Anna Chen - George Orwell: a literary revolutionary? page 3
Orwell in Spain
Orwell's arrival in Barcelona, the reddest of Spanish cities, was, according to Crick, an accident. [16] Turned down for the International Brigade by the British Communist Party, Orwell eventually travelled to Spain under the auspices of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in December 1936. Once in Barcelona, he signed up to the ILP affiliated POUM militia as "Eric Blair: grocer". He enthused over the tell tale signs of workers at least superficially in charge - or "in the saddle" - finding them "startling and overwhelming". Newsinger describes it thus:
Buildings were draped with red flags or with the red and black flags of the anarchists, the walls were covered with the hammer and sickle and the initials of revolutionary organisations, and almost all the churches had been destroyed. The shops and cafes had been collectivised and the waiters and shop workers treated customers as equals. The trains and taxis were all painted black. Crowds of working class men and women filled the streets while loudspeakers played revolutionary songs. What particularly struck him was that as far as he could see the rich had disappeared. This was, he recognised, something worth fighting for. What Orwell had encountered in Barcelona was a working class that was becoming a class for itself. [17]
The thrill wore off once he hit the front line. Orwell was dismayed by the conditions. As he says often in Homage to Catalonia, it wasn't so much the squalid state of the muddy trenches and drenched dugouts, or the terrifying abundance of rats, or the infestations of lice, or the human excrement caked everywhere that lowered his spirits - that was just war. It was the incessant boredom while waiting for action, the inadequate training, and the antiquated weaponry with which they were meant to fight the fascists stationed within eyesight that he found frustrating. His sympathies were by no means set when he arrived: he initially thought the Communists were right to concentrate on fighting Franco by building a more disciplined army. However, what kept him fighting for the POUM - even regretting later that he didn't join - was the realisation that the Communist line was effectively a counter-revolutionary one. It didn't merely stop the revolution in its tracks. It actually meant putting back the clock.
International Volunteers in Spain
Orwell was deeply engaged in the debate around what to do about the revolution, siding with the most revolutionary line - to take the revolution forward. He thought it a mistake that the Republican government had been left in nominal control and was critical that, "in spite of various changes in personnel, every subsequent government has been of approximately the same bourgeois-reformist character." He explained that at first it didn't seem to matter, because the government was "almost powerless". The bourgeoisie were lying low, even disguising themselves as workers. But then, as power was grabbed by the "Communists and right wing Socialists" and used in the interest of the Popular Front, "the government was able to reassert itself, the bourgeoisie came out of hiding and the old division of society into rich and poor reappeared, not much modified". [18] One by one the different parties composing the government were edged out by the Communists. Once Russia began to supply arms, a grateful Communist led Government came to heel and the success of the Spanish Communist Party was assured. Orwell explains how the Catalan Communists, the PSUC, were then able to recover power through "a policy of pinpricks":
In every case, needless to say, it appeared that the thing demanded by military necessity was the surrender of something the workers had won for themselves in 1936... The process of [land] collectivisation was checked, the local committees were got rid of, the workers' patrols were abolished and the pre-war police forces, largely enforced and heavily armed, were restored, and various key industries which had been under the control of the trade unions were taken over by the Government ... finally, most important of all, the workers' militias, based on the trade unions, were gradually broken up and redistributed among the new Popular Army, a "non-political" army on semi-bourgeois lines, with a differentiated pay rate, a privileged officer caste, etc, etc. [19]
He returned to Barcelona to find it just another bourgeois city, unrecognisable from the vibrant centre of workers' control he had seen only a few months earlier.
Trotsky had by now split with the POUM over their refusal to break away from the far greater numbers of anarchists and "build their party as the revolutionary leadership of the Spanish working class ... Instead, they hoped to persuade and influence the anarchists, who were the decisive force in Catalonia, into completing the revolution". [20] Following a police attack on the CNT controlled telephone exchange in Barcelona on 3 May, working class Barcelona took to the barricades in defence of their rapidly eroding bastions of power. Unfortunately, both the POIJM and CNT leaders vacillated instead of going on the offensive, giving the counter-revolutionary forces the upper hand. In a perverse twist of logic, the Communists accused Trotsky of leading the POUM alongside the fascists in a conspiracy against the Popular Front, his living several thousand miles away in Mexico and not being in touch with the Spanish comrades notwithstanding. The POUM was similarly slandered, firstly, as being "objectively pro-fascist" because it was contradicting the Communist line to abandon the revolution, and then accused of actually fighting alongside the fascists, of sabotage and treason under Trotsky's orders. The official term for the POUM was "Trotsky-Fascist", a libel that was repeated in newspapers across the world and used in support of the Moscow Show Trials. The Daily Worker called the ILP volunteers in Spain, many of whom were killed or wounded fighting fascism, a "stain on the honour of the British working class". [21] The propaganda war was vicious, the body count high and rising. Many were tortured by the dreaded secret police, languished in jail or were executed. Andreas Nin, a leading member of the POUM, was reportedly skinned alive. All were hounded by the Communists.
Orwell narrowly escaped but he had gained a whole new perspective. While convalescing from a fascist bullet in the throat, Orwell wrote to Cyril Connolly, telling him, "I have seen wonderful things and at last really believe in Socialism, which I never did before". [22] Although from his earlier publication The Road to Wigan Pier it was clear that he was at least intellectually committed to socialism, it was Spain that gave his socialism an emotional bedrock and dictated the course his socialism would take. Having witnessed the destruction of the revolution in Spain, and lost comrades iii the Communist persecution of the POUM, that course would never lead to Moscow. In the preface to the Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm he wrote:
Nothing has contributed so much to the corruption of the original idea of Socialism as the belief that Russia is a Socialist country and that every act of its rulers must be excused, if not imitated. And so for the past ten years I have been convinced that the destruction of the Soviet myth was essential if we wanted a revival of the Socialist movement. [23]
He returned to Britain to find that his association with POUM and his hostility to the Communists had left him alienated and marginalised in left circles. It was all but impossible to challenge the Communist version of events. His own publisher, Victor Gollancz, who controlled the Left Book Club with its massive readership, declined to publish Homage To Catalonia despite the success of The Road to Wigan Pier but Orwell refused to be gagged. His may have been a lone voice, but it was also a loud and clear one powered by a will to make itself heard through a torrent of articles and reviews.
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© 1999 Anna Chen