Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War. (Review)

COPYRIGHT 2001 Institute on Religion and Public Life

SPAIN BETRAYED: THE SOVIET UNION IN THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR. Edited by RONALD RADOSH ET AL. Yale University Press. 524 pp. $35.

Part of the invaluable "Annals of Communism" project being published by Yale. Documents from newly opened Soviet archives, presented here verbatim along with helpful commentary, demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that from the beginning in 1936 through the end in 1939 Soviet support for the Spanish Republic was aimed at creating a puppet regime and establishing a Soviet-controlled "people's democracy" along the lines that became familiar after World War II. It is also evident that the Soviet Union aimed at bankrupting the Republican government by providing "military aid" at wildly inflated prices. Reports and other documents to and from Moscow are obsessed with factionalist disputes among those variously labeled as Trotskyists, anarcho-syndicalists, good and bad anarchists, right and left socialists, and other ideological sects all putatively allied against "the Fascists." Although leftist atrocities against the Church, including the execution of thousands of nuns and priests, were widespread, they are nowhere mentioned in these documents. Culture, religion, and the condition of the people are conspicuous by their absence. The only concerns are ideological disputes and military fortunes. Spain Betrayed is a chilling read.