Spain's Other War

...Drawn into the Irish rebellion—"I chose none of it...

...While most of this material is ingeniously deployed, and Carroll's interpretations are just cynical enough to be probable, the historical notes often seem potted, creating a lecture-hall lull in the midst of the action...

...Yet not to enter government in times of upheaval leaves the field open to the Leninists, who would destroy the revolution and with it the Anarchists...

...Most histories of the Spanish Civil War have taken the view that the Communists' policy was the correct one—although the war was lost and Franco ruled as dictator of Spain...

...Far more important, though, is the fact that Robert W. Kern helps uncover the truth behind the grand camouflage, so that the Spanish Civil War can be seen as it was, and not as others—some evil, some myopic— wish it to be seen...

...In the rear, meanwhile, the Communist press laid down its own no less lethal barrage: the Anarchists were counterrevolutionary, spies for Franco, fascists, cowardly...

...As Noam Chomsky has observed on the subject...

...By that point, of course, the Anarchists had developed a profounder understanding of the complexities of institutions of power...

...It was the revolutionary peasantry and working class, joined by the lower middle class of artisans and shopkeepers—under such Anarchists as Federi-ca Montseny, Francisco Ascaso, Buenaventura Durruti, and Abad de San-tillan—who defeated the Nationalist armies in the Levant, the Aragon, in Catalonia, in Cordoba and Malaga, and even in Madrid...

...Next, they moved to harass and destroy the 26th (Anarchist) Division led by Ricardo Sanz at the front...

...It is a concise, well-documented history of Spanish Anarchism from its "primitive" beginnings to its development into a more sophisticated movement...

...Then he smiled, and repeated what is almost a cliche in Spain, "Aiee, at heart, all Spaniards are anarchists...

...The Anarchists kept the tottering Republic alive long enough for Josef Stalin to decide that perhaps Spain could be won for his brand of "democracy...

...With the several strands of Brady biography, the novel thus intertwines episodes from the Irish Rebellion and ensuing Civil War, the Sacco and Van-zetti case, vendettas of the Irish-Italian Mafia, Boston politics in the '30s, Senate subcommittees of the '50s, and Vatican II, among many other things...

...He starts with the year Spanish Anarchists formed the Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), an Anarcho-Syndicalist union, and concludes with the year Stalin's GPU agents, headed by Aleksandr Orlov (Russian), Erno Gero (Hungarian), George Eitingon (?), Carlos Contreras (Triestean), and the Comintern delegate to Spain, Palmiro Togliatti (Italian), masterminded the C'NT's destruction...

...Above all, though, Carroll seeks to show the moral dilemmas that even the well-meaning man faces when doing the "right thing" leads to unexpected and finally uncontrollable evil...

...The extensive technical details—on guerrilla tactics, stock manipulation, sail-boating, Boston geography—albeit usually germane to the story, also seem self-indulgent displays of the author's expertise...

...That said, I hasten to add that Carroll conveys far more than local color through his skillful mix of fiction and fact...

...Brady soon finds that worse than...

...The number of dead and wounded is unknown...

...The few noteworthy exceptions have been Stanley Payne's The Spanish Revolution, George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, and a book never published in the United States, Burnett Bolleten's The Grand Camouflage...

...In 1936 two Anarchist leaders, Juan Garcia Oliver and Federica Montseny, had joined the Popular Front government...

...This act did not come unannounced...

...Russia was a clearly defined example...

...When Stalin saw the war was lost, he pulled out, but not before his agents had killed dissident Communists, Trotskyists, and every Anarchist leader they could lay their hands on...

...As the country's economic crisis deepens, we may well find that Anarchism is neither buried nor even mortally wounded...

...Durruti had been at the front, leading his militia in the defense of Madrid...

...Theirs was a difficult situation, since they continued to criticize it openly...

...On December 17, 1936, Pravda boldly proclaimed Stalin's intentions: "So far as Catalonia is concerned, the cleaning up of the Trotskyist and Anarcho-syndicalist elements there has already begun, and it will be carried out with the same energy as in the USSR...

...It chose me...

...Led by General Enrique Lister and his 11th Division (composed of Spaniards and International Brigaders), the Communists wiped out the Anarchist collectives in the name of democracy and anti-fascism...

...For 25 years they had debated the question of whether or not Anarchists should enter government...

...He demonstrates, for example, that Montseny was as great an orator as the renowned I.a Pasionaria, Dolores lbar-ruri, albeit without the kilter's mytho-logi/ing press...

...They are only now emergAs recently as November 1976, when I was in Spain, a knowledgeable official of the Suarez government said to me without my asking: "It is astounding how the Anarchists reappear...

...Indeed, Federica Montseny had declared: "the Anarchists have entered the government to prevent the revolution from deviating and in order to carry it further beyond the war, and also to oppose any dictatorial tendency, from wherever it might come...

...Reviewed by Joseph Parisi Associate Editor, 'Poetry" Following the tested recipes of Haley, Doctorow and Puzo, with a pinch of Capote, James Carroll's ambitious family saga traces three generations of the Colman Brady clan over four decades—from Tipperary to Southie, Beacon Hill, and all around Bean Town...

...For that we must be grateful...

...The Anarchists were driven underground during the Civil War, but they continued their work surreptitiously throughout Franco's rule...

...Reviewed by William Herrick Author, "Hermanos...

...The Anarchists and the anti-Stalinist Communists—the Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxista (POUM)— asserted that the war could not be won without the revolution...

...In focusing on Colman Brady and his family, he highlights the character and shifting fortunes of the Irish on the old sod and in the new land...

...607pp...

...Robert W. Kern's book goes a long way toward correcting this imbalance...

...Gotcz" One can read through dozens of books on the Spanish Civil War and find very little about the role played by the Anarchists, yet without the revolution they led at the beginning of the Nationalist rebellion there would not have been much of a war...

...I do not agree with Kern, however, that Spanish Anarchism was mortally wounded by the Communists during the Civil War, was buried by Franco, and cannot be revived now that Spain has become a modern industrial state with a large middle class...

...They come alive, with all their faults and doubts...

...Pluckof the Irish Mortal Friends By James Carroll Little, Brown...

...The Communists and their allies proclaimed first the war, then the revolution...

...Thus the man ultimately responsible for the destruction of the Spanish revolution sent arms (paid for by Spanish gold), generals, advisors, International Brigades, and the GPU (the Soviet secret police) to Spanish soil...

...According to Kern, and I tend to agree, he was killed by a Nationalist sniper serving with Colonel Yague, the Francoist officer directing the assault on Madrid in November, 1936...

...Eitingon and Contreras later combined their great skills to engineer the murder of Leon Trotsky...

...In addition, Buenaventura Durruti, the most celebrated anarchist of the day, was killed by one of his own disillusioned men...

...Kern's Red Years/Black Years: A Political History of Spanish Anarchism, 1911-1937, should be added to the limited list...

...Starting practically from scratch as compared to the Socialists and Communists, they are fast overtaking them in the unions and workers' councils...

...Anarchist philosophy considers all governments oppressive...

...record-keeping seemed unimportant at the time...

...and in much the same manner...

...Along the way, a number of historical personalities put in special appearances: Eamon de Valera, Michael Collins, Winston Churchill (a cameo role), Mayor James Michael Curley, Governor Alvan T. Fuller, President Abbott James Lowell of Harvard, General George S. Patton, Estes Kefauver, Richard Cardinal Cush-ing, and—of course—the Kennedys...

...Nevertheless, Kern notes, because of their involvement at the government level, Montseny and Garcia Oliver had little time to spend with their comrades and therefore were not fully aware of the devastating effect that the Communist (and government) offensive had on the Anarchists...

...This same alliance of peasants, workers and artisans simultaneously and voluntarily formed some 1,700 collectives in field and factory, bringing together over a million members under the banner of auto-gestion, or self-management, to produce goods for the revolution...

...10.95...

...One of the most fascinating aspects of this book is Kern's "group biography," as he terms it, of the major Spanish Anarchists...