The Spanish Republic at War 1936-1939

by Helen Graham

Book Overview

This 2002 book is a comprehensive analysis of the forces of the Spanish left - interpreted broadly - during the civil war of 1936-9, and the first of its kind for more than thirty years. It argues two... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521453143
• ISBN13: 9780521453141
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 486 Pages
• Weight: 1.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Complex, Exhaustive, and Readable

In The Spanish Republic at War 1936-1939, Helen Graham draws a complex picture of the inter-workings, partisan bickering, and other persistent difficulties of the beleaguered Republic. Her clearly stated principal arguments are that the various political groups of the Spanish Left can only be "understood in relation to their pre-war experiences, worldviews, [and] organizational structures," and that the war itself was the primary influence shaping the "evolution" of the embattled republic. To these ends, Graham employs her masterful knowledge of the literature surrounding the conflict. She takes her readers from the factious beginnings in 1931 to the ignominious defeat in 1939 with an eye on precision and meticulous scholarly investigation. Graham goes to great lengths to show that the Spanish Left, even under the seemingly cohesive Popular Front, was never more than a collection of loosely aligned, ideologically similar groups. She shows how the economic crises of the pre-war Republic created "a legacy of distrust" between the UGT and the CNT; how the PSOE and the USC disagreed heatedly over Catalan nationalist issues ; and how even the anarcho-syndicalist FAI was internally "not as politically homogeneous as it is usually portrayed." The pressure of the military uprising exacerbated these divisions to the point of outright interdivisional violence. Rather than convincing the Left that they had a shared interest in the maintenance of the Republic, the rebellion only served to antagonize "intra-left relations with all their tensions, hostilities and contradictions." The centralization of the republic, Graham argues, became a necessary but difficult task for the several republican groups. Some groups, like the CNT and FAI, were in an ideologically untenable situation. Their practical concerns led the leaders to become "increasingly incorporated into the governing machinery of the liberal state." Yet their "cadres and social base[s]" continued to cling to anarcho-syndicalist ideals and resist centralizing forces. This problem was also evident in the concerns of advocates for regional autonomy. In the aftermath of the disorderly Barcelona May Days, the Catalan regional government came under increasing attacks for ineffectiveness during the crisis. To save the essence of the 1932 Catalan Statute, Luis Companys sacrificed Catalan control of the region's police and military. Predictably, Catalan nationalists resisted the marginalization of the Generalitat. So too did Aragonese regionalists resent the dissolution of the Council of Aragon. However, the central government deemed it necessary to dissolve "the last independent stronghold of regional particularism in Republican Spain" so as to more effectively prosecutes the war. It was the PCE that managed to gain the most from the centralization of republican control. As the republic descended into chaos--squabbling divergent groups, increasing financial pressure from non-interventi

Indispensable

This is not an easy book to read, but it well deserves the praise given by Paul Preston on the back cover. It is indeed the best book written on the Spanish Republic during the Civil war. Graham's book is a complex analytical account which makes two major points. First, one cannot understand the history of the Spanish Civil war without recognizing the origins of the divisions among the Spanish Left and the material and ideological background among them. Second, one must not ignore the impact of the war and in particular how the Republic was slowly crushed by superior Axis aid and the hypocrisy of "non-intervention." Anglo-Americans have often looked dimly on the Spanish Republic. Whether they are conservatives, liberals, Social Democrats, Anarchist or Trotskyists, they have warmed to George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia." Orwell presented a compelling portrait of a genuine revolutionary movement that was diluted and betrayed by moderate liberals and by the Spanish Communist Party. The climax was the infamous "May Days," in which the anarchists and quasi-Trotskyist POUM were provoked into a fighting a battle they lost, then persecuted and often murdered. The Left Socialist prime minister Largo Caballero was replaced by a right Socialist, Negrin. Orwell's account stops here, but after that Negrin became a tool for the communists and the Soviet Union as they unsuccessfully sought to turn Spain into a Russian satellite.What makes Graham's book so important is that it shows that this story is not true. It is not entirely untrue, as we will see. But most important, Negrin was not a Communist. He was not a puppet, he was not a stooge, and he was not a weakling. He was fundamentally a liberal who sought to encourage political pluralism and a market economy. At the beginning of the war he sought, at great personal risk to himself, to prevent the nightly "patrols" from randomly killing suspected rebels. He tried to restore freedom of worship in Spain, after revolutionaries had burned many churches and slaughtered much of the clergy. He opposed proposals to amalgamate the Socialist and Communist parties at a time when many Socialists, who would later denounce him as a Communist puppet, favored the idea. Contra much received opinion his ascension to power was not a Communist plot. Originally the Communists simply wanted Largo Caballero to give up the war ministry, where he showed precious little imagination or vigor or competence. When Largo Caballero left, it was because of the united opposition of the Communists, Right Socialists and Liberal Republicans. It is true that the Communists murdered Andreas Nin, the head of the POUM, and that Negrin had little choice but to accept this. And it is also true that security services and military tribunals arrested people arbitrarily or shot soldiers for desertion. But this was not the realization of the Republic's "totalitarian" or "Stalinist" essence, but the desperate struggle of a Republ