Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 19:55:17 -0500 (EST) From: Andrew Wayne Austin <aaustin-AT-utkux.utcc.utk.edu> Subject: Re: M-I: Spain? 1939? Louis, No, I am not seeking a PhD in political science. Funny, when people think they know everything, and then they run into something they don't know, their first reaction is disbelief or outright ridicule. When X-rays were first discovered, several of the old physicists denied them completely. When Freud revealed, in a speech in 1896, that his neurosis patients had been molested, the hall erupted in riot. But these events are not really analogous, since the matters upon which Louis finds room to be combative are well-known. The year? 1939? It is symbolic, largely, but represents when the Stalinists called off the Popular Front and joined with Hitler in actively putting down the people in Spain. As you know, Louis (I hope you know), 1939 was the year that Stalin and Hitler entered into an alliance, the year after Madrid fell to axis powers. But the Stalinists had been working against the people in Spain for a lot longer than that. The Civil War in Spain was a drawn-out affair, as you should know. The people were struggling against fascism on the one side and the Stalinism on the other. It was a war on two fronts that they ultimately lost. The antifascist and popular forces that were struggling in Spain were eventually abandoned, and then destablized. I really thought that this piece of history was uncontroversial. Evidently not. The counterrevolution by the Stalinists was led through the SCP and the USPC. There immediate goal was, of course, the destruction of the CNT (a cause I am sure many Bolsheviks on here celebrate to this day). In 1935 the Soviets signed a mutual assistance pact. The pact was designed to forge linkages between the Soviet Union and Britain and France to close up holes threatening Russia's interests. To convince the Western Europeans that the established communist parties had no intentions of revolution in Spain they joined forces with the Republican Party, the Republican Union, the Socialist Party, the POUM (Marxist--who would ultimately be put down), the Syndicalist Party, the Basque and Catalan nationalists. This was the famous Popular Front, of which you spoke, and the Popular Front line was adopted by the Third International at the 7th WCC August 1935. The Popular Front stood against the fascists. The effort to undermine the fascist move in Spain involved joining with elements of the bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie, liberal and republican parties, etc. On the fascist side Germany and Italy were giving aid in Spain. When the people actually threw revolution, the Stalinists were embarrassed. Already, from the beginning, the Stalinists worked against fascism but undermined democracy. This destruction of the worker project in Spain lead directly to weakening resistance to fascist forces. (This is all an over-simplification. Events on the ground were obviously very complicated.) The counterrevolutionaries gained power in 1937 and began destroying the working class organizations. They destroyed the workers supply committees, etc., people began starving. The collectives were dissolved. Industries were nationalized and taken from the workers. In December of 1937 Pravda ran this story: "As for Catalonia, the purging of Trotskyists and the Anarcho-Syndicalists has begun, it will be conducted with the same energy with which it was conducted in the USSR." Would we expect anything less? The forerunner of the KGP, the GUP, began operations in earnest. Leaders of the working class began disappearing or turning up dead. During May Day 1937, Barcelona, the Stalinists and government forces launched full-scale assaults against the working people. The destablization lead to the triumph of fascist forces in 1938 when Madrid fell. You fill in the pieces. In 1939, with the signing of the Nonaggression Pact between Germany and USSR, the CP was directed to withdraw all antifascist forces from Spain and the Stalinist party there joined with the fascists. Again, your fill in the pieces. I don't have time, to be honest. If Louis wants to defend Stalinism, then he is free to do so. As for the ad hominem... well, that speaks for itself. I see nothing to make me change my position. I should say that the understanding of geopolitics of this time on this channel is shit. AA --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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