"Homage to Catalonia" by George Orwell.

Book review up at Amazon.

George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" is a 20th Century classic. It captures a snapshot of the mindset of the Left at a particular point in time when the world seemed poised between a Fascist future and a Communist future, and although ultimately, even for Orwell, it was hard to tell the difference in practice between the two, the allure of Marxism never dimmed.


Orwell's autobiographical story opens with his decision to abandon the neutrality of the journalistic sidelines and enter into a struggle that his class and cohort considered to be a titanic and defining moment of history. Orwell makes the leap by joining the militia of the P.O.U.M ("POUM") in Barcelona in December of 1936 not long after the Nationalist's coup had been suppressed by a coalition of leftist militias. POUM was the militia fielded by a Marxist-but-not-Communist political party/worker's movement. In the Barcelona of 1936, all of the leftist political movements, including the anarchists and the Communists had their own militias. POUM and the Anarchists of was to the "left" of the Communists among the parties supporting the Spanish Republic.

Orwell is enchanted by the Barcelona of December, 1936, which he fancies to be the one place on Earth where the working class is in control. He is charmed by the fact that everyone is wearing working class clothes and the traditional religious based greetings have been replaced by sturdy revolutionary slogans.

Orwell is soon on his way to the "front," which turns out to be a short stretch of trenches near Zaragoza. From that point, Orwell's account describes the mundane reality of static warfare, with long stretches of inactivity broken by the rare activity of desultory conflict. These accounts are fascinating in describing the unromantic nature of military action generally and of the period between the World Wars, particularly. Orwell's active involvement in front line warfare ended in early 1937 when he was struck in the throat by a bullet, which threatened to leave him mute for the rest of his life, although he did recover. Orwell was then subjected to the coarse ministrations of the Spanish medical service and returned to Barcelona in time for the suppression of the POUM by the Communists.

Orwell has two sections of his book where he describes the internecine conflict between the leftist parties. Orwell is frankly apologetic for these sections, which he describes as being distasteful and undoubtedly not of great interest to his reader. In this he is entirely wrong because they make up the most interesting and insightful parts of his book. Orwell describes the influence of the Russian NKVD over the Republic, and explains the Communist parties' crackdown on the leftist elements of the left as being to serve the interest of Russia, which did not want France distracted by a radical Spain at its back when Russia was interested in seeing a strong France focused on Germany. Orwell then describes the crackdown by the Communists and Republic that resulted in the rounding up of POUM officers and soldiers and their internment in Communist irregular jails. Orwell found himself having to sleep in the streets to avoid arrest and internment, a fate that many international volunteers found themselves in and from which they never emerged.

One of the most chilling things about these sections is Orwell's seeming acceptance of these actions by the Communists. Orwell clearly thinks that the liquidation of the POUM was a waste of effort and cruel, but he doesn't seem outraged by it in the same way that he feels outraged by the Fascists who were doing nothing essentially different. It is as if right thinking Leftists understood that totalitarianism was inevitable and so long as it had a "worker's" flavor, it was acceptable on some level. Orwell seems to have been more outraged by the Communist's reactionary policy that favored the bourgeoisie than by the fact that the Communists were totalitarian thugs. Obviously, Orwell's Catalonian experience eventually made him distrustful of Communists and condemnatory of the totalitarian mindset, as can be seen in his later works.

Orwell's descriptions of Spain and his off-hand description of the anti-Catholicism of the Leftist is also interesting. Orwell constantly belittles the Spanish for their "manana" attitude and their disorganization. He also notes how every Catholic church he sees in Republican territory has been burned, vandalized and/or turned into a latrine. This last observation seems to leave him with no concerns for the civil rights of Catholics, but, rather, it seems that his latent British prejudice against Catholicism and Spain combine to make the desecration of churches appear almost appropriate.

Orwell's description of his military service at times seems to be a cliché from either World War II military movies showing Brits keeping a "stiff upper lip" or Monty Python. He describes ducking from a bullet in his first action and the experience of being shot in such a way that he seems amazed that he was human - imagine ducking from a bullet! How unBritish! This effect was heightened by the audiobook version I was listening to, where the narrator's voice seemed perfect to play the "British twit" role in a Monty Python skit. The reading, however, was clear and interesting.

"Homage to Catalonia" is a fascinating window into a slice of the Spanish Civil War and the mindset of people on the Left prior to the World War II.

A Long Review of a Very Short Introduction to the Spanish Civil War.

The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction.

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I came to "The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction" as a novice to the subject. I've gleaned some general facts from the Internet but I thought a short audiobook would give me something of an overview of the main events and players of the Spanish Civil War so that I could dig in to the subject with more substantive books. Part of my curiosity was triggered by seeing "There be Dragons," which showed a side of the Spanish Civil War that isn't often portrayed or discussed in the popular media, namely the atrocities commited by the Spanish Republicans.


Unfortunately, this book is a disappointment. Graham seems to have made it her mission to make sure that no one came away from her book without understanding that Franco and the "rebels" were "brutal" - Graham never refers to the opponents of the Spanish Republic as "Nationalists" and she uses the term "brutal" repeatedly in describing the Nationalists and never with respect to the Republicans - and that the great tragedy of the Spanish Civil War was that the Republicans lost. This is not hyperbole; at the end of the book Graham spends time explaining how a modern Spanish historian who has written a book on the "Myths of the Spanish Civil War," which apparently challenges the leftist interpretation, is a "Francoist" who threatens to fill the minds of the new generation with Francoist propaganda. In other words, Graham has a clear interest in the polemical uses of history.

For anyone who approaches the Spanish Civil War without a particular dog in the fight, Graham's one-sided narrative becomes more and more obvious. I found myself listening to the audiobook by making a game out of predicting where Graham would manage to spin mirror behaviors of the Nationalists and Republicans in a way that she could indict the "rebels" and exonerate the Republicans. For example, both sides engaged in atrocities, but the Republicans' motivation arose out of the concrete grievances that they had experienced, while the "rebels" committed their atrocities out of their atavistic fear of change and the "Other." So, really, the Republicans, you seen were entitled to the social change they wanted, whereas the Nationalists needed psychological intervention. That's helpful.

But it isn't and that kind of authorial "projection" is constantly injected into Graham's narrative. Although Graham concludes her book with a long dissertation about the need for nuance and attention to detail, she provides no nuance when it comes to the events. Franco is stupid and brutal; the Republicans are motivated by good ideals and desire for progress. Graham has no interest in the discussing the Nationalist's position - apart from the mention of Franco we never really hear the name of any other Nationalist. The Nationalists are a faceless mass; in other words, they become the "Other" for Graham.

On the other hand, we do get a lot of details on the Republicans. We see the suffering of the war from the Republican side. We learn about Republican leaders. We learn about the history of the Republicans after the war. All of which is good and decent, but not very balanced or nuanced.

At times Graham's polemics seems make her distort or omit key facts. For example, an important thesis to Graham is that the Nationalist coup was entirely unjustified and unprovoked. In making this argument she explains away the revolt in Asturias on the grounds that the people of Asturias learned from the election of 1934, which made the Catholic CEDAS party the majority party, that they couldn't expect to have their grievances resolved democratically. But according to what I've read, the new cabinet was formed on September 29, 1934 - and CEDA was denied its right to form a government - and the general strike was kicked off on October 5, 1934. That hardly seems to be sufficient time for the conservative government to have infringed on the rights of the Socialists; rather, it suggests that the Spanish Socialists didn't view themselves as particularly obligated to play by Democratic rules.

This interpretation may or may not be true, but Graham's pre-emptive strike, which was made without giving the facts, indicates that she is not to be trusted without verification of her facts.

Another example is her apologetic for Socialist atrocities. She does acknowledge that almost 7,000 priests, nuns and bishops were killed in Republican areas, but she excuses the Republicans on the ground that Nationalist coup had caused a breakdown of law and order in Republican areas. This may be a fair point, but she doesn't advise that there was a definite correlation between the murder of priests and the times when Socialists made themselves the only power. For example, in the 1934 revolt in the Asturias, 29 priests were murdered and churches were burned. Likewise, Graham doesn't mention the church burnings and expropriation of Catholic property that occurred before the Nationalist rebellion. On another occasion, Graham affirms the Republican commitment to constitutionality and plurality by the fact that in 1937 it permited Catholics to worship in public, which caused me to pause for a moment and wonder (a) when the Republic had denied Catholics the right to worship in public and (b) if that was viewed as "persecution" which had been a cause of the Nationalist revolt?

Who knows? Graham apparently didn't think that spending time on the history of Socialist persecution of Catholics or the Catholic experience of such persecution was important to an understanding of the Spanish Civil War. As I said, Graham's book is not long on nuance.

At least it's not long on nuance when it comes to the Nationalist side. When it comes to the Republican side, we get informed about the racism of the war, and how there were two African-American volunteers in the international brigades. We also learn that a Finnish-American international brigade member was homosexual and his experience of the Spanish Civil War played an important role in his reconstructing the dynamics of sexuality and politics as a precursor to the "New Left." We also learn that there were all kinds of leftist and progressive organizations, but nothing really about their separate ideologies.

On the other hand, I didn't learn a thing about the "Carlists" and who they were and what made them different from "Falangists." Apparently, very short introductions have time for the only known American homosexual who fought in the Spanish Civil War, but no time for one of the major Nationalist elements. For that kind of information, I will just have to go to some other source.

I'm giving this book two stars with an indication for one star. I give it two stars because it does seem to be a fair example of the leftist/progressive polemical approach to the history of the Spanish Civil War and, to be fair, if you are interested in "A Very Short Introduction to the Republican Side of the Spanish Civil War as Presented by an Apologist for the Republican Side" this book is very good.