Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War (Annals of Communism Series) [Hardcover]

Professor Ronald Radosh (Editor), Mary Habeck (Editor), Grigory Sevostianov (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0300089813 | ISBN-13: 978-0300089813 | Publication Date: June 1, 2001

The Spanish Civil War has long been the stuff of legend. Thousands of brave young men from all over the Western world, most of them organised by their local Communist parties, rushed to Spain to support the democratic Republic against right-wing forces led by rebellious generals in the Spanish officer corps. Although the Republic was eventually defeated, some observers believed that the effort to defend it was a selfless undertaking of the international Communist movement and the Soviet Union - a noble crusade against Hitler, Mussolini, and their Spanish puppet Franco. This book presents a very different view of the role of the Soviet Union in this war. Based on previously unavailable Moscow archives, it provides the first full documentation of that country's duplicitous and self-serving activities. Documents in the book reveal that the Soviet Union not only swindled the Spanish Republic out of millions of dollars through arms deals but also sought to take over and run the Spanish economy, government, and armed forces in order to make Spain a Soviet possession, thereby effectively destroying the foundations of authentic Spanish antifascism. The documents also shed light on many other disputed episodes of the war: the timing of the Republican request for assistance from the Soviet Union; the rise and fall of the International Brigades; the internal workings of the Comintern and its influence on Spain; and much more. Authoritative and startling in the new information it offers, the book is essential reading for anyone interested in Soviet foreign policy or the Spanish Civil War.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Few events in the 20th century have evoked such bitter academic and personal controversy as the role of the Soviet-dominated Communist International(Comintern) in the Spanish civil war. As the introduction to this splendid collection of Comintern documents explains, "the difficulty...has lain in proving the common allegation about Soviet intentions." This rich trove of archival correspondence between Soviet representatives and Moscow provides definitive answers. Perhaps least surprising is the obsessive concern on the part of the Communists with "Trotskyist" and anarchist allies of the Loyalist government. Comintern contempt for the Loyalist government and the "sectarian" Spanish Communist Party confirms Moscow's objective of domination before victory over the fascist rebellion. Indeed, Comintern leader Georgi Dimitrov advises that the "guise of defending the Republic" should not be compromised by premature efforts to install a "dictatorship of the proletariat." For historians, this correspondence offers detailed and multiple reports for the duration of the war. Soviet agents such as Dimitrov, Andre Marty, Ernest Gero, and Palmiro Togliatti anticipated Stalinist tactics in postwar Europe. The editors offer commentary that helps explain the complex panorama of the war and the impact of Soviet decisions on its outcome. Highly recommended for academic and larger public libraries. [July is the 65th anniversary of the civil war's beginning. Ed.] Zachary T. Irwin, Pennsylvania State Univ., Eri.
- Zachary T. Irwin, Pennsylvania State Univ., Erie
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Publisher

Annals of Communism series

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 592 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (June 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300089813
• ISBN-13: 978-0300089813
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,163,005 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Important documentary evidence of Stalin's criminality, November 15, 2003

By 

Craig Matteson (Saline, MI) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War (Annals of Communism Series) (Hardcover)

This is another wonderful volume in the very important Annals of Communism series published by Yale University Press. I can't praise this series enough for the service they have provided us in every one of these volumes.

This book provides, in English translation, 81 important documents of the true Soviet actions in its participation in the Spanish Civil War. Historians will have to make the final judgments and assessments of this material. But I am glad to have the myth of the idealistic Soviet exposed for the lie it always was.

Just as an example of what we learn, we now understand Stalin's desire and success at basically stealing the $50,000,000 Spain had in gold reserves. by shipping Spain outdated and non-functioning military junk as arms. We also know that the French, in effect, supported the Nazi's by interdicting other Soviet arms shipments to the Republic.

There is much more valuable information between the covers of this wonderful book. It reads shorter than its five-hundred plus pages because the documents can be read quickly and the commentary on them is completely fascinating.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars valuable documents on Communist role in Spain, February 4, 2005

By 

disidente "disidente" (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War (Annals of Communism Series) (Hardcover)

Don't let Ron Radosh's move to the political right discredit the
value of this book from a leftwing point of view. The documents
are of value in themselves. To over-simplify a bit, there were
really three sides to the Spanish Civil War. It wasn't just
a civil war but a working class revolution. Spain in the '30s
had a vast revolutionary labor movement. The industrialists,
land-owning oligarchy, Church leaders and generals backed a
violent "final solution" aiming at the extermination of this
movement. But the Communists had very little support within the
Spanish working class. The main social force was an anarchist-
inspired union movement, together with socialist unions
mostly outside the control of the Communist Party.
An interesting aspect of this book are the documents that
give the assessment of the non-Communist left from
the point of view of Stalin's agents. From the point of view of
the workers who built the first labor militias to fight the
fascist army, the war was a class war, a revolutionary war.
Radosh's book shows clearly that the Communists aimed to create
a one-party totalitarian state in Spain, if Franco had been
defeated. To do this they had to crush the authentic Spanish
working class left. It's strategy was to use the leverage it got
from the Soviet Union's arms shipments to Spain to first create
a conventional hierarchical army to replace the initial labor
militias and then eventually capture control of the state by
gaining control of the army officer corps. The documents in this
book, from the Soviet archives, provide evidence to support this
hypothesis.

17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The bitter taste of Soviet bureaucracy, August 5, 2002

By 

Wayne K. Mathias (Santa Monica, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War (Annals of Communism Series) (Hardcover)

The facts speak for themselves. But in this case the casual student of history might nod off during the lecture. The numerous translated documents lose their novelty appeal rather quickly. I recommend it only to the hardcore SCW scholar who can use it for citing references or teaching college courses. It really is a huge, valuable piece of the puzzle. However I would not take it as total vindication for the Republic's detractors: the Popular Front had some support from the Comintern, but it is a slippery-slope fallacy to claim that its decline into Stalinism was therefore inevitable. Its decline was greatly helped along by the war, a condition that always tends to centralize authority and rationalize police-state tactics, and by European & American isolationism. France also elected a Popular Front coalition which, like Spain's, had all the left factions from moderate liberal to communist. Despite the fragmentation of this multiparty system, France managed not to have a civil war over it, and was not undermined by Stalinism. Conspiracies can only do so much; if you look at the documents, the Soviets in Spain had their hands full dealing with the chaos. One could just as easily argue that quick intervention by France, the UK & USA could've saved the Republic from Stalin AND Franco. FDR later admitted to US Ambassador Bowers that he had been right on this point all along.