Building Utopia : The Spanish Revolution 1936–1937

Notes
Federico Escofet, De una derrota a una victoria: 6 octobre de 1934 — 19 de julio 1936, Barcelona 1984. B. Bolloten, The Spanish Revolution, N.C., 1979. Diego Abad de Santillán (quoted in Durruti: The People Armed, Abel Paz, Canada, 1976). Juan Gómez Casas, Historia de la FAI, p.217. Ibid. García Oliver, Solidaridad Obrera, 19 July 1936. It is unlikely that García Oliver would have required much convincing, even by the least artful of flatterers. Peirats mentions that García Oliver speaking of ‘taking power’ at a public meeting in the Barcelona Woodworkers Union in ‘January or February 1936’. He had also pressed this case during a restricted meeting of ‘notables’ held just before the CNT regional conference to discuss the February 1936 ele... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 34 : The POUM: Trotsky and the POUM
The POUM: Trotsky and the POUM The POUM was formed in 1935 by an amalgamation of the Communist Left, a Trotskyist organization led by Nin and Andrade, and the Bloque Obrero y Campesino (BOC — Workers’ and Peasants’ Bloc). In January 1936, the POUM’s decision to sign the Popular Front agreement promoted Trotsky to denounce the POUM in an article on 22 January entitled The Treason of the Workers′ Party for Marxist Unification (POUM). Trotsky’s anathema led to a cooling of relations between the POUM and the supporters of the Fourth (Trotskyist) International and severely damaged the credibility of Spanish Trotskyists. Unable to understand Spanish and with his relationship with Nin broken off, Trotsky had no reliable source of information on what was happening inside Spain. When the revolution came he was one of the few who failed to greet it with the joy felt by the masses of people ev... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 33 : June: Anarchist Intelligence and Security Services
June: Anarchist Intelligence and Security Services The document outlining the proposed anarchist intelligence service, the Servicio de Información y Coordinación (SIC), is a masterpiece of Leninist demagogery: “Every revolutionary party or organization has, unfailingly, to wage bitter struggles, sometimes against visible enemies, sometimes against others working in the shadows. Thus the triumph of its precepts and the full implementation of its hegemony (these being the aspirations which motivate it and give it meaning) should be the result of the solid and continuing task of annihilating the opposition.” The document explores the need for “disciplined organization” and ‘consistent, steely political conduct’ and “jettisoning archaic norms” so as to face up to “modern methods of political contention”. The draft was approved... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 32 : Pierre Besnard’s Reply to ‘Catastrophic Revolution′
Pierre Besnard’s reply to ‘Catastrophic Revolution′ “We have never been unaware of the difficult tasks that confronted our CNT comrades. But we do not agree with comrade Brandt concerning the character of the armed force charged with the defense of the revolution. Basing ourselves on the lessons offered by history, we stated long before the outbreak, of the Spanish revolution that a government force is essentially a counter-revolutionary force which will strangle the revolution the instant the masters of the State deem it favorable, even if the revolution is in its descending phase. We never ceased telling our Spanish comrades that a confederal militia, on the contrary, constitutes the essential instrument of defense of the revolution. Brandt claims that in order to win it was necessary to accept the militarization of the popular militia columns. We do not agree w... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 31 : “Catastrophic Revolution” by Brandt
“Catastrophic Revolution” by Brandt “I want to refresh the memory of those who are preaching 100 percent revolution regardless of any consideration, by pointing out to them the Bilbao catastrophe, which opens the way to a complete fascist conquest of Spain. To be sure, comrade Besnard, very nice to place the revolution above the war; but it is the war that is imposing itself upon us in taking precedence over the revolution. The war got hold of us and we have to fight it out whether we like it or not. We can temporarily suspend the struggle against our Spanish capitalism, but we cannot, for a single instant, stop the fight against fascism. The revolution depends on our volition, but the war is imposed upon us. We cannot devote ourselves to the revolution if we have not first liquidated the war … Whether we like it or not, we are forced to remain tied to this coalition of anti-anarchist ‘friends&rsquo... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

October 1936
October 1936 The CNT leadership’s obsession with antifascist unity steadily widened the gap between them and the aspirations of the mass of the working class membership. The class interests they now defended were those of the bourgeoisie and the property-owning classes. On 23 October a ‘Pact of Unity’ was signed between the CNT, FAI, the UGT and the PSUC in Catalonia. Article Two of this agreement relating to collectivization, stated that although the Council supported collectivization ‘of everything which may be essential in the interests of the war’, the council’s understanding was that ‘this collectivization would fail to produce the desired results unless overseen and orchestrated by a body genu... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

November 1936
November 1936 ON 30 OCTOBER, an optimistic editorial in Solidaridad Obrera noted: ‘The Generalidad Council has embarked upon a series of measures that will, incontrovertibly, have an impact upon the course of events. Mobilization has been decreed for all citizens who are of an age for military service. And, as expeditiously as the present situation requires, the classes of 1932, 1933, 1934 and 1935 have just been called up. In addition, the Council, whose jurisdiction covers Catalonia, has seen fit to invest these formations in the antifascist zone with military overtones. The militarization of combatants may be distasteful to those idealists whose opinions are consonant with their ideas about the noxiousness of units that act in acco... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

December 1936
December 1936 By December the Spanish Civil War had begun to move into what Camillo Berneri described as its ‘third phase’: “Henceforth, the development of the internal situation is subject in the main to foreign factors. These are the Hitlerians and the antifascist émigrés of Germany and Austria, the Italian fascists and antifascists, the Bolshevik Russians and White Russians, the French Communists and the Irish Catholics — who are getting to grips with one another on the Madrid front. The relationships between the forces are in the process of changing — militarily and politically. The Civil War is in the process of taking on a faster rhythm, an even broader field of action, a more decided charac... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

July 1936
July 1936 THE SPANISH ARMY in Morocco rose in rebellion against the Second Spanish Republic on 17 July 1936. By the following day the long-planned rising, under the leadership of General Sanjurjo and a military directorate consisting of generals Yagüe, Queipo de Llano, Mola and Franco, had spread to the Spanish mainland. The Spanish anarcho-syndicalist labor organization, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), had been preparing for the eventuality of a coup for some time. Earlier that year, on 14 February, just two days before the elections which were to bring to power the Popular Front government which precipitated the military uprising, the National Committee of the CNT in Zaragoza issued a prophetic warning to its mem... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Statement by Vivaldo Fagundes
Statement by Vivaldo Fagundes The militians’ distrust of the motives for imposing militarization was not unfounded. Vivaldo Fagundes, a Portuguese anarchist who participated in the Spanish Revolution has this to say: “I have an extract from a letter of Indalecio Prieto, a minister, to Fernando de los Rios, then ambassador in Washington, in which Prieto gives an account of the work he was doing to finish anarchism off. He told him that already he had managed to win over its finest militants by interesting them in governmental politics and that the most stubborn ones, “the uncontrollables”, would be annihilated by militarization — an anti-revolutionary ploy clearly anti-libertarian in its objectives — by me... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)