This book has a polemical, almost hectoring tone, which this reviewer found unsettling. There is scarcely any historian of modern Spain who escapes censure for underestimating the extent of the communist threat to Spanish democracy on the eve of the Civil War. This is unfortunate, for, putting aside the polemics, Martín Asensio has assembled useful information about the importance of communist front organizations in the aftermath of the 1934 October insurrection and the first months of the Popular Front Government. There is little point in summarizing the polemics. The book has a forward by the eminent US historian Stanley Payne, who stresses that Martín Asensio’s work “invalidates a significant part of preceding historiography” (xiii). With this powerful backing, Martín Asensio denounces the work of Herbert Southworth, Paul Preston, Helen Graham, Santos Juliá, and Tim Rees, all of whom failed to appreciate the power of the communists; it is Martín Asensio’s conclusion that historians have failed to grasp “the real and present danger posed by Bolshevism in Europe in the inter-war period” and that his book “will enable the reader to gauge the gravity of that danger” (p. 154).
Martín Asensio essentially makes two points. The first boils down to asserting, repeatedly, that there was a communist threat because communists were communists. “Contrary to popular opinion, the Seventh Congress of the Communist International (in summer 1935) did not bring about a fundamental change in Bolshevik doctrine nor a turn away from the pursuit of world revolution”, he asserts in the introduction (pp. 4–5), as if this were an extraordinary discovery. Communists in Spain, and throughout the world, whatever their stance on such tactical issues as alliances with other parties or the formation of soviets, praised the Soviet Union and Stalin’s dictatorship. The destination of the communist project was hardly a secret. It is not news that Moscow funded the Spanish Communist Party and issued it with instructions. Nor is it surprising that, in 1932, the Comintern singled out Spain as one of the two countries where a revolutionary mood was developing; the monarchy had just been overthrown. The Comintern Executive’s decision of mid-September 1934 that the communists could participate in an insurrection organized by another party, simply set the context for the communists’ late adhesion to the October Insurrection, something established decades ago. The Comintern Executive’s directive of 21 February 1936 urging the Spanish communists not to simply await “the natural maturing of the revolution” now Manuel Azaňa’s government had been formed but to retain a focus on “a conspiratorial method of organising an uprising” is the nearest Martín Asensio comes to proving his point, but on 26 February further instructions directed the Spanish communists to support the government of Azaňa.
Martín Asensio’s second point is much more serious. He explores the paradox that the membership of the Spanish Communist Party was small but the influence of its front organizations large, and that is indeed of interest. It suggests that communist influence in Spain was not something confined to the Civil War itself, with the provision by the Soviet Union of military and other aid. The great popularity of communists in Spain by 1937 was, in part, also down to preparatory work undertaken before the fighting started and, in this way, the communists did play “a leading role in the formation of a Popular Front” (p. 36). Early in 1934, Moscow had criticized the Spanish Communist Party for sending only two students to the Lenin School; by March 1936, there were fifty-three Spaniards studying there and, in the following month, Moscow floated the idea of establishing a branch of the Lenin School in Spain.
The most interesting material offered by Martín Asensio on front organizations relates to Red Aid. In late 1934, it sent 1.5 million pesetas to Spain and, by early 1935, it had distributed over a million francs to the participants in the October 1934 insurrection. Red Aid was able to give practical support to those experiencing repression. By January 1935, there were prisoner aid committees in every major town and over 1,000 lawyers working for Red Aid. As 1935 developed, the activity of Red Aid committees grew into a countrywide network, uniting communists and socialists, and when an assembly was planned for mid-September, the authorities first banned it and then changed their mind, fearing possible unrest. The Red Aid slogans of an amnesty, lifting the state of siege, and ending the use of military tribunals and the death penalty, clearly had a popular resonance and helped win over republicans to the cause of the Popular Front. After the February 1936 elections, Red Aid organized the triumphant return of 121 militants who had sought sanctuary in the Soviet Union; a mass rally was held at Madrid city hall. Red Aid was having a significant influence on Spanish life.
Trade union work was a second example of growing communist influence through front-type activity. From small beginnings, 104 groups in summer 1932, the Oposición Sindical Revolucionaria (OSR), the “revolutionary opposition” within the trade unions, made progress by organizing wild cat strikes in opposition to the UGT’s policy of abiding by the decisions of joint arbitration committees or “mixed juries”; it was relatively easy to suggest that these juries were rigged by the employers. Inevitably, this tactic meant finding common cause with left members of the Socialist Party and the communists could inform Moscow with some pride in September 1934 that the left was about to take over control of the Metal Workers’ Union in Madrid. Committed to the Alianzas Obreras during the October Insurrection and its aftermath, the communists worked extensively in these “embryos of soviets in Spain” and could inform the Seventh Congress of the Comintern in summer 1935 that they controlled three quarters of the local alliances and a quarter of the provincial ones. Even allowing for the element of exaggeration inherent in such reports, Martín Asensio is probably right to suggest that “the tenacious work of the OSR groups within the UGT for over three years […] was a crucial piece of preparatory communist work not sufficiently acknowledged in the historiography” (p. 131).
A third area where Martín Asensio seems to have put his finger on an important issue was publishing. Comintern support for communist publishing activities clearly had a lesser mobilizing impact than Red Aid and trade union work, but as well as ensuring the mass distribution of such works as Dimitrov’s speech at the Seventh Congress of the Comintern, the communists were able to attract a wide range of non-communist intellectuals to write popular works on historical and cultural topics aimed at workers and peasants. In the radicalized atmosphere after October 1934 “a veritable Who’s Who of Spanish writers” (p. 78) joined the communist owned presses, while, in spring 1936, communist control of these presses became tighter as the communists’ agit-prop department won greater representation.
Martín Asensio’s final focus is the united socialist-communist youth organization, JSU. Here, he considers two areas of communist activity. His account of communist penetration of the armed forces is unconvincing. While the Communist Party clearly did try to organize those recruited for military service, too much faith is placed in the rather boastful reports sent to Moscow; communist activity in the army did not force the government to use the Foreign Legion against the October insurgents, although there just might have been eighty communist sympathizing officers in Madrid regiments in early 1936. Much more convincing is the account of the Red Olympiad, held in Barcelona just as the Civil War broke out. This was a triumph for the JSU, with the obvious and active support of the Comintern; the JSU was led by a graduate of the Lenin School. That so many athletes went straight from the stadium to the front, does suggest some JSU success in raising political consciousness. Martín Asensio, however, lets his communist danger argument derail him. He juxtaposes the games, the outbreak of fighting, and the decision of so many athletes to resist the Spanish military to suggest to the reader that the games were a cover to enable communist youth to prepare for war.
In an epilogue, Martín Asensio analyses a report made to the Comintern in May 1936. This stressed that what the communists were achieving in Spain had not “fallen from heaven” (p. 165) but reflected tenacious work over several years. That seems a fair assessment. Putting on one side the polemics and the mission to convince historians of the communist danger in the inter-war years, Martín Asensio is right to argue that through its work in front organizations, communist influence in Spain was greater in early 1936 than a simple count of party members would suggest.
