Part 3, Chapter 11 : Largo Caballero, Reconstructing the Republican State

CHAPTER XI. Largo Caballero, reconstructing the republican state

Largo Caballero broke his enigmatic silence on September 4 and told the country that he would assume the leadership of the government and the war. There would be five Socialist ministers in his government, including Juan Negrín in the Treasury Ministry, Julio Alvarez del Vayo in Foreign Affairs, and Indalecio Prieto in the Ministry of the Navy. He gave two ministries to the Communists—Agriculture to Vicente Uribe and Public Instruction to Jesús Hernández—and the rest went to Republican politicians sympathetic to President Manuel Azaña.

Largo Caballero set out to reconstruct a state that had broken to pieces, between the rebel attacks and the popular mobilizations. He was the only politician capable of accomplishing this. He not only enjoyed a certain prestige among the working masses, but also in high places elsewhere. Moscow’s agents in Spain, under the leadership of the Italian Togliatti, promoted him as the “Spanish Lenin” and emphasized his rivalries with Prieto. They also sought to end the flirtations between the UGT and the CNT. Indeed, in mid-August 1936 Largo Caballero momentarily thought that the best way to undo José Giral’s government was a UGT-CNT accord and for the two organizations to form a workers’ government, although Moscow’s operatives did everything they could to stop that from happening. Koltsov and then Soviet Ambassador Marcel Rosemberg rained down from the Moscow sky in late August to prevent the old UGT leader from making any blunders. Those two figures imbued Largo Caballero with the belief that he was destined to play a titanic role in Spain, like Lenin had in Russia. Once they had aroused his appetite for greatness, controlling the state and the war would be the zenith of glory for the UGT Secretary. He rocked in the Procrustean bed that the Communist International gave him. Although he eventually rebelled against Communist Party control, that is incidental: in September, Largo Caballero was the Noske of the Spanish revolution. [598]

Marcel Rosemberg became the political adviser to the leader of the Spanish state. This was his advice:

One cannot lead a state without control of the state apparatus and, since no state apparatus existed, it had to be created. A state without an army or police force is not a state. To govern, a state needs to have complete authority. In Spain, state power was atomized and distributed among the thousands of committees that exercised it within their field of action. While it was good that the people had defended the Republic against the military uprising, once the immediate threat had passed, everything had to return to the framework of a democratic-bourgeois Republic that was fully respectful of private property and, above all, foreign capitalist interests. What mattered was winning the war against Franco, which could not occur without France and England’s support. Those countries would never help a Spain that resembled Catalonia, where the CCAMC had superseded the Generalitat and workers had expropriated the Spanish and foreign bourgeoisie.

Given all that, Stalin asserted:

The Spanish revolution follows a different path than the Russian revolution. This is a consequence of its distinct social, historical, and geographic circumstances as well as the unique international realities that it confronts. The parliamentary route may be a more effective means of revolutionary development in Spain than it was in Russia.

Stalin supplied the following specific rules:

First, the peasants have to be taken into consideration, as they make up a majority of the population in an agricultural country like Spain. Agrarian and fiscal reforms need to be devised that correspond to their interests. It is important to recruit the peasants to the army and create guerrilla detachments that will fight the fascists in their rearguard. Decrees favorable to the peasantry will facilitate recruitment.

Second, the small and medium bourgeoisie have to be attracted to the government. If that isn’t possible, they must be neutralized. Toward that end, the bourgeoisie must be protected against any property confiscations and assured freedom of commerce, to whatever degree possible.

Third, leaders of the Republican parties must not be rejected but rather encouraged to work with the government. It is necessary to guarantee the support of Manuel Azaña and his group and to do everything possible to help them overcome their hesitations. These measures are necessary to prevent Spain’s allies from considering it a communist Republic.

Fourth, the Spanish government should inform the press that it will not permit damage to property and the legitimate interests of foreigners living in Spain who are citizens of countries that do not aid the rebels.[599]

Largo Caballero assimilated these wise pieces of advice and continued José Giral’s policy of suffocating revolutionary Catalonia and boycotting the Aragón front.

On September 11, 1936 the Huesca sector was in the midst of war operations, as battles raged over Siétamo and Estrecho Quinto. Seizing these positions would allow Republican forces to cut the supply of water to Huesca and then capture the city in a decisive attack. Colonel Villalba led the campaign, with his Column of approximately three thousand soldiers. There had been disagreements between Durruti and Villalba from the beginning, based on Durruti’s distrust of the professional soldier. The militias had a War Committee in Sariñena that represented all the militia Columns, but Villalba— although a strong supporter of the Single Command elsewhere [600] —fought to maintain his independent War Committee in Barbastro. This organizational duplication created significant problems for general offensives: when one sector moved, the other would remain inactive. The need to coordinate military activities obliged Durruti to confront Villalba and the dispute between the two came up at a meeting of the CCAMC. Durruti accused the Colonel for being responsible for the loss of Siétamo in mid-August. Then, Villalba asked Durruti to help his forces attack the site. The Column sent several centurias from the agrupación led by José Mira. After three days of hard fighting, the militiamen occupied the location and then left it under the control of Villalba’s men, who bore responsibility for defending it. We do not know if Villalba understood the position’s significance, but rebels in Huesca counter-attacked and defeated his forces, who abandoned the site. From then on, Siétamo became a nightmare for the attackers of Huesca. In early September, they attacked the town again, but the combat was much harder this time.

The rebels had brought in reinforcements (an infantry company, a group of falangists, and large numbers of Civil Guard). The town’s elevation also allowed them to strategically place six machine-guns and an artillery battery.

Villalba requested Durruti’s help once more and the War Committee sent José Mira with several centurias again. They began the fighting on September 4, under pressure from low flying German planes that machine-gunned and bombed incessantly.

From the beginning of the offensive, the “Alas Negras” [black waves] didn’t stop flying for an instant, reducing all the villages in our rearguard to ruins.... They also circled over our “tribes”[601] at a low-altitude, machinegunning our guerrillas and dropping endless bombs.... After three days of hellish battle, we managed to occupy the outermost houses of Siétamo, where the fighting was extremely difficult: every building had become a bunker and discharged deadly bursts of gunfire against our men.[602]

Commander Vicente Guarner, sent by the CCAMC as an observer, corroborates Mira’s account:

The resistance was fierce. That was something that I could personally appreciate, since I was at Colonel Villalba’s side on September 4 and 5. Planes from Zaragoza’s Garrapinillos airfield, probably German, bombed the command post mercilessly, killing and injuring many.... There was even shooting around the huts in Siétamo. A house-to-house battle began, since the enemy had fortified itself in the town, with the church and the Count of Aranda’s castle as its final defensive line. The situation was unsustainable for the rebels and they evacuated on September 12, withdrawing the fortifications at Estrecho Quinto, at kilometer six on the road to Barbastro, using the Flumen River as a moat. Our land reconnaissance and aerial photographs indicated that the adversary’s trenches stretched from Loporzano and Monte Aragón up to a hill named Plano Loporzano, in front of the Tierz village. They were covering Tierz and Quicena, on the other side of the road, with artillery, machine-guns, anti-aircraft guns, and roughly one, well-positioned battalion. Our forces tried to flank the reinforced lines at Estrecho Quinto in the north and the south and ran into strong resistance between September 15 and 18. We occupied Loporzano on September 30 ... after a brilliant attack by the militia column. At the same time, Fornillos fell, further to the north, and Tierz, in the south, was besieged. Our people advanced head-on to Estrecho Quinto, which had no choice but to withdraw with all the fortifications covering the area east of Huesca. There were many dead and injured and Villalba’s men seized a large number of prisoners. They also captured twelve machine-guns, two 75 and one 155 caliber artillery pieces, two anti-aircraft guns, and several trucks. The path to Huesca was free....[603]

Note that Guarner mentions an anonymous “militia column” in his account, but highlights Villalba.

We continue with Mira’s narrative, who both observed and participated in the operations:

Rousing themselves with a “Viva the FAI!” cheer, the anarchists threw themselves into battle. The first attack was extremely aggressive and some of our forces almost reached the church, which was surrounded by the Siétamo ravine and where most of the enemy fighters were. They took the church in hand-to-hand combat and liberated Siétamo.... But the offensive didn’t stop there; we intensified it, thanks to the timely support that we received from some POUM centurias.... Our comrades boldly climbed the hills of Estrecho Quinto and in five days of fighting won Loporzano, Estrecho Quinto, and Monte Aragón for the revolution.... The war materiel seized in Siétamo included two 10.5 caliber cannons, four 81 caliber mortars, eight machineguns, three hundred rifles, and 150 prisoners. The quantity was roughly the same in Loporzano. In Monte Aragón and Estrecho Quinto, it was four 7.5 and two 10.5 caliber artillery pieces, twelve mortars, and one thousand rifles.... Durruti was a tremendous inspiration to the fighters, who endured the vicissitudes of war with the best of them.[604]

The CCAMC thought it would be a good idea to have a Column leader address the Spanish workers by radio in order to make the most of the victories in Siétamo, Monte Aragón, and Estrecho Quinto. They gave Durruti the task. The professional soldiers hoped that he would emphasize two topics in his speech—discipline among soldiers and need for a unified command in military operations—but Durruti had very different concerns. He had seen what Largo Caballero’s government was doing and that the counterrevolution was raising its head in the rearguard, particularly in Barcelona. There, the PSUC, which had not existed before July 19, suddenly became a political force and grew rapidly—enrolling those expropriated during the revolution and leading figures of the Esquerra Republicana—as it attempted to build a common front against the Catalan working class (that is, against the CNT and FAI’s base). Although the revolution was not explicitly attacked and the CNT and FAI were not mentioned, the workers were identified with the “uncontrollables” and their conquests and economic experiments were disparagingly branded as “crazy” initiatives that undermined the national economy with their ”utopianism.” [605] Durruti had to address those issues, which were so important to the revolution:

Comrades: the worker militias aren’t slacking on the Aragón front. They attack and defeat the enemy and win ground for the revolutionary cause. And this is only a prelude to the great offensive that we will soon initiate across the entire Aragón front. You, workers of Spain, also have an important role to play, because we can’t win the revolution with guns alone; we also have to produce. There is no such thing as a frontline and a rearguard, because we all form one block that has to struggle in unity toward the same goal. And our objective can be none other than building a Spain that represents the working class.

The workers fighting on the front and in the rearguard don’t fight to defend bourgeois privileges. They fight for the right to live with dignity. Spain’s strength is in the working class and its organizations. After victory, the CNT and the UGT will meet and come to an agreement about the country’s economic and political structures.

Those of us on the battlefield aren’t fighting for medals. We don’t fight to be deputies or ministers. And when we’re victorious and return to the cities and villages, we’ll fulfill our responsibilities in the factories, workshops, fields, and mines that we left. Our great victory will be the one that we win in the workplaces.

We are peasants and we sow against the tempests that can put our harvest in danger. We’re ready and know how to resist. The harvest is ripe. We must collect the grain! And it will be for everyone. There will be no privileges in its distribution. Neither Azaña nor Caballero nor Durruti will have a right to more when it’s shared out. The harvest belongs to everyone, to all those working steadfastly and sincerely with their complete intelligence, will, and strength in order to prevent the harvest from being stolen from us. Workers of Catalonia, I spoke to you a few days ago from Sariñena to make it clear to you that I’m proud to represent you on the Aragón front. I also told you that we will be worthy of the trust that you put in us and our rifles. But for that trust and fraternity to continue, we have to devote ourselves completely to the struggle and even stop thinking of ourselves. You, female comrades, don’t follow your heart’s cries: let those on the Aragón front focus on fighting. Don’t write to tell them bad news. Endure it on your own. Let us fight. Remember that Spain’s future, and our children’s future, depends on us. Help us be strong in this war that demands every once of our will if we want to win!

Comrades, the weapons have to be at the front. We need all the arms to build a wall of iron against the enemy. Trust us. The militias will never defend the bourgeoisie’s interests. They are and will always be the proletarian vanguard in the struggle that we’ve launched against capitalism. International fascism is determined to win the battle and we have to be determined not to lose it. To you, workers listening to me from behind enemy lines, we tell you that the hour of your liberation is near. The libertarian militias are advancing and nothing will stop them. The will of an entire people drives them forward. Help us in our work by sabotaging the fascist war industry, by creating centers of resistance and guerrilla cells in the cities as well as the mountains. Fight, anyone who can, while there is a drop of blood in your veins!

Workers of Spain, courage! If it’s written that there’s a moment in a man’s life when he has to show his strength, that moment has arrived. The time is now!

Comrades, we should be hopeful. Our ideal accompanies us. That is our strength. Courage and forward! You don’t argue with fascism, you destroy it, because fascism and capitalism are the same thing![606]