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

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СКАЧАТЬ tactical errors was actually dominated at the time by members of the FJS. They blamed the defeat of October on Besteiro’s reformists, which was absurd. This was used to justify the ‘second stage’ announced in the pamphlet’s title, the expulsion of the reformists and the bolshevization of the PSOE, which signified the adoption of a rigidly centralized command structure and the creation of an illegal apparatus to prepare for an armed insurrection. Inhibited by Asturian backing for Prieto, the authors did not dare call for his expulsion but aggressively demanded the abandonment of his ‘centrist’ line in favour of their revolutionary one.20

      Prieto and others were convinced that the pamphlet had been concocted during the authors’ walks around the prison patio or courtyard with Largo Caballero. Years later, despite being the subject of rapturous praise in the pamphlet, Largo Caballero claimed that it had been published without his permission and that, deeply annoyed, he had protested to Carrillo. Carrillo himself was to admit later that his group had acted without the boss’s authorization. Later still, he categorized the view expressed in the pamphlet as puerile, deriving from ‘infantile leftism’.21 In an interview published in December 1935, however, Largo Caballero agreed with much of the pamphlet, albeit not with its demand for expulsions and for entry into the Comintern.22

      In response to the insulting attacks of the FJS pamphlet, the Besteiristas were emerging from their silence.23 They founded a publication to defend their ideas. Called Democracia, it appeared weekly from 15 June to 13 December. Its lawful appearance was taken by Carrillo’s crony Segundo Serrano Poncela as proof of the Besteirista treachery to the Socialist cause.24 This point of view was given some credibility by Besteiro’s inaugural lecture, ‘Marxism and Anti-Marxism’, on being elected to the Academy of Political and Moral Sciences. In this long and tortuous lecture, given on 28 April 1935, Besteiro set out to prove that Marx had been hostile to the notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat. He infuriated the imprisoned bolshevizers with his insinuations that the violence of the Socialist left was hardly distinguishable from fascism.25 A devastating reply to Besteiro’s lecture by Largo’s most competent adviser, Luis Araquistáin, appeared in the doctrinal journal Leviatán, which had survived the repression of the Socialist media. Araquistáin’s articles were of a notably higher level of theoretical competence than Octubre: segunda etapa and their demolition of the inaugural lecture ensured Besteiro’s withdrawal from the PSOE leadership stakes.26

      With Besteiro eliminated, in late May Prieto returned to the fray with a series of highly influential articles. Collectively entitled Posiciones socialistas, they were published shortly afterwards as a book. The first two restated the need to avoid the great tactical error of 1933, arguing that the right would be united at the next elections and an exclusively workers’ coalition would be the victim of anarchist indiscipline. For Prieto, only a Republican–Socialist coalition could guarantee an amnesty for political prisoners. The last three articles set out, in mild yet firm language, to expose some of the more absurd contradictions of Octubre: segunda etapa. Prieto indignantly dismissed the right of untried youngsters to call for the expulsion of militants who had dedicated their lives to the PSOE and pointed out that the accusations made against various sections of the Socialist movement by the pamphlet were most applicable to the FJS itself. Above all, he denounced the bolshevizers’ dictatorial tendencies and proposed a party congress to settle the direction that the movement was to take.27

      With Carrillo’s name on the cover, Octubre was reissued with a reply to Prieto. Largo Caballero’s friend Enrique de Francisco wrote to Prieto to say that he had no right to make party policy in bourgeois newspapers. Prieto replied that the same moralistic view had not inhibited the Socialist Youth from advocating bolshevization. More stridently, the journalist Carlos de Baraibar, in consultation with Largo Caballero, prepared a book attacking the ‘false socialist positions’ of Prieto. In criticizing him for breaking party discipline by publicizing his ideas, Baraibar conveniently forgot that the FJS had not hesitated to broadcast its controversial views.28 The extremism of the FJS was seriously dividing Spanish socialism. While the repressive policies of the CEDA–Radical government and the existence of thousands of political prisoners made revolutionary propaganda attractive, they also ensured a sympathetic mass response to Prieto’s call for unity and a return to the progressive Republic of 1931–3. An indication of the bitterness being engendered was shown in the summer of 1935 when the Caballeristas produced a legal weekly newspaper called Claridad. Its pages loudly backed the FJS call for the expulsion of the Besteiristas and the marginalization of the Prietistas.29 Democracia responded by arguing that the bolshevization campaign was just a smokescreen to divert attention from the FJS’s failures in October 1934. When Saborit made the gracious gesture of visiting the prisoners in the Cárcel Modelo, Largo Caballero rudely refused to shake his hand or even speak to him.30

      Everything changed after the Seventh Congress of the Comintern was held in Moscow in August 1935. The secretary general, Giorgi Dimitrov, launched a call for proletarian unity and a broad popular front of all anti-fascist forces. Already, in a speech on 2 June, the PCE secretary general, José Díaz, had openly called for union with the PSOE. On 3 November, he declared that the Seventh Congress showed the need for a Popular Front.31 Carrillo was delighted. In prison, he and Hernández Zancajo lived in close proximity to their comrades from the UJC, Trifón Medrano and Jesús Rozado. They were aware that in October 1934 there had been some collaboration on the ground between the rank-and-file militants of their respective organizations. Now their daily encounters and discussions favoured the eventual unification of their organizations.32

      The FJS delegate at the Comintern congress, José Laín Entralgo, reported back enthusiastically that the Communist union, the Confederación General de Trabajo Unitaria (CGTU), would amalgamate with the UGT. He also claimed that the switch of tactics meant that Moscow had returned sovereignty to the various national parties and that there was therefore no longer any reason why the FJS should not join the Comintern.33 Carrillo was already trying to secure the incorporation of the Trotskyist Bloc Obrer i Camperol and the Communist Youth into the PSOE as part of the process of bolshevizing the party. Writing in Leviatán, Araquistáin rightly suggested that Moscow’s fundamental objective with the Popular Front tactic was to ensure that liberal and left-wing anti-fascist governments would be in power in the West to ensure favourable alliances should Germany declare war on the USSR. Far from breaking with the old Comintern habit of dictating the same policy for each country, as the FJS fondly thought, the new tactic confirmed the dictatorial customs of the Third International. Araquistáin accepted the need for proletarian unity but rejected the notion of alliance with the bourgeois left.34

      Largo Caballero was keen on working-class unity as long as it meant the absorption of the Communist working-class rank and file into the UGT. However, he remained hostile to an electoral coalition with the Left Republicans and, like Araquistáin, he opposed the idea of the PSOE joining the Comintern.35 For this reason, Carrillo had to be circumspect in all the negotiations with the imprisoned UJC members and crucially with the most senior Comintern representative in Spain, the Argentinian Vittorio Codovila, codenamed ‘Medina’. The director of the Cárcel Modelo turned a blind eye as Codovila was smuggled into the prison as part of a family party visiting Carrillo. Codovila was surprised by Carrillo’s readiness to accept all of the conditions requested by the Communists. All he wanted in return was for СКАЧАТЬ