The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939

Antonov-Ovseyenko also noted the comments of the Esquerra minister, Jaume Miravitlles: ‘Anarcho-syndicalists are becoming more and more cautious in their management of industry. They have given up their idea of introducing egalitarianism in large enterprises.’ Antonov-Ovseyenko, the Bolshevik leader who stormed the Winter Palace, had become an associate of Trotsky and a member of the left opposition, but his abject statement that August, confessing his faults and condemning his former comrades, did not save him from Stalinist suspicion.²² He may well have been one of those functionaries sent to Spain as a way of preparing their downfall later. The old bolshevik completely failed to see the danger he was in. He asked Soviet advisers and the central government to support an offensive in Catalonia. On 6 October 1936 the consul-general sent a detailed report to Rosenberg, the Soviet ambassador in Spain: ‘Our view of anarchism in Catalonia is an erroneous one…The government is really willing to organize defence and it is doing a lot in that direction, for example they are setting up a general staff headed by a clever specialist instead of the former committee of anti-fascist militias.’ His words were ignored. Comintern propaganda regarded Catalonia and Aragón as ‘the kingdom of the Spanish Makhnovist faction’. And since it had been the Red Army which had destroyed the Makhnovist anarchists in the Ukraine, Antonov-Ovseyenko should have seen the warning signs.²³

He then moved into the realm of international relations, supporting the Generalitat’s contacts with Moroccans, and promising them independence for the colony in the hope of creating an uprising in Franco’s recruiting ground. ‘Two weeks ago’, he reported to Moscow, ‘a delegation of the national committee of Morocco, which can be trusted because it has a lot of influence among the tribes of Spanish Morocco, started negotiations with the Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias. The Moroccans would immediately start an uprising if the republican government guaranteed that Morocco would become an independent state if it succeeded and also on the condition that Moroccans would immediately receive financial support. The Catalan committee is inclined to sign such an agreement and sent a special delegation to Madrid ten days ago. Caballero didn’t express an opinion and suggested that the Moroccan delegation negotiates directly with [the central government].’²⁴ Although such a move was considered by the central government and the Spanish Communist Party, this démarche was angrily rejected by Moscow. The last thing Stalin wanted was to provoke France, whose own colony in Morocco might be encouraged to revolt, and to give the British the impression that communists were stirring up worldwide revolution.

Antonov-Ovseyenko appears to have been doomed by the criticisms of Stashevsky and Negrín. This came to a head the following February when Antonov-Ovseyenko ‘showed himself to be a very ardent defender of Catalonia’. Negrín remarked that he was ‘more Catalonian than the Catalans themselves’. Antonov-Ovseyenko retorted that he was ‘a revolutionary, not a bureaucrat’. Negrín declared in reply that he was going to resign because he regarded the statement by the consul as political mistrust and while he was ready ‘to fight the Basques and Catalans, he did not want to fight the USSR’. Stashevsky reported all this to Moscow (one even wonders whether he and Negrín provoked Antonov-Ovseyenko on purpose) and the consul-general’s days were numbered.²⁵

As a result of the reports from Spain expressing total frustration with Largo Caballero’s determination to thwart communist power in the army, the Kremlin was looking for ‘a strong and loyal’ politician who would be able to control events internally, impress the bourgeois democracies, especially Britain and France, and put an end to the ‘outrages committed by some of the provinces’. Stashevsky had already seen Negrín as the ideal candidate. In late 1936 he reported to Moscow: ‘The finance minister has a great deal of common sense and is quite close to us.’²⁶ But although Stashevsky’s advice was followed, he was to suffer the same fate as Antonov-Ovseyenko. In June 1937 he, Berzin and Antonov-Ovseyenko were all recalled to Moscow where they were executed. Stashevsky’s great mistake was to have complained in April 1937 about the vicious activities of the NKVD in Spain, a curious blunder from one so politically aware.

The International Brigades and the Soviet Advisers