The Partit Socialista Unificat
de Catalunya (PSUC) was formed in July 1936. Most of the members came
from Catalan branches of the Socialist Party
(PSOE) and the Communist Party (PCE).
Members also came from the left-wing Partit
Catala Proletari and the Union General de
Trabajadores (UGT). Juan
Comorera was
elected general secretary of the PSUC.
On the outbreak of the
Spanish Civil War the PSUC joined other
left-wing groups to establish the Antifascist Militias Committee.
By the middle of 1937 the PSUC claimed to have a membership of 50,000.
During
the war the PSUC, Union General de Trabajadores
(UGT) and the Communist Party (PCE)
played an important role in running Barcelona.
This brought them
into conflict with other left-wing groups in the city National
Confederation of Trabajo (CNT), the Federación
Anarquista Ibérica (FAI) and the Worker's
Party (POUM).
On the 3rd May 1937, Rodriguez
Salas, the Chief of Police, ordered the Civil
Guard and the Assault Guard to take
over the Telephone Exchange, which had been operated by the CNT since
the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.
Members of the CNT in the Telephone Exchange were armed and refused
to give up the building. Members of the CNT,
FAI and POUM became
convinced that this was the start of an attack on them by the UGT,
PSUC and the PCE
and that night barricades were built all over the city.
Fighting broke out on the
4th May. Later that day the anarchist
ministers, Federica Montseny and Juan
Garcia Oliver, arrived in Barcelona and attempted to negotiate
a ceasefire. When this proved to be unsuccessful, Juan
Negrin, Vicente
Uribe and Jesus Hernández
called on Francisco
Largo Caballero to
use government troops to takeover the city. Largo Caballero also came
under pressure from Luis Companys not
to take this action, fearing that this would breach Catalan autonomy.
On 6th May death squads
assassinated a number of prominent anarchists in their homes. The
following day over 6,000 Assault Guards
arrived from Valencia and gradually took
control of Barcelona. It is estimated
that about 400 people were killed during what became known as the
May Riots.
The PSUC, now mainly controlled
by the Communist Party (PCE), emerged
from the May Riots in a strong position and now had a greater influence
in the political affairs of the region. In the new Catalan government
the PSUC held the cabinet posts of labour, supply and economy. It
also played an important role in integrating Catalan affairs into
those of the Republic.
Juan
Comorera
and the PSUC gave its full support to Juan
Negrin and his new government. Negrin was a communist sympathizer
and from this date Joseph Stalin obtained
more control over the policies of the Republican government
Comorera
and the PSUC also favoured Negrin's policy of bringing the Anarchist
Brigades under
the control of the Republican Army. At first
the Anarcho-Syndicalists
resisted and attempted
to retain hegemony over their units. This proved impossible when the
government made the decision to only pay and supply militias that
subjected themselves to unified command and structure.
Leaders of the
PSUC were forced to flee from the country when General Francisco
Franco and
the Nationalist Army took control
of Spain in March 1939.
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Last updated: 10th April, 2002
(1)
George
Orwell,
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
It is necessary to explain
that when one speaks of the P.S.U.C. 'line' one really means the Communist
Party 'line'. The P.S.U.C. (Partido Socialista Unificado de Catalunya)
was the Socialist Party of Catalonia; it had been formed at the beginning
of the war by the fusion of various Marxist parties, including the
Catalan Communist Party, but it was now entirely under Communist control
and was affiliated to the Third International. Elsewhere in Spain
no formal unification between Socialists and Communists had taken
place, but the Communist viewpoint and the Right-wing Socialist viewpoint
could everywhere be regarded as identical. Roughly speaking, the P.S.U.C.
was the political organ of the U.G.T. (Union General de Trabajadores),
the Socialist trade unions. The membership of these unions throughout
Spain now numbered about a million and a half. They contained many
sections of the manual workers, but since the outbreak of war they
had also been swollen by a large influx of middle-class members, for
in the early 'revolutionary' days people of all kinds had found it
useful to join either the U.G.T. or the C.N.T. The two blocks of unions
overlapped, but of the two the C.N.T. Was more definitely a working-class
organization. The P.S.U.C. Was therefore a party partly of the workers
and partly of the small bourgeoisie - the shopkeepers, the officials,
and the wealthier peasants.
(2)
Ilya
Ehrenburg, letter
sent to Marcel Rosenberg (17th September,
1936)
To add to today's telephone
conversation, I report: Companys was in a very nervous state. I spoke
with him for more than two hours, while all he did the whole time
was complain about Madrid. His arguments: the new government has not
changed anything; slights Catalonia as if it were a province and this
is an autonomous republic; sends instructions like to the other governors
- refuses to turn over religious schools to the generalitat; demands
soldiers and does not give out any of the weapons bought abroad, not
one airplane and so on.
As yet, neither Caballero
nor Prieto has managed to find time to receive him. And so on. He
explained that if they did not receive cotton or hard currency for
cotton within three weeks there would be a hundred thousand out of
work. He very much wanted to trade with the Soviet Union. He believed
that any sign of attention being paid to Catalonia
by the Soviet Union was important. As for the internal situation,
he spoke rather optimistically;
the influence of the FAl was decreasing, the role of the government
growing.
I spoke
with Trueba, the PSUC (Communist) political commissar. He complained
about the FAI-ists. They are not giving our men ammunition. We have
only thirty-six bullets left per man. The anarchists have reserves
of a million and a half. Colonel Villalba's soldiers only have a hundred
cartridges each. He cited many instances of the petty tyrannies of
FAI. People from the CNT complained to me that Fronsosa, the leader
of PSUC, gave a speech at a demonstration in San Boi in which he said
that the Catalans should not be given even one gun, since the guns
would just fall into the hands of the anarchists. In general, during
the ten days that I was in Catalonia, relations between Madrid and
the generalitat on the one hand, and that between the Communists and
the anarchists on the other, became very much more strained. Companys
is wavering; either he gravitates toward the anarchists, who have
agreed to recognize the national and even nationalistic demands of
the Esquerra, or he depends on the PSUC in the struggle against FAI.
His circle is divided between supporters of the former and of the
latter solutions. If the situation on the Talavera front worsens,
we can expect him to come out on one or the other side. We must improve
relations between the PSUC and the CNT and then try to get closer
to Companys.
(3)
Abad de Santillan, member of the Catalan government (1937)
We had seen in the private
ownership of the means of production, of factories, of means of transport,
in the capitalist apparatus of distribution, the main cause of misery
and injustice. We wished the socialization of all wealth
so that not a single individual would be left out of the banquet of
life. We have now
done something, but we have not done it well. In place of
the old owner, we have substituted a half-dozen new ones who consider
the factory, the
means of transport which they control, as their own property,
with the inconvenience that they do not always know how to organize
as well as the old.
(4)
André
Marty,
letter sent
to the General Consul of the Soviet Union
in Barcelona
(14th October,
1936)
In the period from 18th
July to 1st September, the members of the Communist party were absorbed
with the armed struggle. Thus, all of the work of the party was reduced
to military action, but largely in an individual sense, rather than
from the standpoint of political leadership of the struggle. At best,
the party committees discussed urgent questions (the collection of
weapons and explosives, supplies, questions of housing, and so on)
but without setting forth perspectives for the future or still less
following a general plan.
Beginning on 18th July,
many leaders headed the struggle and remained at this work later,
during the formation of the columns. For example. Cordon is the assistant
commander of the Estremadura column; Uribe, the deputy for Valencia
has the same position in the Teruda column; and Romero is in the column
that is at Malaga; del Barrio is in the column at Saragossa. But it
must be said that only a very few of the leaders have the requisite
military abilities (I do not mean personal bravery). Thus, of the
four just mentioned, Cordon is a brilliant commander, del Barrio is
quite good, and the rest are worthless from a military point of view.
The political activity
of the party has been reduced to the work of the leadership (editorship
of the newspapers, several cells, demarches to the ministries). Party
agitation, not counting what is carried out in the press, has come
to naught. Internal party life has been reduced to the discussion
of important, but essentially practical and secondary, questions.
Meanwhile, recruiting
has moved and continues to move at a very rapid pace. The influx of
new members into the party is huge. For the first time intellectuals
and even officers are being drawn into the party. Already the most
active elements from the middle cadres began in July to set up militia
units which subsequently were transformed into the Fifth Regiment.
The general staff of the Fifth Regiment, consisting of workers or
officers who are Communists or sympathizers - this is the best thing
that we have in the entire fighting army.
Our party (the Unified
Socialist Party of Catalonia - PSUC) is not united. It continues to
remain merely the sum of the four component parties from which it
was created. From the point of view of the Communist party, despite
the fact that the leadership is in our hands, it does not have an
ideological backbone. There is significant friction from this. Despite
this fact, the party's correct policy vis-a-vis the peasantry and
petty bourgeoisie enhances its powerful influence daily. The PSUC
is the third party in Catalonia (after Esquerra and the CNT). A majority
of the members of the party are members of the UGT, which has significantly
increased the number of its members. Unfortunately, the erratic policy
of the party, especially
on the question of cadres, gave the opportunity to raise Sesé
to the head of the UGT- a man who is suspect from every point of view
(see the protocols of the Catalan Commission at the Seventh Congress
of the Comintern
International in September 1935).
The leadership of the Socialist
party in Madrid (the Workers' Party of Spain) continues to work in
the PSUC, and it often happens that the local groups direct their
letters to it instead of writing to the PCE. On the other hand, Caballero
is striving to seize the leadership. Fifteen days ago in Madrid he
handed three million pesetas to Comorera, the general
secretary of the PSUC, for whom we sent to discuss the question of
Catalonia, and we heard this information about him.
The party's union policy.
Nothing practical has been done. The CNT continues to follow an ever
increasing number of UGT declarations, but generally for political
reasons. Our groups assemble but do not work on the problems of everyday
demands. In general, our activists remain in the UGT (the work is
easier). It is my opinion that the struggle for the unification of
the unions is becoming a pressing task. I proposed that the unions
that are under our influence appeal for unification with two aims:
i) unity of the working class to defend the interests of the workers
against the employers; 2) unity in production to defeat fascism. Mije
in principle accepted this proposal on unification (without pointing
out the aims) at a large mass meeting organized by the party in Madrid
on 27th September. This proposal elicited very strong applause, but
I would have preferred that this had been done as I proposed. It is
my opinion that union work requires radical restructuring.
Agrarian policy. In general
the policy is correct (see the decision by the Ministry of Agriculture
on the question of land), but it has not been popularized in the villages.
They do not demonstrate the deep difference between our line and the
methods of the anarchists. And in this area a colossal work still
must be accomplished.
(5)
Vladimir
Antonov-Ovseenko,
General
Consul of the Soviet Union in Barcelona,
top secret document sent to NKVD
(18th October,
1936)
My conversations with
Garcia Oliver and with several other CNT members, and their latest
speeches, attest to the fact that the leaders of the CNT have an honest
and serious wish to concentrate all forces in a strengthened united
front and on the development of military action against the fascists.
I must note that the PSUC is not free from certain instances that
hamper the "consolidation of a united front": in particular,
although the Liaison Commission has just been set up, the party organ
Treball suddenly published an invitation to the CNT and the
FAI that, since the experience with the Liaison Commission had gone
so well, the UGT and the PSUC had suggested that the CNT and the FAI
create even more unity in the form of an action commission. This kind
of suggestion was taken by leaders of the FAI as simply a tactical
maneuver. Comrade Valdes and Comrade Sese did not hide from me that
the just-mentioned suggestion was meant to "talk to the masses
of the CNT over the heads of their leaders." The same sort of
note was sounded at the appearance of Comrade Comorera at the PSUC
and UGT demonstration on 18 October - on the one hand, a call for
protecting and developing the united front and, on the other, boasting
about the UGT's having a majority among the working class in Catalonia,
accusing the CNT and the FAI of carrying out a forced collectivization
of the peasants,
of hiding weapons, and even of murdering "our comrades."
The PSUC leaders-designate
agreed with me that such tactics were completely wrong and expressed
their intention to change them. I propose that we get together in
the near future with a limited number of representatives of the CNT
and the FAI to work out a concrete program for our next action.
In the near future,
the PSUC intends to bring forward the question on reorganizing the
management of military industry. At this point the Committee on Military
Industry works under the chairmanship of Tarradellas, but the
main role in the committee is played by Vallejos (from the FAI). The
PSUC proposes to put together leadership from representatives from
all of the organizations, to group the factories by specialty, and
to place at the head of each group a commissar, who would answer to
the government.
The evaluation by Garcia
Oliver and other CNT members of the Madrid government seems well founded
to me. Caballero's attitude toward the question of attracting the
CNT into that or any other form of government betrays his obstinate
incomprehension of that question's importance. Without the participation
of the CNT, it will not, of course, be possible to create the appropriate
enthusiasm and discipline in the people's militia/Republican militia.
The information concerning
the intentions of the Madrid government for a timely evacuation from
Madrid was confirmed. This widely disseminated information undermines
confidence in the central government to an extraordinary degree and
paralyzes the defense of Madrid.
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