FOR MANY PEOPLE in many countries, the heroic myth of the Spanish Republic is closely linked to the International Brigades. Nobody can doubt the idealism and self-sacrifice of the volunteers from 52 nations who went in the belief that they could defeat fascism in Spain, yet recent discoveries in Russian archives cast a chilling light on the Comintern organisers who threw away their lives so callously in futile attacks.
Even before most volunteers reached Spain, Soviet advisers were planning to destroy their left-wing allies. In September 1936 General Gorev reported to Moscow: “A struggle against the anarchists is absolutely inevitable after victory over the Whites. This struggle will be very severe.” André Marty, the Comintern representative, wrote in October: “After victory we will get even with them, all the more so since at that point we will have a strong army.” And Pravda declared openly in December that the “cleaning up of Trotskyist and anarcho-syndicalist elements will be carried out with the same energy as in the USSR”. The Popular Front alliance was merely a tactic “for the moment”. Stalinists were not prepared to share power with anybody else.
Although Stalin had said that he wanted “to prevent the enemies of Spain from seeing her as ‘a communist republic’ ”, Comintern representatives sought total control. Spanish Communists had infiltrated the directorate of personnel in the Ministry of Defence from the start of the war. By March 1937 party members held 27 out of the 38 key posts, and sympathisers held several more. A report to Moscow that month claimed: “The party now has hegemony in the army, and this hegemony is developing and becoming firmly established more and more each day.”
Marty wrote about the socialist prime minister in a revealing report to Moscow. Largo Caballero, having been a Communist sympathiser and hailed by their press as the Spanish Lenin, had discovered the reality of their tactics. “Caballero does not want defeat,” Marty wrote to Dimitrov, “but he is afraid of victory . . . Victory means an even greater strengthening of the position of the Communist Party. A final military victory over the enemy means for Caballero and the whole world the political hegemony of the Communist Party in Spain. This is a natural and indisputable thing . . . a republican Spain, raised from the ruins of fascism and led by Communists, a free Spain of a new republican type, will be a great economic and military power, carrying out a policy of solidarity and close connection with the Soviet Union.” Comintern bosses evidently saw the Spanish Republic as a future Soviet satellite state despite Stalin’s desire to hide his involvement.
Non-Communist International Brigaders, believing the slogans of anti-fascist unity, were dismayed by Communist hatred of Leftist allies, but party members swallowed the line of the Moscow show trials that “Troskyist-Fascists” were secret Gestapo agents. Stalinist paranoia was exported to Spain, yet Russian historians are starting to believe that the conspiracy theories manufactured in Spain served to accelerate the purges in the Soviet Union.
The greatest shock for these “volunteers for freedom”, as the International Brigaders were called, came with the Soviet style of discipline, selecting men at random and shooting them through the back of the head. When one division retreated during the Segovia offensive, General Walter also ordered “the machine-gunning of those who pull back, executions on the spot, and the beating of stragglers”. Even the elite Spanish Communist formation, the 11th Division, was not spared. After it collapsed during the Battle of Brunete, the chief Soviet adviser reported to Moscow: “Lister’s division lost its head and fled. We managed with great difficulty to bring it back under control. The toughest repressive measures had to be applied. About 400 of those fleeing were shot on 24 July.”
Soviet reports emphasise the appalling state in which the International Brigades found themselves after Brunete. They had suffered 4,300 casualties out of a strength of 13,353. Nearly 5,000 men were in hospital from disease as well as wounds. The head of the International Brigade camp at Albacete reported to Moscow that the performance of the brigades at Brunete had been affected by “the systematic work of the fifth column”.
Every blunder was attributed to deliberate sabotage. General Walter, convinced that the International Brigades had been infiltrated, set up machineguns behind the lines. “The surrender of Brunete and the flight of many brigades were, to a significant extent, the result of panic sown by the ‘fifth column’ that the Fascists had spread around our forces.” The International Brigades even established their own “concentration camp”, called Camp Lukacs. No less than 4,000 men were sent to this punishment camp over the next three months.
Stalinist paranoia intensified. During the Saragossa offensive in August, General Walter accused Spanish medical staff of murdering wounded brigaders in hospital through “methods of treating the sick that were patently the work of wreckers”. In addition, “a large-scale Trotskyist spy and terrorist organisation” was suspected in XIV International Brigade. Walter called the Soviet NKVD in Barcelona to come to investigate, but “Brigade commander Sanje took it upon himself to carry out the investigation. He went to work so ardently and clumsily that the arrested man, a French lieutenant, quickly died during interrogation, taking with him the secret of the organisation.”
The damage to morale was devastating, yet hardly any brigaders repeated what they had seen on their return home for fear of harming the cause of the Republic. Meanwhile, their Comintern commanders, who revelled in a ruthless devotion to the Stalinist cause, did not imagine that their reports to Moscow would ever be revealed, albeit nearly 70 years later.
Antony Beevor is the author of The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
