In Memoriam: Andreu Nin (1892-1937)

The following is a translation by Mike Jones of a report in the Spanish newspaper El Pais of 6 November 1992 by Enric Company, writing from Barcelona. A parallel account in French appears in Informations Ouvrières , 6-12 January 1993.

‘He is to be found neither in Salamanca nor in Berlin. At a point about 100 metres from Kilometre 17 on the highway from Alcalá de Henares to Perales de Tajuña lie the remains of Andreu Nin, the Catalan politician and intellectual, who was a member of the leadership of the Red International of Labour Unions and a close collaborator of Trotsky in Moscow. Later, in Barcelona during the Republic and the Civil War, he was the main leader of the Partit Obrer d’Unificacio Marxista (POUM), a left Communist organisation. Stalin never forgave Nin for his closeness to Trotsky, and ordered him to be pursued to the end: which in the event was his murder by five Communist agents in 1937.

‘Two journalists from TV3 [a Catalan TV station-Ed], Dolors Genovés and Llibert Fern, have spent six months working in the archives of the KGB and the Communist International in Moscow, as well as those in the Madrid Archivo Histórico Nacional. The documents that they have found prove, for the first time, the theory that Nin was murdered by the Soviet political police. Five men murdered him: Alexander Orlov and Juzik, both NKVD members, and three Spaniards only revealed by the initials L, AF, and IL. With them as spectators and melancholy accomplices were another NKVD agent, the Hungarian Ernö Gerö and his driver, the latter only known by the name Victor, which was probably an alias. A letter sent by Orlov personally to his bosses in Moscow on 24 July 1937 acknowledges that they were the perpetrators. Viewers of TV3 were able to see that letter, with the names of the three Spaniards blanked out. The viewers also saw a smiling functionary pull another letter out of the archives, in which Orlov explained how the accusation that Nin spied for Franco would be fabricated.

‘This false statement by a witness is in the Madrid Archivo Histórico Nacional, as it forms part of the trial that was to be held after the war. The accusation was made by Alberto Castillo, a Spanish police informer, who used the name Fernando Velasco, and it was made in the presence of the policeman Javier Jimenez, who was given the job of protecting him. In the programme Jimenez told the story in his own words.

‘The evidence was a text in code and a plan of the defences of the Casa de Camp in Madrid, which was signed in invisible ink with the letter N, which was supposed to mean Nin. On 16 July 1937 he was ordered to be imprisoned in Barcelona. He was taken to the prison at Alcalá de Henares, although his name was not entered in the register. He was interrogated, and, getting no confession, Orlov decided to kidnap him. In his letters, the Soviet agent calls it Operation Nikolai. A Spanish accomplice, whose identity is not revealed, opened the prison gate one July night. Nin was taken to the cellar of a chalet which no longer exists in Alcalá de Henares, the home of the head of the Republican Air Force, Ignacio Hidalgo de Cisneros and of his wife Constancia de la Mora Maura. There he was tortured in the hope of extracting a confession, but this proved impossible, and two or three days later he was murdered. That is Orlov’s story. And yesterday the Catalan viewers were able to see it.’

Some further details have come to us in a letter from Andy Durgan. He points out that much of the evidence in the documentary was not new, but the Moscow documents were, and they confirm the version by Jesus Hernandez in Yo fui un nunistro de Stalin. The kidnapping from the prison led to the ‘official’ version at the time that Nin had been ‘rescued’ by the Gestapo. Apparently, the PCE members, Ignacio Hidalgo de Cisneros and his wife, a former countess, were not aware that Nin was imprisoned and tortured in their house. According to Jimenez, ‘Juzik’ was a Brazilian, José Escoy, who was ‘in charge’ of the whole affair, and who had been specifically sent from Moscow for this purpose, but nothing else is known about him. Although of great interest, many questions were not answered—in particular who the Spaniards were, the KGB archive having protected them ‘so as not to cause any problems for their families’, and, furthermore, it is not clear how complicit the Spanish and Catalan Communist Party leaders were in the whole affair. There may, of course, be more information in existence that the journalists concerned, who were not experts in this field, may have missed. It is hoped that photocopies of the documents that they cite will be translated and published in one form or another, though whether there is any more information in Moscow remains to be seen. Meanwhile, the Socialist authorities in the province of Madrid have given orders to look for Nin’s body, which, if found, will be returned to his birthplace, Vendrell.

Durgan adds that the Andreu Nin Centenary Conference was organised on 25-26 March by the Centre d’Estudis Histories Internacionals in Barcelona. Contributors invited included Victor Alba, Pierre Broué, Andy Durgan, Pere Gabriel, Josep Luis Martin i Ramos, Isidre Molas, Pelai Pages, Jaime Pastor, Wilebaldo Solano and Reiner Tosstorff. There were be papers on both Nin and Maurin, and a report will hopefully appear in a subsequent edition of Revolutionary History.

In Memoriam: Wolfgang Václav Salus (1909- 1953)

A LETTER to us dated 11 September 1992 from Professor Robert Conquest at the Hoover Institute drew our attention to a passage in Moskovski Novosti (2 August 1992) as follows:

‘A report from MGB minister Semyon Ignatiev in March 1953 (after the death of Stalin) to Malenkov, Beria, Molotov, Bulganin and Khrushchev that “the former secretary and bodyguard of Trotsky, Wolfgang Salus, was liquidated by an MGB agent of German nationality by a ‘preparation’ given to him on 13 February, which produces death within 12 to 13 days”, and that he died in hospital in Munich on 4 March without any suspicion arising among the doctors.’

There are some details about Salus in Pierre Broué’s biography of Trotsky, and in Robert Alexander’s work on international Trotskyism. Alexander is often inaccurate on matters about which we know something, but we have no other sources at present. Broué says:

‘The very first foreign militant voluntarily to join LDT in exile and to work for him was without doubt the young Czech Wolfgang V Salus, who was then the first of a string of followers from Prague and the Sudetenland. The son of a doctor, Hugo Salus, who was also one of the greatest poets of the country, the young Wolfgang, even though educated at a military school—Trotsky called him “Krieger” (the warrior)—had broken with his family when still very young. He was 14 when he joined the Young Communists in 1924, and 18 when he was a delegate at an international conference of the Organisation of Young Communists in Moscow.

‘This was, it seems, the first occasion when he made contact with the Russian Left Opposition, and met Trotsky for the first time though we do not have any firm evidence of this. He was in Vienna when Trotsky was expelled from the USSR, and was probably informed of the details by Raissa Adler. He then decided to go and help the exiles. Only the fact that the two men had met before explains why the young Czech, who had no letter of introduction, was welcomed without any problems.

‘His trip and his stay there triggered off a stream of young Communist militants to Turkey. Salus was there that summer when three of his comrades, the engineering worker Ferdinand Jerabeck, the bookbinder Frantisek Kohout, and the young intellectual Jiri Kopp came in their turn...

‘After the break-up of the Czechoslovak group of Rudy Pravo, he [Trotsky] supported Salus, the founder of Jiskra , a journal of the Left Opposition which sought to become the paper of oppositional groups in Brno, Pilsen and Bratislava.’ (P Broué, Trotsky , ppól4, 649)

Alexander says:

‘Upon Trotsky’s exile in 1929, Salus volunteered to serve as Trotsky’s personal secretary and bodyguard at Prinki. His group edited for time a periodical Jiskra , named after the publication edited by Lenin early in the century.

‘It was probably the Salus group to which Trotsky was referring when he informed the Russian Left Opposition in 1930 that “the Czechoslovak group which came into existence several months ago is working with great energy; the first of its publications should be out very soon”.

‘It was not until February 1938 that the dispersed Trotskyist groups of Czechoslovakia were in fact brought together to form the Revolutionary Socialist Party. The factions represented at the conference were those... of Jiskra-Das Banner led by Salus and Kopp... It was reported at the Founding Conference of the Fourth International that Wolfgang Salus in Prague headed the official Czechoslovak section of the International.’ (R Alexander, International Trotskyism, pp234-5)

Studies on Trotsky

Two articles by Dr Ian Thatcher in Coexistence (nos 27 and 29) summarise the articles on Trotsky that appeared in the Soviet press in the 1980s up to the coup in August 1991. The evolution and growing divergences amongst Soviet historians over Trotsky’s place in Russian history are traced in a thorough and scholarly way, though he says little of the new archival material, much of which has only become available since the coup. In a footnote, he criticises Judith Shapiro’s article i class="sub"n Revolutionary History (Volume 2, no 2, Summer 1989), perhaps a little unfairly. Dr Thatcher hopes to bring out an annual Journal of Trotsky Studies, the first issue being due in June 1993. For more details, write to Dr Ian Thatcher, c/o University of Glasgow, Institute of Soviet and East European Studies, 29 Bute Gardens, Glasgow G12 8R5.

New Books in German

READERS WILL be delighted to learn that the proceedings of the conference on Trotsky at Wuppertal (reported in Revolutionary History , Volume 3, no 1, p35) have now been published in Germany under the title Leo Trotzi: Kritiker und Verteidiger der Sowjetgesellschaft, ISBN 3-929455-03-X, price DM39.80, pp356. It is edited by Theo Bergmann and Gert Schafer.

Three other works of interest to readers have also appeared from the same source. The first is Mario Kessler, Antisernitismus, Zionismus und Socialismus (ISBN 3-929455-00-5, DM24, pplS6), an extended treatment of a talk at the conference by an historian from the ex-GDR, who, along with most of the others, was sacked in the post-unification purge. The second is a study by Alexander Kan, Nikolai Bucharin und die skandinavische Arbeiterbewegung (ISBN 3-929455-01-3, DM 29.80, pp220), translated from the Swedish by Theo Bergmann, and the third is August Thalheimer, Programrnatische Fragen, a critique of the programme of the Sixth Comintern Congress (ISBN 3-929455-02-1, DM 18.80, ppll2), with a foreword by Theo Bergmann and an introduction by Jens Becker. All four books can be obtained from Decaton Verlag, Postfach 2161, 6500 Mainz, Fax 06131675989.