Part 2, Chapter 25 : Toward the “Popular Front”

CHAPTER XXV. Toward the “Popular Front”

The time that Durruti spent going in and out of jail did not undermine his optimism or change the direction of his thought, but such prolonged “isolations” were hard on the CNT and FAI. The organizations suffered while some of its most valuable militants wasted away in prison.

Durruti would start devouring magazines and newspapers as soon as he left prison, until a new incarceration again disrupted his access to information and ability to following the thread of events. It was only his intuitive capacity to grasp issues and developments that saved him. His last conversation with Ascaso before his arrest revolved around what looked like the Socialist Party’s new strategy of forming alliances and coalitions, in which the Communist Party would also play a role thanks to Largo Caballero’s Bolshevik “measles.” They agreed that the CNT would face problems if the Popular Front tactic being tested in France was introduced into Spain, because supporters of the electoral coalition would try to asphyxiate the CNT by any means possible. They had to respond to that threat immediately so that the working class wouldn’t be deceived like it had been on April 14, 1931. Durruti, who had plenty of intuition but an excess of prison time, began serving his new sentence shortly after their discussion.

Around this time, the Communist Party held a rally in Madrid’s Cine Monumental. José Díaz gave a long speech in which he proposed the formation of a Popular Anti-fascist Concentration. [433] It would have a four-point program:

a) Confiscate the land held by large landowners ... without compensation and its immediately delivery to poor peasants and agricultural workers.

b) Liberate peoples oppressed by Spanish imperialism. Grant the right to self- government to Catalans, Basques, Galicians, and other national groups oppressed by Spain.

c) Improve the working class’s living and working conditions.

d) Amnesty for the prisoners.[434]

The program was very short. Except for the point about the land, which was included for propagandistic reasons, it was an exact replica of the program that Manuel Azaña would set out in Mestalla (Valencia) and Comillas (Madrid), where he called upon Republican parties to form a coalition before the next elections. There was a section on Spanish imperialism in Díaz’s program indicating that the Spanish regions noted should have the right to self-determination, but there is no mention of Spain’s imperialist venture in Morocco. Why this oversight? The military forces operating in Asturias came from Morocco, because the government didn’t trust soldiers from the Peninsula. The Communist Party proposed an anti-fascist front and yet accepted Spain’s continued domination of the Moroccan people, on whose very soil the fascist threat denounced in José Díaz’s speech was brewing. A typical contradiction for the Moscow-led “communists.”

José Díaz’s speech had no political effect, but its general outlines reflected the direction that the PCE would follow within a few months. It is important to note that Moscow still hadn’t taken Spain into consideration in the new strategic orientation that it had been developing over the previous year. France was what mattered most to Stalin and his subordinates, because it believed that it had an important role to play in the “defense of the Soviet State.” Indeed, the Popular Front will respond solely to the Soviet Union’s interests and it is those interests that will determine its consequent repercussions in Spain. That is why we are obliged to offer a summary treatment of that very specific dimension of international politics in this biography.

Stalin’s policy was consistent since Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 until January 26, 1934. In February 1933, the social democratic Socialist Workers’ International called upon the Communist International (Stalin and the Moscow party leaders) to form an anti-fascist front, but it received no reply. It repeated the call six months later and achieved the same result. The Communist International did not respond simply because it did not see Hitler or Mussolini as enemies at the time. Indeed, the Soviet State had very good relations with both dictators. Stalin’s primary concern was preserving the 1922 agreement between Germany and Russia known as the Treaty of Rapallo. [435] While that was still possible, he cared little if Hitler and his Nazi Party eradicated socialism and communism from German soil. Stalin hoped to sustain that treaty until Germany and Poland signed an accord on January 26, 1934. Moscow military men saw this as a direct attack on Russia and thus Stalin changed his strategy, aligning it with concerns in the French government, which regarded the accord as a dangerous rupture of the equilibrium of alliances formed between European states after the First World War. Perhaps, without wanting to do so, Hitler reestablished the tripartite, crossed alliances between Russia, France, and England that had existed before 1914. [436]

The diplomatic sounding out between the Soviet Union and France began in January 1934. The French supported the Soviet Union’s attempt to join the Society of Nations and Stalin, in compensation, ordered the French Communist Party to form an alliance with the Socialists and the French bourgeoisie. The July 14, 1934 Blum-Thorez-Daladier Pact was the result of this command. [437] That was the first act of the Popular Front comedy. The second occurred on May 2, 1935, when France and the Soviet Union (Stalin and Laval, respectively) signed the Mutual Assistance Pact. After signing the agreement, Stalin declared that he “understood and fully approved of France’s national defense policy, in which it maintains its Armed Forces at the level of its security.” Prior to that date, the French Communist Party had always refused to vote for military credits. In fact, a month and a half earlier, Maurice Thorez [438] stated in the National Assembly that “We will never allow the working class to be dragged into a war called in defense of democracy against fascism.” Stalin’s declaration caused an abrupt change in their stance. That very May 2, posters proclaiming: “Stalin a raison” (“Stalin is right”) covered the walls of French cities. The central organ of the French Communist Party did its best to explain the new strategy to French CP members.

The third act of the comedy took place between July 25 and August 17, 1935, the dates of the Seventh Congress of the Communist International. The actors were Georgi Dimitrov and Palmiro Togliatti, in front of an audience of Communist International representatives. The Popular Front tactic called for an alliance between the working and middle classes to “block the path of the fascist offensive.” Dimitrov explained its necessity as follows: “Today, in a series of capitalist countries, the working masses have to choose not between the dictatorship of the proletariat and bourgeois democracy, but between bourgeois democracy and fascism.” Togliatti, for his part, inveighed against some disobedient delegates who challenged the revolutionary legitimacy of the Popular Front tactic: “Certain comrades have come to think that signing the Mutual Assistance Pact with France means renouncing the revolutionary perspective in Europe and compare it to a forced retreat under enemy fire. They are completely wrong. Far from being a retreat, it is an advance; and those who don’t understand its deep internal coherence understand nothing of the true dialectic that moves events and the revolutionary dialectic even less.”

If we look carefully at the Popular Front tactic, we can prove that it was not appropriate for Spain. Although it was devised for France, Communist Parties in all the “democratic-bourgeois” counties had to accept it without question. Moscow and the Communist International permitted no debate on the matter, even if applying the Popular Front in Spain required that the invention of the middle class and its parties. That is evident in the dialogue between Largo Caballero and Jacques Duclos, the itinerant agent of the Communist International. Duclos explains:

Largo Caballero, the main leader of the Socialist Party and the UGT, was a decisive factor in the formation of the Popular Front in Spain. He had to be convinced that the Spanish worker’s movement needed to consider what had happened in France and, toward that end, the Communist International ordered me to visit him in Madrid, as a representative of the International and a French Communist leader closely linked to the creation of the French Popular Front.

Julio Alvarez del Vayo put Jacques Duclos in contact with Largo Caballero. Under Alvarez del Vayo’s watch, the Young Communists and the Socialists had fuzed to create a Unified Socialist Youth. The group’s secretary was Santiago Carrillo, who had joined the Communist Party during his recent trip to Russia. Alvarez del Vayo turned out to be an excellent bridge between the two men. Duclos describes their dialogues:

We spoke over the course of three days. It was an open dialogue, without intermediaries or interpreters.... I wanted to convince Largo Caballero of the working class’s need for allies. I made a long statement, and was interrupted by questions about the formation of the Popular Front in France. I pointed to the fascist danger and explained that the masses would be defeated if they’re not united. I emphasized that the threat of fascism was no less significant in Spain than in France....

On this point [relations between Socialists and Communists], I knew that Largo Caballero would agree with me in general, especially given his positive comments about the Spanish Communist Party. But I also knew that he wouldn’t agree with the need for an alliance between the working class and the other social categories.

Duclos spoke at length about why the workers had to form a partnership with the middle class and intellectuals, in light of the elections, etc. He says:

On this point, Largo Caballero began by expressing the intransigence that I anticipated. He talked about the middle classes’ lack of importance and explained that the working class was the only consistently revolutionary class.

He made references to Marx and Lenin, whom, he told me, he admired greatly.

With all due respect for the “masters” Marx and Lenin, Duclos argued that one must never close oneself off from reality... that sometimes phenomena occur that influence one class over another, etc. Then he spelled out the “electoral arithmetic,” which was extremely interesting to Caballero. Then, finally, came the coup de grace:

I asked Largo Caballero what the electoral consequences might be in Spain if the Popular Front were created. He agreed that it would be beneficial for the Communist and Socialist Party. I was on the verge of obtaining a favorable response when I told him that, after I returned to Paris, I would then have to go to Moscow and give his response to the leaders of the Communist International. He said that I should tell them that the Popular Front will be formed in Spain. I was happy and felt tremendous affection and respect for that old militant, who had changed his views in light of realities whose breadth and complexity he hadn’t initially perceived. [439]

The machinery-guillotine of the Popular Front was greased. We now go to the Modelo prison in Valencia, where authorities had transferred Durruti from Barcelona in August.