In addition to what @axont@hexbear.net said (which I believe is accurate), what I was referring to specifically wasn’t the “Stalin didn’t send us enough tanks, which means he murdered us” line but the “Spanish Communists worked with the capitalists to suppress the anarchists” line. The way that I’ve heard it told many times is that the whole anarchist (etc.) side had control of a telecommunications building and for some reason, probably their traitorous tankie hearts, the Stalinists and Republicans besieged this building and tossed the anarchist side out, which precipitated the “infighting” where it was the anarchist (etc.) camp vs the Stalinist and Republican camp vs the fascist camp.
I spent a fair bit of time trying to figure out what actually happened and why it all centered on that building until I discovered – from an anarchist archive that was nonetheless very hostile to the Stalin camp – that there was a series of incidents beforehand where the anarchists in charge were sabotaging communications between the Republicans, which is why they and the communists decided that the anarchists weren’t to be trusted with that privilege anymore and must be removed by force. Then, so the story goes, the anarchists had set up barricades across the city by the end of the day and the ~three front conflict began.
There’s this interesting thing that you see with denialist lines where there are people who pretend it didn’t happen and those who admit that it did but say it was a good thing to do. You can find plenty of writing attacking the communists for working the the Republicans, hilariously including Trotsky, whose broad position is obvious because Stalin Bad, but he specifically makes these extremely Ultra arguments about how working with the Republicans meant the communists were not fighting an ideological war, but merely a military one, and thereby made victory impossible because they had no way of properly rallying the masses (by which I think he was including a large amount of the popular base of the Francoists). It’s among the most ridiculous things that I’ve ever read from a “serious intellectual” because Trotsky is not simply being a fool here but, to the best of my understanding, also going entirely against his experiences in the Russian Revolutions for the sake of saying Stalin Bad as emphatically as possible. It’s so fitting that Orwell was part of the anarchist/non-Bolshevik-aligned-communist camp when he was doing his war tourism.
I have no interest in defending the “Stalinist” side in the civil war more broadly, because I think this sort of litigation isn’t useful or relevant or even that interesting, but these specific lines of attack are unforgivably foolish. If you want something better, I think it would be fair to say that communist agitators did engage in slander against the POUM, etc., though the degree to which this was intentional I think also gets misrepresented.
It is of course extremely hostile, which is their prerogative I guess, but still makes it very clear that as concerns the telecom building specifically, the communist/Republican camp was unquestionably in the right because the anarchists were sabotaging the war effort against the fascists for the sake of sticking it to the libs! I haven’t read through everything they link, but it’s worth noting of course that at least two of the three sources in the “communist or pro-communist sources” section are there just to say “look at how crazy and evil the Stalinists were.” Granted, they are valid evidence that there were other problems with how the communists were approaching the situation, but what appears to be well-rounded sourcing ends up having a bent more toward “Here’s the people who hate the communists and here’s the worst prominently-published material from communists we can find to validate that”. I think the only real counterargument is in the Comorera pamphlet and I must admit that I haven’t looked at it very closely.
And here’s another text that I found that doesn’t cover that material but I just sort of found it amusing: https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/11/hightime.htm He calls Stalin “the Kremlin Cain” twice in just a few pages, which compliments him saying “oppressors and tyrants from the Biblical kings down to Stalin” in the previous text, seemingly mainly over him ordering the assassination of a defecting spy.
@vladimirpoopin@hexbear.net Since I included a couple of links and you asked for sources, hopefully this is something.
Thank you for this effort-post, since I often hear more from anarchists on the MLs cracking down on them in the Spanish Civil War, so it’s good for me to at least have this ML perspective, just in case.
I shouldn’t be taken as an authority on anything, much less an adequate representative of the ML side, but at least the sources are there and you can see an anarchist openly acknowledge the sabotage and see what silly things Trotsky had to say, as though 1944 would be the best time to do a communist revolution in London.
Super helpful, thank you. I’ve only read George Orwell’s own experiences on this which while more than valid reasons to be upset at the USSR, felt incomplete and didn’t really explain motivation for the USSR. Going to dig into those sources but appreciate you sharing them
In addition to what @axont@hexbear.net said (which I believe is accurate), what I was referring to specifically wasn’t the “Stalin didn’t send us enough tanks, which means he murdered us” line but the “Spanish Communists worked with the capitalists to suppress the anarchists” line. The way that I’ve heard it told many times is that the whole anarchist (etc.) side had control of a telecommunications building and for some reason, probably their traitorous tankie hearts, the Stalinists and Republicans besieged this building and tossed the anarchist side out, which precipitated the “infighting” where it was the anarchist (etc.) camp vs the Stalinist and Republican camp vs the fascist camp.
I spent a fair bit of time trying to figure out what actually happened and why it all centered on that building until I discovered – from an anarchist archive that was nonetheless very hostile to the Stalin camp – that there was a series of incidents beforehand where the anarchists in charge were sabotaging communications between the Republicans, which is why they and the communists decided that the anarchists weren’t to be trusted with that privilege anymore and must be removed by force. Then, so the story goes, the anarchists had set up barricades across the city by the end of the day and the ~three front conflict began.
There’s this interesting thing that you see with denialist lines where there are people who pretend it didn’t happen and those who admit that it did but say it was a good thing to do. You can find plenty of writing attacking the communists for working the the Republicans, hilariously including Trotsky, whose broad position is obvious because Stalin Bad, but he specifically makes these extremely Ultra arguments about how working with the Republicans meant the communists were not fighting an ideological war, but merely a military one, and thereby made victory impossible because they had no way of properly rallying the masses (by which I think he was including a large amount of the popular base of the Francoists). It’s among the most ridiculous things that I’ve ever read from a “serious intellectual” because Trotsky is not simply being a fool here but, to the best of my understanding, also going entirely against his experiences in the Russian Revolutions for the sake of saying Stalin Bad as emphatically as possible. It’s so fitting that Orwell was part of the anarchist/non-Bolshevik-aligned-communist camp when he was doing his war tourism.
I have no interest in defending the “Stalinist” side in the civil war more broadly, because I think this sort of litigation isn’t useful or relevant or even that interesting, but these specific lines of attack are unforgivably foolish. If you want something better, I think it would be fair to say that communist agitators did engage in slander against the POUM, etc., though the degree to which this was intentional I think also gets misrepresented.
The archive I alluded to is here: https://warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/collections/digital/scw/may
It is of course extremely hostile, which is their prerogative I guess, but still makes it very clear that as concerns the telecom building specifically, the communist/Republican camp was unquestionably in the right because the anarchists were sabotaging the war effort against the fascists for the sake of sticking it to the libs! I haven’t read through everything they link, but it’s worth noting of course that at least two of the three sources in the “communist or pro-communist sources” section are there just to say “look at how crazy and evil the Stalinists were.” Granted, they are valid evidence that there were other problems with how the communists were approaching the situation, but what appears to be well-rounded sourcing ends up having a bent more toward “Here’s the people who hate the communists and here’s the worst prominently-published material from communists we can find to validate that”. I think the only real counterargument is in the Comorera pamphlet and I must admit that I haven’t looked at it very closely.
While it might not be the exact text I had in my head, here’s an example of Trotsky saying what I mentioned: https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/xx/spain01.htm
And here’s another text that I found that doesn’t cover that material but I just sort of found it amusing: https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/11/hightime.htm He calls Stalin “the Kremlin Cain” twice in just a few pages, which compliments him saying “oppressors and tyrants from the Biblical kings down to Stalin” in the previous text, seemingly mainly over him ordering the assassination of a defecting spy.
@vladimirpoopin@hexbear.net Since I included a couple of links and you asked for sources, hopefully this is something.
Thank you for this effort-post, since I often hear more from anarchists on the MLs cracking down on them in the Spanish Civil War, so it’s good for me to at least have this ML perspective, just in case.
I shouldn’t be taken as an authority on anything, much less an adequate representative of the ML side, but at least the sources are there and you can see an anarchist openly acknowledge the sabotage and see what silly things Trotsky had to say, as though 1944 would be the best time to do a communist revolution in London.
Super helpful, thank you. I’ve only read George Orwell’s own experiences on this which while more than valid reasons to be upset at the USSR, felt incomplete and didn’t really explain motivation for the USSR. Going to dig into those sources but appreciate you sharing them