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Soviets in Spain -The October Armed Uprising Against Fascism
Harry Gannes
Published by WORKERS LIBRARY Publishers
P. 0. Box 148, Sta, D, New York City January 1935
Ill
In Asturias, where the united front of the Communists and Socialists of Spain had been established long before the October general strike and the armed battles, a workers’, and peasants' regime was set up. The heroism, the discipline, the achievements of the Asturias working class stand as an inspiration to the toiling masses of all Spain. To this day the spectre of the Asturias Commune terrorizes and frightens the bourgeoisie. When the battles were ended or betrayed by the anarchist leaders in the rest of Spain, the Asturias proletariat held out against the greatest odds, and fought with daring fury to entrench them selves in the fortress of the Asturias Commune, hoping and waiting for reinforcements from the rest of Spain.
They were finally defeated on October 18 only by the greatest mobilization of the most trusted sections of the Spanish army, by the terrific air bombardment of the entire Spanish air fleet, by the ferocious attacks of the cut-throat and well-equipped
Spanish Foreign Legion and the Riff troops imported from Morocco, and above all by the treachery of the anarchist leaders in Catalonia, which permitted the Lerroux-Robles regime to concentrate the bulk of its armed forces against the Asturias Soviets. Oviedo, the capital of Asturias, was reduced to a mass of crumbling ruins. Men, women, and children were slaughtered by the bloodthirsty scum of the Spanish Foreign Legion. This band of hired butchers is universally known to comprise escaped convicts, murderers, mercenaries, the worst dregs of the underworld of every land; White Guard Russians, chased out of other capitalist countries because of their criminal deeds, Riffs, who were paid to kill their own people for Spanish imperialism in Morocco-all under the leadership of General Ochoa, the Spanish Gallifet, hangman of the proletariat. They were the shock troops used by the hypocritical Catholic fascist rulers to teach the Asturias proletariat a lesson in Christian ethics.
Held Power 15 Days
For 15 days the workers and peasants in Asturias held power. These were 15 days of endless fighting without respite for the Red Army. Yet, notwithstanding this, the Commune set up its governing apparatus, decreed all lands belonged to _the peasants who tilled them; requisitioned food and supplies for the toiling masses and the Red Army; established its press; took over the big industries and utilized them for the manufacture of arms for the revolutionary struggles, and seized the largest bank in Oviedo, confiscating 15,000,000 pesetas for food, clothing, and shelter for the unemployed, and for the necessities of waging war against the fascist regime.
On October 12, the Workers' and Peasants' Government of Asturias set up its wireless communication with the rest of Spain and sent a message to the Central Committee of the CommunistParty in Madrid, declaring:
"All of this region is in our hands. We have proclaimed the Republic of Workers, Peasants, and Soldiers. We have 100,000 workers under arms, and a shock brigade of 10,000 men. We have taken the factories producing war materials. On October 9 we occupied all of Oviedo, after besieging the city for five days. Then we proclaimed the power of the workers and peasants. A number of the Civil Guard and Storm Guard gave up to us.
"We declared the abolition of private property. Alcoholic drinks were prohibited. A company of machine gunners coming from Leon were destroyed by us at Campomanes after a hard battle. Since Monday, October B, planes have bombarded us. We shot two of them down with machine guns. [Later they shot five more, though they did not have anti-aircraft equipment.]' The columns of General Ochoa, which penetrated Aviles, opened a cannonade on the workers' homes; they killed women and children and the best-known revolutionists. When General Ochoa penetrated Aviles he did not dare to enter the interior of the city.
"The women fight heroically in the front ranks. We have replaced the proletarian prisoners by capitalists whom we are guarding as hostages. . We possess resources and materials to resist for three months. By radio we know the situation of the rest of Spain.
"But nevertheless, even if you cannot impede the concentration of forces against Asturias, we wil1 not declare ourselves vanquished."
The heroism of the Asturias proletariat, fighting against superior forces, striving by might and main to retain the Soviet power, feeding the hungry masses, attempting to establish its stern discipline and order in the face of the bombardment and sabotage of the fascist hordes, aroused the admiration and respect even of its enemies in Asturias, as we shall learn.
Ruled Against Odds
Every hit of food and supplies requisitioned was done so on the order and receipt of the Revolutionary Committee. The workers showed the greatest revolutionary initiative and ability to rule in the face of the greatest odds.
Instructions were issued by the Revolutionary Committee against all acts of pillage, with orders to arrest and shoot pillagers. All of the workers' parties and organizations were called to the central headquarters of the government to participate in the administration of the Commune and to arrange for the defense of the workers' and peasants' republic.
The documents and deeds of the Asturias Commune are now being studied by the whole proletariat of Spain as examples of what the workers are capable of when they fight for power. The Revolutionary Committee of Mieres (Asturias), when it achieved power, issued a proclamation declaring that "acting on the will of the people and watching over the interests of the revolution, it is resolved to take all measures with the necessary energy in order to direct the course of the movement".
Strict Discipline
These measures provided for the registration of all workers eligible to hear arms. Registration bureaus were set up. They provided that anyone caught looting would he shot. Everyone possessing arms was called on to report at the Committee's head quarters, so that only workers could retain arms, while their enemies were disarmed. All food and clothing were confiscated for the use of the people and for the Red Army. All members of trade unions and workers' political parties and youth organizations were called on to report with their cards so that they could be assigned responsible tasks in connection with the workers' government and the Red Army. In order to organize the fighting on the most effective basis, it was decreed: "It is strictly prohibited to fire shots at airplanes from rifles, pistols or hunting guns, without the express orders of this Committee".
The Red Army, though hastily assembled, was well organized and disciplined, consisting chiefly of the Asturias miners, soldiers, munitions factory workers, peasants. Leaders sprang from the ranks. Special corps of miners were organized to dynamite the troops sent against them. With the greatest daring and skill, they carried out their work. As one Spanish bourgeois correspondent put it: “They carried out their tasks with amazing efficiency and without the slightest regard for their own lives".
Another correspondent tells of the Workers' Red Army marching into Oviedo:
"I watched them march through. It was an indescribable spectacle. The first of the men carried baskets with self-manufactured hand-grenades. With the shout: 'Forward, comrades!' they charged into the withering fire of the Civil Guards, who were barricaded in the building of the telephone headquarters."
One doctor in Oviedo, who was impressed into the medical service of the Red Army of Asturias, writing in the reactionary Spanish newspaper, Estampa, of his experiences, tells of the undying heroism of the Asturias workers. The wounded began to pour into the hospitals. Workers badly injured were impatient at the delay of the doctors. They wanted to get back to the firing lines. The doctor tells of one fighter who was brought in.
'Patch me up quickly', one wounded man demanded. 'Do me first, I want to get back. We must take Santa Clara Barracks. It is full of Civil Guards.'
"I looked at the man. He had a gaping wound on the side of his neck.
'· 'You must go to bed', the doctor ordered.
·"The man refused to go to bed and went off without attention.
The next day he was dead in the roadway.
"A wounded man arrived, supported by a thin youngster with the face of a woman. He carried a rifle slung over his shoulder and bandoliers of cartridges, Turning to me, probably because I was nearest, he declared: 'It's terrible'. 'What's terrible?' I asked. 'Comrade Belarme has been shot. When he saw that we were not making as much progress as he would have liked at the prefecture, he dashed forward, without cover, to bomb the place, and they shot him down with a volley.' 'Do you think', I asked, 'that your ideals are worth all that, all this slaughter?' 'We want nothing more than Communism', he answered. 'But don't forget, my friend·
I pointed out, 'your attempt to establish Communism has collapsed everywhere else in Spain.' 'That was because the others didn't understand how to go about the business', he declared, unconvinced. '"re are not plunderers, or thieves or murderers. "we are proletarians, and our ideal is social equality. Only those who work shall be permitted to eat.' "
When the Asturias proletariat was finally defeated, the fascist slaughter was frightful. Hundreds were massed against walls, men, women, and children, and mowed down with machine guns. The bodies of the dead and wounded were piled up and burned together.
The capitalist press in Spain and throughout the world began its usual campaign of slander against the heroic Asturias workers. They were accused of every atrocity in the long lying calendar of the history of counter-revolution.
At the very moment workers were being imprisoned, tortured, shot, burned, the world capitalist press spread stories of the revolutionaries' "atrocities". But no similar lies were so quickly destroyed. After a brief period of vituperation, the most rabid fascist papers in Spain halted their slanders for lack of even the slimmest shred of proof. The heroism, discipline, bravery of the Asturias workers overshadowed all else, and inflamed the Spanish workers with the greatest enthusiasm. Even Hitler's Nazi correspondent in Madrid was forced to deny the atrocity stories against the Asturias workers, comparing them with the Allied anti-German war atrocity fables. We have not space here to print the mass of complete and definite denials by the fascist forces themselves in and out of Spain.
Preparing for Greater Battles
The reign of terror in Asturias now is the worst in all Spain. But the proletariat, despite its frightful toll, estimated in Asturias alone between 2,500 and 3,500 dead, is manifesting no spirit of defeat; is even now preparing for greater battles, terrifying the butchers who rule over them with machine guns and cannon. So fearful are the Spanish landlord-capitalist rulers of the Asturias proletariat to this day, that the Asturias coal mines have not been opened because they do not know what will happen if the workers get together again. A proposal was made in a Madrid paper that the mines be closed indefinitely and ultimately abandoned.
To what depths has the desperation of the Spanish bourgeoisie gone when it seriously proposes slicing off one of its own vital limbs in order to destroy or disperse the proletariat with it!
But meanwhile, the enraged capitalist dogs are wreaking their vengeance on Socialist and Communist prisoners. The jails are full to bursting. Every day workers are tortured or killed.
The Asturias workers look to the workers of the whole world for help and support. Only mass united front actions of Socialists and Communists, rallying thousands behind them, can save the lives of hundreds of these heroic fighters who so gladly were ready to die for the workers' cause.
The epic of Asturias will forever live in the hearts of the workers of the whole world, glorious inheritor of the Paris Commune and of the Russian Revolution, the beacon that will light the way to a rapid victory of the proletarian revolution through out all of Spain.
IV
The full lessons of the Spanish armed uprising have not been drawn yet, the movement having been too vast, information too scattered and general, with the fascist censorship clamped down. But the main, decisive lessons, the chief causes for failure, those responsible for betrayal and treachery, and the outstanding short comings are clear.
Let us hear from a Socialist leader first, Andeljcio Prieto, who, together .0th Largo Cabellero, partook in the leadership of the general strike and the armed struggles in Madrid. Cabellero was arrested and is now in prison. Prieto, after the failure of the fighting, was able to escape to Paris.
In Paris he was interviewed by Petit Journal on October 31: "To what do you attribute the check of the revolutionary movement, if it truly represents the opinion of the majority?" he was asked. His answer was: "First, to the rapidity and violence of the repression. Second, to the weakness of the agrarian reinforcements, influenced by the defeat suffered during their general strike. Third, to the obstinacy of the syndicalist and anarchist elements.
While all of this is true, it is not the whole truth. No one can deny that the execrable treachery and betrayal of the anarchist leaders stabbed the armed uprising in the back.
Prieto's first reason for failure conceals not the weakness of the proletariat in the face of the ferocity of fascism, but the failure of the Socialist leaders to prepare sufficiently for the armed insurrection beforehand, their resistance to the united front until shortly before the armed uprising, their reliance on small bands instead of mass armed attacks, and chiefly their vacillations in putting the question of Soviets as organs of power before the masses.
In his second reason, Prieto also conceals much. Failure of the agrarian strike, which weakened the peasant forces in the struggle, was due to the bad leadership of the Socialists. Above all, they did not put forward the question of the seizure of the land by the peasants, a slogan which would have had the effect, not only of drawing the peasants into the general uprising, but also of influencing the army, composed mainly of the sons of the peasants.
Criticism Confirmed
We will quote Prieto again in answer to another question because it is here that he enters into some self-criticism, and fully ·confirms the Communist criticism of the Socialist Party leaders since the establishment of the Republic in 1931. In the Republic the Socialists had played a leading role, filling the masses with democratic illusions on the solution of their problems by collaboration with the bourgeoisie.
"How do you explain," Prieto was asked, "the discontent in Span, and the success of Gil Robles [leading fascist] in the last elections?"
Prieto answered: "Precisely because of the Right policy of the Left regime. This government born with the republic and created by the republic became the rampart of forces adverse to the republic. It is true that the Left government of Spain carried out the policy of the Right before Lerroux and Samper. In this period of perishing capitalism, the Spanish bourgeoisie could not even carry through the bourgeois democratic revolution.
"It is this disillusionment of the masses with the republic they so much desired that explains the victory of Gil Robles."
The Left regime referred to, which carried out a Right pol icy, is, of course, the regime of the Socialist leaders with the Left Republicans.
Communist Analysis
Soon after the defeat of the revolutionary struggles in Spain the Communist Party analyzed the causes for the failure. We list the basic points of this analysis:
1.The political and organizational preparations for the revolution were insufficient. Its program was not made known to the whole of the working masses. The fact was ignored that the revolution is not made; it is organized.
2.The peasants were not drawn into the revolutionary struggles. This, too, is the reason why the army, consisting mainly of peasants, did not go over to the side of the revolution.
3.The problem of power, the fundamental question of every revolution, was not placed clearly before the workers and peas ants. The masses were not acquainted with the organs of power, the Soviets, how they should function, how and where they should be organized.
4.In the very heart of the Socialist leadership, side by side with revolutionists, ready for any sacrifice, were elements who did not conceal their hostility to the revolution.
5.The general strike was not carried out before the Lerroux Robles government was formed. This left the initiative in the hands of the enemy.
6.The struggle for national independence in Catalonia was left to the initiative of the vacillating and treacherous bourgeoisie, such as Companys. To be victorious, the revolution, in all its forms, must be under the leadership of the proletariat.
7.The monstrous betrayal and treachery of the anarchist leaders was the worst blow of all and showed them, as Marxism has always described them, as enemies of the proletarian revolution, who in the struggles in Spain were found on the barricades on the side of fascism.
Anarchists Sabotaged Struggle
The deeds of the anarchists in Spain in the decisive struggles against fascism again proved up to the hilt the historical Marxian criticism of the whole theory and tactics of anarchism.
Not in all the history of anarchism have their leadership and basic ideas been so costly to the workers as in Spain. This flows, not out of the tactical mistakes of the Spanish anarchists in this particular situation, but out of the whole conception of anarchism in relation to the class struggle. In Spain, the damage was so great because the anarchists had won leadership over 1,000,000 workers and the leaders carried out their counter-revolutionary conceptions at a time when the workers were entering armed struggles against fascism.
Nothing expresses the treacherous conceptions of the anarchist leaders more than their published comment when a number of Spanish Communists were sent to the African penal colonies. Borrowing their phrases from the Trotskyites, the anarchists declared to the Communist prisoners: "Go, build Socialism now in one country!"
In their criticism of the capitalist State, the anarchists also criticized as bitterly and savagely the dictatorship of the proletariat, thereby diverting the workers from the only force and power which could defeat and destroy the rule of capitalist landlord ruling power. In this they have a common ground with those who, like Kautsky, consider the fascist dictatorship as on the same plane and basically indistinguishable from the proletarian dictatorship.
Anarchism, basically, is the utopian, petty-bourgeois philosophy developed into a system by Proudhon and given organizational expression by Bakunin, the bitterest enemy of Marx in the First International. It is based chiefly on the remnants of the petty bourgeoisie who in the early stages of capitalism are driven into the ranks of the proletariat and carry on a violent struggle against capitalism for the abstract conception of "liberty" and "equality" which expresses the utopian desire of the enraged petty bourgeoisie to preserve their individual property and "liberty".
Because of the late development of capitalism, and hence of the proletariat, in Spain, the anarchists were able to get a foot hold, and carry over their leadership into a period when the proletariat was maturing rapidly toward seizure of power and the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship.
The anarchist leaders' idea is that, since the proletarian dictatorship is no better than the capitalist dictatorship, when the one is threatened by the other, why take sides? Furthermore, not believing in proletarian struggles, they fight against strikes of a political nature, especially one leading to the armed insurrection for workers' power.
The victory of the workers in the Soviet Union has shown the correctness of the Marxian-Leninist goal of the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the most powerful weapon of the revolution in combating and destroying, not only the capitalist State, but the last vestiges of the capitalist class and capitalist relations which try to perpetuate themselves after the seizure of power by the working class. Every revolutionary struggle since 1871 has shown again and again that unless the working class is able to establish its dictatorship, it cannot hope to proceed with the development of the new society, Socialism. Especially at a time when the Spanish bourgeoisie were dropping all pretenses at democracy and bringing their class dictatorship out into the open, with its more brutal, chauvinist, and repressive characteristics, the "impartiality" of the anarchists towards the "State" proved to be the most valuable counter-revolutionary service in the interest of fascism.
The anarchist leaders fought against the Soviet Union and the proletarian dictatorship more vigorously than against the capitalist State, considered by them freer than proletarian rule, which they called "red imperialism".
Sabotaged General Strike
Hence, when it came to the decisive test, when fascism sought to establish its open, brutal dictatorship, the anarchists, true to their historical role, sabotaged the general strike, the armed uprising for Catalonian national independence, and the proletarian revolution and the establishment of Soviets throughout Spain.
Anarchism, in the person of the Spanish anarchist leaders, performed a service for Spanish capitalism which its mercenary, criminal Foreign Legion could never have performed alone, with its most modern means of mass murder.
The lessons of the Spanish revolution are of international significance, and will have international, immediate repercussions in the class struggle and the world battle against fascism and for Soviet Power.
In an article in International Press Correspondence, on "The Civil War in Spain and the International Proletariat", Comrade Ercoli writes:
"The recent events in Spain have once again provided a convincing object lesson of the international validity of Leninism and Bolshevism. The victory of the revolution demands revolutionary strategy and revolutionary tactics. There are no revolutionary tactics and strategy outside the practice and theory of Bolshevism.
"The October struggles of the Spanish masses which revealed this incapacity of the Socialist leaders by an acid test, represent a decisive stage in the development of the Spanish revolution. The working masses of Spain will learn from their experience.
"The Communist Party of Spain was not only the sole working-class organization which had a correct policy toward all the fundamental problems of the revolution, but it was also at the head of the working masses in their struggles in the October days. The red flag of the Communist Party waved victoriously over the barricades in Asturias, and it was carried into the struggle by the most determined of the proletarian fighters of the glorious Commune of Asturias.
"The Spanish revolution is still proceeding. The Spanish bourgeoisie is well aware that the workers and peasants have not suffered a final defeat, and the fear of further mass struggles has already made a section of the bourgeoisie hesitant...Our heroic Spanish Communist Party, which has now stood its test of fire gloriously, will succeed in placing itself at the head of the workers and peasants and in leading them to final victory.
"However, the Communists and the other revolutionary workers of Spain must receive practical assistance from us in their struggle. The international solidarity of the proletariat and the international struggle of the proletariat to support the Spanish revolution must contribute practically to clearing the way for further mass struggles in Spain and to assisting the Spanish workers and peasants in their difficult struggle. The international solidarity of the proletariat must and will contribute to the defeat of fascism in Spain and bring the day of the final victorious struggle of the proletariat nearer both in Spain and in the rest of Europe."
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