CHAPTER XIII. Antonov Ovssenko and García Oliver

From the very beginning, the Spanish civil war transcended the country’s national boundaries and had to be understood as an international affair. Italy (Mussolini) and Germany (Hitler) were the first countries to intervene. France (Popular Front) followed later, when it provided armaments to the Spanish Republican government. The French government was forced to determine its position on July 19 when it received a telegram from Prime Minister José Giral that reminded it of a 1932 agreement between the two nations on arms sales and that requested the rapid delivery of planes, trucks, and ammunition.

Léon Blum consulted with the men of his party after receiving Giral’s cable: some insisted that France had to fulfill its obligations to Spain whereas others objected, saying that doing so would put them at risk of war with Germany. Prime Minister Blum held the latter view. Socialist politician Vincent Auriol, on the contrary, thought that France not only had to provide arms to Spain but should also intervene in Morocco, given that the established agreement demanded both actions: “General Franco is nothing but a rebel altering the Moroccan order.” [621] Indecisive, Léon Blum traveled to London in search of advice. There he was told that France should stay out of the conflict on the Iberian Peninsula and “let the Spaniards slit their own throats.” To calm his “socialist conscience,” Léon Blum devised the “nonintervention” policy. [622]

This policy deprived the Spanish Republic of needed military supplies, while it gave Franco every possibility of victory, thanks to the aid that he received from Italy, Germany, and England (the latter under the pretext of protecting its mercury mining interests in Almadén). [623]

For its part, the Soviet Union waited and watched to see how western governments responded to the conflict in Spain. When it saw that it could engage without significant risk to its own interests, it did so. A Russian agent, Krivitsky, explains:

Stalin wanted to make Madrid a vassal of the Kremlin. If he could accomplish that, he could forge closer ties with Paris and London and also strengthen his position for a treaty with Berlin and Rome. As master of Spain, his ship of State would have the security that it needed and become a coveted, essential ally.

But unlike Mussolini, Stalin was not willing to risk anything in Spain. Soviet intervention could have been decisive at certain moments, if Stalin had gambled for the Republican side what Mussolini gambled for Franco, but Stalin wagered nothing until he was assured that there was enough gold in the Bank of Spain to cover the cost of his support. He did every thing he could to prevent the Soviet Union from getting entangled in a conflagration. His slogan was “stay beyond the reach of artillery fire.” That defined our line of conduct during the whole campaign.[624]

The first phase of Soviet intervention began in August 1936, when Spain and the Soviet Union established diplomatic ties.

The Spanish Republic sent Marcelino Pascua to Moscow and the Soviet Union sent Marcel Rosemberg to Madrid. The latter, a genuine bureaucrat, had the support of two important figures: Ilya Ehrenburg and Mikhail Koltsov.

The Spanish Republic facilitated the second phase of Soviet interference in late August when it sent three Spaniards to Russia to purchase weapons. They had already failed do so with three arms dealers (England’s Vickers, Czechoslovakia’s Skoda, and France’s Schneider). They met with a Soviet operative in Odessa, whom they told that Spain was ready to pay in gold for any war materiel that it could buy. The Russian left them in a hotel under the surveillance of the GPU (the Soviet secret police). The USSR had to decide what it was going to do. The government appeared to resolve the matter on August 28, 1936, when Stalin signed a decree prohibiting “the exportation, re-exportation, or shipment to Spain of any type of armaments, ammunition, war materiel, airplanes, or war ships.”

The Soviet Union thus joined the signers of the nonintervention pact. However, Stalin’s decree was little more than a ruse: in September, after Largo Caballero formed his government, Stalin convened the Political Bureau and ordered immediate engagement in Spain. He emphasized that Soviet assistance must be kept completely secret in order to eliminate any possibility of his government being drawn into an armed conflict. We continue with Krivitsky:

Two days after this meeting, a special envoy flew to Europe and brought me instructions from Moscow. The orders were: “Immediately expand your activities in Spain. Mobilize all available agents and provide every facility for the quick creation of a system for purchasing armaments and transporting them into the country. An agent has left for Paris who will help you with 526 Antonov Ovssenko and García Oliverthis assignment. He will present himself to you and will work under your supervision.” At the same time, Stalin ordered Yagoda, the leader of the GPU, to create a branch of the Soviet secret police in Spain.

On September 14, Yagoda urgently called a meeting in the Lubianka, his main office in Moscow. It was attended by General Uritaky, from the Red Army General Staff; Frinovsky, presently Commissioner of the Navy and then leader of GPU Military Forces; and my comrade Sloulsky, chief of the GPU’s International Department. They selected an officer at the meeting to organize the GPU in Republican Spain; his name was Nikilsky, alias Schewed, alias Lyova, alias Orlov. They also put Comintern activities in Spain under the control of the Soviet secret police. Spanish Communist Party and GPU activities would be coordinated and harmonized.

It was also decided that the GPU would control the movement of international volunteers to Spain. In the Central Committee of every Communist Party around the world, there is a member who secretly plays a GPU role.

While this happened in the USSR, Rosemberg, Ehrenburg, and Koltsov made contact with leading figures of Republican Spain in hopes of convincing them that the country had to return to the bourgeois normality that existed before July 19. They “worked on” Largo Caballero the most. Ehrenburg told Moscow to send a consul of “substance” to Catalonia; someone who could deal with the anarchists. It dispatched Antonov Ovssenko. In the beginning of the second fortnight in September, Ehrenburg met with Ovssenko in Paris, who was on his way to Barcelona to begin serving as Soviet consul. Ehrenburg reports that he said: “They gave me orders in Moscow to make the anarchists listen to reason, so that they participate in the defense.”

Ehrenburg’s commentary:

How fortunate, I thought, that Moscow chose Ovssenko to be the consul in Barcelona! He will know how to influence Durruti; since he’s not like a diplomat or functionary at all. He’s modest, simple, and still breathes the atmosphere of October [1917]. He remembers what it was like to be underground before the Revolution.

Indeed, I was right: Antonov Ovssenko quickly learned to speak Catalan and formed friendships with Companys and Durruti.[625]

We haven’t found any evidence of a meeting between Ovssenko and Durruti, but that is not surprising. Nonetheless, Jaume Miravitlles has written about the relations between Ovssenko and García Oliver. His comments merit reproduction:

Stalin sent a functionary to Madrid and a revolutionary to Barcelona. Why that difference? Each had different tasks. Antonov Ovssenko came to Barcelona, the capital of Spanish anarcho-syndicalism and the European center of a revolutionary ideology hostile to Marxism. There had never been a Catalan socialist movement of any significance. The Socialist Party had always been minuscule here, without any meaningful strength. While the Unió Socialista de Catalunya did have prestigious leaders, without an alliance with the Esquerra it never would have elected a deputy or a municipal counselor. The pro-Moscow Communist Party was nonexistent, whereas the Bloc Obrer i Camperol was a young and dynamic group but without any influence on the working masses.

The two large popular forces were the CNT, with anarcho-syndicalist foundations, and the Esquerra Republicana, with Catalanist bases. The mission of the Soviet consul was certainly difficult, even more dangerous than the assault on the Winter Palace: he had to attract, neutralize, or destroy those two organizations.

A few days after arriving in Barcelona, and probably advised by an expert on Catalan politics, Antonov Ovssenko made contact with me, the Esquerra, and García Oliver, one of the most authentic representatives of Catalan anarcho-syndicalism.

At first, the Soviet consul stayed at the Majestic hotel on the Paseo de Gracia. On two or three occasions he invited us—García Oliver and I—to eat with him, just to “talk about the situation.” His goal was twofold: to find out who we were and how we thought and also to see if he could win us to his position.

The debate centered on the “war or revolution” polarity. The anarchists defended the revolutionary thesis. García Oliver argued that once the attempted coup of July 18–19, 1936 turned into a civil war, the victory of Republican forces depended on the militant action of the working class. Thus, it was necessary to make a “revolutionary war;” a social, economic, and physical expression of the revolutionary proletariat.

The Soviet consul held the opposite view. It was not a workers’ revolution, but a movement for national liberation in which all the anti-fascist forces could participate, from proletarians to the liberal bourgeoisie, including the middle class and intellectuals. It was necessary to suspend all social reforms likely to accentuate antagonisms between those strata until after victory. Now we have to make war; we’ll make the revolution later.

The issue had immediate practical implications. The anarchists wanted to preserve the militias as a military force; the Communists asked for the creation of a highly centralized popular army; the anarchists had proceeded to collectivize industry and agriculture; the Communists supported the conservation of the old socio-economic structures, although adapted to the necessities of war; the anarchists advocated the formation of “Regional Councils”—as they demonstrated with the Council of Aragón, a true popular government; the Communists championed “democratic centralism” and managed to drastically limit—always in the name of the war—the Generalitat’s power.

Schematically, when explained in this way, the Communist’s propositions seemed more “logical” and “strategic,” and Ovssenko defended them in those terms. But García Oliver, who was not lacking in intelligence or persuasive skills, refuted them one by one. “There’s no point in ignoring the fact that the civil war is already a revolutionary war,” he said. “The only forces that have spontaneously participated in the struggle on the Republican side are the workers’ forces. The bourgeoisie, liberal as well as reactionary, is and will always be hostile: the middle classes don’t engage nor will they engage actively in the battle. They’ll passively accept the outcome, whatever it may be. Making concessions to those sectors won’t mobilize them but will compromise the workers’ revolutionary enthusiasm. On the other hand, we can see where everything that you argue has taken Russia: to the liquidation of the authentically revolutionary elements and the imposition of Communist Party tyranny under the false platform of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat.’”

Antonov Ovssenko, thin, vibrant, with a penetrating look under the white locks of the years, listened to García Oliver with growing interest. Lenin had not applied—against the democratic government led by the socialist Kerensky—the tactics of “popular unity” that he was now obliged to defend to García Oliver.... The Bolsheviks had first made the revolution and then later made the war. And they won that war precisely because the revolutionaries identified with the regime that emerged out of the revolution.

I saw in his face how that old and tired man was revived by the contagious enthusiasm of his anarchist interlocutor; his youth, his participation in a revolution that assured him a permanent place in history. The “old revolutionary” was gaining ground on the “new diplomat.” Little by little, Antonov Ovssenko let himself be captivated by García Oliver’s eloquence and feverish excitement.... The “seducer” was seduced. One never would have suspected—either Ovssenko or us—that this just vision of Catalan reality, which we helped him understand so well, would cost him his life.

It was in those circumstances when we heard that the first Russian ship coming to Spain had landed in Barcelona.... London’s Nonintervention Committee had made it impossible for Republican Spain to get arms and ammunition abroad. The CCAMC ordered an attack in the Huesca province [the previously noted assault on Siétamo] with a shortage of ammunition so severe that militiamen had only one rifle cartridge in their possession. The Russian ship’s name was Zirianni and everyone in Barcelona expected it to arrive loaded with weapons or at least ammunition. The CNT dockworkers’ union mobilized all its personnel to unload the steamer as quickly as possible, as a precaution against the possibility that planes might bomb the port and blow up that eagerly awaited cargo. The people came to the port en masse to welcome the Russian sailors and gaze at the red flag with its hammer and sickle. The exuberance of the moment made Stalinism into an abstraction and evoked the October revolution.

The ship anchored outside the port and Ovssenko, consulate personnel, and various CCAMC members set off in a canoe to greet the seamen. Miravitlles was part of that privileged group that welcomed the Russian sailors. He describes the historic encounter as follows:

There were scenes of great emotion onboard the Zirianni. “Viva la Republic!” the sailors shouted. “Viva the Soviet Union!” the anarchists replied. Antonov Ovssenko, incapable of controlling his excitement, suddenly gave a shout that surely sealed his fate: “Viva the FAI!”

My blood ran cold when I heard that cheer. I knew quite well that the official Russian bodies and GPU agents were implacable. I instinctively looked around, searching for the mysterious person who would lodge the event in a future accusation against the old conqueror of the Winter Palace.[626]

There was a reception that evening for the sailors and the staff of the Russian Consulate. Lluís Companys, other Generalitat ministers, and the entire CCAMC attended.

Meanwhile, CNT dockworkers and Russian sailors hurried to unload the goods, under the protection of a cordon of militia members. They were eager to find out what the boxes contained and opened several out of impatience. Tins of condensed milk and canned meat dropped out.

The news reached us as we were in the midst of the social and revolutionary euphoria at the Majestic hotel. The anarchists indignantly threatened to withdraw from the room. I witnessed—and mediated—an angry exchange between García Oliver and Ilya Ehrenburg. At one point, the anarchist from Reus called him stupid in Catalan. Ehrenburg impassively asked me if I would translate the word for him. With the same apparent calm, I replied that the similarity between “stupid” in Catalan and the French “estupide” was so great that I felt that my help was unnecessary. [627]