Customer Reviews

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

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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 by shipping Spain outdated and non-functioning military junk as arms.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.

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.

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.

Ron Radosh, whose own uncle, Irving Keith died in fighting the Fascists in Spain, has written a gripping, if ponderous, terrifying if also mundane account of the Stalinist grip on the Republic of Spain.

In a series of documents, culled from the former Soviet archives, Radosh spins a thoroughly believeable tale of cunning, avarice, deceit and betrayal not only of the Spanish Republic, but of the thousands of idealistic young men - the vast majority of them Communists - who flocked to Spain believing that MOTHER RUSSIA was the great white hope of stopping Hitlerism in its tracks. And thousands died, never knowing of the deals that pockmarked scum toady was making with Herr Hitler.

Radosh also presents the documents of those International Brigade men who went to Spain fighting for Democracy and Revolution, and when they found out that the revolution and fight against Fascism had been betrayed, they themselves were arrested and many shot. Close to a dozen Americans were shot by the GPU, some on charges of desertion, others like Albert Wallach, Vernon Selby, Marvin Stern and Harry Perchik on political grounds. Even non-Communist Lincoln Brigaders like one-time commander Philip Detro, a self-described Roosevelt Democrat, may have been terminated by a Party that was little tolerant of dissent.

One of the foremost documents Radosh features is one written by "M. Fred" M. Fred was Manfred Stern or Emil Kleber the vaunted General Emilio Kleber who saved Madrid during the November 1936 siege. Kleber writes a critical document, encompassing almost 75 pages, justifying his role in the International Brigades and acknowledging mistakes. What Kleber was really writing here was a plea for his life, because Stalin had already begun the purges of International Brigade commanders (1938) when this document was written.

And little did Kleber know - he was to perish shortly after returning to Moscow - that Stalin had already made up his mind that no matter how many victories the International Brigades would win, the Republic was doomed and just a pawn, a toy to be played with Herr Hitler.

Many, like Bill Herrick in his excellent "Jumping the Line" would learn the bitter truth early on. Others, like Harry Fisher, would parrot the Party Line till the day he died protesting the just war against the Stalin of the Middle East, Saddam Hussein.

This is a five star book that only received four stars because I wish that Radosh would write more of the Lincolns and his uncle. Their idealism, and in many cases a sincere fight against Hitlerism and to support the democratic republic of Spain - instead of the cynical betrayal of it by Joe Stalin.

I saw this book as I was browsing one day and I had to get it. The Spanish Civil War has always intrigued me because I think if the Republicans had won, World War II may not have happened. So to see a book that describes how Stalin used Spain as his own little playground and piggy bank was very intriguing to me. Ordinarily, I would not have bought a book this long with these types of sources. I would have dismissed a book like this as untrue propaganda. But in this case, there is no way that any of the things in here are lies. The anti-Stalinist feelings of the authors are definitely dominant in the tone of the beginning of each section. But, I mean, it's STALIN we're talking about here, not some two bit amateur sociopath. So I respect the bias of the book. I like the fact that the telegrams and cables in the book are actually REAL, so the reader could see what Stalin and his comrades in crime were doing to the people of Spain. The idea that Stalin could profit off of falsifications of exchange rates in money froom the Republic makes me hate him even more than I did before I read "Spain Betrayed". This book is amazing, very very well researched and documented, and if you are at all interested in Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Uinion, the Spanish Civil War, or all of the above, then you need to read Spain Betrayed. Overall, this book really shows that two dictators were victorious in the Spanish Civil War: Joseph Stalin and Francisco Franco.

I hope that reviewing a review isn't in bad taste, but something written below in Mr Jewett's review is demonstrably false. The excellent point made by Radosh et al. about Soviet treachery toward their fellow leftists in Spain was made long ago by Chomsky in his famous article "Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship" (1968)--available in "The Chomsky Reader." Of course, Orwell made the point earlier still in "Homage to Catalonia." BTW, such betrayals did not originate with Stalin. For the despicable treatment of Ukrainian anarchists by Lenin and Trotsky see Voline's "The Unknown Revolution" and Arshinov's "The History of the Makhnovist Movement." Still, the true nature of the USSR is a point that cannot be made too often.

This is another fine book by Ronald Radosh who became a neo-conservative after undergoing what Sidney Hook referred to as the "shock of recognition". The substance of the revelations in "Spain Betrayed" corroborate what George Orwell wrote in "Homage to Catalonia" where he stated that "nine-tenths of everything written about the Spanish Civil War is a lie". Radosh and his co-editors Mary Habeck and Grigory Sevotyanov go through over 500 pages of documents, dealing with the Spanish Civil War, discovered in the Russian archives. The net effect of this effort will be to turn upside down all the historical perceptions of the Communist Left in the 20th century.

The information from the archives shows the totality of Stalin's attempts to control the revolution in Spain in his quest to turn it to his own imperialist whims. The treachery is laid out in page after page as Stalin's henchmen kill those very people they purport to support. The archives also show the preening elitism of the heretofore-sanctified Abraham Lincoln Battalion particularly as it relates to their treatment of their Spanish military counterparts and supporters. This is nothing new as it continues today in Europe and America where the sanctimonious Left preaches one thing but lives another. An example of this intellectual dishonesty is seen in Ernest Hemingway who looms large as his perfidy is revealed much as Paul Johnson spotlighted him in his book "Intellectuals".

Hilton Kramer's book "Twilight of the Intellectuals" is a good companion piece for this book as it relates how intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Satre gave intellectual support to the Stalinist revolution from the 30's onward, but when faced with the betrayal and lies of such, as enunciated by Kruschev in 1953, turned their guns on America. This exercise in contorted logic has been largely successful in persuading many budding college sophomores to see "Amerika" as the flip side of the Stalinist tyranny. An example of one who has carried this traditional Leftist dodge into the 20th century is Noam Chomsky, one of the most influential communist sympathizing demagogues on college campus' today. He still preaches the same tired dogma of a stripe highlighted in "Spain Betrayed" hence my caption above "and the shroud of the sea...".

For the Communist sympathizing Left the Spanish Civil War was the last undefiled temple of the Marxists and their admirers and the revelations in this book have thoroughly undermined the assumptions supporting that structural artifice.

As Sidney Hook, the Left leaning anti-Communist averred, "the enemy is on the Far Right and on the Far Left." Put another way the alpha chimp, the Mafia don seeking world dominion, knows no political party or religion, he only knows his own burning ambition to control everyone everywhere for all time. I hope this book gets a wide play in the media, but I fear that like most tomes, which don't synch with today's politically correct academics it will end up on remainder long before it should.

Another book that develops the continuing saga of this muddled academic allegiance to the principles of communist aspirations, outlined by Radosh, et al, is the "Long March" by Roger Kimball. No one ever thought that archives like these would see the light of day, but thanks to historical events and the diligence of truth seekers like Radosh it is now available for all to read. Thank you Mr. Radosh and friends and while we're at it let's thank the Yale University press's extraordinary annals of Communism series.

this book thoroughly debunks several myths of the spanish civil war and refutes the widespread view that the republicans were the good guys of the conflict. stalin and his henchmen tried to install a "peoples government" and learned that only the presence of red army troops made any people accept a communist regime.

the leadership of the spanish republic was honeycombed with stalin's agents or fellow travelers (to use a term from senator mccarthy). as much of the civil war's bloodshed was caused by intra left struggles (communist versus anarchist) as was spilled between franco's falangists and the republican forces.

the book should be read by any serious student of the spanish civil war. our own abraham lincoln brigade spilled their blood to install a soviet version of slavery rather than liberate the spanish people as popularly advertised.

I've written a few comments on other people's reviews, but after reading both Mr. Anthony Beevor's 'The Battle for Spain' and much of Mr. Ronald Radosh's framing commentary, I want to include my own review.

I gave this book one star, even though the choice of documents and the picture the documents present are first rate. However, as Mr. Grover Furr suggests in his own review, the documents all too often contradict the framing commentary. 'Spain Betrayed' is part of the excellent series 'Annals of Communism.' There are three books in that series that I particularly think are invaluable: 'The History of the Gulag,' by Oleg Khlevniuk, and 'Stalin's Secret Pogrom,' by Joshua Rubenstein and Vladimir Naumov (about the trial and execution of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee) are both first rate, and 'The Road to Terror' by J. Arch Getty and Oleg Naumov (about the Stalin purges and show trials) is by far the single best treatment of that period. With that august company, the weaknesses in Mr. Radosh's commentary are especially surprising.

In Beevor's 'Battle for Spain,' he mentions the two disparate views of Soviet actions for the Spanish Republic. The traditional view is of a heroic USSR disinterestedly giving all the help it could to a legally constituted Republic. The opposing view is that Stalin used Comintern agents and aid in an effort to create Stalinist-style Soviet regime in Spain; failing that, then take whatever the Soviets could from Spain. Beevor explains that while neither version is correct, the former is further from the truth. However, Radosh loses his way by embracing the latter view (critical of the Soviet Union) so completely, that his thesis is that the Republic would have won the civil war, but for the duplicity of the Soviets: '[T]he price the Republicans paid for the Soviet aid was the very factor that led to the Republic's eventual demise.' That assertion is simply unsupportable. The actions taken by the Western Democracies with the Non-Intervention Committee, which allowed a free flow of support to the Nationalists, and isolated the Republic, doomed the Republic, regardless of what the Soviets did or did not do.

Soviet Duplicity v. American Aid

Radosh is absolutely correct, when he condemns the Soviets for taking Madrid's gold reserves to pay for weapons, and using an exchange rate of 2.5 rubles to the dollar, when the market rate was actually 5.3 rubles to the dollar. The inflated rate made the guns the Republicans purchased twice market value. That was bad. What Radosh fails to suggest is where else the Republicans should or could have gone to purchase supplies. The United States? Hardly. While the Soviets were selling weapons at a double mark up, Texaco diverted five oil tankers--bought and paid for by the Republic--to the Nationalists. Beevor states that over the course of the civil war, Franco received 3.5 million tons of oil--on credit, no less--well over double the amount the Republic was able to import. Ford, Studebaker, and General Motors provided 12,000 trucks to the Nationalists (three times more than the Axis powers were able to provide). Dupont provided the Nationalists 40,000 bombs, having to send them through Germany to circumvent the Neutrality Act. Beevor quotes Jose Maria Doussinague, the under-secretary at the Spanish Foreign Ministry, saying 'without American petroleum and American trucks and American credit, we could never have won the civil war.' Moreover, within a month of the uprising, Franco received 48 Italian and 41 German aircraft. The Republic received no more than 13 outdated fighters and six obsolete bombers. In conclusion, regardless of what the Republicans were paying the Soviets, weapons were not available elsewhere at any price.

That fact doesn't keep Radosh from quoting Gerald Howson, a British Historian, who says:

'[Of all the] swindles, cheatings, robberies and betrayals the Republicans had to put up with, this barrow-boy behavior by Stalin and the high officials of the Soviet nomenklatura is surely the most squalid, the most treacherous, and the most indefensible.'

I don't think so. Far more indefensible, treacherous, and squalid were the actions of the Non-Intervention Committee, which consisted of the ambassadors to England of every European nation except Switzerland and the US--including Portugal, Germany, and Italy who were all opening aiding the Nationalists. Beevor quotes Claude Bowers, the American ambassador to Spain:

'Each movement of the Non-Intervention Committee has been made to serve the cause of the rebellion . . . This Committee was the most cynical and lamentably dishonest group that history has known.'

All in all, the military experience and expertise of the Nationalists, coupled with the support of the Western Democracies and the Axis Powers, were 'the very factor(s) that led to the Republic's eventual demise,' not the Russian exchange rate for Republican gold.

Other Errors

For reasons I can't understand, Radosh is similarly sloppy and sometimes just wrong in many of his assertions. For example, he states that 'Spain was fated to be the first nation in which the three great ideologies and political systems--democracy, fascism, and communism--would fight it out.' This generalization is wrong on at least two counts. First, the parliamentary struggles in Germany, culminating with the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, predated Spain's civil war. The German situation was much more of a battle between 'democracy, fascism, and communism' than Spain. More importantly, Radosh's view ignores the power of the of the anarcho-syndicalists and the National Confederation of Labour (CNT) Union. While the Nationalist were unified (Beevor calls them 'right wing, centralist, and authoritarian at the same time'), the Republic was an incompatible mix of centralists and authoritarians (most prominently, the communists) with anarchists and regionalists, like the Catalans. A more accurate, and fair, generalization would have Spain the first nation where four great ideologies--democracy, fascism, communism, and anarcho-syndicalism--would fight it out. But that still would be, at best, an unhelpful generalization.

Radosh also says 'The Spanish Civil War took place because the indecisive elections in February 1936 revealed a nation divided.' While those elections did reveal a divided nation, the result was far from 'indecisive:' Beevor states there is no question the Popular Front won the election, despite Nationalist propaganda to the contrary. Next, in terms of the violence against civilians, Radosh states 'Once the civil war broke out, both sides were responsible for unspeakable atrocities,' effectively equating both the 'Red' and "White' terror. Beevor goes into detail about how the Nationalists, as soon as they took an area, set loose a reign of terror, with massacres that were greater many times over than the number of people executed by the Republic forces. In no way can atrocities by the Republic be equated with the violence of the Nationalists.

The extent and viciousness of the Nationalist forces towards defeated Republican towns was no secret. For example, Nationalist General Queipo de Llano broadcast over Radio Seville stories about the sexual powers of his African troops, and how he had promised them the women of Madrid as a prize, once the capital was taken. With that background, Radosh's contention that the 'Stalinists' resistance to allow a genuine 'proletarian revolution' disarmed the Republic of its 'unique weapon' of 'popular enthusiasm' is especially curious. He quotes Robert Alexander, another historian, claiming that Soviet-influenced efforts were a 'negative contribution to the war effort,' and Soviet prevention of the revolution 'certainly increasingly raised troubling questions in the minds of the workers and peasants in the rearguard about whether their sacrifices for the struggle were any longer worthwhile.'

I am at a loss to understand that reasoning. Beevor details the extreme and unrelenting brutality of the advancing Nationalist troops. I can't imagine anything the Comintern agents could have said or done that would have been more 'troubling' to the 'rearguard,' that a rearguard facing massacres at the hand of the Nationalists would still be wondering if their sacrifices were 'worthwhile.'

Certainly, there is a story about the Soviet Union's cynical and opportunist actions during the Spanish Civil War. But to call those actions THE 'betrayal' of the Republic, and the reason for the Republic's defeat, not only does a disservice to those who supported the Republic, but excuses those who truly are responsible for fascism's victory in Spain. Oddly, the documents Radosh presents frequently support that view, contrary to his own commentary.

A much better book should have been written about the dealings between the Spanish Republic and the Soviets. That book would go into detail about Soviet disingenuous behavior, but framing Soviet actions through the three factors that betrayed the Second Spanish Republic: first and foremost, the actions of the Axis powers and the Western Democracies through the Non-Intervention Committee, which supplied the Nationalists and starved the Republicans; second, the Nationalists advantage in terms of trained military and equipment, along with the Nationalists willingness to be the first in history to launch bombing campaigns against civilian populations; then, at a distant third, the fact that the Soviet Union traded weapons for Spanish gold at an inflated exchange rate.

I gave this book one star, because if you are looking for one book to read about the Spanish Civil War, do not read this book. There are many excellent books about the complexity and tragedy of Republican Spain. Obviously, my favorite is Anthony Beevor's 2006 edition of 'The Battle for Spain.'The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 You will be much better served reading Mr. Beevor's book, instead of this one.

The role of the Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War is a highly contentious and politicized debate that often says more about the historian than the history. In Spain Betrayed, Ronald Radosh seeks to "demystify" Soviet participation in the struggle with newly released documents from Soviet archives. What happens instead, however, is that Radosh further convolutes the issue at hand by presenting an analysis that is often at odds with the new body of evidence. Whereas the introduction of new evidence should allow historians to see a more nuanced and accurate picture of Soviet intervention, Radosh obscures it by presenting preconceived anticommunist attitudes about Soviet participation in the war with documents that don't necessarily provide the same image.
Radosh seems in many ways to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the Soviet role in the conflict. Throughout the book, he contends that Soviet advisers sought to take control of the Spanish economy, military, and political institutions so that it could become a Soviet satellite much like the Peoples' Democracies of Eastern Europe after World War II. Radosh never questions why the Soviets would want to conquer Spain, nor does he acknowledge the impracticality of it. By doing so, he sets up an image for the reader of the Soviet Union as a power-hungry empire without ever seriously considering the political climate of Europe at the time. A more in-depth analysis would examine the growing influence of the fascist powers as well as the attitudes of Britain and France toward Spain, and what the consequences of another fascist state in Europe may have been.
Radosh also uses evidence very selectively to construct the image he believes to be true. In the case of Soviet arms shipments to Spain, Radosh downplays the significance of reduced arms shipments in 1938 and 1939. In fact, historians such as Daniel Kowalsky have shown that some of the most needed weapons such as tanks and planes were not replenished as the volume of Soviet assistance declined after the initial months of fighting, a fact which certainly had a negative effect on the Republic's ability to resist the technologically superior Nationalists. Radosh's analysis of Soviet advisers suffers the same bias by ignoring the complex nature of their involvement. He frequently depicts the Soviets as trying to control the Spanish economy and military. In one sense he is right, but the issue is really more complex. Whereas Radosh reads Soviet proposals as orders , he also sees their attempts to make the economy more efficient and centralized to boost much-needed industrial production as outside domination rather than a wartime necessity.
He makes a similar error in analyzing the Soviet advisers' role in the Spanish military. He interprets their desire to make a formalized, regular army as an attempt to control it, and by consequence the Spanish state. What the evidence proves, however, is that Radosh ignores the reality of the war to present a preconceived image. The document he provides in support of this argument shows a Soviet adviser acknowledging the problem of anarchist militias not showing up for battle, a problem which he believes cost the Republic the Battle of Teruel. Unreliable units would logically cost the Republic, a fact which Radosh ignores so that he can present the Soviet's proposal for an organized army as a power grab. Documents which Radosh presents to illustrate the totality of the advisers' control turn out to actually be complaints of the limitations of their position and the need for more advisers, because they lacked influence.
I have provided here only a few of the instances in which Ronald Radosh's political opinions have obscured his investigation of Soviet participation on the Spanish Civil War. Perhaps the author of such recent articles as "Why Obama Care Must Be Defeated" and "The Rebirth of the Stalin Cult" was not the best choice of a historian to analyze new documentary evidence on such a highly politicized issue. Books which include the analysis and evidence side by side are powerful ways of checking the credibility of the analysis, and in this case it has illuminated the failure of Radosh to add any new and credible insights into this thorny piece of history.