Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War (Annals of Communism Series) | 
 enlarge | Creators: Ronald Radosh, Mary Habeck, Grigory Sevostianov
Publisher: Yale University Press
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 764897
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 592
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.1
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.7
ISBN: 0300089813
Dewey Decimal Number: 946.081347
EAN: 9780300089813
ASIN: 0300089813
Publication Date: June 1, 2001
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Product Description
The Spanish Civil War has long been the stuff of legend. Thousands of brave young men from all over the Western world, most of them organized by their local Communist parties, rushed to Spain to support the democratic Republic against right- wing forces led by rebellious generals in the Spanish officer corps. Although the Republic was eventually defeated, some observers believed that the effort to defend it was a selfless undertaking of the international Communist movement and the Soviet Uniona noble crusade against Hitler, Mussolini, and their Spanish puppet Franco. This book presents a very different view of the role of the Soviet Union in this war. Based on previously unavailable Moscow archives, it provides the first full documentation of that country's duplicitous and self-serving activities. Documents in the book reveal that the Soviet Union not only swindled the Spanish Republic out of millions of dollars through arms deals but also sought to take over and run the Spanish economy, government, and armed forces in order to make Spain a Soviet possession, thereby effectively destroying the foundations of authentic Spanish antifascism. The documents also shed light on many other disputed episodes of the war: the timing of the Republican request for assistance from the Soviet Union; the rise and fall of the International Brigades; the internal workings of the Comintern and its influence on Spain; and much more. Authoritative and startling in the new information it offers, the book is essential reading for anyone interested in Soviet foreign policy or the Spanish Civil War.
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 Read Beevor's The Battle for Spain instead August 26, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I've written a few comments on other people's reviews, but after reading both Mr. Anthony Beevor's 'The Battle for Spain' and much of Mr. Ronald Radosh's framing commentary, I want to include my own review.
I gave this book one star, even though the choice of documents and the picture the documents present are first rate. However, as Mr. Grover Furr suggests in his own review, the documents all too often contradict the framing commentary. 'Spain Betrayed' is part of the excellent series 'Annals of Communism.' There are three books in that series that I particularly think are invaluable: 'The History of the Gulag,' by Oleg Khlevniuk, and 'Stalin's Secret Pogrom,' by Joshua Rubenstein and Vladimir Naumov (about the trial and execution of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee) are both first rate, and 'The Road to Terror' by J. Arch Getty and Oleg Naumov (about the Stalin purges and show trials) is by far the single best treatment of that period. With that august company, the weaknesses in Mr. Radosh's commentary are especially surprising.
In Beevor's 'Battle for Spain,' he mentions the two disparate views of Soviet actions for the Spanish Republic. The traditional view is of a heroic USSR disinterestedly giving all the help it could to a legally constituted Republic. The opposing view is that Stalin used Comintern agents and aid in an effort to create Stalinist-style Soviet regime in Spain; failing that, then take whatever the Soviets could from Spain. Beevor explains that while neither version is correct, the former is further from the truth. However, Radosh loses his way by embracing the latter view (critical of the Soviet Union) so completely, that his thesis is that the Republic would have won the civil war, but for the duplicity of the Soviets: '[T]he price the Republicans paid for the Soviet aid was the very factor that led to the Republic's eventual demise.' That assertion is simply unsupportable. The actions taken by the Western Democracies with the Non-Intervention Committee, which allowed a free flow of support to the Nationalists, and isolated the Republic, doomed the Republic, regardless of what the Soviets did or did not do.
Soviet Duplicity v. American Aid
Radosh is absolutely correct, when he condemns the Soviets for taking Madrid's gold reserves to pay for weapons, and using an exchange rate of 2.5 rubles to the dollar, when the market rate was actually 5.3 rubles to the dollar. The inflated rate made the guns the Republicans purchased twice market value. That was bad. What Radosh fails to suggest is where else the Republicans should or could have gone to purchase supplies. The United States? Hardly. While the Soviets were selling weapons at a double mark up, Texaco diverted five oil tankers--bought and paid for by the Republic--to the Nationalists. Beevor states that over the course of the civil war, Franco received 3.5 million tons of oil--on credit, no less--well over double the amount the Republic was able to import. Ford, Studebaker, and General Motors provided 12,000 trucks to the Nationalists (three times more than the Axis powers were able to provide). Dupont provided the Nationalists 40,000 bombs, having to send them through Germany to circumvent the Neutrality Act. Beevor quotes Jose Maria Doussinague, the under-secretary at the Spanish Foreign Ministry, saying 'without American petroleum and American trucks and American credit, we could never have won the civil war.' Moreover, within a month of the uprising, Franco received 48 Italian and 41 German aircraft. The Republic received no more than 13 outdated fighters and six obsolete bombers. In conclusion, regardless of what the Republicans were paying the Soviets, weapons were not available elsewhere at any price.
That fact doesn't keep Radosh from quoting Gerald Howson, a British Historian, who says:
'[Of all the] swindles, cheatings, robberies and betrayals the Republicans had to put up with, this barrow-boy behavior by Stalin and the high officials of the Soviet nomenklatura is surely the most squalid, the most treacherous, and the most indefensible.'
I don't think so. Far more indefensible, treacherous, and squalid were the actions of the Non-Intervention Committee, which consisted of the ambassadors to England of every European nation except Switzerland and the US--including Portugal, Germany, and Italy who were all opening aiding the Nationalists. Beevor quotes Claude Bowers, the American ambassador to Spain:
'Each movement of the Non-Intervention Committee has been made to serve the cause of the rebellion . . . This Committee was the most cynical and lamentably dishonest group that history has known.'
All in all, the military experience and expertise of the Nationalists, coupled with the support of the Western Democracies and the Axis Powers, were 'the very factor(s) that led to the Republic's eventual demise,' not the Russian exchange rate for Republican gold.
Other Errors
For reasons I can't understand, Radosh is similarly sloppy and sometimes just wrong in many of his assertions. For example, he states that 'Spain was fated to be the first nation in which the three great ideologies and political systems--democracy, fascism, and communism--would fight it out.' This generalization is wrong on at least two counts. First, the parliamentary struggles in Germany, culminating with the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, predated Spain's civil war. The German situation was much more of a battle between 'democracy, fascism, and communism' than Spain. More importantly, Radosh's view ignores the power of the of the anarcho-syndicalists and the National Confederation of Labour (CNT) Union. While the Nationalist were unified (Beevor calls them 'right wing, centralist, and authoritarian at the same time'), the Republic was an incompatible mix of centralists and authoritarians (most prominently, the communists) with anarchists and regionalists, like the Catalans. A more accurate, and fair, generalization would have Spain the first nation where four great ideologies--democracy, fascism, communism, and anarcho-syndicalism--would fight it out. But that still would be, at best, an unhelpful generalization.
Radosh also says 'The Spanish Civil War took place because the indecisive elections in February 1936 revealed a nation divided.' While those elections did reveal a divided nation, the result was far from 'indecisive:' Beevor states there is no question the Popular Front won the election, despite Nationalist propaganda to the contrary. Next, in terms of the violence against civilians, Radosh states 'Once the civil war broke out, both sides were responsible for unspeakable atrocities,' effectively equating both the 'Red' and "White' terror. Beevor goes into detail about how the Nationalists, as soon as they took an area, set loose a reign of terror, with massacres that were greater many times over than the number of people executed by the Republic forces. In no way can atrocities by the Republic be equated with the violence of the Nationalists.
The extent and viciousness of the Nationalist forces towards defeated Republican towns was no secret. For example, Nationalist General Queipo de Llano broadcast over Radio Seville stories about the sexual powers of his African troops, and how he had promised them the women of Madrid as a prize, once the capital was taken. With that background, Radosh's contention that the 'Stalinists' resistance to allow a genuine 'proletarian revolution' disarmed the Republic of its 'unique weapon' of 'popular enthusiasm' is especially curious. He quotes Robert Alexander, another historian, claiming that Soviet-influenced efforts were a 'negative contribution to the war effort,' and Soviet prevention of the revolution 'certainly increasingly raised troubling questions in the minds of the workers and peasants in the rearguard about whether their sacrifices for the struggle were any longer worthwhile.'
I am at a loss to understand that reasoning. Beevor details the extreme and unrelenting brutality of the advancing Nationalist troops. I can't imagine anything the Comintern agents could have said or done that would have been more 'troubling' to the 'rearguard,' that a rearguard facing massacres at the hand of the Nationalists would still be wondering if their sacrifices were 'worthwhile.'
Certainly, there is a story about the Soviet Union's cynical and opportunist actions during the Spanish Civil War. But to call those actions THE 'betrayal' of the Republic, and the reason for the Republic's defeat, not only does a disservice to those who supported the Republic, but excuses those who truly are responsible for fascism's victory in Spain. Oddly, the documents Radosh presents frequently support that view, contrary to his own commentary.
A much better book should have been written about the dealings between the Spanish Republic and the Soviets. That book would go into detail about Soviet disingenuous behavior, but framing Soviet actions through the three factors that betrayed the Second Spanish Republic: first and foremost, the actions of the Axis powers and the Western Democracies through the Non-Intervention Committee, which supplied the Nationalists and starved the Republicans; second, the Nationalists advantage in terms of trained military and equipment, along with the Nationalists willingness to be the first in history to launch bombing campaigns against civilian populations; then, at a distant third, the fact that the Soviet Union traded weapons for Spanish gold at an inflated exchange rate.
I gave this book one star, because if you are looking for one book to read about the Spanish Civil War, do not read this book. There are many excellent books about the complexity and tragedy of Republican Spain. Obviously, my favorite is Anthony Beevor's 2006 edition of 'The Battle for Spain.'The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 You will be much better served reading Mr. Beevor's book, instead of this one.
 valuable documents on Communist role in Spain February 4, 2005
10 out of 12 found this review helpful
Don't let Ron Radosh's move to the political right discredit the
value of this book from a leftwing point of view. The documents
are of value in themselves. To over-simplify a bit, there were
really three sides to the Spanish Civil War. It wasn't just
a civil war but a working class revolution. Spain in the '30s
had a vast revolutionary labor movement. The industrialists,
land-owning oligarchy, Church leaders and generals backed a
violent "final solution" aiming at the extermination of this
movement. But the Communists had very little support within the
Spanish working class. The main social force was an anarchist-
inspired union movement, together with socialist unions
mostly outside the control of the Communist Party.
An interesting aspect of this book are the documents that
give the assessment of the non-Communist left from
the point of view of Stalin's agents. From the point of view of
the workers who built the first labor militias to fight the
fascist army, the war was a class war, a revolutionary war.
Radosh's book shows clearly that the Communists aimed to create
a one-party totalitarian state in Spain, if Franco had been
defeated. To do this they had to crush the authentic Spanish
working class left. It's strategy was to use the leverage it got
from the Soviet Union's arms shipments to Spain to first create
a conventional hierarchical army to replace the initial labor
militias and then eventually capture control of the state by
gaining control of the army officer corps. The documents in this
book, from the Soviet archives, provide evidence to support this
hypothesis.
RIPS AWAY THE ROTTING SCAB OF STALINISM January 14, 2005
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
Ron Radosh, whose own uncle, Irving Keith died in fighting the Fascists in Spain, has written a gripping, if ponderous, terrifying if also mundane account of the Stalinist grip on the Republic of Spain.
In a series of documents, culled from the former Soviet archives, Radosh spins a thoroughly believeable tale of cunning, avarice, deceit and betrayal not only of the Spanish Republic, but of the thousands of idealistic young men - the vast majority of them Communists - who flocked to Spain believing that MOTHER RUSSIA was the great white hope of stopping Hitlerism in its tracks. And thousands died, never knowing of the deals that pockmarked scum toady was making with Herr Hitler.
Radosh also presents the documents of those International Brigade men who went to Spain fighting for Democracy and Revolution, and when they found out that the revolution and fight against Fascism had been betrayed, they themselves were arrested and many shot. Close to a dozen Americans were shot by the GPU, some on charges of desertion, others like Albert Wallach, Vernon Selby, Marvin Stern and Harry Perchik on political grounds. Even non-Communist Lincoln Brigaders like one-time commander Philip Detro, a self-described Roosevelt Democrat, may have been terminated by a Party that was little tolerant of dissent.
One of the foremost documents Radosh features is one written by "M. Fred" M. Fred was Manfred Stern or Emil Kleber the vaunted General Emilio Kleber who saved Madrid during the November 1936 siege. Kleber writes a critical document, encompassing almost 75 pages, justifying his role in the International Brigades and acknowledging mistakes. What Kleber was really writing here was a plea for his life, because Stalin had already begun the purges of International Brigade commanders (1938) when this document was written.
And little did Kleber know - he was to perish shortly after returning to Moscow - that Stalin had already made up his mind that no matter how many victories the International Brigades would win, the Republic was doomed and just a pawn, a toy to be played with Herr Hitler.
Many, like Bill Herrick in his excellent "Jumping the Line" would learn the bitter truth early on. Others, like Harry Fisher, would parrot the Party Line till the day he died protesting the just war against the Stalin of the Middle East, Saddam Hussein.
This is a five star book that only received four stars because I wish that Radosh would write more of the Lincolns and his uncle. Their idealism, and in many cases a sincere fight against Hitlerism and to support the democratic republic of Spain - instead of the cynical betrayal of it by Joe Stalin.
 Important documentary evidence of Stalin's criminality November 15, 2003
13 out of 15 found this review helpful
This is another wonderful volume in the very important Annals of Communism series published by Yale University Press. I can't praise this series enough for the service they have provided us in every one of these volumes.This book provides, in English translation, 81 important documents of the true Soviet actions in its participation in the Spanish Civil War. Historians will have to make the final judgments and assessments of this material. But I am glad to have the myth of the idealistic Soviet exposed for the lie it always was. Just as an example of what we learn, we now understand Stalin's desire and success at basically stealing the $50,000,000 Spain had in gold reserves. by shipping Spain outdated and non-functioning military junk as arms. We also know that the French, in effect, supported the Nazi's by interdicting other Soviet arms shipments to the Republic. There is much more valuable information between the covers of this wonderful book. It reads shorter than its five-hundred plus pages because the documents can be read quickly and the commentary on them is completely fascinating.
A poor work September 29, 2003
11 out of 49 found this review helpful
This work contains many false statements, poor use of evidence, and just plain incompetence. Far from showing Soviet "betrayal," these 81 documents make the Comintern, the International Brigades, and the massive Soviet aid to Spain appear in an extremely positive light. Reading the documents alone, and ignoring Radosh's "commentary," any objective person will come away with tremendous respect for the communist effort in the Spanish Civil War, not only by the Comintern and the justly famed International Brigades, but of the Soviet Union -- or, as Radosh says it, in his crude demonizing synecdoche, of "Moscow" and "Stalin."I've written a longer review of this book at http://eserver.org/clogic/2002/furr.html In short, the documents are of great interest, but Radosh's commentary is incompetent and dishonest.
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