That Carrillo was the “Last
Stalinist”, as the title states, remains the source of the puzzle. Never is
this assertion even suggested anywhere in the book much less explained or
argued. The reasons then that bring
Preston to document copiously that Carrillo was not only a consummate Stalinist
but then to opine that he was the last one as well, unfortunately, can only be
a matter of speculation. So be it.
The speculation perhaps should go
to Preston’s philo-communism, a conspicuous feature of his highly prolific and
meticulous scholarship on the Spanish civil war and the subsequent decades-long
Franco dictatorship. Preston rarely if
ever speaks of “anti-communism” in this biography without attaching to it a
sufficiently malignant adjective such as “virulent.” Preston likely could not
conceive of an anti-communist who does not enjoy torturing political prisoners
or bombing rural villagers. While one
can never be too vehement and strenuous in their condemnation of “fascism”,
much greater toleration is considered de rigueur for the critics of an ideology whose champions in the twentieth
century murdered tens of millions of people across the globe while proclaiming
their idealism, humanism and love for the toiling masses.
Stalin remains a huge problem for
residents of the left disposed toward the worship of their own virtue
manifested in various and sundry rituals dedicated to the execration of fascism
and the lamentation of the excesses and evils of capitalism. How, the problem seems to be, does one, determined
to find in the last 100 years or so some plausible evidence of communism’s contributions
to human betterment, extricate Stalin, the communist, who in alliance with the
western democracies triumphed over Hitler, the eternal face of Fascist evil,
from Stalin, Hitler’s partner in the rape of Poland and the Baltic states,
slave-state overseer and prolific mass-murderer?
The Stalin-problem is
particularly thorny when it comes to the historiography of the Spanish Civil
War which the left has for a long time fashioned into a simple inspirational
morality play. The freedom-loving,
democratically elected Republicans, supported by Stalin and defended by his
international brigades, succumbed to the tides of Spanish fascism under the
leadership of General Franco, goose stepping in a junior partnership with
Hitler and Mussolini. This is the widely promulgated Manichean version of the Spanish Civil
War – the forces of Good, advancing democracy, equality and freedom,
confronting Evil in the form of fascism with its instinctive brutality, militarist
atavism and racial bigotry. It is wonderfully free of any moral ambiguity – the
losers, heroes and martyrs in opposition to tyranny and oppression, abandoned
by the Western democracies; the winner, a cretin mediocrity who took his
revenge, built his dictatorship and finally drifted into senescence.
Relieved of its romantic For Whom
the Bell Tolls mythology, however, the historiography of the Spanish Civil War,
thanks to the herculean labors of researchers like Burnett Bolloten and Stanley
Payne, gives way in large part to the contemplation of communist (Stalinist)
duplicity and treachery sufficiently cloaked in the rhetoric of democracy,
equality and freedom. While contributing
human and material assets to the Spanish Republicans ostensibly to resist the
fascist rebels, Stalin’s NKVD agents were moving through Spain rounding up,
torturing and murdering fellow communists, like Andreu Nin, taking control of
the Army and insinuating themselves deeply into positions of governmental power. Stalin’s Trojan horse modus operandi in Spain
was a dress rehearsal for how the communists would operate to support the
unfolding of “democracy” in devastated counties like Bulgaria, Romania and
Poland at the end of World War II, countries that we all know became models of
social equality and so bursting with confidence, prosperity and opportunity that no
one was allowed to leave.
During the period of the Spanish
Civil War, Stalin’s assassins were also chasing his former revolutionary
colleague, Leon Trotsky, around the globe until the Soviet-trained Spaniard,
Ramon Mercader, murdered him in Mexico City in 1940. The Leon Trotsky of
Stalin’s invention and dissemination was supposedly in league with the Franco
and the fascists. In historical retrospect it is difficult to conceive how such
a preposterous fiction could have taken hold with anyone, but Stalin’s
dramaturgical skill in service to his jealousy and megalomania was second only
to the eager gullibility of his acolytes and fellow travelers.
“Fascist” in the Stalin lexicon
was his preferred term of abuse for whomever at the moment he saw as a
competitor for power, his enemy du jour. Stalinists reserve their resentment
for those who compete with them for power. When the Stalinists have power, competition
is not allowed: when they are trying to get it they lie about, smear, malign, and,
when they can, physically destroy the competition. Inside the Soviet Union during
1936 and 1937 Stalin purged the bulk of the old Bolsheviks like Bukharin and
the senior officer corps. These were individuals, most of whom were deeply
committed revolutionaries from the early days of the Bolshevik revolution. But Stalin feared and loathed them because he
viewed them as competitors for his own power base within the party. Into Spain with the support of Carrillo and the Spanish communists,
he exported his signature calumnies, purges, show trials with the accompanying
tortures and executions. He moved his agents against the anarchists (chronicled
by George Orwell), the POUM, Francisco Largo Caballero and the socialists, the
entire spectrum of the non-Stalinist left in Spain. He did so with a ferocity
and ruthlessness that was directed against the forces of Franco in lesser
proportions. All of the non-Stalinist
left at one time or another during the civil war linked to or tarnished with
the label of fascist.
The Social Democrats in the western
democracies during the early 1930s were “social fascists” until he needed their
support in the Popular Front governments of France and Spain. Hitler, of
course, was the epi-center of Nazism-Fascism except for the 1939-1941, Soviet-Third
Reich friendship period when Stalin and the Fuhrer joined forces in the
depredation of central Europe.
With “fascism” being so protean, flexible
and reversible in its attachments, it seems absurd to try to render the Spanish
Civil war as a battle of democracy against fascism when in many ways it more
resembles a conflict of two vicious ideologies, or, if you will, a battle
between fascists – brown ones and red ones.
Preston’s detailed and elaborate
biography of Santiago Carrillo is immensely valuable in its capturing the
essence of Stalinism in the life of a single individual, particularly his
obsession with power and his unwavering, unprincipled will to destroy those who
are obstacles to, or are competitors for, the prize of holding absolute
domination over the lives of others.
Like Stalin, Carrillo was a betrayer who left a staggering range of
victims – his father, his mentor, his first wife, his colleagues, individuals
who interfered with his political ambition deeply steeped in a utopian ideology.
He was, as Preston demonstrates, heavily responsible for the arranging and
carrying out the Paracuellos massacres of thousands of prisoners in the later
months of 1936.
It is worth noting the irony at
the beginning of Preston’s biography of Carrillo where he notes how much Franco
and Carrillo were alike in certain fundamental ways – “[H]e shared with Franco
a dedication to the constant rewriting and improving of his own life story … In
his anxiety for advancement, he was always ready to betray or denounce
comrades. Such ruthlessness was another characteristic that he shared with
Franco.” (xii-xiii) For Preston,
however, in Franco there never resided a single redeeming human quality. There
is no best or worst that could be said about him. He is no more than a Spanish Hitler, as he
argues in his book, The Spanish Holocaust, a moral monster who like Hitler
deserves only execration.
But for Preston, his Spanish
Stalinist, as the title of the last chapter suggests (“From Public Enemy No. 1
to National Treasure”), in the end achieves an atonement of sorts. “The best
that can be said about him is that he played a key role in the transition to
democracy by helping to convince the right of the moderation of the left.” (336)
This “best” is no small achievement: the
Spanish people, it now turns out, owe Carrillo a considerable debt. He becomes their benefactor,
in effect, “helping” those on the right overcome their unreasonable fear that
the left might be less moderate than they want to appear to be. The left remains pristine and the right
grudgingly and belatedly moves toward compromise. So with this rendering, Carrillo late in his
career becomes not the “last Stalinist”, as Preston puts it, but rather a former
Stalinist, a good guy, so to speak, a pragmatist with the highest achievable aspirations
in mind for a truly democratic Spain, not the lying, treacherous, morally
repugnant ideologue he once was who connived, murdered, and betrayed nearly
everyone around him in a good long imitation of the General Secretary of the
CPSU, the man he so long served and admired.
“The worst that can be said about
him,” continues Preston, “is that while the central objective of most of those
with whom he worked and sometimes clashed was the struggle against Franco, his
main priority was his own eminence. Accordingly, he betrayed his comrades and
appropriated their ideas.” (336) Hardly! A lot worse can be said about him, some of it earlier in the
book by Preston himself. However, with
this final rendering, yet one more Stalinist-Carrillo emerges, not the “last”
one or the even the “former’ one as noted above, but the only Stalinist. Stalinism
in Spain, thus it would seem, was largely confined to the person of Carrillo, a
disappointing aberration in a collection of otherwise virtuous individuals,
committed to a free and democratic Spain.
Had Carrillo and his people, not Franco prevailed, all no doubt would
have been forgiven, and reconciliation and democracy for the Spanish people
would have come to fruition forty years earlier.
It should finally be noted that
Preston mentions in passing Carrillo’s 1977 speaking tour in the United States
with stops at Harvard, Yale and Johns Hopkins University (318). No mention is to be found anywhere of protests at these universities by virulent anti-communists or anyone perhaps offended by such a gracious welcome extended to a butcher and errand-boy for one of history's most vile dictators.* From The Harvard Crimson, November 22, 1977: “Professors
and graduate students from local universities will dine with [Santiago]
Carrillo at the Center for European Studies before this evening's speech, Peter
M. Lange, Associate Professor of Government said. Carrillo will hold a press
conference at the Center at 4 p.m. today, he added.” So, last or not, unrepentant or not, for those Stalinists who live long
enough, there is forgiveness and dinner with the Harvard faculty.
*Dedicated to my good friend, Tom Moore, who would have been deeply offended.
*Dedicated to my good friend, Tom Moore, who would have been deeply offended.
