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

Soviet advisers, however, were soon complaining bitterly in their reports back to Moscow about the incompetence and inertia with which they had to deal. ‘Sometimes my hands itch to take some of these bastards out of their offices and stand them up against a wall,’ wrote General Berzin to Voroshilov. ‘Such unpunished, unbridled sabotage of necessary measures, such sloppiness and irresponsibility as reign here in the general staff and in the bureaucracy of the administration at the front, I could never have imagined before. People simply do not carry out the orders of the war ministry, or they do the opposite and calmly continue to stay where they are.’²⁴

One of the main problems in the relationship between Soviet personnel and their Spanish allies stemmed from a clash of very different cultures, political as well as social. Soviet soldiers had never had the opportunity to mix with foreigners, especially with ones who disagreed with Stalinist policy, and this was clearly a shock. A commissar with a Soviet tank battalion reported that the first ‘specific feature of the local situation which we had failed to take into account’ was the fact that ‘people around us belong to different political parties’. Another problem was the ‘practice of a completely open consumption of alcohol (wine is served with meals)’. Perhaps predictably, a number of Soviet advisers tended to over-exploit the opportunity. An aviation commissar reported that alcohol ‘was also a great threat’ for the Soviet pilots. ‘A local tradition is to drink wine with meals. There is always a lot of wine in our canteens. At first, our men got carried away.’

The tank battalion commissar was also shocked by the existence of legalized brothels in republican Spain. ‘I have to mention that it took a while for a number of our comrades to understand how disgraceful it is to visit brothels. About twenty men have visited prostitutes without permission before 3 December. After the party collective stopped these visits to brothels, discipline has changed dramatically for the better.’ Clearly few precautions were taken, since 22 men were infected with venereal diseases. He also reported on a ‘carefree and offensive attitude towards women: Morkevich, a Komsomol member and commander of a tank, offered 200 pesetas to one woman, who refused and reported this to the Antifascist Women’s Committee’.²⁵

The small detachment of Soviet naval advisers, led by Kuznetsov, had one overriding priority. It was to organize the safe arrival of ships bringing armaments and ammunition from the Soviet Union. Each vessel was identified by a cypher, consisting of Y followed by a number, and given a different route. Those leaving the Crimea would pass through the Dardanelles, then find an island in the Aegean to carry out a superficial refit to change identity, including the name of the ship and flag of convenience. A fake funnel or superstructure would be added to camouflage the ship’s profile. Some pretended to carry tourists, with members of the crew strolling around in hats and pretending to take photographs. The captain was instructed to avoid crossing dangerous stretches in daylight.

Once into the central Mediterranean, the Y ships would keep close to the coast of Africa. They turned north towards Cartagena only when level with Algeria. The most dangerous part of the journey came towards the end, with Italian submarines as well as aircraft patrolling the blockade area. When 48 hours from their destination, Kuznetsov’s staff, who had been tracking the progress of each ship, arranged for Spanish republican warships to escort them in.²⁶

One young Soviet sailor was clearly fired up with his mission, to judge by the poem he wrote:

I am a brave sailor from the Red Navy

I am exactly twenty years old.

I am sailing out into the vast expanse of the sea

To bring the Great October to the whole of the world.

Oh, our noise and uproar,

Resound against the bourgeois shores,

Our Soviet fleet is the stronghold.

All the working people, forward!²⁷

The first ship with Soviet military supplies to reach Spain was the Campeche, which berthed in Cartagena on 4 October 1936. The second ship, the Soviet vessel Komsomol, reached Cartagena eight days later with the first shipment of T-26 tanks. These two shiploads arrived just in time to play a major part in the imminent battle for Madrid.

The Battle for Madrid