs. The socialist, Luis
Araquistain, described Negrin's government as the "most cynical
and despotic in Spanish history."
By June 1937,
the Socialist
Party had
160,000 members. The growth in the Communist
Party was
even more dramatic which now had nearly 400,000 members. The communists
also controlled the Union
General de Trabajadores (UGT), the Catalan
Socialist Party (PSUC) and
the PSOE youth movement, Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas (JSU).
On 27th February,
1939, the British prime minister, Neville
Chamberlain
recognized the Nationalist government headed by General Francisco
Franco. Later that day Manuel
Azaña
resigned from office, declaring that the war was lost and that he
did not want Spaniards to make anymore useless sacrifices.
Juan
Negrin
now promoted communist leaders such as Antonio
Cordon, Juan
Modesto and
Enrique Lister to senior posts in the army.
Segismundo
Casado,
commander of the Republican Army
of the Centre,
now became convinced that Negrin was planning a communist coup. On
4th March, Casedo, with the support of the socialist leader, Julián
Besteiro and disillusioned anarchist leaders, established an anti-Negrin
National Defence Junta.
On 6th March
José
Miaja in Madrid joined the rebellion by ordering the arrests of
Communists in the city. Negrin, about
to leave for France, ordered Luis Barceló,
commander of the First Corps of the Army of the Centre, to try and
regain control of the capital. His troops entered Madrid and there
was fierce fighting for several days in the city. Anarchists troops
led by Cipriano Mera, managed to defeat the
First Corps and Barceló was captured and executed.
Segismundo
Casado
now tried to negotiate a peace settlement with General Francisco
Franco.
However, he refused demanding an unconditional surrender.
The leaders of
the Communist Party were forced to flee from Spain
when General Francisco
Franco and
the Nationalist Army took control
of the country in March 1939.
Jesus
Hernández went to the Soviet Union
and became an executive member of Comintern.
He soon became disillusioned with the rule of Joseph
Stalin and went to live in Mexico. In
his memoirs published in 1953, Hernández admitted that he was
following orders from Stalin to oust Francisco
Largo Caballero and
to get him replaced by Juan Negrin. He
also claimed that Stalin did not really care about the Republicans
winning the Spanish Civil War and was more
concerned with blocking German influence in the country.
(1)
Luis
Bolin, Spain, the Vital Years (1967)
On 16 November 1935, as a prelude to Communist rule, the Comintern
instructed Spanish party members to join hands with Socialist and
Left-wing Republicans. Without antagonizing the middle classes, they
were to intensify their campaign of violence against the Church and
the Right and maintain peasants and other workers in constant turmoil
and unrest. These instructions were scrupulously executed during the
months that followed.
The tactics thus propounded
were not new. Lenin had already prophesied that Spain would be the
first country after Russia to adopt Communism. Trotsky shared this
opinion.
(2)
Roy Campbell, Light on a Dark Horse
(1951)
One noticed, during the restless period that
preceded the 1936 elections, that the working class was divided in
two.
The bootblacks, an enormous class to themselves in Spain, the waiters,
and most of the mechanics, along with the miners and factory workers,
were either anarchists or Reds. It was expected that the anarchists
would abstain from voting: or might even vote for the Right, with
whom, in their liking for liberty, they have more in common than with
the Communists. Amongst the anarchists were to be found some of the
most generous idealistic people, at the same time as the real "phonys"
- like the ones that dug up the cemetery in Huesca,
held parades of naked nuns, and out-babooned in atrocity anything
I had ever read of before. But they were warm-blooded - unlike their
ice-cold compéres, the "commies", who were less human.
You could beg your life from an anarchist. It was not long before
most of the anarchists wished they had gone Right for they were unmercifully
massacred by their Red Comrades.
(3)
George
Orwell,
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
The whole of Comintern
policy is now subordinated (excusably, considering the world situation)
to the defence of U.S.S.R., which depends upon a system of military
alliances. In particular, the USSR is in alliance with France, a capitalist-imperialist
country. The alliance is of little use to Russia unless French capitalism
is strong, therefore Communist policy in France has got to be anti-revolutionary.
This means not only that French Communists now march behind the tricolour
and sing the Marseillaise, but, what is more important, that they
have had to drop all effective agitation in the French colonies. It
is less than three years since Thorez, the Secretary of the French
Communist Party, was declaring that the French workers would never
be bamboozled into fighting against their German comrades; he is now
one of the loudest-lunged patriots in France. The clue to the behaviour
of the Communist Party in any country is the military relation of
that country, actual or potential, towards the USSR In England, for
instance, the position is still uncertain, hence the English Communist
Party is still hostile to the National Government, and, ostensibly,
opposed to rearmament. If, however, Great Britain enters into an alliance
or military understanding with the USSR, the English Communist, like
the French Communist, will have no choice but to become a good patriot
and imperialist; there are premonitory signs of this already. In Spain
the Communist 'line' was undoubtedly influenced by the fact that France,
Russia's ally, would strongly object to a revolutionary neighbour
and would raise heaven and earth to prevent the liberation of Spanish
Morocco. The Daily Mail, with its tales of red revolution financed
by Moscow, was even more wildly wrong than usual. In reality it was
the Communists above all others who prevented revolution in Spain.
Later, when the right-wing forces were in full control, the Communists
showed themselves willing to go a great deal further than the Liberals
in hunting down the revolutionary
leaders.
(4)
Ilya
Ehrenburg, letter
sent to Marcel Rosenberg (30th September,
1936)
The question of possibly
merging the Socialists and the Communists into one party (as in Catalonia)
does not have, according to my preliminary impression, any immediate,
current significance since the Socialist party, as such, at least
in the central region, does not make itself much felt and since the
Socialists and Communists act in concert within the framework of a
union organization - the General Workers' Union - headed by Caballero
(abbreviated UGT), the activity and influence of which far exceed
the limits of a union.
Except for La Pasionaria,
the leadership of the Communist party consists of people who do not
yet have authority on the national level. The party's real general
secretary was an individual about whom I wrote you. Because he occupied
just such a position not only within the Central Committee but also
outside it, he besmirched the reputations of two institutions with
all the people in the Popular Front. However we evaluate his role,
in any case, the fact that he himself took the place of the leadership
hindered the formation, from the leadership cadres, of independent
political leaders.
The Communist party, which
has attracted some of the more politically conscious elements of the
working class, is, all the same, insufficiently organized and politically
strong to take on even to the slightest degree the political work
for the armed forces of the revolution. In Catalonia, about which
I can judge only through partial evidence, the party is significantly
weaker and undoubtedly suffers from the provocative activities of
Trotskyists, who have won over several active leaders, like, for example,
Maurin. Undoubtedly the party is still incapable of independently
rousing the masses to some kind of large-scale action, or of concentrating
all the strength of the leadership on such an action. What is more
the example of Alcazar has been in this connection a notoriously negative
test for the party. However, I will not give a more definite evaluation
of the cadres and strength of the party, since this is the only organization
with which I have had insufficient contact.
What are our channels
for action in this situation? We support close contact with the majority
of the members of the government, chiefly with Caballero and Prieto.
Both of them, through their personal and public authority, stand incomparably
higher than the other members of the government and play a leading
role for them. Both of them very attentively listen to everything
that we say. Prieto at this particular time is trying at all costs
to avoid conflict with Caballero and therefore is trying not to focus
on the issues.
I think it unnecessary
to dwell at this time on the problem of how an aggravation in class
contradictions might take shape during a protracted civil war and
the difficulties with the economy that might result (supplying the
army, the workers, and so on), especially as I think it futile to
explore a more distant prospect while the situation at the front still
places all the issues of the revolution under a question mark.
(5)
André
Marty,
letter sent
to the General Consul of the Soviet Union
in Barcelona
(14th October,
1936)
In the period from 18th
July to 1st September, the members of the Communist party were absorbed
with the armed struggle. Thus, all of the work of the party was reduced
to military action, but largely in an individual sense, rather than
from the standpoint of political leadership of the struggle. At best,
the party committees discussed urgent questions (the collection of
weapons and explosives, supplies, questions of housing, and so on)
but without setting forth perspectives for the future or still less
following a general plan.
Beginning on 18th July,
many leaders headed the struggle and remained at this work later,
during the formation of the columns. For example. Cordon is the assistant
commander of the Estremadura column; Uribe, the deputy for Valencia
has the same position in the Teruda column; and Romero is in the column
that is at Malaga; del Barrio is in the column at Saragossa. But it
must be said that only a very few of the leaders have the requisite
military abilities (I do not mean personal bravery). Thus, of the
four just mentioned, Cordon is a brilliant commander, del Barrio is
quite good, and the rest are worthless from a military point of view.
The political activity
of the party has been reduced to the work of the leadership (editorship
of the newspapers, several cells, demarches to the ministries). Party
agitation, not counting what is carried out in the press, has come
to naught. Internal party life has been reduced to the discussion
of important, but essentially practical and secondary, questions.
Meanwhile, recruiting
has moved and continues to move at a very rapid pace. The influx of
new members into the party is huge. For the first time intellectuals
and even officers are being drawn into the party. Already the most
active elements from the middle cadres began in July to set up militia
units which subsequently were transformed into the Fifth Regiment.
The general staff of the Fifth Regiment, consisting of workers or
officers who are Communists or sympathizers - this is the best thing
that we have in the entire fighting army.
Our party (the Unified
Socialist Party of Catalonia - PSUC) is not united. It continues to
remain merely the sum of the four component parties from which it
was created. From the point of view of the Communist party, despite
the fact that the leadership is in our hands, it does not have an
ideological backbone. There is significant friction from this. Despite
this fact, the party's correct policy vis-a-vis the peasantry and
petty bourgeoisie enhances its powerful influence daily. The PSUC
is the third party in Catalonia (after Esquerra and the CNT). A majority
of the members of the party are members of the UGT, which has significantly
increased the number of its members. Unfortunately, the erratic policy
of the party, especially
on the question of cadres, gave the opportunity to raise Sesé
to the head of the UGT- a man who is suspect from every point of view
(see the protocols of the Catalan Commission at the Seventh Congress
of the Comintern
International in September 1935).
The leadership of the Socialist
party in Madrid (the Workers' Party of Spain) continues to work in
the PSUC, and it often happens that the local groups direct their
letters to it instead of writing to the PCE. On the other hand, Caballero
is striving to seize the leadership. Fifteen days ago in Madrid he
handed three million pesetas to Comorera, the general
secretary of the PSUC, for whom we sent to discuss the question of
Catalonia, and we heard this information about him.
The party's union policy.
Nothing practical has been done. The CNT continues to follow an ever
increasing number of UGT declarations, but generally for political
reasons. Our groups assemble but do not work on the problems of everyday
demands. In general, our activists remain in the UGT (the work is
easier). It is my opinion that the struggle for the unification of
the unions is becoming a pressing task. I proposed that the unions
that are under our influence appeal for unification with two aims:
i) unity of the working class to defend the interests of the workers
against the employers; 2) unity in production to defeat fascism. Mije
in principle accepted this proposal on unification (without pointing
out the aims) at a large mass meeting organized by the party in Madrid
on 27th September. This proposal elicited very strong applause, but
I would have preferred that this had been done as I proposed. It is
my opinion that union work requires radical restructuring.
Agrarian policy. In general
the policy is correct (see the decision by the Ministry of Agriculture
on the question of land), but it has not been popularized in the villages.
They do not demonstrate the deep difference between our line and the
methods of the anarchists. And in this area a colossal work still
must be accomplished.
(6)
Claude
Cockburn, The
Daily Worker (25th November, 1936)
It
is difficult to convey briefly and accurately the feeling for the
Communist Party - so young, and until recently so small - which exists
in Spain today.
It is not on the other
hand, difficult to understand it.
As the situation grew
tougher and tougher and more people who had previously been suspicious
of, and even hostile to the Communist Party, began - sometimes rather
grudgingly and sometimes "with full acknowledgments" - to
accept the fact that a great many things the Communists had said,
which seemed sensational or alarmist at the time, were, as a matter
of fact, true: that when the Communists talked about the "need
for unity" they really were talking about a matter of life and
death, as obvious and urgent as the provision of machine-gun ammunition
and sandbags: that when the Communists declared that every other political
consideration must be secondary to the question of how to win the
war, they meant just that: that when they called upon others to subordinate
sectional aims to the need for supporting the democratic government
of Spain against the Fascists they were the first to put their propositions
into practice: and above all, that, as a result of their highly disciplined
yet highly democratic form of organisation, they were able more easily
than any other single organisation
to translate intentions into action.
Of course it would be
possible to put all this in a more formal way, and a full analysis
of the work of the Communist Party in the united defence of Spain
by all the parties of the People's Front would be a very valuable
thing.
Here, since the part being
played by the Communist Party in the defence of Madrid is now in the
centre of the world stage, I only want to draw attention to one or
two of the points which have brought the Communist Party to this immensely
responsible and honourable position in the democratic alliance, where
it shares with Socialists, Republicans, anarchists and Catholics,
the task of holding the front line of the world's democracy against
the world Fascist threat.
It is, for instance, no
secret that the very first move for the creation of the People's Army
of Spain came from the Communist Party. Nor did it come simply in
the form of a "suggestion" or a manifesto or a report.
(7)
Vladimir
Antonov-Ovseenko,
General
Consul of the Soviet Union in Barcelona
, top secret document sent to NKVD
(14th October,
1936)
The relationship between
our people (the Communists) and the anarcho-syndicalists is becoming
ever more strained. Every day, delegates and individual comrades appear
before the CC of the Unified Socialist Party with statements about
the excesses of the anarchists. In places it has come to armed clashes.
Not long ago in a settlement of Huesca near Barbastro twenty-five
members of the UGT were killed by the anarchists in a surprise attack
provoked by unknown reasons. In Molins de Rei, workers in a textile
factory stopped work, protesting against arbitrary dismissals. Their
delegation to Barcelona was driven out of the train, but all the same
fifty workers forced their way to Barcelona with complaints for the
central government, but now they are afraid to return, anticipating
the anarchists' revenge. In Pueblo Nuevo near Barcelona, the anarchists
have placed an armed man at the doors of each of the food stores,
and if you do not have a food coupon from the CNT, then you cannot
buy anything. The entire population of this small town is highly excited.
They are shooting up to fifty people a day in Barcelona. (Miravitlles
told me that they were not shooting more than four a day).
Relations with the Union
of Transport Workers are strained. At the beginning of 1934 there
was a protracted strike by the transport workers. The government and
the "Esquerra" smashed the strike. In July of this year,
on the pretext of revenge against the scabs, the CNT killed more than
eighty men, UGT members, but not one Communist among them. They killed
not only actual scabs but also honest revolutionaries. At the head
of the union is Comvin, who has been to the USSR, but on his return
he came out against us. Both he and, especially, the other leader
of the union - Cargo - appear to be provocateurs. The CNT, because
of competition with the hugely growing UGT, are recruiting members
without any verification. They have taken especially many lumpen from
the port area of Barrio Chino.
They have offered our people
two posts in the new government - Council of Labour and the Council
of Municipal Work - but it is impossible for the Council of Labour
to institute control over the factories and mills without clashing
sharply with the CNT, and as for municipal services, one must clash
with the Union of Transport Workers, which is in the hands of the
CNT. Fabregas, the councillor for the economy, is a "highly doubtful
sort." Before he joined the Esquerra, he was in the Accion Popular;
he left the Esquerra for the CNT and now is playing an obviously provocative
role, attempting to "deepen the revolution" by any means.
The metallurgical syndicate just began to put forward the slogan "family
wages." The first "producer in the family" received
100 percent wages, for example seventy pesetas a week, the sec- ond
member of the family 50 percent, the third 25 percent, the fourth,
and so on, up to 10 percent. Children less than sixteen years old
only 10 percent each, This system of wages is even worse than egalitarianism.
It kills both production and the family.
In Madrid there are up
to fifty thousand construction workers. Caballero refused to mobilize
all of them for building fortifications around Madrid ("and what
will they eat") and gave a total of a thousand men for building
the fortifications. In Estremadura our Comrade Deputy Cordon is fighting
heroically. He could arm five thousand peasants but he has a detachment
of only four thousand men total. Caballero under great pressure agreed
to give Cordon two hundred rifles, as well. Meanwhile, from Estremadura,
Franco could easily advance into the rear, toward Madrid. Caballero
implemented an absolutely absurd compensation for the militia - ten
pesetas a day, besides food and housing. Farm labourers in Spain earn
a total of two pesetas a day and, feeling very good about the militia
salary in the rear, do not want to go to the front. With that, egalitarianism
was introduced. Only officer specialists receive a higher salary.
A proposal made to Caballero to pay soldiers at the rear five pesetas
and only soldiers at the front ten pesetas was turned down. Caballero
is now disposed to put into effect the institution of political commissars,
but in actual fact it is not being done. In fact, the political commissars
introduced into the Fifth Regiment have been turned into commanders,
for there are none of the latter. Caballero also supports the departure
of the government from Madrid. After the capture of Toledo, this question
was almost decided, but the anarchists were categorically against
it, and our people proposed that the question be withdrawn as inopportune.
Caballero stood up for the removal of the government to Cartagena.
They proposed sounding out the possibility of basing the government
in Barcelona. Two ministers - Prieto and Jimenez de Asua - left for
talks with the Barcelona
government. The Barcelona government agreed to give refuge to
the central government. Caballero is sincere but is a prisoner to
syndicalist habits
and takes the statutes of the trade unions too literally.
The UGT is now the strongest
organization in Catalonia: it has no fewer than half
the metallurgical workers and almost all the textile workers, municipal
workers, service
employees, bank employees. There are abundant links to the peasantry.
But the CNT has much better cadres and has many weapons, which were
seized in the first days (the anarchists sent to the front fewer than
60 percent of the
thirty thousand rifles and three hundred machine guns that they seized).
(8)
Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (1961)
A secret F.A.I.' - Federacion
Anarquista Iberica - 'circular of September 1938 pointed out that
of 7,000 promotions in the Army since May 5,500 had been Communists.
In the Army of the Ebro out of 27 brigades, 25 were commanded by
Communists, while all 9 divisional commanders, 3 army corps commanders,
and the supreme commander (Modesto) were Communists. This was the
most extreme case of Communist control, but the proportions for the
Anarchists were nearly as depressing elsewhere. In all six armies
of Republican Spain the Anarchists believed the proportions to be
163 Communist brigade commanders to 33 Anarchists, 61 divisional commanders
to 9 Anarchists, 15 army corps commanders to 2 Anarchists (with 4
Anarchist sympathizers), and 3 Communist army commanders, 2 sympathizers
and one neutral.
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