Fourth Part: The deaths of Durruti

The purge of Trotskyist and anarcho-syndicalist elements has begun in Catalonia. This work will be conducted in Spain with the same vigor with which it was conducted in the USSR.

— Pravda, December 17, 1936

Introduction

The fourth section of this book would be unnecessary if a haze of confusion hadn’t emerged around Durruti’s death immediately after it occurred. But, since the mystery of his death still exists today, forty years after the fact, we are obliged to add this epilogue.

From the moment Durruti received the injury that would end his life, the witnesses of the event began circulating contradictory accounts of the incident, which even the CNT could not counteract. There were clear political interests motivating each account. Koltsov correctly acknowledged that Durruti was one of the most brilliant men of Catalonia and the Spanish workers’ movement, which is why every tendency within the anti-fascist camp wanted to exploit his death for its own purposes and ideological ends. The most dramatic example occurred when he was posthumously granted the rank of Lieutenant Colonel (he, who had died as a simple militiaman) in order to make it easier to give the same rank to Líster, Modesto, Valentín González, and Cipriano Mera. That was an unambiguous political assassination, given the revolutionary attitude that Durruti maintained up to the moment of his demise. That, in addition to the pervasive exploitation of a phrase attributed to him (which we find no trace of in his own statements), not only consummated Durruti’s political murder but also contributed to the annihilation of the proletarian and peasant revolution. Indeed, immediately after his death, the GPU used the Communist Party to begin the hunt for the anarcho-Trotskyists. This was all done in the name of “renouncing everything except victory” (to cite “comrade Durruti”).

It is impossible to analyze the various accounts of Durruti’s death without considering the political climate at the time and the psychological dimensions of the Spanish tragedy. In that conflicted situation, an official account of Durruti’s death that was not definitive—and it couldn’t be said definitively that Durruti died from an “enemy bullet”—had the potential to provoke an armed conflict among anti-fascists. But a persuasive explanation of his death was never provided. In fact, the existing accounts are so contradictory and raise so many questions that we believe it is unlikely that the issue will ever be clarified. We can group the accounts of Durruti’s death into three categories:

1. A fascist killed Durruti.

2. One of Durruti’s comrades assassinated him because he was beginning to turn toward the Communists.

3. The GPU murdered Durruti.

To those three possibilities, we can add a fourth, that of the “vox populi”: the counter-revolution—all the political forces trying to make Spain return to the starting point of July 18, 1936—executed Durruti.