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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
From Strike to Armed Struggle
The general strike of October 5 went over into the armed struggle against fascism with the greatest unevenness and with the greatest lack of centralized leadership and clear-cut objective. The anarchist leaders held hack. They controlled organizations totaling over 1,000,000 members. This was fatal. One month later, early in November, the anarchist leadership in Saragossa called a general strike in protest against the execution of two revolutionists. But then it was too late. Had they called the strike simultaneously with the Workers' Alliance, the executed would more likely have been Gil Robles and Lerroux, butchers of the Spanish workers.
Fighting then broke out all over Spain. The proletariat went into action. Though there was no centralized leadership, the whole world was electrified by the stubbornness and the heroism of the Spanish workers. They had learned from events in Germany. They had learned from the Austrian fighting. The Russian Revolution was their guiding banner, though they did not have its masterly leadership.
In Asturias, the proletariat in this Northern industrial center of Spain had learned thoroughly every lesson of the revolutionary struggles of the proletariat of the Paris Commune and of the Russian Revolution. They seized power and held it. They organized their Red Army, set up a workers' and peasants' re public. They organized the civil war, food distribution, their apparatus of power, action, communication, and distribution of the means of life.
They communicated with the Communist Party of Spain in Madrid. They promised to hold out until the last ditch, waiting for revolutionary reinforcements throughout Spain. They called on the workers, peasants, and soldiers of all of Spain to follow their example. But the failures, the treachery of the anarchists in Barcelona, sealed their fate.
While daily fighting was going on in Madrid, while the anarchists were betraying, and the Workers' Council in Catalonia was vacillating, waiting for the national bourgeoisie under the leadership of Companys to take the initiative, the Asturias proletariat issued as their first proclamation the following manifesto I See page 10 for reproduction of original)
"WORKERS' AND PEASANTS' REPUBLIC OF ASTURIAS
"workers! Our glorious movement is spreading over the whole of Spain. In numerous places in Spain the movement has consolidated with the victory of the toiling masses, the workers, peasants, and soldiers.
"As soon as our inner connections have been established and secured, you will be kept informed as to events in our republic and all over Spain. When our broadcasting stations are working, with ordinary and short waves, you will be kept informed.
"Indubitably we have reached the last effort for the consolidation of the victory of the revolution. The fascist enemy is about to surrender, as also the paid soldiery with their apparatus. Guns, munitions, and other arms which we cannot name, as the war material must not become known, have fallen into our hands.
"The forces of the army of the defeated republic of April 14 are in retreat, and our vanguards are being joined by the soldiers ranging themselves in our glorious movement.
"Forward, workers, women, peasants, soldiers, and revolutionary militia! Long live the social revolution!
"THE REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE."
This manifesto was signed by the Revolutionary Committee of Oviedo. Behind them were 20,000 armed Red Guards, and 100,000 striking workers.
Asturias blazed the way for the future of the Spanish revolution. Asturias was the handwriting on the wall of the fortress of Spanish fascism. No wonder Asturias, its glorious achievements, its revolutionary daring, is on the lips of the whole Spanish working class! No wonder it is the perpetual nightmare of the bloody horde of the oppressors-the rich landlords, the
myrmidons of the Church, the fascist scum, and the whole rotten class of capitalist landlords and agents of the foreign concessionaires!
II
In Madrid, the general strike of October 5 was completely effective. But while the Asturias workers went over into the offensive through mass armed struggles, seizing power and setting up a workers' and peasants' republic, arousing the greatest initiative of the masses, inspiring them to the most self-sacrificing and heroic deeds, the Madrid fighting was largely sporadic. It was· restricted mainly to picked shock bands. They struck with extreme rapidity and surprise and retreated almost as quickly. But the great mass reserves of the proletariat were not led to storm the heavens of capitalism.
Even so, the fighting in Madrid far surpassed the strategy in Vienna, as the picked bands carried the attack into the strategic centers of the enemy.
The workers were on strike, prepared to fight. But the as sault of the great mass of workers was directed mainly against strike-breakers, while the specially picked shock troops tried to harry the government forces, hoping to break their morale and increase the confusion and weakness of the precariously organized fascist regime.
The great masses, ready for action, were not drawn into the fighting to the fullest extent because of the basic failures and vacillations of the Socialist leaders. Largo Caballero and Prieto, Socialist leaders, from their secret headquarters, directed the fighting, but they had no clearly defined objective and had not previously prepared for mass struggles, for the establishment of Soviets, for arousing the peasants into simultaneous action which could have led to a victorious revolution.
Workers with machine guns and rifles made repeated sallies on such central buildings as the Cortes (parliament), the Bank of Spain, the central police headquarters, the Ministries of the Interior, War, and Communications.
“Wherever employers tried to replace striking leftists with strike breakers, aimed bands of rebels appeared. In almost all instances there were sharp brushes with government forces protecting the strike-breakers. It was almost as though the rebel strikers had taken up the gauge of battle flung down by the two-day old cabinet of Premier Alejandro Lerroux at an emergency meeting yesterday.' (Frank Gervasi, N.Y. American, October 8.)
A description of the strategic attacks of the picked shock forces is given by the Associated Press cable from: Madrid on October 7:
"Heavy firing broke out at the famous Puena de! Sol, where the Ministry of the Interior is situated. Assault forces poured into the plaza there from five anerial streets, a veritable army appearing to converge upon a strategic center down the spokes of a wheel... In one district the revolutionaries captured a score of Chi! Guards and held them as prisoners. Troops began moving into Madrid, concentrating at strategic points from nearby bar racks. They had full war-time equipment. Meanwhile, Madrid was virtually isolated from the provinces with communications severed and the only open channels being used for transportation of troops."
The government was slow to move troops against the workers,
fearing mutiny. Special regiments had to be picked to go into action. Orders were immediately given for the Foreign Legion at Ceuta, Africa, to proceed to Spain for counter-revolutionary service. These troops were sent chiefly to Asturias.
In the workers' districts in Madrid, the fighting continued long after the central drives were beaten back, but lack of wea pons further prevented a development of the battle to a greater offensive. The capital not falling into the hands of the restricted armed groups, the Catalonian debacle (which we will discuss later) giving heart to the bourgeoisie, the fighting in Madrid dwindled and died.
Madrid proved to the hilt the declaration of the Communist Party of Spain: "The revolution does not just occur, it is organized." Insurrection, as Lenin pointed out, is an art. The organization of revolution cannot be restricted to shock troops "prepared to do anything" but must bring into the offensive the whole forces of the working class and must arouse into action the great peasant masses. The workers did not know who, where, and under what forms of struggle the revolution was being led, and what organs of power should be set up.
The Socialist leaders resisted up to the eleventh hour the persistent proposals of the C.P. of Spain for a united front, saying that since the S.P. is relatively the larger party, it was not necessary for thein to enter into united action. The higher stage, the offensive nature of the struggle, as compared to the February days in Austria, inevitably broke that resistance from on top. The Socialist leaders did not know and could not apply the les sons of insurrection taught by Marx and so brilliantly developed by Lenin and confirmed by the victorious Russian Revolution.
"To be successful", wrote Lenin in his article on "Marxism and Uprising", "the uprising must be based not on a conspiracy, not on a party, but on the advanced class. This is the first point. The uprising must be based on the revolutionary upsurge of the people. This is the second point. The uprising must be based on the crucial point in the history of the maturing revolution when the activity of the vanguard of the people is at its height, when the vacillation in the ranks of the enemies, and in the ranks of the weak, half-hearted, undecided friend of the revolution are at their highest point. This is the third point. But once these conditions exist, then to refuse to treat the uprising as an art means to betray Marxism and the revolution."
Waited for the Fascists
The Socialist leaders did not pick the crucial point, wa1Ung for the fascists to take the initiative. When they did go into action, they did not base themselves on the mass struggles at their height, nor did they treat the uprising as an art; they failed to organize it for the victory which could have been achieved.
What happened in Catalonia turned the tide of events. For four hundred years, the central rulers of Spain have been trying to unify Catalonia with the rest of Spain. When the 1931 republic was established, the Catalonian people achieved a restricted measure of national independence which was increasingly curbed as the "democratic" measures of the republic were whittled away by the Right, and later by the fascist developments.
The crisis in the Samper government, which led to the formation of the Lerroux-Robles fascist regime, and the armed uprising, was precipitated by the agrarian-national question in Catalonia. The Catalonian Generalidad (local government), some months before the clash, had passed an agrarian law, partially favoring the tenants and small landowners. The Supreme Court of Spain declared this law null and void, thereby wiping out the limited autonomy already won in Catalonia and the meager agrarian reform.
The Workers' Alliance, instead of taking the lead for the independence of Catalonia on the basis of the revolutionary struggles of the working class, waited for the Catalonian bourgeoisie to act under the leadership of Louis Companys.
On October 6, after pressure from the masses, Catalonia was declared independent. The anarchists fought against the independence of Catalonia, sabotaging the revolutionary struggles of the workers, and acting as open strike-breakers and counter-revolutionists. This delayed the action of the working class, created further hesitation and disorganization, and permitted Companys to betray the movement.
Companys Maneuvered
Companys did not go over into the armed struggle but maneuvered and treated with General Batel of the Catalonia garrison. He feared the unloosing of the mass armed struggle which would sweep over the head of the national bourgeoisie. He gave General Batel time to organize his troops for assault. On October 6, Companys invited Batel to join the independence movement. "The general," declared the New York Times cable of October 8, "asked for an hour to consider the proposition, but before the time was up, he ordered his troops into the streets and began at tacking buildings".
Batet's troops seized the central government headquarters and the radio station from which Companys was broadcasting his pompous appeals. By this time, the workers had gone into action, but they had received a fatal blow from the anarchist leaders and were defeated. This gave encouragement to the landlord-bourgeois fascist government at Madrid, and the tide of battle turned throughout Spain after this defeat.
In the suburbs of Barcelona, at Badelona, a city of 30,000 inhabitants, and Sabadell, with 40,000 people, the workers took control; but with the defeat in Barcelona, without supporting actions of the proletariat throughout Catalonia (due to the fatal and initial treachery of the anarchists), the battle was lost. Since the anarchists had monopolized the leadership of the workers in this most important industrial center of Spain, their counter revolutionary tactics sealed the defeat of the workers.
Communist Party Held First Congress
In the early part of 1934, the Communist Party of Catalonia held its first congress, attended by more than 100 delegates from all parts of Catalonia. At that time, the problems of the revolution in Catalonia were clearly outlined by the C.P. Congress. The main thesis declared:
"The Communist Party of Catalonia, whilst proceeding to the carrying out of its historical task, the overthrow of the power of the bourgeoisie and of the big landowners, by mobilizing the broad masses for the national and social emancipation of the toiling population of Catalonia, for the struggle for the right of self-determination right up to separation, for the setting up of the Soviets of workers, toiling peasants, soldiers, and sailors, will conduct an irreconcilable struggle against Spanish imperialism, and the traitors of the cause of the emancipation of the Catalonian people: the Esquerra, the Generalidad and its agents."
The Communist Party of Spain in its resolution on the lessons of the armed uprising declared with regard to the national struggle:
"Another frightful error was the leaving of the issue of struggle. in the hands of such vacillating persons as Companys. If the revolution is to be victorious, it must remain in all its forms in the hands of the exploited. This has been once more demonstrated by our heroic comrades in Asturias and Biscay."
Faced by the withering criticism of the toiling masses, by the sharp movement away from the anarchists to the Communist Party, the anarchist leaders tried to win back their waning leadership by calling a general strike in Saragossa and other parts of Catalonia in protest against the execution of two workers. But this gesture, coming from a source itself tainted with the blood of the workers, received little supporting response.
The result of the fighting in Catalonia has sharpened the class lines in the national independence struggle. The bourgeoisie has been weakened (if not annihilated) as a force in the struggle for national emancipation. The anarchist chiefs, who were against national independence, are being exposed in the eyes of the revolutionary masses as counter-revolutionists. The workers who went into action have learned the lesson of taking the initiative which will not be lost in the next revolutionary upsurge.
Early in December 1934, the workers in the anarcho-syndicalist trade unions gave a striking expression of their disgust with the betrayals of the anarchist leadership. At an under ground meeting of the Castille division of the anarcho-syndicalist trade union I C.N.T.), it was decided to join in the united front of the Workers' Alliance along with the Socialist and Communist Parties.
All present agreed that it was necessary to condemn in the sharpest manner the sabotage and betrayal of the Central of Anarchists (F.A.1.), and it was resolved to break all relations with Garcia Oliver, anarchist leader of the F.A.I. Similar action was taken in Asturias, Galicia, Leon, Aragon, Catalonia, and Andalusia.
It was further resolved, in breaking with the anarchist leaders and policies, to participate in the next municipal elections by supporting candidates of the Workers' Alliance, and, where such nominees are not put up, either the Socialist or Communist candidate.
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