La Guerre d'Espagne : Révolution & contre-révolution

by Burnett Bolloten

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 in 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.

Using extensive documentation from a vast collection of primary sources that he accumulated over the years, Bolloten develops two general themes. First, he meticulously charts the depth and scope of the popular revolution unleashed by the July 1936 military rebellion, showing that—despite elaborate attempts by some Republican groups to minimize its significance—the revolution dramatically reshaped the architecture of politics in the Republican zone. Revolutionary committees sprang up in countless villages and towns, creating new structures of economic and political power, largely controlled and directed by workers' organizations.

Second, Bolloten argues that the fierce struggle for political hegemony on the left led to the rise in power and influence of the Spanish Communist party. He documents precisely how the Communists managed either to eliminate or absorb their opponents on the left, including Anarchosyndicalists, dissident Marxists, Socialists, and liberal Republicans. Backed by the prestige and material resources of the Soviet Union, the Communists gained decisive control over nearly every phase of public life. Underpinning Bolloten's analysis of the Communists' rise to prominence is his carefully researched discussion of international diplomacy during this period.

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

1280 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]

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]

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 !!

[Asa]

Bolloten's thesis needs the revolution real and the Communists guilty, and he still prints what the revolution's own side did wrong, at length and against his interest, so the evidence was free to refuse him.

chapter 33:
- He names the Iron Column's raids in his own voice: the Valencia jewellers, the burnt registers, the dead GPA guard. Then he prints the column's own reasons for the burnings.
- He gives the column its best material at the greatest length. On pp. 532–534 the San Miguel de los Reyes escapee gets the last word on what the column was.
- He prints the column's own movement turning on it: the CNT-FAI press censure and the 97 men denounced as deserters.
- p. 525: he answers Casanova on the document. He gives the date, says what the editorial actually proposed, and states that he read every available issue of Línea de Fuego. A reader can run that check against him.

At 456 I could not place him. He seemed to defend Franco and then didn't, and he spent long stretches on anarchist mistakes. I ended at "maybe he's just giving the truth." That counts as evidence.

Why this is not balance read as freedom. "He criticises everyone" would be the failure, and it is what Chaves does at CED 2. Chaves equates every revolutionary with any reactionary as a category. Bolloten works case by case, document by document, and shows the check. The 5 rests on that, not on even-handedness.

The "he's conservative" point is about where he comes from, not what the pages do. The Payne and Trevor-Roper prologues are reception.

He was picked as the maximal case for this subject’s ground. He holds, and because a Hoover anticommunist does not simply agree with me, the hold tells me something.

The credit is for printing against his own thesis and showing the check.