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The First Great Patriotic War: Spanish Communists and Nationalism, 1936-
1939
Xosé-Manoel Núñez a; José M. Faraldo b
a
Departamento de Historia Contemporánea, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Praza da
Universidade, 1, Santiago de Compostela, Spain b Departamento de Historia Contemporánea, Universidad
Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Geografía e Historia, Madrid, Spain

Online Publication Date: 01 July 2009

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Nationalism, 1936-1939',Nationalities Papers,37:4,401 — 424
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 Nationalities Papers, Vol. 37, No. 4, July 2009

The First Great Patriotic War: Spanish Communists

and Nationalism, 1936– 1939
Xosé-Manoel Núñez and José M. Faraldo

A small advertisement in the first issue of España Popular, a weekly journal begun in
February 1940 and edited by Spanish communists in exile, announced that it would be
publishing chapters of The Terror of 1824. This 1877 novel by Benito Pérez Galdós
(1843–1920) was part of the second series of his National Episodes and served as a
literary standard for reinforcing the master narrative of Spanish liberal nationalism
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at the turn of the century. Spanish communists considered The Terror of 1824 a repre-
sentative work of common patriotic heritage that should be preserved and publicized
among their followers. Built around the absolutist repression of liberals after the anti-
Napoleonic War in Spain, the novel was given an updated political meaning. An
implicit parallel was traced between the fate of nineteenth-century liberals and the
recent exile of Spanish communists, with the former cast as the progressive forerun-
ners of the twentieth-century freedom fighters in Spain. This was coherent with the
Republican and socialist interpretation of the Spanish history of that period.
By 1940, Spanish nationalism had become incorporated into the Spanish communist
ideological repertoire. This was largely an outcome of the 1936–1939 Civil War,
when the Spanish Communist Party (Partido Comunista de España—PCE) was
forced to use historical myths and cultural references as a complementary strategy
for social penetration and war mobilization. The appeal of Spanish communists to
patriotism was also a spontaneous reaction to state collapse and social confrontation,
since the typical Marxist-Leninist ideological background was insufficient to cope
with the new circumstances of war and revolution. This communist move to
embrace Spanish nationalism as a mobilization strategy became a crucial element
of the discursive patterns framed by the Spanish “comrades” of Stalin during and
after the civil conflict. The experiences of the Spanish Civil War also served the inter-
national communist movement, as the Soviet Union was obliged to resort to national
themes to mobilize the Soviet population against the Nazi invaders in 1941, and

Xosé-Manoel Núñez (author for correspondence), Departamento de Historia Contemporánea, Universidade

de Santiago de Compostela, Praza da Universidade, 1, E-15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Email:
xoseml.nunez@usc.es. José M. Faraldo, Departamento de Historia Contemporánea, Universidad Complutense
de Madrid, Facultad de Geografı́a e Historia, C/Profesor Aranguren, s/n, E-28040 Madrid, Spain. Email:
jm.faraldo@ghis.ucm.es

ISSN 0090-5992 print; ISSN 1465-3923 online/09/040401– 24 # 2009 Association for the Study of Nationalities
DOI: 10.1080/00905990902985652
 X.-M. NÚÑEZ AND J. M. FARALDO

provided some of the discursive patterns and political strategies that helped to estab-
lish the “people’s democracies” in Eastern Europe from 1946 onwards.

Spanish Patriotism and Civil War

The appeal to patriotism as a first-order mobilizing weapon on the Republican side

emerged during the two months following the July 1936 coup d’état. This resulted
from the fact that neither the trade unions (UGT and CNT) that had taken to the
streets nor the majority of the left-wing parties that had joined the fight against
insurgence and the efforts to crush the rebellion were capable of imposing their revo-
lutionary objectives single-handedly. The Republican institutions and the liberal and
left-wing Republican parties were too weak to control the de facto power of trade
unions and working-class or party militias. But all agreed that the war must be won.
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To do so, it would be necessary to reach beyond party and trade union members
and sympathizers to eventually mobilize and give cohesion to the masses. A
common denominator was needed for the many political organizations and unions
on the loyalist side of the conflict as well as for the population living in areas under
its control.
An appeal to the threatened homeland would provide quicker results than an appeal
to revolution, to the international proletariat or to the legal order of the Republic.
Defending the homeland from an invading foreigner provided a wide range of
actors with a discursive repertoire of images and myths that favoured a unified
effort against a common enemy, even though this involved postponing the social
and political objectives of each group.1
The images and topics that the defenders of the Republic evoked in their propa-
ganda were not invented overnight. They reproduced stereotypes and icons dating
back to the early nineteenth century, or sometimes earlier. The appeal to patriotism
as the true revolutionary motif was rooted in a Spanish tradition that designated the
People as the subject of history and the depository of the most authentic national
virtues. The People were perceived as an indefinite and variable mix of classes and
lower social groups who, unlike egotistical cosmopolitan elites, possessed a suppo-
sedly authentic sense of the land. The historic, ambiguous and theoretically malleable
concept of the People now acquired a new function.2
Shortly after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the pillars of public discourse
that defined it as a national conflict were set in place in the parts of Spain loyal to the
Republic. On 23 July 1936, Manuel Azaña, president of the Republic, defined the
resistance of the Spanish people to the coup by military traitors as a new, popular
uprising like that of 2 May 1808, in which the People rose up in arms against Napo-
leon, in defence of their freedom and independence. Spaniards had stood up in defence
of an “independent and free country, that is, the Republic. That is what Spain wants to
be.”3 Two days later, the newspaper ABC labelled the new conflict a “second war of

402
 THE FIRST GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR

independence,” a term that caught on.4 This interpretive frame of the new military
reality took some time to become established, co-existing with interpretations of the
war as either a civil conflict or a revolutionary war. The representation of the Civil
War as a war against an invader extended gradually to newspapers and public
figures that defended the Republican, unionist, socialist or anarchist causes throughout
Spain. This gradual evolution was influenced by three factors. First, it depended on the
local reactions to the radio and press speeches by the principal Republican leaders,
who embraced the patriotic message. Second, after July 1936 it was also affected
by the progressive disclosure and awareness in the loyalist camp of the external
support that the rebels were receiving. Third, it hinged on the need to counterbalance
the language of patriotic exaltation of the homeland used by the insurgent press and
media, for fear that it might convince the loyalist rearguard.
Strong and more radical language was soon used in the Republican public arena to
deny that the war was strictly a conflict between Spaniards. These discourses carried
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an appeal to the decisive presence of an external other, efficiently aided by traitors in

the landowning and passive wealthy classes, fascist gentlemen and a clergy that had
always been sold out to Rome as centre of the foreign power of the Curia.5 The
many Spaniards among the rebels were styled as mercenaries in a motley group of
multinational troops.

The National-Revolutionary War for Independence

The communists pioneered the instrumental use of nationalism as a mobilizing

resource even though they appeared as the least likely to use this approach. The char-
ismatic PCE leader Dolores Ibárruri, “la Pasionaria,” recalled a year later how her
party “was the first to speak to the people about how this was a war of independence
and social liberation.”6 This type of discourse, with its language of anti-fascist unity
and a common leadership transformed the PCE into a truly Republican mass organiz-
ation and the leading defender of the Republic. The PCE managed to integrate patrio-
tic images to serve as a common reference for one side of the conflict, which until then
had excessively fragmented symbols, reference points and discourses. Taking the
baton of “popular Spanishness” from Indalecio Prieto in the socialist arena, the
PCE ran in the place of the Spanish Workers’ Socialist Party (Partido Socialista
Obrero Español—PSOE), which had become incapacitated for this job as a result of
internal divisions.7
From its foundation, the PCE had held many positions regarding the national ques-
tion and during the Republic had followed the instructions of the Third International in
defending the application of the principle of nationalities to Spanish Morocco,
Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia; in order to win over the nationalist move-
ments opposed to the bourgeois state.8 Yet prior to the Civil War the Spanish commu-
nists had taken steps towards adopting a Spanish patriotic political vocabulary, which

403
 X.-M. NÚÑEZ AND J. M. FARALDO

was evident in the party discourse during the 1936 electoral campaign of February and
the following months. The goal was to increase the electoral and social base of the
PCE, identifying with the tradition of Spanish liberal patriotism, and proclaiming its
intention of contributing to the national regeneration of Spain through a popular gov-
ernment. Its task would be to purge Spain of “parasites and show-offs” in the name of
the true Spain of the “productive masses,” in the words of a communist leader in
January 1936.9 Just after the war began, the PCE positioned itself to defend the
Republic and the democratic order as the keystone of its war policy, in accord with
the recommendations of Dimitrov from the Communist International.10
Calls to defend Spain’s independence began to appear in the PCE press in August
1936, after several discussions in its Central Committee and in the Comintern. Its offi-
cial organ, Mundo Obrero, clearly defined the conflict in patriotic terms on 11 August:
this was a “national war, a holy war” to defend a people who felt it had been sold to
traitors and attacked in the core of its being.11 On 18 August, the PCE published a
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manifesto declaring that the war had begun as a struggle between democracy and
fascism but had been transformed into “a war to defend a people that has been betrayed
[. . .] that sees its homeland [. . .] the home where its ancestors are laid to rest, in danger
of being torn apart, razed and sold to foreigners, threatening its national Indepen-
dence.” The rebel generals and their aristocratic, fascist and clerical allies were com-
parable to the traitors who had helped the Moors invade the Iberian Peninsula in 718.
These same felons were now handing Spain over to the mercenary hordes of Morocco.
Such treason revived the “sentiment of dignity of the ridiculed homeland.”12
This line of argument was subsequently used by José Dı́az, general secretary of the
PCE. It was a struggle between democrats and reactionaries, a war of national
independence that made it imperative to join forces and unite as anti-fascists.
This national-revolutionary war of independence would in turn help liberate the
German and Italian peoples from fascism and would encourage the liberation of the
sub-state nationalities in Spain.13 A few months after the war began, the Comintern
designated the war in Spain as a national liberation and social emancipation project.
The Italian communist Palmiro Togliatti, together with the Argentinean Victorio
Codovilla, set the course of action for the PCE in Spanish politics. The former
wrote in October 1936 that the Spanish Civil War was nothing less than a
“national-revolutionary” war, which sought to provide national independence from
fascist aggression along with a peculiar sort of democratic-bourgeois revolution in
which a broad coalition of social groups would ultimately establish a new sort of
popular democracy under the increasingly powerful and conscious proletariat, as a
forerunner to socialism.14
Labelling the conflict as a war of independence, calling the opponent a foreign
invader and defining the main PCE war objectives as the minimum unified principles
of war were constant themes in the communist press and publications. This approach
was also perfectly congruent with the strategic priority designed by the party: to win
the war while increasing its socio-political presence among the Republican loyalists.

404
 THE FIRST GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR

This also served to label certain internal opponents as enemy collaborators; such as the
anti-Stalinists of the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification (Partido Obrero de Unifi-
cación Marxista—POUM), founded in 1935, who did not fall in line with the war
discourse and insisted on carrying out their own revolution in tandem with the
war.15 The Spanish people were fighting for their “very lives, the well-being and
freedom of all Spaniards, the independence of the Homeland.” With so much at
stake, any revolutionary maximalist objectives had to be abandoned.16 The commu-
nists sought a unity in support of the government that was common to all its
component currents: “to be above all political and religious currents, feeling first
and foremost as Spaniards.”17 “We have become patriots, but [. . .] our Homeland is
that of the Popular Front, a Homeland where the popular classes hold the economic
and political might in their hands.” This homeland, which was identified with the
People and directed their destinies and fortunes, would have its own history as well
as a unique material and abstract patrimony.18
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Who are the Patriots?

The communists targeted youth—particularly students—for social mobilization using

patriotic propaganda. The communist-inspired Alianza Nacional de la Juventud
(National Alliance for Youth) adopted a policy based upon a “progressive concept”
of patriotism. It had room even for “sincere and honest” young Catholics, but not
for Trotskyites.19 In the words of the communist Minister of Public Instruction,
Jesús Hernández:
This is not a war of the Spanish people against indigenous slave-makers [. . .] It is a war
of an entire country, a war of self-defence of an entire people seeking national indepen-
dence, wholeness and territorial sovereignty [. . .] It is a national war of a people that
wants to survive as such and ensure its historical continuity rather than a vilified
descent into submission to foreign powers.
The communists, and good republicans by extension, were and had to be the true
patriots.20 The manifestos of territorial and local PCE organizations and reports in
their provincial meetings and conferences were quite literally saturated with the
dominant motif of defending Spain’s independence from a fascist invader seeking
to colonize the homeland, followed by other themes such as social progress and refer-
ences to the Popular Army, the Republic and the Popular Front.21 The defence of
Spain’s independence was also a virtually monographic theme in the outlines of
simple speeches to combatants, given by the war commissars of the Republican
People’s Army, a corps very heavily influenced by the communists.22 Political com-
missars, most of whom were communists or close to the PCE, were given works, such
as those of Pedro Garfias, as recommended literature for theatre productions on the
battle front. These explained to a militant soldier why he was fighting (“for justice
and freedom”), revisited former futile discussions with the anarchists and finally

405
 X.-M. NÚÑEZ AND J. M. FARALDO

called upon all soldiers to defend the homeland, with its characteristic landscapes and
riches.23
However, at all times any explicit use of the term nationalism was avoided, due
in part to its semantic appropriation by the rebel side and by fascists in general.
In October 1937, the director of Mundo Obrero, Manuel Navarro Ballesteros, wrote
that communists pride themselves in being “the foremost Spaniards” and those who
most love their homeland. They were also the “foremost proletarian internationalists,”
but that did not weaken their defence of concepts such as national sovereignty and ter-
ritorial unity, in order for the Spanish people to control their own destinies.24 For the
communists, the term patriot had a more attractive ring to it. Renewed Spanish patrio-
tic pride was legitimized by the blood of a heroic people and an equally self-sacrificing
working class that maintained an internationalist spirit of solidarity with other peoples
oppressed by fascism. To liberate Spain from the fascist invader meant also to fight for
an internationalist cause.25
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The discourse of nationalist affirmation used by the communists rapidly spread to

other newspapers and media intended for the working class and Republicans. They
also adopted a language with a fiery patriotic shine in defence of the Republic.
This can be seen in the joint manifesto of the Popular Front parties, published on
23 September 1936, in response to the need for greater support and focused forces
in the upcoming battle for Madrid.26 The anarchists were outside this unified front
at first, but they soon adopted a similar discursive repertoire in their press and
propaganda.27
There was an important exception: dissident anti-Stalinist communists, represented
by the POUM. They remained aloof to the neo-patriotic discourse and faithful to a
position of self-determination for the Iberian nations so long as the national emanci-
pation movements were to be directed by the proletariat once that historical phase
became possible. The proletariat was the only class that could carry the fight for
self-determination to its final stage: a confederal state that would be known as the
“Iberian Union of Socialist Republics.”28 This party position followed the directives
established by its leader Andreu Nin, who emphasized in January 1937 that republi-
can, socialist, communist and even anarchist casting of the Civil War as one of
national liberation and their campaign “supporting the national front instead of the
workers revolutionary front” were mere rhetorical artifices to cover their tendency
to cooperate with the bourgeoisie. For Nin, the fight for a socialist revolution was
incompatible with the “war to defend the homeland” since the latter implied a
defence of the Republic and the dismantling of the organized revolutionary accom-
plishments of the proletariat since the beginning of the war. In April 1937, he
again argued that placing the concept of class struggle in opposition to the concept
of “national defence” was a way of forgetting Marxism and the lessons of the Paris
Commune. The bourgeoisie would always prefer a military defeat, even by a
foreign invader, over the triumph of the working class . . .29 The Spanish Civil War
clearly extended beyond “national social groups”; it had become an “international

406
 THE FIRST GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR

centre for class struggle, for a combat to the death between the bourgeoisie and the
proletariat,” with the international proletariat on one side of the struggle and the
global bourgeoisie on the other. For Andreu Nin, Spain held only accidental signifi-
cance as the specific scenario for this clash.30

Old Myths, New Meanings

The war language launched by Spanish communists against the invader made use of a
repertoire of historic symbols and myths that were easily recognizable to most of the
population. The history of Spain was seen as more than a struggle of the people—who
were the true homeland—in defence of their freedom, an interpretation that had
become dominant in the Republican pre-war pedagogy.31 A chronological succession
of events was also established around a ferocious resistance to foreign dominance,
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which forged a peculiar kind of national spirit that should infuse every potential
aspiration of social transformation. A speech by Dolores Ibárruri in Valencia in
August 1937 summarizes this chronology, based on the supposed historical antece-
dents of the new war of independence and the selection of topoi constantly alluded
to in national-revolutionary war discourse. Military traitors and the Spanish oligarchy
had sold out to foreign fascist powers but had not counted on the “capacity for sacrifice
and heroic behaviour” of the Spanish people, patent throughout its history.
A fervent sentiment of Independence and a formidable love of freedom lived [. . .] in
the heart of every Spanish man and woman, causing the ancient towns of Sagunto
and Numancia to prefer death to slavery. They roused the ancient Basques and moun-
tain people to fight against Roman and Arab invasions; they made it possible for Pelayo
and the Asturians to commence a glorious war to re-conquer the Peninsula; they made it
possible for the comuneros of Castile, the brotherhoods of Valencia and Majorca, as
well as the peasants of Catalonia to rise up in defence of their ancient laws and
popular freedoms.
They forgot that Spain had already had a war of independence, written by our people in
the heroic and glorious pages of Gerona, Zaragoza, Bailén and Madrid; and several
golden pages that our people contributed more recently to the revolutionary history
of the proletariat during the glorious Asturian October . . . They did not know our
people.32

Of particular importance were the historical myths of the anti-Napoleonic War

(1808–1813), which had scarcely been commemorated by government leaders and
left-wing parties during the five-year Republican period (1931–1936). These myths
were revived and updated along with various local myths of liberal resistance to
absolutism prior to 1833. The popular uprising in Madrid on 2 May 1808, against
the Napoleonic troops, became the most cherished patriotic myth. It had already devel-
oped its own commemorative tradition, which the Republicans and liberals used to
emphasize the triumph of the People as the healthiest expression of the nation. The

407
 X.-M. NÚÑEZ AND J. M. FARALDO

workers of Madrid (and by extension of all Spain) had learned from the mistakes of
1808 and had proved themselves invincible in 1936 due to their class conscience,
their political maturity and their organized leadership.33
Anti-Napoleonic myths were used broadly among the militia and soldiers on the
front. According to the Republican Ministry of War, one task of the Popular Army’s
political commissars was to explicitly and prominently emphasize certain historical
themes of the tradition of fighting for freedom against an invader, while also allowing
for ethno-cultural diversity and the nationalities of the country, along with a reinterpre-
tation of the great feats of the Spanish people. In conjunction with this were the French,
Russian and Mexican Revolutions, the black legend and the recent history of Spain.34
These themes were to be explained to the “‘soldier-comrades’ [. . .] carefully reviving
their feelings of patriotism and independence, that is, their capacity to fight.”35
It was in this context that Benito Pérez Galdós’ National Episodes became an
important element of communist historical remembering. During the Spanish War
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some attempts were made to shape a new national-communist literature. This involved
poets such as Rafael Alberti, Arturo Serrano Plaja and others, who added their weight
to the literary trench journal El Mono Azul. Some novelists, such as César
M. Arconada, also attempted to write the epics of the fight of the Spanish people
for liberation and national independence. This was the main argument of his novel
Rı́o Tajo [The Tagus River] (1938), which was clearly inspired by Michail
A. Sholokhov’s And Quiet Flows the Don (1928).36
The search for historical precedents for Mother Spain reached back to Viriato,
Indı́bil and Mandonio, tribal leaders who resisted Roman domination; moving on to
the constantly glorified sieges of Sagunto and Numancia; followed by El Cid Campea-
dor, the literary Christian hero of the Middle Ages, cast as the archetype of defiant
Castilian honour. To define the “bravery of this race” in the present, the communists
recurred principally to myths of resistance against a foreign invader.37 As a means of
connecting present-day militia women with figures from the past, communist propa-
ganda also emphasized historical heroines such as Agustina of Aragón, an archetype
of female popular resistance against the Napoleonic troops. The Heroine of Zaragoza
was fully incorporated as a myth of resistance to invaders and a symbol of the partici-
pation of women in the war effort of the People. She became the fighting Mother
Spain, the fusion of the people and the nation.38
The paintings of Francisco de Goya from the anti-Napoleonic War period also
emerged as a strong iconographic point of reference in tandem with the recovery
and reinterpretation of this Aragonese artist. His paintings showcased a good
portion of the Republican and left-wing spectrum of icons and provided a historical
record of patriotic and popular fervour as an example for the present, as suggested
by the communist intellectual and painter Josep Renau:

When we examine the extensive works of Goya, it gives us shivers to see how through
his images the ancient barbaric actions of invaders come alive in the torn flesh of the

408
 THE FIRST GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR

people, rising up in arms, yesterday as today, in defence of their independence [. . .] The

rebellion manifest in the artistic expression of Goya as a militant expression of that sen-
timent of freedom is as ancient as the tyranny of oppression of the popular masses in
Spanish history.39
Republican war propaganda also emphasized the “great Homeland,” which was best
expressed in the popular classes or simply the People in their fight for independence,
along with the many “little homelands,” the various regions and provinces from which
the militia came. This led to a strong and significant series of references to local
elements, themes and contexts, particularly related to the land (la tierra). To defend
the countryside, property, county, fiestas, traditions and local liberties of the peasant
was to defend the great homeland and the revolution.40 Through literature and icono-
graphy, the most authentic traditional heritage was combined with the memory of the
various regional “revolutionary traditions” and put into service for the revolution and
the defence of national unity. All the peoples of the homeland contributed to the inde-
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pendence of Spain and the liberation of each of its territories or provinces.41

The defence of Madrid, “the heart of Spain,” was carried out by Spaniards from all
regions. It became a quintessential expression of the revenge of all the Spanish peoples
suffering under the heel of foreign mercenaries and their traitor allies.42 A new Spain
would arise from this epic defence.43 The communist commander of the Fifth
Regiment, the Galician Enrique Lı́ster, expressed that Madrid was a school of anti-
fascism that provided combatants from all over Spain the chance to commune with
the people in an anti-fascist crucible of diversity.44 The reunifying nature of this
Hispanic solidarity of the “peoples of Spain” was particularly exemplified in the con-
tribution of the Catalan militias to the defence of Madrid. Their arrival in the autumn
of 1936 was hailed by the literary trench journal El Mono Azul as evidence that
Catalonia acknowledged belonging to a Hispanic destiny.45 The prominence of the
people of Madrid in this heroic struggle erased the capital’s reputation as “the arche-
type of cheap imperialism” and transformed it into an object of solidarity even for
Basque communists.46

Homeland or Homelands? The Independence of Spain and the Freedom

of its Nationalities

During the 1920s, virtually all communist parties showed strong support for the rights
of national minorities; seeing sub-state parties and national movements as revolution-
ary partners in destroying the bourgeois state.47 The Spanish Communist Party was no
exception. In theory, Spanish communists supported self-determination for Catalonia,
the Basque Country, Galicia and Northern Morocco through the early 1930s.
However, the Spanish communist strategy changed dramatically after the outbreak
of civil war, allowing a calculated degree of modulation in its patriotic discourse that
theorized the simultaneous liberation of the nationalities and of the great homeland.

409
 X.-M. NÚÑEZ AND J. M. FARALDO

These concepts were ambiguous and not explicitly hierarchical at first, as seen in the
propaganda of the PCE and the Catalan autonomous communist party, the Partit
Socialista Unificat de Cataluña (PSUC), which had been founded on 24 July 1936.
This party included Catalan communists, the Catalan PSOE branch, Catalan national-
ists with socialist tendencies and even a communist-oriented pro-independence
group.48 One week after the outbreak of the war, the new daily organ of the PSUC
stated that the popular forces, whose presence had been significant in the streets,
“will have to work for a new Spain and a new and free Catalonia, freely united
with the other peoples of Spain.” Without specifying which homeland it was referring
to, it stated that once the homeland was liberated from its military, fascist and monar-
chist enemies, the nation could finally be fully identified with its most authentic defen-
der, the People.49
On a theoretical plane, Spanish communists clearly suggested that a great homeland
was foremost. A June 1938 speech by Joan Comorera, secretary general of the PSUC,
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summarized that the communists were not fighting for their own cause (a dictatorship
of the proletariat) because this would lead them to confrontation with the socialists and
republicans. Instead, they were seeking a common denominator and what united them
first was the cause of freedom, patriotism and freedoms for the nationalities. Freedoms
rather than independence.50 In January 1938, the leaders of the Unified Socialist Youth
of Catalonia (Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas de Cataluña) and the Spanish Unified
Socialist Youth (Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas—JSU) reiterated that Spain should
one day become a Federation of Iberian Socialist Republics, thereby recognizing the
aspirations of the nationalities of Spain. However, it would not receive a new name as
an acronym, such as the USSR, but would continue to be called Spain.51 Spain could
potentially follow the Soviet model of recognition of the rights of the nationalities; but
it was always defined as a nation, and not as a multinational polity.52 The cause that
was the independence of Spain carried in it the freedoms of Catalonia, the Basque
Country, Galicia and Morocco; including the possibility of “determining their own
destinies” and “developing their own cultural and folkloric traditions.”
In mid-1938 the communist Minister of Agriculture, a Basque by the name of Vicente
Uribe, projected that the war for the freedom and independence of Spain as a whole
implied that once liberty and independence were achieved there would also be national
freedoms for Galicia, Catalonia and the Basque Country. These territorial aspirations
would be fully guaranteed by the social transformation and deepening of democracy
that was taking place in the Spanish Republic during the war. The growing significance
of the popular classes and workers’ organizations, the replacement of the old army for a
Republican popular army and the elimination of centralist and right-wing hold-outs
since the Republic of 1931 would allow the freedoms of the peripheral nationalities
to be defended as complementary to the Great Cause, the “decisive triumph over the
Italian–German fascist conquerors and their agents.” After this a new homeland of
diverse peoples would emerge, as it had in the old tsarist empire after the Soviet
Civil War. In light of this Great Cause, anyone who acted “behind the mask of a

410
 THE FIRST GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR

closed, selfish and in truth reactionary nationalism” must be considered as “enemies of

the people” comparable to “undercover instigators such as the Trotskyites and the
agents of Franco.”53 The slogans of Vicente Uribe were quickly translated into articles
praising these tenets, and published in the Galician and Catalan communist press.54
In this sort of dual, if not ambivalent, patriotism a calculated rhetoric was applied to
two territories in a similar fashion, with similar terms and implications but without a
clear territorial hierarchy. For example, the Galician Militia press, organized for the
defence of Madrid by Galician communists who were later integrated into the
renowned Communist-oriented Fifth Regiment, referred ambiguously to the liberation
of the Galician and Spanish homelands without explicitly defining a hierarchy. Their
local anti-Napoleonic myths, as with myths emphasizing early Galician resistance to
Romanization or the martyrdom of the rebellious aristocrat Pardo de Cela at the hands
of the Catholic Monarchs of Castile in 1483 (idealized by Galician ethno-nationalism
as an upholder of independence against Castilian/Spanish assimilation) were continu-
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ously glorified in trench journals published by Galician communists.55 This bivalent

manner of expressing local resistance to past invaders as both “peripheral” and
Spanish, a war of liberation for both Galicia and Spain—or the Republic—was
unique to the Civil War. Such expressions of dual patriotism were quite frequent in
the private correspondence of Galician communist combatants.56
The ambiguity was also maintained by the PCE regarding the war in the Basque
Country. The Basque autonomous Communist Party (Partido Comunista de
Euzkadi), established in 1935, advocated defending the liberty of Spain as a war objec-
tive for the people; a liberty that included the restructuring of relations between “all
the peoples of this Iberian land” according to an undefined future model.57 It also
undertook the historical rehabilitation of the Catholic and conservative founder of
Basque nationalism, Sabino Arana (1865–1903): the official organ of the Basque
communists stated in November 1936 that it accepted Arana’s formulation of a
Basque homeland (Euzkadi). But this time the sacrifices involved in opposing the
invader provided an occasion for a rhetorical independence that didn’t show disdain
for the autonomy granted by the Spanish Republic.

Euzkadi, standing upright and armed, defends its sovereignty and the autonomy that
brings it closer to liberty. Bloodied by its secular enemy, Euzkadi rushes forward to
exterminate it once and for all, making Independence—the idea that filled and
overflowed the life of Sabino—a reality.58

Yet it was never very clear how far to identify with Arana and his followers. One
contributor to the newspaper Euskadi Roja, the mouthpiece of the Basque commu-
nists, stated at that time that the communists could only feel sympathy towards
“the desire for independence of all peoples of particular and defined characteristics
who are submitted to the perverse power of imperialist states,” based on “unmistak-
able ethnic and racial principles.” The example used to accommodate these demands
was, not surprisingly, that of the USSR.59 However, others emphasized the Spanish

411
 X.-M. NÚÑEZ AND J. M. FARALDO

people as the rightful subject of national sovereignty.60 The Basque Statute of Home-
Rule approved in October 1936 was the work of the People, who “take the reins in
order to understand the problem of the nationalities.” Basque communists also
argued that the war had strengthened the bonds between the Basque Country and
the other peoples of Spain “committed to the firm and immutable objective of crush-
ing fascism.”61
A position favourable to Basque nationalism and even independence became fairly
regular in the pages of Euskadi Roja. This newspaper became entangled in several
polemics with Basque nationalists concerning the appropriateness of demanding
self-determination during times of war and how best to apply it in the future.62 Yet
in early 1937 this newspaper clearly defended the right of the Basque nation to
complete independence. This position caused other communists from around Spain
to distance themselves from the Basque Party. The leaders of the PCE continued to
emphasize the freedom of the Basque Country but only as a part of the liberation of
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Spain. These two causes must remain intertwined: freedom for the nationalities and
independence for Spain.63 In an April 1937 radio speech, Dolores Ibárruri praised
the resistance of the Basque people, “our mother Euzkadi,” which symbolized “the
desire for liberty, for the independence of our Homeland, within a free and democratic
Spain.”64
When the message of Republican patriotism emerged from the government of Juan
Negrı́n in May 1937, and especially after the publication of the Thirteen Points pro-
gramme in May 1938, the peripheral communist language of dual patriotism began
to shift towards the pole of Spanish patriotism in tandem with the worsening military
situation. Still, instructions to the Popular Army war commissars maintained the dis-
tinction of Catalans, Basques and Galicians from the other peoples of the Republic,
who were categorized more or less generically as “Spaniards,” when referring to
the “fraternal alliance” between these peoples.65

President Juan Negrı́n’s “Spanish Neo-populism” and the Communists

The careful ambiguity of the patriotic war discourse for the peripheries grew increas-
ingly nuanced in a direction that favoured Spain as its reference point after mid-1937.
It coincided with several events, particularly the May clashes between anarchists and
communists in Barcelona, the fall of the northern front in the Basque Country in June
and the inauguration of a new socialist Spanish president, Juan Negrı́n.66 A report sent
to the Comintern by PCE leader Pedro Checa around August 1937 emphasized how
the Basque nationalists were to blame for the fall of the northern front, due to their
defence of the “class interests” of the regional bourgeoisie. He warned that English
and French politics favoured a territorial fragmentation of Spain in order to establish
colonial protectorates (that would involve France in Catalonia, Britain in the Basque
Country, and Portugal in Galicia and Extremadura).67 The political forces backing

412
 THE FIRST GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR

Negrı́n, including the PCE and the Prieto wing (prietistas) of the PSOE, closed ranks
around his neo-patriotic tenets. First, they completely backed his relocation of the
Republican government to Barcelona as a final measure to unite forces against the
invader.68 Later they supported his neo-patriotic populism. PCE secretary general
José Diaz made this clear in March 1938 by prioritizing the political agenda to
restore national independence and a democratic republic. This was re-emphasized
by the young leader Santiago Carrillo on 2 May in a statement proclaiming that the
PCE fully supported the Negrı́n programme.69
The publication of the Thirteen Points programme in March 1938 reaffirmed this
tendency. Pasionaria pointed out in her May 1938 report to the PCE Central Commit-
tee that the key to victory was “the defence of the freedom and independence of our
Homeland.” In order to win the war, it was necessary to reinforce unity and “bring new
strata of the People into combat against the invaders.” This also meant putting aside
peripheral demands: “Catalonia cannot be free if Spain is enslaved; quite the opposite,
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only the independence of Spain can ensure the autonomous freedoms and rights of
Catalonia and the other peoples within a democratic regime.” At this point, inter-
regional rivalries would only strengthen “the fascist invaders who want to place
their yoke on all the peoples of Spain.”70
Some previous pseudo-independentist positions of the Basque and Catalan commu-
nists were then deemed imprudent and immediately corrected. During the 12–13
December 1937 conference of the Basque Communist Party, held in Barcelona, the
party decided to expel a communist council member of the Basque regional govern-
ment, Juan Astigarrabı́a, for excessive “proximity” to Basque nationalism. It was
acknowledged that “today the struggle of the proletariat and anti-fascist masses of
Euzkadi is a fight for its national independence, the free exercise of its sovereignty,
the right to self-determination; it is a fight to throw the foreigners out of its land
and crush fascism.” Yet this was just another facet of “the battle for the victories of
the Popular Revolution as expressed in the new Democratic and Parliamentary Repub-
lic, for which both the proletarian and anti-fascist masses of all the peoples of Spain
fight.” This struggle could only triumph if it became part of the broader objective of a
new independence for Spain. There could be no “partial solutions that only served
Euzkadi” and the Basque demands for self-government could only be formulated
within the framework of the defence of the Spanish Republic.71
The Catalan Communist Party PSUC also assumed this discourse, as clearly indi-
cated by its principal leader, Joan Comorera, in June 1938. The PCE and PSUC
firmly adhered to the Thirteen Points and the Catalan Stalinists went so far as to
state that “Catalonia’s fate is directly linked to the destiny of the other Spanish
peoples.” They adamantly and specifically condemned “every attempt to artificially
re-invigorate Catalan separatism, at a point in time when the closest union of Catalonia
with Spain as a whole is an absolute pre-requisite for victory.” At the same time,
the PSUC encouraged the combatants on the front to strengthen their unity with the
soldiers of other regions of Spain.72

413
 X.-M. NÚÑEZ AND J. M. FARALDO

The Soviet Example

Although this sort of “democratic centralism” was born out of internal Spanish
circumstances, it was also consistent with a more general pattern that characterized
the views of the Comintern regarding federalism, the national liberation of minorities
and the establishment of a hierarchy among the different nations co-existing within the
state, based on the model of the Soviet Union.73 The Leninist nationalities theory
developed by the Soviet leadership throughout the 1920s and 1930s enhanced the
abundant rhetoric on the rights of nationalities. Regardless of concrete political cir-
cumstances, in theory all national minorities were recognized as having the right to
develop their own national culture and distinctive ethnic identity.74 However, the
right of secession was recognized only theoretically, since the subject of sovereignty
was the Soviet nation in its entirety. Russia and the Slav peoples were given the domi-
nant position in the common task of building socialism, since they were supposedly
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the most mature peoples of the Soviet Union and could therefore function as the van-
guard of the Soviet project.75
The Soviet example was a point of constant comparison, and not only concerning
Soviet national minority policies. Russia—a term used broadly in Spain during the
1930s to refer to the USSR—was admired as the global proletariat homeland by the
popular classes in left-wing parties.76 It was argued that nobody could understand
the tragedy of the Spanish people better than the Soviets because the USSR had
itself experienced between 1918 and 1922 what the Spaniards were now suffering: a
war of national liberation. Such a war would precede true social revolution, which
would come about due to the imperialist designs of international capitalism.77 An
example of this attitude can be seen in the very active Association of Friends of the
Soviet Union, which emphasized during the war that the USSR was the best ally of
Spain’s fight for independence. Specific examples of warrior heroism were provided
by Soviet propaganda and movies (Chapaev, the Kronstadt sailors, The Battleship
Potemkin . . .) which found their corollaries in the Popular Army of the Republic.78
There could be little doubt that the intentions of the USSR were strictly those of soli-
darity and fraternity.79 The Russian experience of 1917–1922 also indicated that
foreign intervention and a patriotic sentiment provided greater strength for revolution-
ary ideals and helped overcome its apparent contradictions.80
Another parallel was traced with the Chinese communist troops that fought against
the Japanese invasion beginning in 1937. With few variants, the communist mouth-
piece Mundo Obrero adopted the same vocabulary to describe China that it was
using in the Spanish Civil War.81 It even became the standard jargon for describing
national wars of liberation involving a former colony.
Even though it may have been fostered from above, solidarity with the Republi-
can side during the Spanish Civil War helped many Soviet citizens to shape a
simple but effective dichotomous worldview of “Fascism” against “Anti-fascism”
and democracy.82 These concepts had little to do with the Western European

414
 THE FIRST GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR

understanding of the words. Neither the brief honeymoon of Stalin and Hitler after
the Molotov – Ribbentrop pact, nor the mass Soviet hatred of Stalinism could erase
the enduring image of the Spanish conflict as a fight between good and evil. The
same reading was applied afterwards to the Soviet’s own “Patriotic War” against
Germany, which became the centrepiece for legitimizing the state and the system
after 1945.83

National-Communisms and the Spanish Experience

At the political-strategic level, the bureaucrats and leaders of the Comintern, as well
as the veterans of the International Brigades, served as a concrete link between
the experience of the Spanish “national-revolutionary war for independence” and
the political agency of Eastern European communists during the 1940s. This experi-
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ence functioned in both directions. During the Spanish conflict Comintern orders
and advice helped a new strategy of “communist patriotism” to emerge in Spain.
And, after June 1941, the lessons of the Spanish conflict significantly conditioned
how the new discourse of the Great Patriotic War was framed by Soviet elites.84 Fur-
thermore, many veterans of the International Brigades learned in Spain “anti-fascist”
and patriotic war strategy, which helped them define strategic priorities for organizing
the resistance against the Nazi occupation and afterwards.85 It is not an exaggeration to
say that the use of nationalism to mobilize the population found some inspiration in the
Spanish communist experience of 1936–1939, involving the discourse and rhetoric of
national-revolutionary war as well as the ambiguous hierarchy of priorities around the
“nation” and the “nationalities” in multinational polities such as the Soviet Union.86
The strategy of avoiding direct revolution—the “national way into communism”—
was performed by other European communist parties during the Second World War.
Following Stalin’s directives—but keeping in mind their own national political objec-
tives—communists now insisted on not stepping over the line of bourgeois democ-
racy, thus avoiding a simultaneous involvement in a revolution and a war. This
pattern continued in the establishment of the various “people’s democracies”
between 1944 and 1947. As in Spain, the consolidation phase of communist govern-
ments was supposed to last a long time before communist parties became hegemonic.
The people’s democracies of the late 1940s followed this idea of the Spanish Republic,
which they considered to have been pluralistic and at the same time anti-fascist, patrio-
tic but not nationalist; the Soviet Union was styled as their best ally and friend but they
were not (in theory) a satellite nation to the USSR. Comintern documents repeatedly
warned of the danger of transforming national liberation wars into a communist revo-
lution too soon.87 The war manifestos of many European communist parties and of the
first post-Second World War coalition governments followed suit.88
In a similar way, the strategy of “national union” pursued by the Spanish Commu-
nist Party in exile after 1942 was another attempt along the lines of the Popular Fronts.

415
 X.-M. NÚÑEZ AND J. M. FARALDO

It was also a precedent for the National Fronts of the post-war period in Eastern
Europe. Broad platforms of “progressive” parties under a hegemonic communist
party were supposed to achieve national liberation from the occupiers, and then
take the first steps on the road to socialism. The best example of this strategy,
which promoted different “national paths into socialism,” can be seen in the agrarian
reforms carried out in most Eastern European countries. From Spain in 1936 to Eastern
Europe in 1948, most of the top bureaucrats of the European communist parties were
against the Soviet model of collective agriculture. This was to be postponed to the
distant future.89 Land was not generally collectivized in Eastern or Central Europe
until 1948, except in some parts of Yugoslavia and some former German-owned
land estates in western Poland.90
The unexpected Soviet hegemony all over Eastern Europe beginning in mid-1945,
along with the beginning of the Cold War, decisively accelerated the takeover and
seizure of power by national communists. Despite early Soviet plans to extend the
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Revolution, the rise of “people’s democracies” was not the consequence of a

previously designed strategy. The insistent self-perception of the new satellite states
as a socially advanced model of democracy superior to bourgeois liberal democracy
was not merely communist propaganda. The failure of the National Fronts, not only
in Eastern Europe, together with the beginning of the Cold War were decisive
factors in the communist takeover in several countries. To illustrate this paradox,
five months before the February 1948 communist-led putsch in Prague, the first
Cominform meeting—held in Szlarska Porzba—severely criticized the Czechoslovak
communists.91 In the context of the growing political split between East and West,
national communists born in the hot “anti-fascist” conflicts of the 1930s and early
1940s were no longer useful in the Kremlin’s strategy.92

Some Conclusions

The publications issued by the Comintern after the end of the Spanish Civil War
stressed its essentially “patriotic” character.93 It also referred to the “unity of the
Spanish working class with the Spanish nation” while commemorating every
Spanish communist leader who died in exile as a hero of “Spain’s independence.”94
Besides German communists, Spanish communists were probably among the first to
make extensive use of national-patriotic propaganda as a central part of their political
strategy. The Spanish Civil War and the ensuing armed resistance against the Franco
regime were embedded within a discourse of national liberation, drawing upon a
“popular” interpretation of national history and culture. After the end of the Second
World War, the need for many Eastern European communist parties to become
state-leading parties led them down a different ideological path, with nationalism an
integral part of their power-legitimizing strategy. By contrast, Spanish communists
remained in exile and carried out clandestine internal resistance, which increased

416
 THE FIRST GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR

their use of rhetoric of national liberation, combined with a new anti-imperialist stance
that cast the Franco regime as a puppet of the new other, the US. Similarly, the hier-
archical idea of nations to be liberated (Spain’s independence and freedoms for its
nationalities) changed very little during the 1950s and 1960s, though the Spanish
Communist Party organization closely controlled the “regional” branches, including
the Catalan PSUC.
From the late 1930s, patriotism became a crucial element of the Spanish commu-
nists’ political culture and praxis. Nationalism was very useful to communists
during the Civil War: not only did it provide for social and political legitimacy for
Stalin’s comrades among most Republican combatants, party elites and democrats
but it also helped mobilize popular support for the Communist Party, which experi-
enced a drastic increase in membership during the war and became the main organiz-
ation of anti-Franco resistance until the mid-1970s. Furthermore, the communist
patriotic commitment helped create common ground for collaboration on a shared
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minimum programme with Republican and democratic organizations. This approach

has been debated extensively, but what is clear is that it was something more than
opportunistic rhetoric. It can be seen as a particular type of commitment to nation
building, within the sphere of socialism and communism.

NOTES

Funding for this research was provided by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation,
Research Project HAR2008-06252-C02-01.

1. For a systematic treatment see Núñez, ¡Fuera el invasor! See also idem, “Nations in Arms
against the Invader,” 45– 67.
2. On the concept of people in the European context and its malleability, cf. Canovan, The
People. For the Spanish case, cf. Álvarez Junco, “En torno al concepto de pueblo,” 83– 94.
3. See “Palabras de aliento y gratitud a los defensores de la República (Alocución, por radio,
al pueblo español la noche del 23 de julio de 1936),” in Azaña, Obras completas, 607– 09.
4. “Segunda guerra de la independencia,” ABC, 25 July 1936, 7.
5. This representation of the anti-patriotism of the Catholic Church had a long tradition
within the Spanish republican arena. Cf. Salomón Chéliz, “El discurso anticlerical en la
construcción de una identidad nacional española republicana (1898 – 1936),” 485– 97.
6. Speech by Pasionaria in Madrid, 19 July 1937: see Mundo Obrero, 20 July 1937, 4.
7. Graham, The Spanish Republic at War, 1936 –1939, 183 –84.
8. Elorza, “La ‘nation éclatée,’” 113 –28.
9. See Cruz, Pasionaria, 120– 21; and idem, En el nombre del pueblo.
10. “Anoche por radio. Pronunció una vibrante alocución la ‘Pasionaria,’” La Prensa. Diario
independiente, 30 July 1936, 3.
11. Mundo Obrero, 11 August 1936, 3.
12. See Various authors, Guerra y revolución en España 1936 – 1939, vol. I, 307 –11.
13. Elorza and Bizcarrondo, Queridos camaradas, 298– 306; Dolores Ibárruri, Memorias de
Dolores Ibárruri Pasionaria, 360 – 61; “¿Qué hacer para ganar la guerra?,” speech by
José Dı́az in Valencia, 2 May 1937; and “Por la unidad, hacia la victoria,” report before

417
 X.-M. NÚÑEZ AND J. M. FARALDO

the meeting of the PCE Central Committee in Valencia, 5 – 8 May 1937, both by Dı́az, Tres
años de lucha, 84 – 109 and 129– 213.
14. Article published in International Press Correspondence 48 (24 October 1936), 1292 – 95.
15. On the foundation and history of POUM see Durgan, El Bloque Obrero y Campesino,
1931 – 1936; and Tosstorf, Die POUM im spanischen Bürgerkrieg.
16. “Inexorabilidad frente a los provocadores. Ellos luchan por el triunfo del fascismo, y noso-
tros tenemos que ganar la guerra,” Mundo Obrero, 6 May 1937, 1.
17. “¡Gora Euzkadi Azkatuta!,” Socorro Rojo. Órgano de la Solidaridad, Alicante, 9 (3 July
1937), 1.
18. Escrich, El Partido Comunista y la unidad de la juventud española en defensa de la Patria,
8 –15.
19. Ibid., 19.
20. Hernández, El orgullo de sentirnos españoles, 3 – 5, 7 –8, 11 –13. Similar tenets can be
found in idem, ¡Atrás los invasores de España!
21. See, for instance, the manifesto issued by the PCE’s Regional Committee for Aragón,
in Treball, 9 January 1938, 11. Or the report by the Andalusian Communist leader
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Cristóbal Valenzuela: Por el aplastamiento de Franco y la expulsión de España de los

invasores.
22. See, for example, “Charlas sencillas a los combatientes. La guerra del fascismo alemán e
italiano contra el pueblo español,” La Voz del Combatiente, 5 September 1937, 4.
23. Pedro Garfias, “Poesı́as de guerra,” El Comisario, 8 February 1937, 126– 27.
24. [Manuel] Navarro Ballesteros, “Nacionalismo,” Mundo Obrero, 20 October 1937, 1– 2.
25. Idem, “Los comunistas llevamos a nuestra patria en el corazón,” Mundo Obrero, 22
October 1937, 1 –2.
26. “Manifiesto de los partidos del Frente Popular,” ABC, 23 September 1936, 11.
27. See Núñez, ¡Fuera el invasor!, 62 – 77.
28. Qué es y qué quiere el Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, reproduced in Alba, La
revolución española en la práctica, 29– 51.
29. See Andreu Nin, “Viejos y jóvenes”, 30 January 1937; “¿Qué clase detenta el poder?,” 10
April 1937; and “Primero de Mayo de 1937,” La Batalla, 1 May 1937, reproduced in idem,
Los problemas de la revolución española 185– 90, 199 –203 and 205– 06, respectively.
30. Resoluciones aprobadas en el Pleno Ampliado del Comité Central del POUM celebrado
en Barcelona los dı́as 12 al 16 de diciembre de 1936, in Alba, La revolución española,
104 –13.
31. On the doubts that arose during the Republican period regarding attributing things to the
classical myths of Spain’s history, in the sphere of education, cf. Boyd, Historia Patria,
214 –30.
32. “El magnı́fico discurso de Pasionaria en Valencia,” Mundo Obrero, 12 August 1937, 4.
33. See, for example, “Las enseñanzas de una derrota. Cómo Napoleón tomó Madrid,” El
Mono Azul, 15 October 1936, 1.
34. “Orientación teórica del comisario,” El Comisario, 14 January 1937, 5 –7.
35. “Temario. Traidores a la patria. Independencia. Los italianos en Málaga,” El Comisario,
15 February 1937, 154– 55.
36. See Cruz, El arte que inflama.
37. Mı́nimo, “España quiere ser libre,” El Mono Azul, 26 August 1937, n.p.
38. See Trabajadoras, 15 April 1938, 2, and 1 May 1938, 14.
39. Josep Renau, “Nosotros y Goya,” Nuestra Bandera 1 –2 (1938), n.p.
40. See Ramos-Gascón, El Romancero del Ejército Popular, 210– 12; and Salaün, Romancero
de la guerra de España, 29 – 31.

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 THE FIRST GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR

41. Cf. M.[artı́nez] Carrasco, “Los pueblos de España vienen a la lucha,” in idem, Zafarrancho
de España (poemas de la guerra), 17 –18.
42. A. Fernández, “La venganza de España” (1937), in Ramos-Gascón, El Romancero, 213–14;
M[artı́nez] Carrasco, “Letanı́a del Madrid Rojo,” in Zafarrancho de España, 21.
43. Poem in Moral del combatiente, 1 March 1939, qtd. in Salaün, La poesı́a de la guerra de
España, 246; “Madrid,” Hora de España, XXII (November 1938), 5 – 6.
44. Enrique Lı́ster, “De Madrid al Ebro,” Nueva Galicia, 7 November 1938, 5.
45. “Los catalanes que defienden Madrid,” Mundo Obrero, 25 October 1937, 4.
46. “¡Todos en defensa de Madrid!,” Euskadi Roja, 11 November 1936, 1.
47. See Connor, The National Question in Marxist-Leninist Theory and Strategy; and Carrère
d’Encausse, The Great Challenge.
48. Cf. Puigsech Farràs, Nosaltres, els comunistes catalans.
49. “Un poble en armes,” Treball, 26 July 1936, 1.
50. Cited by Benavides, Guerra y revolución en Cataluña, 14 –15.
51. Casterás Archidona, Las Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas de Cataluña ante la guerra y la
revolución (1936 – 1939), 282– 84.
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52. See, for example, “Per a conèixer la Pàtria socialista,” Treball, 13 January 1938, 9; and “La
Juventud Popular revolucionaria lucha por la independencia del suelo de España,” Soldado
Popular, 13 September 1937, 4 –5.
53. Uribe, El problema de las nacionalidades en España a la luz de la guerra popular por la
independencia de la República española, 20– 22.
54. See “En torno al problema de las nacionalidades en España. La agresión del fascismo
contra la República,” Nueva Galicia, 10 September 1938, 1; and “En torno al problema
de las nacionalidades en España. ¿Qué defiende la República española?,” Nueva
Galicia, 30 September 1938, 1.
55. See Santidrián Arias, Historia do PCE en Galicia (1920 – 1968), 395 – 400; “Noso saudo,”
Nueva Galicia, 17 May 1937, 4; Álvarez, Las milicias populares gallegas, 11– 12.
56. Letters from Eduardo Abal, Benicarló, 12 February 1938, and Pedro Lorenzo Santos, 5
October 1937, in Archivo General de la Guerra Civil, Salamanca, AGGC, PS Barcelona,
1063.
57. “Del momento. La significación histórica de la lucha armada de nuetro pueblo contra la
sublevación militar fascista,” Euskadi Roja, 22 September 1936, 1.
58. “Sabino de Arana Goiri y Euzkadi,” Euskadi Roja, 25 November 1936, 1.
59. Gudari Bat, “¿Comunismo es nacionalismo?”, Euskadi Roja, 18 November 1936, 2.
60. See, for example, Arturo España, “La verdadera significación de esta guerra,” Euskadi
Roja, 3 October 1936, 2.
61. “Ante el discurso de José Antonio de Aguirre,” Euskadi Roja, 24 December 1936, 1.
62. See, for instance, “Conviene aclarar. ¿Qué es eso de la quinta columna ‘independen-
tista,’?” Euzkadi, 10 March 1937, 1.
63. See Mundo Obrero, 25 May 1937, 1.
64. “Un formidable discurso de Dolores Ibárruri La Pasionaria,” Tierra Vasca 118 (30 April
1937), 3.
65. “Actividades de los comisarios,” Boletı́n de Información y Orientación Polı́tica. Comisar-
iado General de Guerra. I Cuerpo de Ejército, 10 February 1939, 3.
66. See Núñez, ¡Fuera el invasor!, 110– 24. On Negrı́n’s presidency, see Viñas, El honor de la
República; Moradiellos, Don Juan Negrı́n; and Jackson, Juan Negrı́n.
67. See report by Pedro Checa, Algunos hechos sobre la situación en España, n.d. (c. July –
August 1937), reproduced in Radosh et al., España traicionada, 467 –84.

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 X.-M. NÚÑEZ AND J. M. FARALDO

68. “En una misma lucha. Identificación de los pueblos de España”, Mundo Obrero,
22 October 1937, 1 – 2; “España y Cataluña en la batalla por la libertad común”, Mundo
Obrero, 29 October 1937, 1.
69. Carrillo, ¡Fuera el invasor de nuestra Patria!, 8.
70. Ibárruri, En la lucha, 283 –312; Treball, 25 March 1938, 1, 4.
71. Resolución de la conferencia de activistas del Partido Comunista de Euzkadi, n.d.
(mid-December 1937), in Archivo Histórico del Nacionalismo Vasco, Artea, (Historical
Archive of Basque Nationalism), GE 113/3.
72. See “Por la independencia de nuestra patria; por la libertad de nuestro pueblo,” Mundo
Obrero, 31 March 1938, 1 – 3; Various authors, Guerra y revolución en España 1936 –
1939, vol. IV, 87– 93; “El P.S.U. per la victòria, per Catalunya i per la República,”
Treball, 9 June 1938, 4 –5; 11 June 1938, 4– 5; 12 June 1938, 5; and 14 June 1938, 5;
“Resolució polı́tica del Comitè Central del Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya, presa
en la seva reunió plenària celebrada a Barcelona els dies 5, 6 i 7 de juny” and “A tots
els combatents de la República,” Treball, 13 June 1938, 12; “La independencia de
España y la libertad de Cataluña son inseparables,” Frente Rojo, 8 June 1938, 1.
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73. See Harris, National Liberation, specially Chaps. 6, 7.

74. See the classic Pipes, The Formation of the Soviet Union.
75. See Brandenberger, National Bolshevism.
76. See Avilés Farré, La fe que vino de Rusia. But the traditions of comparing Spain with
Russia are much older. See Faraldo, “Ad marginem,” 95– 103; and Bagnó, Pogranichnye
kultury miezhdu Vostokom i Zapadom.
77. Cf. Uribe, Qué hacer en la nueva situación para ganar la guerra, 6 –7.
78. Caparrós Lera, El cine republicano español, 1931 – 1939, 71 –75.
79. See Dialco, “Espejos. Ayer Rusia . . . Hoy, España,” Nueva Galicia, 24 October 1937, 1.
80. “El Dos de Mayo,” ABC, 3 May 1938, 6.
81. To list just a couple of examples, see “El pueblo chino se dispone a ofrecer una resistencia
inquebrantable contra los invasores,” Mundo Obrero, 10 August 1937, 3; and “La lluita
heroica del poble xinès per la independència,” Treball, 24 May 1938, 8.
82. See Novikova, “Las visiones de España en la Unión Soviética durante la guerra civil
española,” 9 –44. A brief account of the numerous publications about the Spanish Civil
War in the USSR helps the understanding of the importance of the conflict in Soviet
Russia. See Novikov, Grazhdanskaia voina v Ispanii, 1936 –1939.
83. Weiner, Making Sense of War.
84. For individual perceptions see some collections of eyewitness accounts: Gorilovskogo,
Vmeste s patriotami Ispanii: vospominaniia uchastnikov natsional’no- revoliutsionnoi
voiny ispanskogo naroda; Various authors, My internatsionalisty; and Pritsker, Lenin-
gradtsy v Ispanii.
85. See Skoutelsky, Novedad en el frente.
86. See, for example, McLellan, Antifascism and Memory in East Germany, 43 –73; and Uhl,
Mythos Spanien.
87. This is found consistently in many instructions from the Comintern. See, for example:
Russian State Archive of Social and Political History, Moscow (RGASPI), instructions
to José Dı́az, 495-74-201; or the resolution about the “Spanish question,” in 495-184-
21. See also Elorza and Bizcarrondo, Queridos camaradas, 286 –88, Schauff, Der
verspielte Sieg, 336. For Stalin’s support of the parliamentary republic, see Viñas, El
escudo de la República, 344– 45.

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 THE FIRST GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR

88. See, for example: Polish Worker’s Party Declaration: “What are we fighting for?” of 1943
(Gomulka, O co walczymy?), as well as the Czechoslovak Kosice government program of
5 April 1945 (see Košický vládnı́ program); Mark, Revolution by Degrees.
89. Very clearly, for the case of the GDR, see Arnd Bauernkämper, “Auf dem Wege zum
‘Sozialismus auf dem Lande,’” Die Politik der SED 1948/49 und die Reaktionen in dör-
flich-agrarischen Milieu,” in Hoffmann and Wentker, Das letzte Jahr der SBZ, 245– 67
(here 248).
90. For an old comparative overview that is still of interest see Góra, Reformy agrarne w socja-
listycznych państwach Europy, 1944–1948. A comparative overview of the subsequent
collectivization can be found in Bideleux and Jeffries, A History of Eastern Europe, 527–28.
91. See Procacci, The Cominform; and Gert Robel, “Die Entscheidung von Schreiberhau/
Szklarska Porzba,” in Lemberg, Sowjetisches Modell und Nationale Prägung, 286– 305.
92. See Herbert and Schildt, Kriegsende in Europa; Naimark and Gibianskii, The Establish-
ment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe, 1944 – 1949.
93. See “La heroica lucha del pueblo español,” La Internacional comunista, 3 (March 1939),
16 – 19.
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94. As on the occasion of José Dı́az’s death; see “Pamiati Jose Diaza,” Kommitern, 3 – 4
(1942), 81.

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