La Guerra Civil Española: Revolución y Contrarrevolución

by Burnett Bolloten, Belén Urrutia (Adapter)

This monumental book offers a comprehensive history and analysis of Republican political life during the Spanish Civil War. Completed by Burnett Bolloten just before his death in 1987, "The Spanish Civil War" is the culmination of fifty years of dedicated and painstaking research. While Bolloten's earlier works - "The Grand Camouflage" (1961) and "The Spanish Revolution" (1979) - ended with the controversial events of May 1937, "The Spanish Civil War" covers the entire period from 1936 to 1939 and is the most exhaustive study on the subject in any language. It will be regarded as the authoritative political history of the war and an indispensable encyclopedic guide to Republican affairs during the Spanish conflict.

Burnett Bolloten (1909-1987) was a United Press correspondent in Spain during the war, and it was then that he began his lifelong practice of collecting original documents relating to the conflict. By invitation, he was a lecturer and director of research on the Spanish Civil War and revolution, for three years, at the Institute for Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Studies at Stanford University.

Genres: History, Spanish Civil War, Spain, War, Politics

1248 pages, Hardcover

First published February 25, 1991

About the author

Burnett Bolloten (Wales, United Kingdom, 1909 – Sunnyvale, California, 1987) was a writer and scholar of the Spanish Civil War.

Son of a Liverpool jeweler, he was born in the UK. Not wishing to follow his father's career, he began to travel around the Mediterranean. While on vacation in Barcelona, he was witness to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, a conflict that he covered as correspondent for the United Press agency. Initially a supporter, however not militant, of the Communist Party, he became disappointed with it during the course of the war, eventually coming to the conclusion that the Communists had betrayed the Republic. After the war he moved to Mexico and spent several years there with his first wife, Gladys Evie Green, interviewing refugees of the conflict and putting together material about the war. This material is now held at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

After separating from his wife, in 1949 he immigrated to the United States, settling in Sunnyvale, California. For many years he worked as an historian and a real estate broker. He died of prostate cancer in November 1987.

Reviews

[Micah · Rating 5 out of 5]

As the subtitle indicates, this is essentially an account of the struggle between the anarchists (and their allies among the Socialists and the POUM) and the Communists, which is by far the most fascinating and important aspect of the conflict. A lot of the book is dedicated to ministerial machinations, but the composition of the cabinet and the general staff did basically reflect the overall balance of forces.

When the far right attacked liberal democracy in Spain, workers responded with a social revolution more radical than the Russian one, and a massive wave of collectivizations swept the eastern part of the country. Bolloten asserts that for several months the Republic didn’t exist in the "Republican" zone, as all power was in the hands of revolutionary committees attached to the giant Socialist and anarchist trade unions. The middle classes were terrified and flooded into the previously insignificant Communist party, which positioned itself on the right wing of the anti-fascist forces and took up the task of reversing the collectivizations and defending private property, as the normal middle-class liberal parties were paralyzed. Stalin calculated that a revolution in Spain wouldn’t spread to the rest of Europe and would make the governments of France and England even softer on Nazi Germany (and they were very soft already).

Maybe we can say the anarchist base went too far too fast in the economic field, needlessly antagonizing the middle classes, while the leadership was too timid in the political field, allowing the Catalan government to persist when they could have easily abolished it. Many voices of course made these critiques at the time.

There is still a lot of mainstream historiography that is extremely misleading about the Spanish conflict and the role of the Communists, so Bolloten’s book is very important.

[Pierre-Olivier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Livre posthume de Bolloten qui sera l’œuvre d’une vie entière sur un document historique incontournable de la guerre civile espagnole. Depuis l’élection du front populaire en passant par le coup d’état de franco et l’échec du soulèvement nationaliste. À travers la révolution sociale des anarcho-syndicaliste de la FAI et de la CNT ainsi que des marxiste anti-Staliniste du Poum par la socialisation des moyens de production par le prolétariat, la destruction de la propriété privé , de l’état bourgeois républicain et de la monnaie par l’instauration du communisme libertaire dans les régions aragonaise et catalane. Par la cooptation intégrale de la révolution par une contre-révolution exacerbée du Parti communiste espagnole , du Parti socialiste et des partis centriste républicain planifié matériellement et politiquement par Moscou et sa dictature stalinienne. Par la destruction de toute opposition à la reprise du pouvoir militaire, politique et économique par l’état bourgeois républicain au nom de la diversion prioritaire de la guerre contre le fascisme et des demandes d’aide internationale des pays occidentaux qui ne viendront jamais. La guerre espagnole ce veut un récit historique fascinant pour l’extrême-gauche au niveau de sa dissension interne dans les stratégies , les idéologies et les structures politique du front populaire espagnol. Que dire de la cooptation des communistes et de leur stratégies de divisions ( la fameuse tactique du salami ) pour la course au pouvoir centrale incontesté du front populaire , qui est la plus grande trahison historique contre-révolutionnaire du 20 ieme siècle aussi importante à mes yeux que le massacre de Kronstadt et la répression militaire de la Makhnovchtchina par les bolcheviks. J’ai adoré ce livre , j’en veut encore plus !!! Résumé du livre : never trust a tankies, never !!