Ilya
Ehrenburg
was
born in Russia in 1891. He worked for Izvestia
and between 1936 and 1939 reported on the Spanish
Civil War. As well as writing for the newspaper he also collected
information on the Popular Front government
for the NKVD.
Ehrenburg died in 1967.
(1)
Ilya
Ehrenburg, letter
sent to Marcel
Rosenberg, Soviet ambassador to the Spanish Republic
(17th September, 1936)
To add to today's telephone
conversation, I report: Companys was in a very nervous state. I spoke
with him for more than two hours, while all he did the whole time
was complain about Madrid. His arguments: the new government has not
changed anything; slights Catalonia as if it were a province and this
is an autonomous republic; sends instructions like to the other governors
- refuses to turn over religious schools to the generalitat; demands
soldiers and does not give out any of the weapons bought abroad, not
one airplane and so on.
As yet, neither Caballero
nor Prieto has managed to find time to receive him. And so on. He
explained that if they did not receive cotton or hard currency for
cotton within three weeks there would be a hundred thousand out of
work. He very much wanted to trade with the Soviet Union. He believed
that any sign of attention being paid to Catalonia
by the Soviet Union was important. As for the internal situation,
he spoke rather optimistically;
the influence of the FAl was decreasing, the role of the government
growing.
I spoke with Garcia Oliver.
He was also in a frenzied state. Intransigent. At the same time that
Lopez, the leader of the Madrid syndicalists, was declaring to me
that they had not permitted and would not permit attacks on the Soviet
Union
in the CNT newspaper, Oliver declared that they had said that they
were "criticizing" the Soviet Union because it was not an
ally, since it had signed the non-interference pact, and so on. Durruti,
who has been at the front, has learned a lot, whereas Oliver, in Barcelona,
is still nine-tenths anarchist ravings. For instance, he is against
a unified command on the Aragon front; a unified command is necessary
only when a general offensive begins. Sandino, who was present during
this part of the conversation, spoke out for a unified command. They
touched on the question of mobilization and the transformation of
the militia into an army. Durruti made much of the mobilization plans
(I do not know why - there are volunteers but no guns). Oliver said
that he agreed with Durruti, since "Communists and Socialists
are hiding themselves in the rear and pushing the FAI-ists out of
the cities and villages." At this point he was almost raving.
I would not have been surprised if he had shot me.
I spoke with Trueba, the
PSUC (Communist) political commissar. He complained about the FAI-ists.
They are not giving our men ammunition. We have only thirty-six bullets
left per man. The anarchists have reserves of a million and a half.
Colonel Villalba's soldiers only have a hundred cartridges each. He
cited many instances of the petty tyrannies of FAI. People from the
CNT complained to me that Fronsosa, the leader of PSUC, gave a speech
at a demonstration in San Boi in which he said that the Catalans should
not be given even one gun, since the guns would just fall into the
hands of the anarchists. In general, during the ten days that I was
in Catalonia, relations between Madrid and the generalitat on the
one hand, and that between the Communists and the anarchists on the
other, became very much more strained. Companys is wavering; either
he gravitates toward the anarchists, who have agreed to recognize
the national and even nationalistic demands of the Esquerra, or he
depends on the PSUC in the struggle against FAI. His circle is divided
between supporters of the former and of the latter solutions. If the
situation on the Talavera front worsens, we can expect him to come
out on one or the other side. We must improve relations between the
PSUC and the CNT and then try to get closer to Companys.
In Valencia our party
is working well, and the influence of the UGT is growing. But the
CNT has free rein there. The governor takes their side completely.
This is what happened when I was there: sixty anarchists with two
machine-guns turned up from the front, as their commander had been
killed. In Valencia they burned the archives and then wanted to break
into the prison to free the criminals. The censor (this is under Lopez,
the leader of the CNT) prohibited our newspaper from reporting about
any of this outrage, and in the CNT paper
there was a note that the "free masses destroyed the law archives
as part of the accursed
past."
(2)
Ilya
Ehrenburg,
letter sent to Marcel
Rosenberg, Soviet ambassador to the Spanish Republic
(18th September, 1936)
Today I again had a long
conversation with Companys. He proposed to form a local government
in this way: half Esquerra, half CNT and UGT. He said that he would
reserve for himself finance and the police. After my words on the
fact that the anarchists' lack of personal responsibility would interfere
with manufacturing, he declared that he "agreed" to put
a Marxist at the head of industry. He called Oliver a fanatic. He
reproached the PSUC for not answering the terror of the anarchists
with the same. On the conduct of the Catalan militia in Madrid, he
said that that was the FAI-ists and that the national Guardia and
the Esquerrists would fight anyone. He said that Madrid itself wanted
the CNT militia, while not hiding the fact that the latter left to
"establish order in Madrid." He advised sending them back
from Madrid.
The whole time he cursed
the FAI. He knew that I was going from him to the CNT and was very
interested in how the FAI-ists would converse with me. He requested
that I communicate the results of the conversation with him. He complained
that the FAI-ists were against Russia were carrying out anti-Soviet
propaganda, or more accurately, carried out but that he was our friend,
and so on. A steamship, even if it held only sugar
would soften his heart.
(3)
Ilya
Ehrenburg,
letter sent to Marcel
Rosenberg, Soviet ambassador to the Spanish Republic
(30th September, 1936)
Undoubtedly one of the
main tasks is to attract to the revolution's side, at this stage,
the healthier elements from among the anarchists. It is characteristic
that in the last conversation that I had with Galarza, the minister
of the interior (a Socialist), he mentioned that his attempt at cooperation
with the anarchist labor federation had produced positive results,
and that lately several of the confederation leaders had begun to
recognize that many alien elements were interspersed among their members.
One of the anarchists' "idols," who provokes great doubts
of a nonideological sort, is Juan Lopez, who is now the boss of Valencia.
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.
In this kind of circumstance,
such as I have touched on above and which I went into in my summary
telegram, there is no need to prove that supplying the Spanish with
technology may turn out to have a huge influence on the final outcome
of the civil war. It is clear that however significant the temporary
successes of the rebels may be, they have in no way guaranteed a definitive
advantage. The steadfast military cadres of the revolution will be
forged in the very process of the civil war.
(4)
Ilya
Ehrenburg,
Izvestia,
on the May
Riots (3rd November, 1937)
I must express the sense
of shame which I now feel as a man. The same day that the fascists
are busy shooting the women of Asturias, there appeared in the French
paper a protest against injustice. But these people did not
protest against the butchers of Asturias but rather against the republic
who dares to detain
fascists and provocateurs of the POUM.
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