The Man Who Denounced Antonov-Ovseenko
MIRAVITLLES, JAUME
Spain's mysterious 'Pedro' again in the news THE MAN WHO DENOUNCED ANTONOV-OVSEENKO By Jaume Miravitlles One of the first of Stalin's victims to be rehabilitated by the new Soviet leaders in...
...Jaume Miravitlles was formerly the Information Secretary of the Autonomous Government of Catalonia...
...When the civil war broke out in Spain and the French and British Governments adopted their policy of non-intervention, the Spanish Republic recognized the USSR (which it had not done until then), and Moscow sent two diplomatic representatives to the Peninsula: Ambassador Rosenberg, a career diplomat, to Madrid, and Antonov-Ovseenko as Consul General to Barcelona...
...None of the Spanish Communists, however high in the ranks of the Party—Pepe Diaz and La Pasionaria not excepted—could take a decision without first consulting him...
...carried out at the orders of the then GPU chief in Barcelona...
...but they in fact seduced him...
...Seidman...
...For he was instructed to bring around to a pro-Communist position the Catalan Anarcho-Syndicalists and the Catalan nationalists of the Generalitat (autonomous government of Catalonia), both groups implacable enemies of the authoritarian and centralist Marxism of the Soviets...
...At a recent reception given by the Israeli Delegation to the United Nations in New York, this writer had a conversation with a Polish Jewish journalist...
...Spain's mysterious 'Pedro' again in the news THE MAN WHO DENOUNCED ANTONOV-OVSEENKO By Jaume Miravitlles One of the first of Stalin's victims to be rehabilitated by the new Soviet leaders in their campaign to rid themselves of the Stalinist taint was Antonov-Ovseenko, Consul General of the USSR in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War...
...He showed his acquaintances the issue of Pravda which carried the news of his appointment on its front page...
...the grey eminence of the Comintern in Barcelona, denouncer of the now rehabilitated Antonov-Ovseenko...
...Antonov-Ovseenko had been one of the great strategists of the Russian Revolution: as right-hand man to Trotsky, head of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee, it was he who planned and carried out the seizure of the Winter Palace...
...Pedro" was likewise involved in the assassination cd the POUM leader Andres Nin...
...His appointment is certainly one of the most contradictory developments of the anti-Stalin phase of Communist politics...
...Seidman affirmed that the edition of Pravda announcing the appointment of AntonovOvseenko as Commissar of Justice had been fabricated by the Soviet secret police: the regular edition circulated in Moscow on that date, which Dr...
...He began to study the Catalan language, and on one occasion shouted, "Long live the CNT...
...a shadowy figure whom all of us in Barcelona knew by name but whom very few of us had seen...
...This writer had occasion to observe the ill-starred Consul at close range, and has written on various occasions of the tragic circumstances which led to his disgrace and death...
...Not only did he fail to seduce the Anarcho-Syndicalists and Catalanists...
...In response to an article about Antonov-Ovseenko which I wrote for a newspaper in Mexico, a former member of the Central Committee of the Catalan Communist party, Cabrer Pallas, confirmed to me that the individual who had denounced Antonov-Ovseenko was "Pedro...
...Who is this "Pedro...
...Antonov-Ovseenko did not accomplish this mission...
...Soon word was received that Antonov-Ovseenko, as a reward for his outstanding performance in Spain, had been appointed People's Commissar of Justice and was returning to Moscow to assume this important post...
...A foreign Communist mystery man called "Pedro," who was the real chief of both the foreign and native Communists in Spain, and the supervisor of Rosenberg and Antonov-Ovseenko, secretly denounced the Consul General to the Kremlin and demanded that he be relieved of bis post in Barcelona...
...When Antonov-Ovseenko arrived in Moscow, be was immediately arrested...
...Colonel Alexander Orlov...
...who had also followed closely the downfall of the one-time Soviet Consul General in Barcelona...
...Later he fought in the war against the Whites...
...Seidman had seen, said nothing whatever about any new assignment for the Consul General...
...This was the National Confederation of Labor, which was dominated by the Anarcho-Syndicalists...
...None other than Erno Geroe, the man who has jnst replaced Rakosi (purger of Spanish Civil War veteran Laszlo Rajki as First Secretar) of the Hungarian Communist party...
...The Consul's mission was not an easy one...
...Accused of '"criminal weakness" and suspicious associations with Anarcho-Syndicalists and petty bourgeois Catalan nationalists, he was tried, condemned to death and executed...
Vol. 39 • August 1956 • No. 32
