Revolution et la guerre d’Espagne, by Broué

[p021] La Revolution et la Guerre d’Espagne. By Broué, P. and Témime, E. Les Editions de Minuit, 1961, 30 NF. _ Of the recent books on the Spanish Civil War, this one stands out for its explicit political dissection of the forces of revolution and counter- revolution which lay behind it. By comparison, Thomas’s! involved nar- rative is politically naive and uncom- prehending and Balloten’s? study of the events of 1936, for all its in- valuable documentation, provides only laborious corroboration. This work measures the extent of social crisis which afflicted 20th century Spain, combining medieval backwardness uneasily with the dis- integrative forces of developing capitalism. From this crisis issued the attempt to install a democratic 1. Thomas, H., The Civil War in Spain. 2. Balloten, B., The Great Camou- flage.

[p022] 60 republic in 1931 and the failure of those politicians who pinned their faith in parliamentary development to provide the conditions for its success. Indeed, the years of the Republic provide a_ history of dictatorship, instability, revolt, in- ternal violence and civil strife which led inevitably to the showdown in 1936. The electoral victory, by a narrow margin, of the parties of the Popular Front in February of that year was only an episode. Not only did the social camps behind the party leaders of Left and Right become increas- ingly irreconcilable, but the line-up in the Cortes soon ceased to represent the real line-up of forces. On the one hand, and long before 1936, the landed oligarchy, big business and the church had concluded that the ultimate hope of preserving the social order upon which their wealth and privileges depended lay in military dictatorship. The army thus took on a political role and its leaders pre- pared themselves for the day when it would become the saviour of a Spain swept clear of liberals, atheists and reds, On the other side, the social conditions of the country, with its politically conscious urban working class and large landless or semi- landless peasantry, sharpened the class struggle to revolutionary pitch. The weakness of Spanish Marxism—the Communist Party before 1936 was of no great weight among the workers —saw much of the revolutionary energies thus inspired turning to the anarchist movement, which made the breaking of the state power the begin- ning and the end of revolutionary strategy. As Trotsky had shown from 1931 onwards, the great need of the Spanish workers was the forging of a new leadership and movement which could prepare for the coming struggle. The failure of Nin and Maurin, in particular, to grasp this point, and to understand the character of the developing struggle, meant that the workers entered the combat with immense courage and -fervour, but politically with inadequate armament. It was not only this kind of armament which was lacking in the July days when the military in- surrection began. The popular re- sponse was a call for arms and resistance which took on a spontane- LABOUR REVIEW—Summer, 1962 ous revolutionary character. The government of the Popular Front, uneasy and vacillating through all the months of growing tension and violence, found itself pitched into a situation which it would dearly have liked to avoid. Between the contend- ing social forces its main leaders represented that substantial section of the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie which hankered after a consolidation of the parliamentary system on the basis of social reforms which, while modernising the archaic structure of Spanish society, at the same time would leave intact the essential foundation of capitalist private property. This was the premise of the Popular Front, which thus con- taminated and distorted the actions and policy of all those working class leaders and movements which joined it or, as did the anarchists, worked with it. It was a premise which led some of the Left republicans, even after the revolt had begun, to seek a reconciliation between the two camps, a tendency which found expression, here and there, right down to the final capitulation. In the meantime, as this book shows irrefutably and in detail, a genuine revolution was taking place: a revolution made by the workers and peasants themselves. It came to life in the establishment of the militias and in the ubiquitous committees which, like the Soviets in 1917, took over the power which had fallen from the hands of the bourgeois state when its coercive organs—police and army —turned against it. The situation of dual power which resulted provided the basis for carrying forward the social revolution. The Popular Front government, for its part, took on the task of rebuilding he Republican state, with all the trappings of police, disciplined army and ‘legality’. In this task it found its most willing and able co-operators in the now rapidly growing Communist Party. Follow- ing the line of the Seventh Congress of the Communist International, the struggle was held to be one between democracy and fascism in which the aim was the establishment of ‘a new type of democratic republic’ based on a union of classes which could solve the problems of the bourgeois- democratic revolution of Spanish soil. This policy, which made the Com- munist Party the most eager support for the Popular Front and for the restoration of the republican state, was determined essentially by the needs of Soviet foreign policy which had no interest in seeing a revolution- ary regime established in the Iberian peninsula, With the Republic be- coming increasingly dependent upon Soviet aid and arms, the republican and socialist politicians, as well as their governmental allies, the ‘anti- state’ anarchists, had to keep their mouths shut while the NKVD was installed in Spain for the express purpose of hunting down and liquidating the revolutionaries. The ebb of the revolution from late 1936 (so well delineated by Orwell3 through the differences in the atmosphere in Barcelona over this period, in a book which is cavalierly dismissed by Thomas) leads on to the situation described by Hernandez,‘ at that time a Communist Minister (in a book described by Thomas as ‘un- pleasant’) which led to the assassina- tion of Andreas Nin and the stifling of the revolution in Catalonia. By the time when the CP had been able to get rid of the Caballero government, the embers of the revolu- tion were burning dim. The conflict had become merely a military one: the republican state versus the military-fascist regime of Burgos. The differences between the two forms of state, as well as the situation at the front, are described in this book with, as far as can be seen, the care and impartiality which they deserve. Inevitably, the the temper of the Spanish masses changes, the events themselves become intrinsically less interesting. It becomes a story of intrigue and personal friction—to be continued in the recriminations of exile—and the grinding forward of the Franco forces with their massive Italo-German support to the accompanying farce of the Non- Intervention Committee. The men who took leading parts in the heroic days of of 1936 are within a year or so either dead (killed at the front, or perhaps by the NKVD) or in prison (half the Model Prison in Barcelona contained POUM and CNT = sup- porters) or working or fighting according to the ‘discipline’ of the republican state. The revolution had 3. Orwell, G., Homage to Catalonia. 4. Hernandez, J.. .La Grande Trahison.

[p023] BOOK REVIEWS failed and without help from its fellow ‘democracies’ the Spanish Republic was fated for defeat. This book has not, perhaps, in deference to the general reading public, discussed in the requisite detail all the political lessons of the Spanish events, but it provides a most useful guide to further study, It is to be hoped that an English translation will soon be made avail- able. _ T.K. Missing the point The Anatomy of Soviet Man. By Klaus Mehnert. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1961, 30s. , Mr. Mehnert has many unique qualifications as a writer on the Soviet Union—he was born and spent his early childhood in Russia, he speaks Russian fluently, and he has lived for long spells in the Soviet Union both in the intimate circle of personal friends and as a correspon- dent for the German press. Thirty years ago he published his book on Soviet youth (Die Jugend in Sowjetrussland, 1932), a useful con- tribution to our knowledge of an important phase in the development of the Soviet Union. Even today his earlier work still conveys the fresh- ness of direct observation, of the author’s ‘thrill at the grand and exhilarating spectacle’ of a society in the pangs of revolutionary change, and of the response of the first generation of Soviet citizens to this transformation. In his new book, too, Mr. Mehnert has much to say that is interesting. He has caught—in his early chapters, at least—something of the real rhythm of Soviet life, of its mechanics and dynamics as reflected in the experience of his interlocutors. He is particularly good when he dis- cusses and demonstrates reactions and attitudes to the aspirations of the managerial and professional elites to mould Soviet society in their own image. His personal impressions are judiciously augmented with pertinent references to the Soviet press and to literary sources. Mr. Mehnert cannot be blamed for not being comprehensive; he has, indeed, covered many aspects of Soviet life but he has left many significant gaps which tend to distort the picture he presents. One would have liked to hear something about, for instance, the Communist Labour Brigades which have incurred per- sistent official displeasure for their egalitarian practices. Altogether, it is just not good enough to deal with the Communist Party in a few trite monolithic commonplaces. A more serious criticism of the book is that Mr. Mehnert has adopted rather questionable criteria for his evaluation of Soviet man: ‘The traditional Russian of the nineteenth century is familiar to all of us through Russian litera- ture. This book now attempts to establish which of the old Russian traits have disappeared during the last four decades, what new features have emerged, and what the result of this dual process is.’ (p. 1.) This thesis, to say the least, is neither as original nor as relevant as Mr. Mehnert suggests; and some of the conclusions he draws from it are plainly absurd, as e.g.: ‘Readiness to submit to authority, then, must be considered one of the Russian traits; the people are by nature not inclined to be critical.’ (p. 191.) This betrays a perverse reading of the main trends of Russian 19th century literature: from Griboedov’s Chatsky to Turgenev’s Bazarov, from Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov to Gorky’s Pavel Vlassov, the heroes of classical Russian literature are all rebels against authority. In any case, it is an odd statement to come from Mr. Mehnert who is at pains, throughout the book, to emphasise the Russian - people’s critical dislike of Bolshevik authority. (e.g., pp. 78, 81, 124, 261- 274.) Finally, Mr. Mehnert’s ‘thesis’ belies the title of his book. He deals, in fact, not with Soviet man, but confines himself to the Soviet Russian population which, after all, forms only about 55 per cent of the total. He has nothing to say on the basic question as to what common features have emerged during the political and industrial revolutions of the last 45 years to modify national distinc- tions and traditions. This, surely, must be the starting point for any