Durruti: The People Armed

by Abel Paz, Nancy MacDonald (translator)

Anarşizmin İspanya pratiği üzerine temel bir yapıt.

Anarko-sendikalistlerin saflarında yıllarca faşist Franko güçlerine karşı savaşmış, faşizmin zaferinden sonra liberter gerillaya katılmış ve 11 yılını Franko'nun zindanlarında geçirmiş bir anarşistin kaleminden, 2 milyon anarşistin katıldığı İspanya Devrimi'nin çarpıcı olaylarla dolu bilinmeyen tarihi.

Genres: History, Biography, Spain, Politics, Nonfiction, Spanish Civil War, Biography Memoir

323 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Abel Paz was a Spanish anarchist, former combatant and historian.

Abel Paz was the pen name of Diego Camacho. He was born in Almería in 1921, and moved with his family to Barcelona in 1929. In 1935 he started work in the textile industry and joined the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT).

During the Spanish Civil War and Spanish revolution he fought in the Barcelona May Events of 1937.

After the fall of Catalonia in January 1939, he went into exile in France, where he was interned. During the 1940s he fought both in the French resistance to Hitler and the Spanish Anarchist resistance to Franco.

He was the author of numerous works on anarchist history, the most important being his biography of Buenaventura Durruti which has appeared in several editions, and numerous languages.

Reviews

[Argos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kitap, İspanya İç Savaşı’nda anarşistlerin ve efsanevi liderleri Durruti’nin eylemleri ve düşünceleri hakkında savaşta anarşistlerin yanında yer almış yazarın anlattıklarından oluşuyor. Dolayısıyla objektif değil ancak ciddi bir belgesel niteliğinde.
İç savaşa adım adım geliş ile savaşta yaşananlar çok detaylı anlatılıyor. Yazar Durruti ve yoldaşlarını “bürokratlardan, görevli sosyalistlerden, komunistlerden ve sendikalist örgütlerden farklı olarak hiçbir zaman ücretli devrimciler olmamışlardır” gibi keskin bir tanımla tanıtıyor.
İç savaşta Stalin’in İspanya üzerine çöken uğursuz gölgesini, Londra, Paris ve Brüksel’in üç maymunu oynamalarını, faşist İtalya ve Almanya’nın falanjistlere desteğini çok ayrıntılı olarak anlatıyor. Anarko-sendikalistlerin ve CNT’nin faaliyetlerini Durruti ve arkadaşları üzerinden anlatıyor.
Daha önce okuduğum Hans Magnus Enzensberger’in “Anarşinin Kısa Yazı” isimli kitabından oldukça farklı. Daha ayrıntılı ve birinci derecede tanıklık ile yazıldığından daha vurucu. Bir edebi eser değil tabii ki ama kitapta yer alan şu cümleyi aktarmadan yapamayacağım. “Paris-Soir muhabiri şöyle yazıyordu: Oh kadim Avrupa ! Her zaman küçük oyunlarınla ve ciddi entrikalarınla öylesine meşgulsün ki. Bu akan kan bir gün seni de boğmayacak mı ?”

[Pedro Kapila · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book on the AK Press holiday sale (A U$30 value for U$5) and what a good idea it was! Well written, with surprisingly few typos and in-depth chronicling of durruti's life before and during the revolution. It really gives tri-dimentionality to durruti beyond a couple of catch-phrases and the "fearsome warrior" persona. As an icon, Durruti kicks Che's ass with hand tied and blinfolded, for his humanism, loyalty and deep comradeship and trust for his comrades, his fellow militiamen and his companera Emilliene and his daughter Colette. Just read it. You won't regret it, I swear.

[Lucas · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best analysis and explanation of the Spanish Revolution up until Durruti's death that I have read. Abel Paz not only explains Durruti's role in the war but his life prior to it and excellently paints a picture of the atmosphere that lead to the outbreak of the Civil war. The book is as much about the anarchist movement and the CNT as it is about Durruti and brings us in depth on not only an incredible mans life but also clarifies the politics of the day.

[Lee]

This is an especially sympathetic biography on Buenaventura Durruti. Overall, it is an excellent view of the the build up to the social revolution in Spain up to 19 July 1936 and following up to Durruti's fatal gunshot wound on 19 November 1936 as well as the various intriguing and inconsistent information about how he died after he died 20 November 1936. What makes this particular book exceptional is due to the fact that Paz was a partisan in the Libertarian Youth during the Spanish Revolution. One of the best things about this biography also is that it doesn't paint Durruti as some kind of super leader but shows him as one of many of the heroic partisans during this time. I believe that it is also a handy bit of information in understanding the eventual rise of fascism leading up to World War 2 because the fascists pretty much got their warm up in this conflict.

[Chuck · Rating 5 out of 5]

I translated this book.

[Craig Plunkito · Rating 5 out of 5]

With anarchist/libertarian communist intellectual circles today more ready and willing than ever to collaborate with socialist parties such as Podemos, Syriza et al, the best parts of this book were the chapters on the class terror of the highly romanticised Second Republic. This book very nonchalantly makes this sort of historical revisionism completely untenable.

It's a kind of living miracle that this books exists at all, given the difficulty of finding out the things that needed to be found out to make it, and many other factors.

Full of inspirational and mostly unremembered workers' rebellions, where hungry and humiliated peasants defend themselves against the murderous Guardia Civil.
I love this book.

[Tyler Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely told from an admiring point of view, but I still felt that this biography of Durruti was extensively researched and highly informative. The Spanish Civil War and the years running up to it are extremely complex and confusing periods, knee deep in competing faction and ideologies. Paz's book unwinds a lot of threads and allows the reader to get a grip on major players and events, in a way that many other books don't manage to do, often tending to lump anyone and everyone into simply "Fascist" or "Republican" camps. This book explains and positions, without bogging down in laundry lists of untrackable detail.

[Kit Condill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dude, this book rocks. If you want to shake yourself out of your middle-America bourgeois complacency, try this on for size.

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

I blew through the first section of this book and found the middle half a tad bit laborious (although this is a perhaps a testament to Paz's superb historial analysis and research). The final sections surrounding the controversies of Durruti's death are especially of interest to students of history. Paz considers 4 different outcomes and possibilities and pieces them together with memoirs, interviews, documents etc.

Paz, himself an anarchist who fought against Franco well after the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), gives the "noble gunman" Durruti a fitting (and fair) biography. And it's hard not to admire Durruti the man as well as the myth. A mechanic by trade, Durruti was that rarest creature: a revolutionary intellectual with proletarian roots.

The strength of this biography, however, stems from Paz taking Durruti off the pedestal and placing him where he belongs; with the masses. Durruti certainly exhibited a religious belief in the working classes to handle their own destiny as well as his equal treatment and respect of women in the revolution. He worked, fought, ate, and slept alongside the men (and women) who fought with him.

In this era of Occupy Wall Street, I can't think of a more terribly relevant book. Highly recommended.

[Antti Rautiainen · Rating 5 out of 5]

First half of the book was adventures of Durruti robbing banks around the world. Highly entertaining but not that much substance, would recommend this to any 9-12 year old.

Second half had more interesting stuff. Attempts of syndicalists to raise uprising in Rif of Spanish Marocco in 1936 were interesting, although eventually sabotaged by social-democrats. This is a solid proof, that anarchists of the golden era took anti-colonialism seriously, and were open to an idea of a common front with islamists against fascism, in contrary to what people like Fredy Perlman or Bookchin would claim later.

Another interesting aspect, especially from a Nordic point of view, was relationship of Durruti with social democracy. Durruti, just as Rudolf Rocker, apparently considered that there was just a narrow time frame for anarchists to depart for a radical alternative, before social democracy would take a persistent hold of the labour movement. They were right, but this is also a sort of contradiction with view of some classical anarchist (such as Bakunin) that there is no need of "right material conditions" for creating anarchist alternatives, view which is popular today amongst insurrectionalists.

My main reason to read the book was that I was interested about Durruti's position on materialism. This was not cleared much, and in the end I believe that FAI never had very clear analysis what in their practice is different from Blanquism of Bolsheviks in 1917. Ok, there is a promise that there would not be terror or repression of peasants, but still it is about a vanguard organisation. FAI was not very consistent on prefiguration.

Durruti had a clear understanding that he was a charismatic leader with a huge responsability and exceptional capability, but should anarchism be about replacing bureaucratic authority with charismatic authority? Durruti had almost no flaws, he was even a sort of feminist of that time, as there was a period when he was basically a housewife taking care of a baby when he was blacklisted by employers, for which he was ridiculed by some more traditional comrades... but when all the most charismatic leaders are shot, what would FAI do?

To be honest, this book made me more interested about trentistas of Pestana and their criticism of Blanquism of FAI, and less interested about FAI, although FAI was way more solid on anti-colonialism than Pestana. It is obvious, that vast majority of FAI considered their insurrectionary practice a failure by 1936, and this is why they made choices which have been criticised since then.

[Liz Estrada · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just finished reading this fascinating biography of the great Durruti in Spanish loaned out from my local library. For obvious reasons, when this book was first published in Spanish, it could not be read in its original language here nor by the readers for which it was intended. Only years after Franco's death did it finally appear. It did NOT disappoint. In Spain, he is either vilified or considered a national folk hero. No in between. Abel writes with first-hand knowledge of this complicated yet reluctant revolutionary leader with passion. It is sad that he was killed in "mysterious " circumstances right at the beginning of the Civil War at such a young age just for being a union/anarchist leader. It's funny how I just saw a poster of him at the Museo Reina Sofia, which is quite emotional. Recommended to all who want to learn more about the Spanish "Che Guevara" and how many different factors led up to the Spanish Civil War. 4.8 stars.

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing 800 page tome written by lifelong Spanish anarchist and Spanish civil war revolutionary Abel Paz documenting the life of Durriti which contains all sorts of gems

[Trey]

This book is remarkably difficult to follow. So much stuff is piled together that the writing feels kind of rushed. I'm lost a lot. Some of it might be a translation issue (the book was written in Spanish), but take names for example. Characters are referred to by either their given names or their surnames - but which name is used will change several times and with no rhyme or reason. I guess the writing sort of expects the audience to be more or less familiar with the events and important characters already. I'm sticking with it, though, because I'm super interested in Durruti, and I've wanted to read this book for a while.

[Hunter · Rating 4 out of 5]

You have to want to read this book. Or maybe want to finish it. It's long and super detailed, and because it's about such a complicated and contentious time period the amount of information can be overwhelming. But the life of Durruti was pretty amazing, and it's all in here.

[Derek Minno-Bloom · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have wanted to read the book for 16 years and finally made it happen, it is a big and long book, but so worth it, Durruti is one of the greats of human kind!

[Munta · Rating 3 out of 5]

İspanyol anarşist devrimci ve tarihte kurulmuş ender anarşist toplumlardan birinin beyni olan Durruti'nin biyografisi. Kaynaklar verilerek, belgesel tadında bir anlatım kullanılarak yazılmış. Ben biraz hayal kırıklığına uğradım çünkü İspanyol anarşist devriminin işleyişi ve pratiğini merak ediyordum, çok bahsedilmemiş.

En hoşuma giden kısımları kendi düşüncesini anlattığı konuşmalar ve diğer düşünürlerle olan anıları. Savaş kısımları ve Cumhuriyetçi blok içindeki iç çatışmalar da çok detaylı ve güzel anlatılmış. Anarşistler bu kitaptan bir çok dersler çıkarabilir. Durruti'nin ölümü hakkında biraz daha detaylı bir araştırma olmaması üzdü. En azından en makul suçlunun kim olduğunu anlatmasını beklerdim. Durruti'nin hayatı gibi, çok ani ve ortada bitiyor kitap.

[David Grobgeld]

An absolutely marvelous, breathtaking work of anarchist history. Much more than a biography of one man, Abel Paz goes into great detail of the political development of Spain, its vast, unbelievably rich anarchist movement and its confrontation with fascism. Of 700 pages, every page felt essential, fascinating, stunning. I genuinely can't believe I lived this long before reading this.

[Ben Leigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

“We are going to inherit the earth. The bourgeoise might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing in this minute.”

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

That world is growing in this minute

[A. M. C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un libro excelente para desmentir las trolas sobre el anarquismo en España. Como, por ejemplo, la filfa de que Durruti salió por patas en Madrid, cuando en realidad fue otro batallón el que huyó... Resulta penoso que la mayoría de críticas de este libro sean extranjeras... corrijo: ¡no hay ni una puta reseña en español! ¡Los trabajadores españoles hemos olvidado nuestra historia! No es de extrañar con la bazofia que nos embuten en las escuelas... A mí no me dijeron ni mu de Durruti en el instituto... he aprendido más de estos libros que de seis años en el puto sistema educativo español...

Y hay una idea clave en este libro: ¡era la Revolución o la derrota! Uno de los argumentos más extendidos contra la Revolución española es que ningún país capitalista echaría un cable a una República controlada por la clase obrera... Pues bien, ya se sabe la historia, se cargaron la Revolución en el 37 y después no envío ayuda militar ni el Tato... Que no os engañen... ¡la mayoría de países (EE. UU., Reino Unido, Francia...) se morían de ganas de que ganara Franco! ¡La No Intervención fue una pantomima! ¡Lo que pasa es que los gobernantes de estos países se habían cagado la pata abajo porque el pueblo español había tomado el poder! Como dijo Camillo Berneri:

La guerra civil y la revolución social son dos aspectos de una misma realidad; la derrota de una implica la derrota de la otra.

[Trey]

This book is remarkably difficult to follow. So much stuff is piled together that the writing feels kind of rushed. I'm lost a lot. Some of it might be a translation issue (the book was written in Spanish), but take names for example. Characters are referred to by either their given names or their surnames - but which name is used will change several times and with no rhyme or reason. I guess the writing sort of expects the audience to be more or less familiar with the events and important characters already. I'm sticking with it, though, because I'm super interested in Durruti, and I've wanted to read this book for a while.

[Kiril · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to give this book a higher rating, because after reading it I'm still very much fascinated by anarchism, and very much fascinated by Buenaventura Durruti. My difficulty is in the style of the book, which goes into great depths about Spanish events or persons. The depth was too much for me, and even though I was impressed by the level of factual knowledge, I felt this book is not for me. It was more directed at advanced readers, maybe historians. There are large sections of the book as well which leave Durruti out to focus on the Spanish Civil War.

[Matthew Antosh · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did not care for this book at all. It's pure hero worship with the added feature of trying to convince you that it's not hero worship. If you want to understand how revolutions happen and revolutionary civil wars, this is not the book to do to understand it. At times its presented like the Spanish revolution happened by sure durruttis will alone, that people are motivated by him magnetism and personality and not the social situation and political organization.

It took me forever to read and I think it's turned me off of anarchist non-fiction for a while.

[Meg]

I set it down, and I sort of doubt I'll ever pick it back up.

[Aidan Chamberlain · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very inspiring and personal account of a larger than life figure in both Spanish and Anarchist history.

[Arawak Amargi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Des individus comme Durruti il y en a très peu par siècle, ce mec est une légende...