ou have only to read George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" to know, contrary to the well-cultivated and widely accepted myth, that the Soviet Union and Stalin did not fight the good and moral fight against fascism in the Spanish Civil War. Over the years, many (not all) historians examining the Spanish conflict — that vortex of noble failure and international romanticism — have essentially agreed with Orwell, finding that the real motive of the Soviet Union was to establish dictatorial control of a European country, ruthlessly eliminating all opposition from within the republican camp, and not to safeguard Spanish democracy.

Now Yale University Press, continuing its extraordinary Annals of Communism series, has published translations of some 80 formerly secret documents mined from the great reservoir of information in the archives of the former Soviet Union. Edited by Ronald Radosh, Mary R. Habeck and Grigory Sevostianov, the new volume, "Spain Betrayed," provides documentary evidence for the analysis developed by Orwell six decades ago. As the editors readily acknowledge, the documents in this volume do not produce "startling new revelations, but rather the more complete understanding of Soviet and Comintern participation in the war and the politics of the Spanish Republic." (The Comintern was the Communist International, an organization, directed by Moscow, to aid Communist parties worldwide.)

The documents show, for example, that from the beginning of the outbreak of civil war in Spain in 1936, Soviet policy was to disguise its ultimate objective: to bring about the dictatorship of the proletariat in Spain, or, in other words, to accomplish what Moscow later accomplished in Eastern European countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia. Instead, Moscow instructed the Spanish Communist Party to be discreet and to support a moderate social program until conditions were ripe for a Soviet-style takeover.

To "assign the task of creating soviets and try to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat in Spain . . . would be a fatal mistake," an early Comintern report concludes. However, it continues, "When our positions have been strengthened, then we can go further."

The documents shed light on some specific incidents that have long provoked historical controversy, like which party was responsible for the civil war within the civil war that broke out in Barcelona in 1937 and resulted in the destruction of the powerful Spanish anarchists. The documents collected here — specifically, a lengthy intelligence report from a Soviet agent in Spain passed on to the very top of the Soviet leadership — prove that Soviet operatives in Spain wanted to provoke a political crisis, and Barcelona provided them with an opportunity. The documents show clearly how Moscow forged a large apparatus of security and political manipulation with the intent of controlling the Spanish republican government and army and crushing rival leftist parties. Had the Republicans won the war, this effort would have turned Spain into a satellite state.

To some extent, "Spain Betrayed" is more a book for specialists, or at least those with a particular interest in the Spanish Civil War, than for general readers. The documents are often long, full of jargon and details that no longer seem central. The editors have provided fine explanatory notes for each section of documentary evidence, but they assume a good deal of knowledge from the reader, and in many places use acronyms or refer to actors in the Spanish drama without much explanation. A fuller glossary of people and institutions would have been enormously helpful, and its absence is a serious handicap for nonspecialists. Moreover, there have been several very good books on the Spanish Civil War by writers like Hugh Thomas, Paul Preston, Burnett Bolloten and others; if you were going to read only one book about it, this probably would not be it.

But "Spain Betrayed" gives the weight and substance of documentary evidence to a subject that has always provoked deep feeling and impassioned debate. The war in Spain was the first European conflict involving the fascist states of Italy and Germany and the revolutionary Soviet Union. The fascist victory in Spain — aided by the unwillingness of the democratic Western powers to intervene — foreshadowed the European conflagration.

Thousands of idealists from all over the world came to Spain to fight the enemies of democracy, and the war in that sense has always had a legendary quality. It has epitomized the valiant struggle against evil undertaken even as Britain, France and the United States cultivated a myopic neutrality.

This latest book presents no new information on the failure of the West, but it says a great deal about the Soviet Union's position as the only outside power to enter the war on the side of the Republicans. In essence, Moscow provided military aid and equipment in exchange for disproportionate political influence in Spain and for most of the country's gold supply. If there is a single theme running through the documents collected in "Spain Betrayed," it is the persistent Soviet desire to control the Spanish Republican army and government.

One remarkable document, the text of a report by a Soviet agent in Spain sent to none other than Kliment Voroshilov, Stalin's army chief, outlines a full strategy for going "decisively and consciously to battle" against the Republican government of Francisco Largo Caballero, the Socialist premier who, in the view of Moscow's agents, "is making desperate efforts to isolate the Communists." The strategy outlined was "not to wait passively for a `natural' unleashing of the hidden government crisis, but to hasten it and, if necessary, provoke it."

Two weeks later, the Communists, in the view of this book's editors, did provoke the desired crisis, unleashing the Barcelona street battles that essentially eliminated the anarchist leadership and led to the replacement of Largo Caballero by a more malleable premier.

Few events have been more hotly debated than those in Barcelona, which have been seen variously as a Communist provocation or as a desperate pre-emptive strike by the anarchists to realize their more radical vision of social transformation. The documents in "Spain Betrayed" provide powerful evidence that the Barcelona incidents were part of a consistent Soviet plan, decided on early in the conflict and implemented ruthlessly for the entire war.

SPAIN BETRAYED

The Soviet Union
In the Spanish Civil War

Edited by Ronald Radosh, Mary R. Habeck and Grigory Sevostianov

Illustrated. 537 pages. Yale University Press. $35.