Pickleloaf.com : Books : Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War (Annals of Communism Series)


Books : Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War (Annals of Communism Series) In association with Amazon.com Rating: - The bitter taste of Soviet bureaucracy The facts speak for themselves. But in this case the casual student of history might nod off during the lecture. The numerous translated documents lose their novelty appeal rather quickly. I recommend it only to the hardcore SCW scholar who can use it for citing references or teaching college courses. It really is a huge, valuable piece of the puzzle. However I would not take it as total vindication for the Republic's detractors: the Popular Front had some support from the Comintern, but it is a slippery-slope fallacy to claim that its decline into Stalinism was therefore inevitable. Its decline was greatly helped along by the war, a condition that always tends to centralize authority and rationalize police-state tactics, and by European & American isolationism. France also elected a Popular Front coalition which, like Spain's, had all the left factions from moderate liberal to communist. Despite the fragmentation of this multiparty system, France managed not to have a civil war over it, and was not undermined by Stalinism. Conspiracies can only do so much; if you look at the documents, the Soviets in Spain had their hands full dealing with the chaos. One could just as easily argue that quick intervention by France, the UK & USA could've saved the Republic from Stalin AND Franco. FDR later admitted to US Ambassador Bowers that he had been right on this point all along. Rating: - Accurate, descriptive, and unfortunate I saw this book as I was browsing one day and I had to get it. The Spanish Civil War has always intrigued me because I think if the Republicans had won, World War II may not have happened. So to see a book that describes how Stalin used Spain as his own little playground and piggy bank was very intriguing to me. Ordinarily, I would not have bought a book this long with these types of sources. I would have dismissed a book like this as untrue propaganda. But in this case, there is no way that any of the things in here are lies. The anti-Stalinist feelings of the authors are definitely dominant in the tone of the beginning of each section. But, I mean, it's STALIN we're talking about here, not some two bit amateur sociopath. So I respect the bias of the book. I like the fact that the telegrams and cables in the book are actually REAL, so the reader could see what Stalin and his comrades in crime were doing to the people of Spain. The idea that Stalin could profit off of falsifications of exchange rates in money froom the Republic makes me hate him even more than I did before I read "Spain Betrayed". This book is amazing, very very well researched and documented, and if you are at all interested in Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Uinion, the Spanish Civil War, or all of the above, then you need to read Spain Betrayed. Overall, this book really shows that two dictators were victorious in the Spanish Civil War: Joseph Stalin and Francisco Franco. Rating: - Correcting an error I hope that reviewing a review isn't in bad taste, but something written below in Mr Jewett's review is demonstrably false. The excellent point made by Radosh et al. about Soviet treachery toward their fellow leftists in Spain was made long ago by Chomsky in his famous article "Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship" (1968)--available in "The Chomsky Reader." Of course, Orwell made the point earlier still in "Homage to Catalonia." BTW, such betrayals did not originate with Stalin. For the despicable treatment of Ukrainian anarchists by Lenin and Trotsky see Voline's "The Unknown Revolution" and Arshinov's "The History of the Makhnovist Movement." Still, the true nature of the USSR is a point that cannot be made too often. Rating: - iconoclastic view of the spanish civil war (1936-1939) this book thoroughly debunks several myths of the spanish civil war and refutes the widespread view that the republicans were the good guys of the conflict. stalin and his henchmen tried to install a "peoples government" and learned that only the presence of red army troops made any people accept a communist regime. the leadership of the spanish republic was honeycombed with stalin's agents or fellow travelers (to use a term from senator mccarthy). as much of the civil war's bloodshed was caused by intra left struggles (communist versus anarchist) as was spilled between franco's falangists and the republican forces. the book should be read by any serious student of the spanish civil war. our own abraham lincoln brigade spilled their blood to install a soviet version of slavery rather than liberate the spanish people as popularly advertised. Rating: - And the shroud of the sea rolls on and on This is another fine book by Ronald Radosh who became a neo-conservative after undergoing what Sidney Hook referred to as the "shock of recognition". The substance of the revelations in "Spain Betrayed" corroborate what George Orwell wrote in "Homage to Catalonia" where he stated that "nine-tenths of everything written about the Spanish Civil War is a lie". Radosh and his co-editors Mary Habeck and Grigory Sevotyanov go through over 500 pages of documents, dealing with the Spanish Civil War, discovered in the Russian archives. The net effect of this effort will be to turn upside down all the historical perceptions of the Communist Left in the 20th century. The information from the archives shows the totality of Stalin's attempts to control the revolution in Spain in his quest to turn it to his own imperialist whims. The treachery is laid out in page after page as Stalin's henchmen kill those very people they purport to support. The archives also show the preening elitism of the heretofore-sanctified Abraham Lincoln Battalion particularly as it relates to their treatment of their Spanish military counterparts and supporters. This is nothing new as it continues today in Europe and America where the sanctimonious Left preaches one thing but lives another. An example of this intellectual dishonesty is seen in Ernest Hemingway who looms large as his perfidy is revealed much as Paul Johnson spotlighted him in his book "Intellectuals". Hilton Kramer's book "Twilight of the Intellectuals" is a good companion piece for this book as it relates how intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Satre gave intellectual support to the Stalinist revolution from the 30's onward, but when faced with the betrayal and lies of such, as enunciated by Kruschev in 1953, turned their guns on America. This exercise in contorted logic has been largely successful in persuading many budding college sophomores to see "Amerika" as the flip side of the Stalinist tyranny. An example of one who has carried this traditional Leftist dodge into the 20th century is Noam Chomsky, one of the most influential communist sympathizing demagogues on college campus' today. He still preaches the same tired dogma of a stripe highlighted in "Spain Betrayed" hence my caption above "and the shroud of the sea...". For the Communist sympathizing Left the Spanish Civil War was the last undefiled temple of the Marxists and their admirers and the revelations in this book have thoroughly undermined the assumptions supporting that structural artifice. As Sidney Hook, the Left leaning anti-Communist averred, "the enemy is on the Far Right and on the Far Left." Put another way the alpha chimp, the Mafia don seeking world dominion, knows no political party or religion, he only knows his own burning ambition to control everyone everywhere for all time. I hope this book gets a wide play in the media, but I fear that like most tomes, which don't synch with today's politically correct academics it will end up on remainder long before it should. Another book that develops the continuing saga of this muddled academic allegiance to the principles of communist aspirations, outlined by Radosh, et al, is the "Long March" by Roger Kimball. No one ever thought that archives like these would see the light of day, but thanks to historical events and the diligence of truth seekers like Radosh it is now available for all to read. Thank you Mr. Radosh and friends and while we're at it let's thank the Yale University press's extraordinary annals of Communism series.