The Last Stalinist: The Life of Santiago Carrillo. Paul Preston

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ made its own arrangements for creating militias, which usually went no further than drawing up lists of names of those who might be prepared to take to the streets. Whatever Carrillo fondly believed, there was no central coordination. Largo Caballero himself admitted that the majority of local party and union leaders thought that ‘the revolution was inevitable but feared it and just hoped that some initiative or incident might see it avoided and so they invested only the minimum effort in its preparation, not wanting to appear to be hostile to it in order to keep the loyalty of their members’. He thus perfectly summed up his own attitude. For the bulk of the Socialist leadership, if not for the bolshevizing youth, there was never any real intention of making a revolution. Largo Caballero was convinced that President Alcalá Zamora would never invite the CEDA to join the government because its leaders had never declared their loyalty to the Republic.87

      The loud revolutionary rhetoric of the FJS was followed with relish by both Gil Robles and Salazar Alonso. They were aware that the revolutionary committee had linked its threats of revolution specifically to the entry of the CEDA into the cabinet. They also knew – as did Largo Caballero but apparently not Carrillo – that the left was in no position to succeed in a revolutionary attempt. Thorough police activity throughout the spring and summer of 1934 had undermined most of the uncoordinated preparations made by the revolutionary committee. Most of the few weapons acquired by the left had been seized. Gil Robles admitted later that he was anxious to enter the government because of, rather than in spite of, the violent reaction that could be expected from the Socialists: ‘Sooner or later, we would have to face a revolutionary coup. It would always be preferable to face it from a position of power before the enemy were better prepared.’88 Speaking in the Acción Popular offices in December, he recalled complacently:

      I was sure that our arrival in the government would immediately provoke a revolutionary movement … and when I considered that blood which was going to be shed, I asked myself this question: ‘I can give Spain three months of apparent tranquillity if I do not enter the government. If we enter, will the revolution break out? Better let that happen before it is well prepared, before it can defeat us.’ This is what Acción Popular did: precipitated the movement, confronted it and implacably smashed the revolution within the power of the government.89

      In similar terms, Salazar Alonso wrote: ‘The problem was simply to begin a counter-revolutionary offensive to establish a government determined to put an end to the evil.’ It was not just a question of smashing the immediate revolutionary bid but of making sure that the left did not raise its head again.90

      The moment of truth was coming nearer, but the reality would be very different from the Leninist dreams of armed insurrection nurtured by Carrillo and the other young bolshevizers. They had little or no idea of how to convert their threats into action. Largo Caballero and his hardened trade union followers were now using revolutionary phrases less frequently and with decreasing conviction. Their outrage in the wake of the November 1933 elections had given way to alarm at the way in which Salazar Alonso had managed to decimate the organized labour movement during the strikes of the spring and early summer of 1934. Throughout September, there were numerous minor strikes and waves of police activity. On 8 September, in response to a twenty-four-hour strike in Madrid, Salazar Alonso had ordered the Casa del Pueblo to be closed. It was searched, to no avail, by the police. When it was reopened six days later, the police went in again and allegedly found a substantial cache of bombs and firearms. This unlikely discovery was the excuse needed for the Socialist headquarters to be closed again.

      The next day, 14 September, there took place an event which symbolized the naive hopes of the bolshevizers. Eighty thousand people attended a spectacular joint rally of the FJS and the Communist Youth at the Madrid Metropolitan Stadium. It was in response to a decree by Salazar Alonso, prohibiting those under the age of twenty-one from joining political organizations without written permission from their parents. Although there were speeches by members of the PSOE and the Communist Party, the main speakers were Carrillo for the FJS and Trifón Medrano for the UJC. All spoke of the imminent seizure of power. Greeted by a sea of raised fists, Carrillo declared that ‘if this government at the service of the right does not withdraw the decree, these youth movements will assault the citadels of power and establish a class dictatorship’. He spoke of the identification of the FJS with ‘the chief of the Spanish revolution’, an obvious reference to Largo Caballero. Intoxicated by the moment, he closed his intervention with cries of ‘Death to the Government! Death to the Bourgeoisie! Long live the Revolution! Long Live the Dictatorship of the Proletariat!’ The event ended with the militants marching out ‘military style’ while waving a profusion of red flags. El Socialista rather ingenuously described the event as ‘a show of strength by the proletariat of Madrid’.91

      The crunch came on 26 September, when the CEDA sparked off the crisis by announcing that it could no longer support a minority government. The only solution was either the calling of new elections or the entry into the government of the CEDA. Lerroux’s new cabinet, announced in the early hours of the morning of 4 October, included three CEDA ministers. The arrival in power of the CEDA had been denominated the first step towards the imposition of fascism in Spain. It was the moment for the much threatened revolutionary insurrection. In the event, the efficacy of the threatened revolution was to be in inverse proportion to the scale of the bolshevizers’ bombast. Much of the Socialist movement was paralysed with doubt. The executives of the PSOE and the UGT met and agreed that, if indeed the President did what they were sure he would not do – invite the CEDA to join the government – then the revolution must be launched. Coded telegrams – with messages like ‘I arrive tomorrow’, ‘Angela is better’, ‘Pepe’s operation went well’ – were sent to local committees in every province.

      However, having hoped that threats of revolution would suffice to make Alcalá Zamora call new elections, Largo Caballero simply could not believe that he had failed. The revolutionary committee thus did nothing about making the final preparations for the threatened seizure of power. Instead, they spent the next three days in Prieto’s apartment ‘anxiously awaiting’ news of the composition of the cabinet. Largo still believed that Alcalá Zamora would never hand over power to the CEDA. Similarly, the FJS’s revolutionary militias were also lacking leadership and organization. At 11 p.m. on 3 October, two Socialist journalists, Carlos de Baraibar and José María Aguirre, arrived with the unofficial news that a government had been formed with CEDA participation. Several members of the revolutionary committee declared that the time had come to start the movement. Largo, however, stated flatly that ‘until I see it in the Gaceta, I won’t believe it’. He was finally convinced only by the arrival of some soldiers who brought news that the new cabinet had declared martial law. Even then, it was with reluctance that the Socialists prepared for action. They felt that they had no choice. ‘The die was cast,’ wrote Largo.92

      Now the extent of his revolutionary intentions was revealed when the UGT gave the government twenty-four hours’ notice of a pacific general strike. He hoped that the President would change his mind, but he succeeded merely in giving the police time to arrest working-class leaders. In most parts of Spain, the strike was a failure largely because of the prompt action of the government in declaring martial law and bringing in the army to run essential services.

      The entry of the CEDA into the cabinet revealed the emptiness of the revolutionary bombast of the previous months. It was followed by the creation of an independent Catalan Republic, though it lasted only for ten hours; a desultory general strike in Madrid; and the establishment of a workers’ commune in Asturias. With the exception of the Asturian revolt, which held out against the armed forces during two weeks of fierce fighting and owed its ‘success’ to the mountainous terrain and the special skills of the miners, the keynote of the Spanish October was its half-heartedness. There is nothing about the events of that month, even СКАЧАТЬ