Andres
Nin
was
born in Spain in 1892. He
held left-wing political views and for a while he was secretary to
Leon Trotsky.
In
1935 Nin joined with Joaquin Maurin
to form the Workers
Party of Marxist Unification (POUM). This revolutionary anti-Stalinist
Communist party was strongly influenced by the political ideas of
Leon Trotsky. The group supported the
collectivization of the means of production and agreed with Trotsky's
concept of permanent revolution.
As a result
of Maurin's involvement, POUM was very strong in Catalonia. In most
areas of Spain it made little impact and in 1935 POUM is estimated
to have only around 8,000 members.
After the
Popular Front gained
victory Nin became councillor of justice. He supported the government
but his radical policies such as nationalization without compensation,
were not introduced. During
the Spanish
Civil War the
Workers Party of Marxist Unification
grew rapidly and by the
end of 1936 it was 30,000 strong with 10,000 in its own militia.
During
the Spanish
Civil War the
Workers
Party of Marxist Unification grew
rapidly and by the end of 1936 it was 30,000 strong with 10,000 in
its own militia.
During
the war Luis Companys attempted to maintain
the unity of the coalition of parties in Barcelona.
However, after the Soviet cousul, Vladimir
Antonov-Ovseenko, threatened the suspension of Russian aid, he
agreed to sack Nin as minister of justice in December 1936.
Nin's followers
were also removed from the government. In June 1937 Nin and most of
the leadership of POUM were arrested and sent to a Soviet camp at
Acala de Henares near Madrid. Andrés
Nin was
executed on 20th June 1937.
(1)
John
Dos Passos, The Villages
Are the Heart of Spain (1937)
The headquarters of the unified Marxist party (P.O.U.M.).
It's late at night in a large bare office furnished with odds and
ends of old furniture. At a bit battered fake Gothic desk out of somebody's
library. Andres Nin sits at the telephone. I sit in a mangy overstuffed
armchair. On the settee opposite me sits a man who used to be editor
of a radical publishing house in Madrid. We talk in a desultory way
with many pauses about old times in Madrid, about the course of the
war. They are telling me about the change that has come over the population
of Barcelona since the great explosion of revolutionary feeling that
followed the attempted military coup d'etat and swept the fascists
out of Catalonia in July. 'You can even see it in people's dress,'
said Nin from the telephone laughing. 'Now we're beginning to wear
collars and ties again but even a couple of months ago everybody was
wearing the most extraordinary costumes... you'd see people on the
street wearing feathers.'
Nin was wellbuilt and healthylooking
and probably looked younger than his age; he had a ready childish
laugh that showed a set of solid white teeth. From time to time as
we were talking the telephone would ring and he would listen attentively
with a serious face. Then he'd answer with a few words too rapid for
me to catch and would hang up the receiver with a shrug of the shoulders
and come smiling back into the conversation again. When he saw that
I was begin- ning to frame a question he said, 'It's the villages.
. . They want to know what to do.' 'About Valencia taking over the
police services?' He nodded. 'What are they going to do?' 'Take a
car and drive through the suburbs of Barcelona, you'll see that all
the villages are barricaded. The committees are all out on the streets
with machine guns.' Then he laughed. 'But maybe you had better not.'
'He'd be all right,' said
the other man. 'They have great respect for foreign journalists.'
'Is it an organized movement?' 'It's complicated. . . in Bellver our
people want to know whether they ought to move against the anarchists.
In other places they are with them. You know Spain.'
It was time for me to
push on. I shook hands with Nin and with a young Englishman who also
is dead now, and went out into the rainy night. Since then Nin has
been killed and his party suppressed.
(2)
George
Orwell,
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
On 15 June the police
had suddenly arrested Andres Nin in his office, and the same evening
had raided the Hotel Falcon and arrested all the people in it, mostly
militiamen on leave. The place was converted immediately into a prison,
and in a very little while it was filled to the brim with prisoners
of all kinds. Next day the P.O.U.M. was declared an illegal organization
and all its offices, book-stalls, sanatoria, Red Aid centres and so
forth were seized. Meanwhile the police were arresting everyone they
could lay hands on
who was known to have any connection with the P.O.U.M.
After his arrest Nin was
transferred to Valencia and thence to Madrid, and as early as 21 June
the rumour reached Barcelona that he had been shot. Later the rumour
took a more definite shape: Nin had been shot in prison by the secret
police and his body dumped into the street. This story came from several
sources, including Federica Montsenys, an ex-member of the Government.
From that day to this Nin
has never been heard of alive again.
(3)
Edward
Knoblaugh,
Correspondent in Spain (1937)
Juan Negrin, former Minister of Treasury under
Largo and a friend of the foreign correspondents, was named Premier
to succeed Largo. I had known Negrin for several years and sincerely
admired him. Even after the stocky, bespectacled multi-linguist became
a cabinet minister he continued his nightly visits to the Miami bar
for his after-dinner liqueur. I often chatted with him there, getting
angles on the financial situation.
The presence of a moderate
Socialist at the head of the new government was a boon to the regime
because it strengthened the fiction of a "democratic" government
abroad. Largo's ouster, however, produced fresh troubles. Feeling
much stronger after its critical first test of strength against the
Catalonian Anarcho-Syndicalists, the government had ousted the Anarchist
members of the Catalonian Generalitat government and followed this
up by excluding the Anarcho-Syndicalists from representation in the
new Negrin cabinet.
Largo, it had been thought,
would step down gracefully, but, bitterly disappointed and angry,
the former Premier immediately began plotting his return to power.
The Anarchists, equally bitter at their being deprived of a voice
in government, suddenly threw their support to Largo, who adopted
as his new campaign slogan the Anarchist cry "We want our social
revolution now."
Largo has another important,
if less powerful, ally, in the outlawed P.O.U.M. Trotskyites. The
disappearance and reported murder of the Trotskyite leader, Andres
Nin, added to the bitterness of the P.O.U.M. Nin, one of the
foremost revolutionaries in Spain, was arrested last June when the
government, at the behest of the Stalin Communists, raided the P.O.U.M.
headquarters in Barcelona and arrested many of the members.
It was announced that
Nin had been taken first to Valencia and then to Madrid for imprisonment
pending trial. When the P.O.U.M., supported by the Anarchists and
many of Largo's extreme Socialists, became more and more insistent
in their demands that Nin be produced and tried, and the government
was unable to dodge the issue any longer, it issued a communiqué
to the effect that Nin had "escaped" from the Madrid prison
with his guards. Even
the Anarchist newspapers were obliged to print this version, but Anarchist
and Trotskyite circles were convinced that Nin was murdered enroute
to Madrid, and he became a martyr.
Largo regards the present
government as bourgeois and counter-revolutionary, and is frankly
working for its overthrow. With the opposition to the Negrin government
now three-way, neutral observers do not believe that a decisive program
can long be avoided. The well-disciplined Communists supporting the
Negrin cabinet are confident that if an open fight eventuates, as
it seems likely to do either before or after the war, it will have
the support of a large percentage of Loyalist Spain. The government
will be able to count on its "army within an army."
Whether this will be able
to cope with the powerful labor unions supporting Largo is problematical.
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