Customer Reviews

Homage to Catalonia

5 star:		(100)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Generalissimo Francisco Franco's fascist troops invaded Spain in July 1936 in order to overthrow the newly established Republic headed by the Popular Front, (composed of liberal democrats, socialists, anarchists, trade unionists, communists and secularists). The country was basically divided into Red Spain - the Republicans, and Black Spain, represented by the landed elite, committed to a feudal system and Franco's cause, Fascists, the urban bourgeoisie, the Roman Catholic Church, and other conservative sectors. The number of casualties is only an estimate, but suggests that between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people were killed. Many of these deaths, however, were not the results of military battles, but the outcome of brutal mass executions perpetrated by both sides.

During the war in Spain, approximately 38,000 non-Spanish, anti-fascist volunteers from fifty-two countries, took up arms to defend the Republican cause against Franco, who was aided by Hitler and Mussolini. Twenty-eight hundred Americans, in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, fought here alongside their Spanish and international comrades-in-arms from 1937 through 1938. These men and women believed the defense of the Republic represented the last hope of stopping the spread of international fascism. Most of the volunteers were not political, but idealists who were determined to "make Madrid the tomb of fascism." English novelist, essayist, and critic, George Orwell was one of them.

Orwell was not just a writer, he was a partisan and he was a political idealist. A revolutionary Socialist, not a Communist, he was affiliated with the Independent Labor Party (I.L.P.). Orwell originally traveled to Spain in 1937 to observe and to write, but he almost immediately enlisted in the militia as a private. At that time there were several political parties in Loyalist Spain, and each party had its own militia units, soon to be absorbed into the People's Army. Because Orwell's letters of introduction were originally from the I.L.P., which had connections to the P.O.U.M. (Workers Party of Marxist Unification - a small group of anti-Stalinists), he joined a unit of that party. Most volunteers fought Fascism under one of the Communist or Socialist banners, in a coalition effort, with the intention of working through political and social differences when the war was won. Until that time, he believed that the anti-Fascists should work together in a united front.

When Orwell arrived in Barcelona, the Anarchists were still virtually in control of Catalonia. It was the first time Orwell had ever been in a town where the working class "was in the saddle." He clearly conveys the sense of excitement of seeing the city under de facto workers' control, and the intensity of the revolutionary spirit which coursed through the people. "Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said 'Senor' or 'Don' or even 'Usted;' everyone called everyone else 'Comrade' and Thou,' and said 'Salud' instead of 'Buenos Dias.'" It seemed like all men were equal, and there was hope in the air. "All this was queer and moving. There was much in it I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it almost immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for."

After the most elementary training, Orwell spent weeks of bitter cold and hardship on the Zaragoza front, but saw little action. He was briefly hospitalized with a festering hand wound, and then returned to action - and this time there was plenty of it. Orwell's description of the fighting and conditions at the front is extraordinarily vivid and chilling. He went on leave to meet his wife in Barcelona in April, and thus was in the thick of things for the P.O.U.M. uprising. The situation in Barcelona had changed drastically since those initial days when everyone appeared on equal footing. There were startling changes in the "social atmosphere." Perhaps initially, everyone had worn overalls and shouted revolutionary slogans "as a way of saving their skins." Now, smart hotels and restaurants were once again filled with the wealthy, while food prices had jumped enormously for the working-class. The poor experienced serious and recurrent shortages. The differences between the luxuries of the "haves" and the increasing poverty of the majority became obvious. On May 3 a struggle began between the syndicalist unions and the Catalonian police force. Orwell saw the issue as a clear one: "I have no particular love for the idealized 'worker' as he appears in the bourgeois Communist's mind, but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on." He spent three nights on the roof of a moving-picture house, watching over P.O.U.M. headquarters until troops came from Valencia, and the street fighting stopped.

After ten days back at the front Orwell received a near lethal neck wound. By the time he left the hospital he had lost his voice and all movement in his right hand. Warned by friends that the P.O.U.M. had been suppressed, and many members jailed, Orwell escaped to France with his wife. He began to write "Homage To Catalonia" shortly thereafter. It is a most inspiring and eloquent account of his time fighting with the militia during the Spanish Civil War, not just from a soldiers perspective, but as an eye-witness to one of the most significant events of the 20th century. It first appeared in 1938, but was coldly received by the left-wing intelligentsia, who regarded Communists as heroes of the war. In Orwell's lifetime "Homage to Catalonia" sold only about fifty copies a year.

Many became disillusioned with communism in Spain, but kept silent fearing to harm the Loyalist cause. Orwell's take on the Communist's/Stalin's political machinations, and the overriding priority of the USSR to strengthen Soviet foreign policy, may appear obvious today, but those who put their lives on the line in Spain were much more naive. "The whole of Comintern policy is now subordinated (excusably, considering the world situation) to the defense of the USSR." History now documents the Communist betrayal as far more terrible than Orwell conceived. He became an enemy of Soviet style communism as a consequence of his experiences in Spain, and advocated the English brand of socialism. There is an excellent Introduction in this edition by Lionel Trilling which discusses, to some extent, the political wheeling and dealing that occurred on the Republican side: how the Communist Party allied itself with right wing socialists and liberals to crush the P.O.U.M., with the standard Party line that anyone to the left of them were Trotskyists and therefore "fascist traitors."

This is a masterpiece which brings history to life. For a truly intense portrait of the period, you can do what I did, which was to read Ernest Hemingway's "For Whom The Bell Tolls" with "Homage To Catalonia," back-to-back. My highest recommendations!
JANA

Homage to Catalonia may be the most important book I ever read. Important because it is the book that inspired me to become a journalist, a writer and a teacher.

On the surface, this book is a reportage of the Spanish Civil War. It deals, of course, with the politics, some of the military strategy, and the deep social divisions of the period. More importantly, however, it is the story of how an idealistic, naive, but brilliant man discovered personal truths about war, politics and humanity.

As a history of the Spanish Civil War, it is probably suspect. Orwell was isolated in Catalonia, affiliated with the POUM, a far-left revolutionary Marxist party led by Andres Nin [not Durutti who was, in fact, commander of the Anarchist CNT's militia], and a foreigner. He didn't see enough of the war to write its definitive history.

However, that's not the task Orwell sets for himself. Rather, this is a chronicle of idealistic young men and women in dark times. It is a tale of the promise of revolution and its betrayal by power. Homage to Catalonia is a story of deep humanity about the dignity of man, home, and disillusionment.

It is a great book.

It's been said that George Orwell is every conservative's favorite liberal and every liberal's favorite conservative. This book likely did more to create that sentiment than any of Orwell's other works.

"Homage to Catalonia" is the story of Orwell's experience fighting in Spain, during 1936 and 1937, against Franco's forces that were seeking to overthrow the Spanish government. Orwell originally traveled to Spain simply to report on the war as a journalist, but falling in love with the people of Catalonia and their revolutionary, honestly egalitarian spirit, Orwell joined the Workers' Party of Marxist Unity (POUM) militia.

Once enlisted, Orwell traveled to the front lines of the fight in Catalonia. His observations of life on the front-line and the daily struggles for a soldier during war are at times funny, fascinating, and depressing. Remarking on war, especially the politics of war, Orwell writes, "I believe that on such an issue as this no one is or can be completely truthful;" yet Orwell seems supernaturally honest throughout this book.

After risking his life for the socialist cause he believed in, even being shot in the neck, Orwell eventually realized that many people he once assumed were fighting for the same anti-Fascist cause as he were really no different than the enemy he was fighting. The anti-Fascist soldiers were generally divided into Anarchists (who believed that a Marxist revolution should be the immediate goal) and Communists (who believed that the Fascists must be defeated first and the Marxist revolution addressed after that). Orwell originally sided with the Communists in believing that the Fascists should be defeated first, but over time he came to realize that all the Communists were really wanting was the installation of their own totalitarian system. This left Orwell to fight with and support the Anarchists who were far more genuine than the Communists and simply wanted to be free from any oppressive rule. After months of political bickering, the pro-Stalin Communists in Spain began to arrest and remove the Anarchists with whom they had originally partnered in the fight against Franco, and many of Orwell's friends and brothers-in-arms were arrested and executed. Orwell, still recovering from his gunshot wound to the neck, barely managed to escape from Spain and avoid being caught in the brutal purge of the Anarchists. Knowing he had done nothing morally wrong or anything for which he should logically be arrested, Orwell inititally wanted to stay and help free his friends arrested in the Communist crackdown. But he soon came to realize, "It did not matter what I had done or not done. This was not a round-up of criminals; it was merely a reign of terror. I was not guilty of any definite act, but I was guilty of `Trotskyism'. The fact that I had served in the P.O.U.M. militia was quite enough to get me into prison. It was no use hanging on to the English notion that you are safe so long as you keep the law. Practically the law was what the police chose to make it."

Orwell wrote "Homage to Catalonia" seven months after he escaped from Spain. By then he had time to consider the politics of the war from a distance and relate what he had seen and heard from people who never experienced life on the front-line of a war. The parts of the book in which he addresses these people are the most fascinating. In several of these passages Orwell writes of how he came to the realization that many of the people driving the Marxist ideas he once supported were every bit as dishonest and treacherous as the right-wing Fascists he always hated. As he writes of the press covering the war, "One of the dreariest effects of this war has been to teach me that the Left-wing press is every bit as spurious and dishonest as that of the Right." Orwell's scorn extends beyond the left-wing press to wealthy English travelers through Spain at the time who were oblivious or apathetic to the widespread misery around them. Writes Orwell, "Some of the English visitors who flitted briefly through Spain, from hotel to hotel, seem not to have noticed that there was anything wrong with the general atmosphere. The Duchess of Atholl writes, I notice (Sunday Express, 17 October 1937): 'I was in Valencia, Madrid, and Barcelona... perfect order prevailed in all three towns without any display of force. All the hotels in which I stayed were not only "normal" and "decent", but extremely comfortable, in spite of the shortage of butter and coffee.' It is a peculiarity of English travellers that they do not really believe in the existence of anything outside the smart hotels. I hope they found some butter for the Duchess of Atholl."

It must have been hard for Orwell to come to terms with the fact that many people he once supported were no less repugnant than his enemies. When faced with such a situation, human beings have a natural urge to deny or make excuses for what they are seeing or hearing, for whatever their reasons. It is hard for people to admit when they are wrong, especially regarding something they care deeply about. Orwell faced this situation, and he chose honesty over ideology. Sadly, many of his contemporaries did not.

Ever wonder what it is like be shot right through the neck? Ever wonder what it is like to stare over open sights at an enemy soldier with his pants down (literally) relieving himself? Would you shoot? Ever wonder what it is like to fight with allies that may be as worse than the common enemy?

Orwell experienced all of this and more as a member of one of the more obscure Spanish militias fighting for the Spanish Republic during the bloody internecine Spanish Civil War. He also became incredibly dissillusioned in the process. Finding his beliefs in revolutionary socialism, he was already jaded by communism and the cynical use it was put to serve Stalin's interests. He opted for a more loose organisation and therefore choose to enroll with the Anarcho-Syndicalists as a foreign volunteer in the Spanish Civil War. His particular group was called the POUMists (an acronym that I need not summarize here).

Ill-equipped and with no training, they showed what raw idealism can do against Franco and his fascist oppression -- they stopped fascism cold on the battle field and were never found wanting in terms of courage. What did defeat them was the United Front launched by the Cominterm against International Fascism. For those that did not tow the line, Stalin's advisors and compadours inside the Spanish Communist Party sacrificed. Denied weapons, ammunition and food, the coalition --- made up a broad spectrum of liberal-democrats, progressives, socialists, communists, anarchists (and every shade between) --- were defeated in piece-meal battles. Orwell was shaped and scarred by the experience. Although always a social progressive, he realised that idealism in its most extreme forms could be as bad as the fascism one was fighting against. This shaped his eternal mistrust of Communism (but not as some rightist's bizaarly claim, push him into being some kind of conservative demigod).

This book has it all: a trenchent analysis of political history, a serious war biography, a good slice of military narrative, and a chronicle of idealist growth, development and abandoning of a former way of thinking...

Without a doubt one of my top 5 war biographies and one of the top 25 reads of my entire life, so far....

Attracted by the idea of fighting against Fascism, the English journalist, Eric Blair, a.k.a. George Orwell, went to Spain in late 1936 to cover the fight against Fascism and found himself in Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia in north-east Spain, joining the militia of the anti-Fascist "Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxista", the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification - or POUM, for short. Yet Orwell himself, in a literary work praised by many for its - or its author's - honesty, admits to have joined without any pretence of knowing or caring what it meant to be part of any particular anti-Fascist militia. His take on all the squabbling, which existed at the time between the various anti-Fascist factions, was much the same as anybody who was ignorant of the facts; that is, "Can't we put this political stuff aside and get on with the war?" As a result, the consequences of being in the POUM militia - if not a party member himself (which he was not) - would become all too obvious later on when it was almost too late for him personally.

The book is a mixture of a personal, eyewitness account of the fighting on the Aragon Front, in which he participated actively, and of the background to what he called the "internecine" nature of the infighting between the anti-Fascist factions which was to lead to back-stabbing by rival factions, including the Communists, with the POUM as the main target for attacks in the press, both Spanish and foreign.

Orwell describes life in the front line in language that is meant to convey in an honest - some might say too honest - way just how things were: the ways in which pathetically ill-trained and ill-equipped militiamen were thrown into the front line without even having been shown any weapons of any kind, the privations of life in the trenches, the sheer boredom of being on guard-duty with only the occasional firing from enemy positions, several hundreds of meters away, to break the monotony, the sight of destroyed buildings, the fertile lands being turned into a wasteland, and fear of the cold being greater than fear of the enemy.

For him, the most memorable incidents were the night attack against the Fascist lines, in which he participated, and the moment when he was shot in the throat, albeit at a later date. His descriptions of both incidents are lively and vivid. The crawling through no-man's-land, trying to make as little noise as possible, the firing of shots in unison, the throwing of hand-grenades, the deafening noises, the shouting of attackers and defenders, the bullets zipping overhead too near for comfort, and even Orwell himself chasing a Fascist up a trench trying (and failing) to bayonet him - all are described in language that he keeps as objective as possible, even to the point of regretting trying to kill anyone, even those trying to kill him.

This is due to the fact that people like him were caught up in a war whose political ramifications were either misunderstood or else not understood at all, thanks largely to their being kept deliberately ignorant of the propagandist mud-slinging and governmental back-stabbing behind their backs. The militiamen (Orwell hardly ever uses the word, "soldiers") only knew that they were fighting, whether by choice (as in Orwell's case) or not, for causes which turned out to be somewhat dubious once one had a grasp of what the war was really supposed to be about.

Orwell devotes a considerable amount of space to trying to explain the political background to all the war, yet he sends a caveat to the reader: "Beware of my partisanship", indicating that his account is necessarily one-sided, if only because he had been fighting allegedly against Fascism. At times, it can seem utterly confusing to a reader who, like him, knows nothing of the politics prevailing in 1930s' Spain. It seems that, if Franco was not trying to overthrow the Republican government, the various left-wing parties, representing socialism, anarchism and communism, were vying for power in the most brutal manner.

The one thing that was most misunderstood by the foreign press, Orwell notes, was that there was a revolution going on in Spain, yet the Communists allegedly did NOT want revolution to happen, if only because revolution could only come once the war had been won. Instead, the POUM ended up as the political scapegoat, as it was viciously attacked in the press as a subversive organization that was allegedly pro-Fascist, even though the opposite was true. The party was suppressed, and it was a cat-and-mouse game for the wounded Orwell to avoid arrest and detention without trial by the police. His disgust at the way his fellow militiamen were treated is clear - these people had risked their lives at the front yet, once back in Barcelona, they were being thrown into prison.

Orwell neatly puts propaganda and the war into perspective. What Spaniards and foreigners alike wanted to believe depended upon their prejudices being reinforced by whatever was being told in the press, and Orwell quotes many sources which were written in a way designed deliberately to mislead and mis-inform. Even British pro-Communist papers swallowed what Orwell points to as "lies" spread by the Spanish government in order to ensure that the main reasons for the war in Spain were never fully explained.

It could not have been easy for Orwell, reading about how he and others like him were being portrayed as "Trotskyists in Fascist pay" when they were, in fact, in the bitterest fighting against the Fascists, yet such was the nature of the contemporary reporting of one of the least understood wars of the 20th century, not least because the politics behind it was badly understood. The attitudes that prevailed in Spain simply did not exist in England, something that Orwell points out, and this state of affairs simply contributed to the indifference to, and lack of understanding of, the war by people in his native England, to which he returned soon after his escape from Spain in June 1937.

Said to be one of the most vivid examples in 20th century English literature of the futility of war and its consequences, "Homage to Catalonia" may be regarded as a combination of a personal memoir and an anti-war polemic, yet it has only been really understood and appreciated properly in the light of events which occurred since the book was first published in 1938. It is, indeed, still a powerful work where Orwell shows that he has the ability to be objective about what was happening, neither attacking nor defending the events around him, the hallmark of a true journalist.

In this gripping book, you find some of the best reportage about the Spanish Civil War and you get some of the most engaging descriptions of anarchist and communal living. People always complain about the part of the book which emphasizes party politics in Spain, and you can easily skip that--or, you can peer into a seminal experience for Orwell. His frustrations with the Stalin-supported Spanish communists drove him to write 1984 and Animal Farm. Orwell is better known for these anti-communist writings and less so for his own socialist creed and deep compassion for the poor. Homage to Catalonia captures both his admiration of the working classes and his abject fear of communism. For the writing, for the vision of collectivism, for the war journalism, for the eyewitness accounts of crucial history, and for many more reasons, this book should be a part of everyone's library.

An editor from Slate magazine stated that "Homage to Catalonia" was one of his top three non-fiction books. That's a strong claim, and also what motivated me to download this to the Kindle.

Orwell paints a vivid picture of the Spanish civil war prior to WWII. It is well written and a compelling read. Orwell travels from Britain to Spain and joins the Independent Labor Party and POUM [...] anti-fascist army in the fight against dictator Francisco Franco. His detailed descriptions of fighting on the front with ill-prepared comrades and antiquated weapons provide a palpable sense for trench warfare.

At a few points in the book, Orwell departs the narrative and provides deep political analysis of the interactions between the PSUC, PCE, POUM and the various societal components of Spain at the time (bourgeois, farmers, workers, the Basques, etc). For the detail-oriented buff of Spanish history, these would no doubt be valuable nuggets, but I admit that I found these sections pretty dry and that I longed for the return of the story line. Suffice it to say that the political and social landscape in Spain around 1936 was extremely complex on one hand, and yet simplistic with regard to the world view of the rise of fascism elsewhere.

Homage to Catalonia gave me perspective that I'd not had prior, and first-hand perspective regarding the views of Orwell himself. Recommended, but I'd fall shy of calling it one of the top non-fiction books.

-j

The other week, a Seattle bookstore celebrating its 100th anniversary asked me to pick a favorite book to read at their celebration. I thought about five seconds and picked Homage to Catalonia.

It's about the Spanish Civil War, which few of us still remember. More importantly, it's about human courage and idealism, and the struggle to make a better world.

Orwell's unblinking in his vision. He's scathing toward the Communist apparatchiks who'd rather maintain control of their sectors than win the war against Franco. But he's generous-spirited to all the ordinary volunteers who served on the Republican side--to people who sacrificed for a sense of justice and human dignity.

He also gives a glimpse of a world that might be possible--a world of human dignity and mutual aid. Later his vision got darker, even bitter. I read Animal Farm, for all its power, and don't see much hope. But Catalonia, without soft-pedaling any of the downside, embodies that hope in every page--in the portraits of human courage and aspiration. You read it and it makes you want to act.

Orwell couldn't have anticipated it, but his same Spanish soil later nurtured a wonderful workers coop called Mondragon. Started in darkest days of Franco by a Spanish priest who'd fought with the Republicans, it now employs 23,000 worker-owners, and has $4 billion of annual exports. So the dream Orwell glimpsed wasn't entirely a mirage after all.

Between the World Wars of the 20th century, there was another devastating conflict on European soil that attracted participants from all over. It was the Spanish Civil War, and while internal dissatisfaction and agitation were breaking out around the country, Spain also became a proving ground for broader political ideologies. In 1937, George Orwell went as a journalist but the socialist siren song of the promise of bringing about a classless society drove him, as well as others from abroad, to enlist. He signed up with P.O.U.M., the party for Marxist unification but quickly learned that there were many similar political parties and labor unions, each with their own woefully unprepared militia, and none were working together against the threat of Franco's military coup and Fascism. He also found the Communists arriving, not to assist revolution but to thwart it.

With a clear eye that catches remarkably prophetic insights into the Spanish future, Orwell manages to sort out the chaos of who's who, and the nuances of war that are sometimes awful, sometimes fertile ground for wry humor. Although the voice of the narrative is in memoir form, Orwell was writing only from a distance of 5 or 6 months after he escaped. The book is remarkable for the immediate eye-witness account of the turn of fortunes in Barcelona and the objective sorting out of events that were not being accurately recorded in the media. Orwell expresses deep respect for the native Spanish character, even when some of its inefficient tendencies produce frustration.

My edition, which I purchased here last year, but which looks different from the cover above, offers an introduction by critic Lionel Trilling written in 1952, two years after Orwell's death from TB. It, too, is also a historical document now, preserving the sense of the ruling emotions of the era.

The Spanish Civil War was the defining moment of the 1930s for most European intellectuals. The impact of Franco's attempted coup was comparable to the effect of Pearl Harbour on Americans. For the first time, an illegal Fascist attempt to seize power had been stopped in its tracks by an armed working class. For many intellectuals (like the poet W.H. Auden), the brutality and cynicism often displayed of both sides caused them to swear off politics permanently. Orwell was not one of those - however, it opened his eyes to the dangers of Stalinist Communism as well as Fascism. One can see the seeds of '1984' and 'Animal Farm' in the account of the suppression of the Catalan 'Trotskyists'(so-called) by the Communist-controlled state. This experience made Orwell what he became - a socialist who thought that state-control might solve the problems of poverty, but who feared the tyranny such state-control would bring in its wake. Orwell never seemed to decide which he believed in the more - socialism or intellectual liberty, something which made him describe himself once as a 'Tory Anarchist'. He never came up with a solution to what could be called the key problem of the 20th century, however it is the way he posed the problem that is important. As someone who is the only author in English read by every dissident behind the old Iron Curtain, his place as a defender of freedom is secure. In another sense, this is a great book about the experience of men at war - to me it is as good as any of the memoirs that have come out of Vietnam or World War II like William Herr's 'Despatches' or William Manchester's 'Goodbye, Darkness'. It can be appreciated without understanding the political background at all. Probably among the greatest of Orwell's longer works - its ranks alongside 'Animal Farm' and possibly ahead of '1984'.