CHAPTER XXIII. “Peace and order reign in Asturias”

When the government ended its military operations in Asturias, it told journalists that “peace and order reign in the rebel zone.” That “peace and order” caused 1335 worker deaths, 2951 injuries, and an undetermined number of exiles, who took refuge in the mountains. The working class paid dearly for that bourgeois “peace and order.”

The government entrusted the mission of imposing order to Civil Guard commander Lisardo Doval and Judge Alarcón. Instruments of torture were improvised in the cells and the legal system ground on. Thirty thousand people were detained.

But this wasn’t enough for the Rightwing: it wanted an even harsher crackdown. Calvo Sotelo stated as much in the November 6 session of the Parliament. Alejandro Lerroux declared that his government would be “merciless in Asturias.” “Until the seeds of revolution are exterminated in the mothers’ wombs,” insisted Calvo Sotelo.

There were a number of prominent political figures among the 30,000 people imprisoned as a result of the October events. Manuel Azaña was arrested in Barcelona, despite his opposition to the rebellion, which he objected to because he considered it class-based. Authorities released him on December 2 after he proved that he had not participated. However, the prosecutor demanded that life sentences be imposed on Lluís Companys and the Generalitat ministers for the crime of “military rebellion.” Various members of the Socialist Party’s Executive Committee, including Francisco Largo Caballero, joined the other inmates from the “high political circles” in prison (police had arrested him on October 14). Ramón González Peña, who had been prominent in the Provincial Revolutionary Committee, was also incarcerated. He was facing the death penalty.

All the detainees had to respond to judges’ questions about their conduct and participation in the revolt. This was easy for Socialist Party and UGT leaders, since they had decided beforehand that no one would take responsibility for the uprising if they were captured and that they would declare that it had emerged spontaneously from the working class. Largo Caballero describes his interrogation in his memoirs and illustrates the conduct of those ”deserter bosses at the hour of truth. He appeared before the Examining Magistrate, an army colonel:

“Are you the leader of this revolutionary movement?”

“No, sir.”

“How is that possible, being President of the Socialist Party and General Secretary of the Unión General de Trabajadores?”

“Well, anything is possible!”

“What role did you play in organizing the strike?”

“None.”

“What is your opinion of the revolution?”

“Mr. Magistrate, I appear here to answer for my acts, not my thoughts.”

The District Attorney: “You are legally obliged to answer the Magistrate’s questions!”

“Indeed, that’s why I’m answering them. I wouldn’t do so otherwise.”

They showed me some typed notes found during a search of the UGT’s offices. “Are these notes yours?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Who delivered them to you?”

“The mailman. I received them through the mail, but if I knew who sent them, I wouldn’t say so.”

The District Attorney: “I repeat that you are required to truthfully answer the questions you are asked.”

“That’s what I’m doing. However, if Captain Santiago, who conducted the search, wants to find out who sent me those notes, he should know that he’ll never get that information. I won’t say any person’s name for any reason and I’m fully aware of the responsibility that I incur.”

Indeed, the General Office of Security had shown me copies of these notes, while they were telling me what they had done and intended to do against us. Captain Santiago wanted to know who sent them, to punish the person harshly. He was beside himself with the matter of the notes. The magistrate continued asking me:

“Who are the organizers of the revolution?”

“There are no organizers. The people rose up in protest because the Republic’s enemies entered the government.”[424]

Largo Caballero was legally absolved and resumed his activities as UGT General Secretary.

Largo Caballero dedicated some paragraphs in his memoirs to Ramón González Peña, whom Indalecio Prieto had described as the “hero” of Asturias. Largo Caballero writes:

Much to my great regret, this obliges me to treat the case of González Peña, the “hero” of Asturias.

Peña wasn’t responsible for the revolutionary movement in Asturias; he just couldn’t deny his participation, because they caught him in the act. They had seen him moving around the region and confirmed his presence in the mountains and other places. If they had captured me “red-handed,” I would have had to admit my participation, despite the decision we had made. Yet that wouldn’t make me a hero, just one among many who had risked their lives and liberty.

However, one should read his statements to the Parliamentary Commission and the Court Martial. Since he couldn’t deny it, he said that he had taken part in the rebellion, but out of discipline, to carry out the decisions of the Worker Alliance Committees and other leading bodies. He said that his activities were limited to preventing barbarities and saving lives, even Civil Guardsmen, who were only doing their duty. He gave the names of people with whom he had spoken and worked, indicating places where he had been and slept. At the end of his declaration to the Court Martial, he surrendered himself to the mercy of the court. His testimony implicated people and places, and cost some of his comrades their lives. He presented the revolutionaries as bloodthirsty, which is why he had needed to intervene. He tried to diminish the importance of his participation in hopes of escaping a harsh sentence.

But is this the conduct of a hero? Was this declaring himself responsible for the revolutionary movement in Asturias? No one could affirm such a thing after reading his statements. And if another coreligionist who participated in the event had the sincerity to repeat in public what was said privately about González Peña, we would have a much more accurate picture of his heroism....

I don’t criticize him for trying to reduce the sentence, but I do criticize those incriminating statements about people and places.[425]

Without intending to, Largo Caballero had expressed an important truth when he gave his testimony to the magistrate:

There were no organizers. The workers rose up in Asturias because it was ripe for revolution and the people were the only heroes.

However, Largo Caballero would draw the opposite conclusion while he reflected in prison. Apparently Largo Caballero used his incarceration to read Lenin’s writings and was impressed by his theory of the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” He had discovered revolutionary Marxism.

The same “measles” also afflicted other Socialists. Araquistáin, the most advanced of the group, would distinguish himself with his writings on the “return to Marxism” in the Socialist Party’s theoretical magazine Leviatán.

It was fine to study Marxism, but what good was such a “discovery” if it lacked an immediate practical application? But application is not imitation; it should be a creative act. The Bolshevik model was not relevant to Spain: the Spanish revolution had to find its own strength and trajectory. Asturias had demonstrated the Spanish path to the revolution. That revolution could not be reduced to a single party, because there were diverse and contradictory forces among its various tendencies. To ignore that historic reality was to restrain, and turn one’s back on, the revolutionary process initiated by the working class. That is what Largo Caballero did; who failed to see that the revolution demanded an alliance between the CNT and UGT. Largo Caballero “matured” in prison only to be duped by the strategy that the Communist International was exporting to “democratic-bourgeois” countries in its effort to implant Soviet communism worldwide.