Jean Rous

This last contribution is meant to interpret what goes before, and in a sense to draw a final line under it. It is translated from Espagne 1936-Espagne 1939: La révolution assassinée, first published by the Librairie du Travail in February 1939, and reprinted in Documents sur la révolution espagnole (1936-39), Les Cahiers du CERMTRI, no.38, September 1985, pp.3-34.

Its author, Jean Rous (1908-1985), began his career in the SFIO (Socialist Party), and in 1932 joined the French Trotskyists. A lawyer by profession, he was National Secretary of the GBL (Bolshevik-Leninist Left), the French Trotskyist group, in 1934, and when they entered the SFIO he was elected onto its National Administrative Council. When the Trotskyists left the SFIO he was a leading member of the POI (International Workers Party) formed in 1936. Born in Catalonia, he could speak both Catalan and Castillian, and as he was a member of the International Secretariat, this made him the ideal choice to send to Spain to make contact with the POUM and help organise the work of the Spanish Trotskyists. He was not able to achieve either objective, for as the foregoing accounts make plain, he not only fell foul of Nicola di Bartolomeo, the POUM’s liaison officer with the foreigners coming to Spain, but also with the party as a whole, including its centre-left wing around Andrade and Molins y Fábrega, and the result of his work was to isolate the Trotskyist militants yet further from the POUM.

In 1939 the French Trotskyists split, and Rous was a leader of the faction that joined the PSOP (Workers and Peasants Party) of Marceau Pivert. As the PSOP disintegrated, he was a member of the CQI (Committee for the Fourth International) publishing L’étincelle along with Yvan Craipeau, but in 1940 he was expelled from this group and set up a small nationalist grouping, the MNR (Revolutionary National Movement). Later in the war he was a supporter of the Libérer-Fedérer Resistance group, and joined the SFIO after the Liberation. After this he was for a while a member of the PSU (United Socialist Party), but rejoined the Socialist Party in 1972.

“There is nothing so destructive as illusion, whereas nothing can be of greater use to the revolution than naked truth.” So said Rosa Luxemburg in her speech on the programme. And the great revolutionary added: “The best source of a better and more profound understanding for the future is to practice self-criticism and to undertake a serious and practical examination of what has happened, of what has been accomplished and of what has been neglected in order to acquire proper methods and the way to follow ...” [1] This is the outlook that should inspire us in our study of the rich experience of the Spanish Civil War. The deaths of thousands upon thousands of revolutionary workers must not be in vain. All the causes of this defeat must be understood and examined.

This study does not intend to be a substitute for the most profound lessons in the theoretical sphere, such as those of Leon Trotsky, essentially those outlined in The Lessons of Spain: The Last Warning. [2] Nor does it intend to replace first hand observation, nor the more analytical studies touching upon particular questions, such as the land problem, the national question, some of the Anarchist experiences of agrarian Communism, the problem of the army, or of the trade unions. We await all these with interest – particularly from those comrades who took part in these events.

Here, we simply want to provide a summary of the main events in order to allow every concerned and deeply enquiring worker to have henceforth a sort of broad panoramic view of the essentials of the matter that is capable of helping him in his task.

19 July 1936–4 May 1937

Before July 1936: The Spanish Revolution began in 1931 with the fall of the absolutism of Alfonso XIII. But the Socialist leaders, Prieto and Caballero, did all they could to prevent the revolution from being carried through to its conclusion. They stopped at the bourgeois democratic stage and put Socialist tasks back to a distant future date. In the parliamentary arena they practised class collaboration, which led them to organise a bloody repression of the workers, such as the massacre of the Anarchist Commune of Casas Viejas, etc. The result of the betrayal of the interests of the working class by this ‘Popular Front’, which did not bear this name as yet, was to provoke and accelerate the offensive of bourgeois reaction. The working class on its part responded magnificently with its own method of struggle – direct action.

The culmination of this stage was the great Asturian Commune of October 1934. [3] The proletariat seized power by means of the Workers’ Alliances, whose instigators in Catalonia were Nin of the Communist Left, and Maurín of the Workers and Peasants Bloc. But the workers’ struggle was broken by the treachery of both the democrats (Azaña and Companys) and the reformist leaders, who prevented the arming of the workers and gave in without a fight.

Was anything learnt from this important lesson? Unquestionably not by the leadership of the different workers’ parties, which, from 1936 onwards, yet again allied themselves with the bourgeois democrats and concluded a common programme for the reform of the state and for wage demands typical of the French Popular Front programme. The Communists, who during the previous period had attacked the United Front between working class organisations as ‘Social Fascism’ and ‘Trotskyism’, were, even in Spain, the most ardent propagandists of the new formula of class collaboration. As for the Anarchist leaders, they proceeded to support the Popular Front from the sidelines, as it was well known that they would not get involved in politics. The POUM (the Workers Party of Marxist Unification, the product of the fusion of the Communist Left of Nin and Andrade and the Workers and Peasants Bloc of Maurín) later broke the pact, inasmuch as they considered it to be a purely electoral concern.

Brought to power by this electoral coalition, Azaña’s main concern was to defend the capitalist regime and private property that were threatened by the workers and the peasants. He protected the Fascist and reactionary officers. He supported them publicly, guaranteeing their loyalty. He had no more enthusiastic supporters than the so-called Communist Party. The Fascist conspiracy, which was then being openly prepared in the army in close liaison with the upper echelons of finance capital, remained, as always, the master plan. The result was the Francoist insurrection of 19 July 1936.

Except for five divisions the whole army went over to the Fascists. It was that kind of ‘Republican’ army! To begin with, both Azaña in Madrid and Companys in Barcelona refused to give arms to the workers and attempted to repeat their performance of 1934. But the workers had drawn their own conclusions, and, without taking the slightest notice of the Popular Front sermons about governmental and parliamentary authority, helped themselves. They spontaneously hurled themselves upon the rebel armies, and by fraternising with the soldiers, disarmed them and emptied the Fascist armouries and arms depots in Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia. In a word, they answered the Fascist insurrection organised by the ‘Republican’ army with a proletarian counter-insurrection.

From 19 July onwards the Spanish Revolution, combined with a civil war against the Fascist armies, had an upward trajectory, only to fall back again in a period of retreat and repression, whose most striking turning point of reference is the smashing of the 1937 May Days in Barcelona.

To start with we shall see the unfolding of the revolution in the first stage, and then how the revolution was defeated, to the great profit of the Fascist armies.

From 19 July to 15 August the workers repulsed the Fascist armies (the regular army, in other words) by turning their own weapons against them. Just before this the gentlemen Philistines of the Popular Front explained in their speeches that revolution was impossible on account of modern weaponry. But in Barcelona the workers of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI), the National Workers Union (CNT) and the POUM advanced against the Fascist battalions, disarmed them, took the barracks, and set up their own militias.

One fact is of the utmost significance: the Republican Left [4], the organisation which was by far the strongest electorally in Catalonia, which had every member of the Catalan Parliament save six, had at the same time the smallest militia (about 1,000 men). On the other hand, the POUM, the most feeble both numerically and electorally, was, with a militia of between 5,000 and 6,000 combatants, the next biggest after the CNT, which was the strongest working class organisation. Such was the power of the revolution compared with that of the Popular Front!

This was the heroic period of the Durruti Column, of the Grossi Arquer Column of the POUM, and of the first international column or Lenin Column, composed of international revolutionaries, including militants of the Fourth International, among them Robert de Fauconnet [5], who was killed at Huesca, Italian Maximalists, and militants of the Independent Labour Party.

In spite of the official Giral-Azaña [6] government, the toiling masses also entered into action in Madrid. Even if the POUM section was so weak numerically, it was at the head of the attackers who took the Montana Barracks with cries of “Long live Lenin and Trotsky!”. In a few days the enemy was pushed back 150 kilometres from Madrid. On the Catalan front, where it had been pushed back more then 250 kilometres, the columns of the POUM and the Durruti Column were some tens of miles from Saragossa.

But the Republican ministers and generals were uneasy about the lightning victory of the masses. They held back. In Catalonia, they did not want to take Huesca. Their rôle was even more cynical in Madrid. On the radio Giral and Prieto openly begged the Fascists, whom they called “brothers of the same blood” (sic!) to conclude a truce! And sure enough Mundo Obrero, the organ of the so-called Communist Party, supported Prieto.

Permanent Revolution in Action

To a greater or lesser extent, everywhere in ‘governmental’ territory civil war was accompanied by social revolution. The Socialist revolution completed the struggle for the defence of democratic liberties. The so-called abstract theory of Permanent Revolution, according to which, in the epoch of decaying capitalism, democratic tasks can only be carried to their conclusion by the methods of the Socialist revolution, became a reality. The militants of the POUM and the CNT, and the Catalan and Madrileno masses carried out the permanent revolution, most of them quite unconsciously. To defend themselves against Fascism, they had taken over the factories and land here, expropriated the capitalists there, and everywhere built their own workers’ state (the committees) in the face of the old bourgeois democratic state. However, the Messrs Stalinist leaders chattered on about the necessity of halting at the democratic revolution. Describing the situation at the time, the Central Committee of the POUM could say:

From the very first moments in Catalonia the revolution has assumed a proletarian character and the working class has made itself absolute master of the situation. The normal organs of government continue to exist, but the appearance of bodies such as the Central Committee and the Council of the Economy had reduced the former to pure fantasy.

La Batalla, the organ of the POUM, wrote that:

In fact the Central Committee of the Militias ruled Catalonia, and the Generalitat, presided over by Companys, was happy to carry out the decisions taken by the Central Committee. The Central Committee had absolute control over the entire military organisation of Catalonia and over the conduct of the war, including supplies. It was also the virtual master of internal order and of police control and, furthermore, it controlled the radio and exercised censorship over the press and communications of every sort.

In the same way a committee existed in every district and in every village: the local committee held total power and had the job both of guaranteeing the defence of working class gains and of the general political and economic administration which had replaced the capitalist Council of Administration. This was the moment when, because of the initiative of the workers and peasants of the CNT, the FAI and the POUM, these magnificent achievements of the Catalan proletariat sprang up in their hundreds.

In such factories as Hispano-Suiza in Barcelona, the whole management of production was in workers’ hands. Control was exercised by a committee with a representative from each branch of industry, including the engineers. The underground, transport and all the large factories were administered by workers’ committees and the CNT trade unions. The abolition of capitalist profit resulted in the lowest prices, the reduction of the working day and higher wages, along with the most rational organisation of production for the benefit of all.

Whoever was fortunate enough to be in Barcelona at that time (as was this writer) was convinced of the overwhelming superiority of the methods of Socialist management of the economy over the capitalist system, by the daily and very concrete results in factories, transport and shops. Moreover, the worker was simultaneously working for himself as well as for everyone and, through this, gained a feeling of initiative, a sense of responsibility and an energy which was completely unknown under capitalist slavery.

Under the inspiration of rank and file Anarchists, the peasants in hundreds and hundreds of country villages had abolished money, pooled their resources, fixed wages, set up distributive cooperatives for buying and selling in liaison with the trade unions, and got together in village assemblies encompassing the entire population to debate and decide upon the orientation and interests of the community, and to control the activity of their committee.

Capitalist private property was overthrown everywhere. Only under the protection of the leaders of the Popular Front did the official power of the old state remain, but it was completely disorganised, because in order to expropriate the capitalist enemy who would only work under the Fascist enemy, the workers were forced to construct their own state apparatus. Over and against Parliament and the Generalitat, they built their committees. Instead of the Republican army that they had blown to pieces, they built the people’s militias. It was not due to a kind of impulse, as the Stalinist witch-doctors explained, or as a result of so-called ‘Trotskyist provocation’ that the masses took the road towards the Socialist revolution. Every worker, faced point-blank with reality, could see that it was impossible to defeat Fascism, or achieve democratic aims, other than by the methods of the Socialist revolution, that is by expropriating the expropriators and constructing the apparatus of the workers’ state.

The great mass of the Anarchist workers of Catalonia thus put Marxism into practice without knowing it. A regime of dual power, in the classic sense of that term, existed in Catalonia, although it was less widespread in the rest of governmental territory, no doubt because the official bourgeois government there played a greater rôle. But even in Valencia an Executive Committee replaced the official governor, and the large industrial, agricultural and banking concerns were expropriated.

In Madrid the official decree only authorised “the expropriation of ordinary or judicial personnel who have, in a direct or indirect manner, taken part in the insurrectionary movement”. This decree was published in the September issue of Gaceta, the official paper. In precise governmental language it was a distant echo of the fact that, during the first days of July, the UGT and the CNT had taken control of the factories, shops, businesses and means of transportation. The entire authority of the government of the Popular Front was used to protect the Bank of Spain and the foreign banks, in particular the German ones.

Thus, even in Madrid, though to a lesser extent than in Catalonia, a regime of dual power existed: the committees were opposed to the official state. Catalonia was the decisive region, the heart of the revolution, as well as being at the same time the main reservoir for the industrial, natural and human resources of the Civil War.

The Real Question – The Decisive Moment

What would be the outcome of this dual power? Would the workers completely destroy and root out what remained of the old apparatus, such as the police, military and civil administration, as if they were tearing off old wallpaper? Would they substitute for it a state composed of the committees of the workers, peasants and militias that had sprung from the insurrection? Or, on the other hand, would the democratic bourgeoisie, helped by the Stalinists, reformists and all the supporters of the ‘democratic’, as opposed to the Socialist revolution, gradually rebuild the bourgeois state by reviving its remains? This was the decisive moment.

During August 1936 the world bourgeoisie trembled at the thought of a new October Revolution. It trembled, and quite rightly so. For it would have been enough for the CNT and the POUM to have simply called for the unequivocal abolition of the old official state, and its substitution by the creation of a state of committees of the workers, peasants and militias, beginning with Catalonia.

‘Democracy’ was in no position at that time to oppose this mopping up, for the armed workers were in charge. But any hesitation, and any loss of time, would allow the balance to tip to the right. And threatening signs had already appeared. In governmental territory the big capitalists had fled to Franco or further afield. Occasionally they were rescued with the complicity of the Popular Front, as was the case with Matteu, the head of the electricity consortium, who was saved on 30 July 1936 at the request of Blum, the president of the Council of France, and was sent to Barcelona as his personal secretary. [7]

But the capitalist top brass had left behind their left wing agents, the democrats Azaña and Companys and their allies in the Socialist and the Communist Parties. From the very first days of the proletarian counter-insurrection these gentlemen preached their sermons to humanity. Above all they wanted to defend “order and property”, as a resolution of the Communist Party put it. As if the insurrection of Franco had not been fomented with this overriding aim, and not just to replace the fading democrats! True enough, this entire Popular Front claimed that it had no worse enemy than Fascism, which it was necessary to fight “above all”. “Later on” we would see what could be done.

On 4 August Prieto’s journal El Socialista provided a lecture to the intellectuals from the leader of the Communist Party militias, a certain Castro [8], “to those elements who think that the time has come for the insurrection to put in place the foundations of the dictatorship of the proletariat, we must say that the popular militias were set up to defend the democratic republic against attacks from whichever direction they come”. This warning had to be made by a Communist leader. From the mouth of Azaña or Companys it would only have had the effect of inciting the proletarian insurrection even further. It came far more convincingly from the mouth of a Communist.

We want neither Fascism nor the social revolution, said the democrats, the reformists and the Stalinists. What we want is the status quo, bourgeois democracy and our jobs in the state and in parliament; that is what the workers must defend, full stop, that’s it. Otherwise, woe betide them! It is this selfsame preoccupation that at the same time aroused both democrats and bankers in London and Paris ... or, more precisely, the ‘Communist’ leader had done no more than convey the terror of the democrats and bankers of London and Paris in the face of a military victory against Franco that would be irresistibly accompanied by the Socialist revolution.

The banker of democratic Britain tells himself that Franco’s victory would be greatly preferable to such a catastrophe. What price democracy without capital? So as not to lose the support of my friend the banker, the Spanish democrat tells himself that at all costs the revolution must be prevented. The democrats in France and Britain were far less troubled than their Spanish allies by the ‘unwelcome’ presence of armed workers ...

Preventing the revolution meant for them above all preventing the development of the victorious struggle of the workers against the armies of Franco, cutting off food supplies, and preventing the normal supplying of Red Spain with weapons. Hence the non-intervention initiative of 6 August, undertaken by Blum and Eden [9] and approved of by Stalin, was in reality laid down by Vickers, Schneider, Rothschild, Forgeat-Matteu and Company. These gentlemen of big capital have given us a lesson in realism: what is decisive for we capitalists, and what has consequently been decisive for our government, even if it is a Popular Front one, is the preservation of our capital. To this end alone we are prepared to use the democrats at one moment, and the Fascists at another. Let it be understood, then, that if you democrats are incapable of holding back the revolution, then we will no longer rely on you. Franco will definitely be our man. Thus spoke the democrats of the Paris and London stock exchanges.

The Meaning of the Capitalist Manoeuvres

It must be observed that in some way their initiative of non-intervention was not only of help to Franco, but was also support for the enemies of the revolution in the governmental camp, such as the Azaña democrats and their allies. In fact, whoever penetrated the corridors of the revolution at this time, the offices of the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias for example, would have been able to tell that from the moment when Paris and London cut off all supplies, the Republican gentlemen and their Stalinist allies lifted their heads up again and regained fresh confidence. Speaking to the CNT, the FAI and the POUM, they said:

You see, dear friends [the tone was still friendly!] Blum and Eden have been frightened by some of the excesses, and it is going to cost you the revolution [they still talked about revolutions!]. We must reassure our Popular Front French and democratic British allies. That is a precondition for making them reverse their unfortunate decision. For this we must give the appearance of order and normality. We must preserve the façade of the bourgeois republic. You know what we mean – the façade! For we do not intend to take the factories from the workers.

Then the Anarchists nodded their heads sagely and replied with some emotion:

Fair enough! We have the economy, where we are the masters! So we very much want to make this concession to you, in the interests of anti-Fascist unity. You politicians can continue to concern yourselves with politics, and it is for you to represent us abroad.

Moreover, as a result of the lobby discussions at this time – the beginning of August – a series of measures was adopted, entitled normalisation, supposedly for the sake of the external ‘façade’, in order to reassure London and Paris.

Thus it was that the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias became, without any fuss, a simple arm of the official Ministry for the Defence of the Generalitat. To break up dual power, an executive council was formed in each ministry on which the parties and trade unions were represented. In a word, the new organs of workers’ power were incorporated into the old state machinery which was being reconsolidated, and of which they could only become an annex, a limb.

We did point out this danger at the time to the comrades of the POUM and the CNT, both in private conversation and afterwards in articles of the press service of the Fourth International, but they thought quite the opposite, as is explained, for example, in La Batalla. According to them, this solution had the advantage of shifting “revolutionary power into the governmental machine itself”. And “in Catalonia we cannot talk of the traditional schema of the Russian Revolution, dual power”. It was always the bourgeois power that was strengthened, whereas workers’ power was incorporated within it. Through the constant use of the slogan “Arms for the Front” the workers in the rear were gradually disarmed and the numbers of the regular police – the assault guards – were swollen considerably.

The time had now come for normalisation. They attempted to incorporate Socialism within the Generalitat on 11 August by means of the Economic Council that was instructed to run the new economy. So, obviously, President Companys adopted the programme of socialisation presented by Nin! The Economic Council was the Socialist Council of the bourgeois Generalitat ... Thus, in conditions of a revolutionary upsurge, the democratic gentlemen decked themselves out in a ‘Socialist’ disguise.

From that time onwards, by increasingly using the blackmail of non-intervention, in other words by resting on international capital, the democratic gentlemen went over to the offensive to reconquer lost ground. Skilfully, with a thousand flatteries addressed to the revolutionaries, they tried to find a route to counter-revolution.

As was their wont, it was in this way that the Spanish friends of Blum, Eden and Stalin were to use the defeats of San Sebastián and Irún [10], which were the direct results of Blum’s, Eden’s and Stalin’s crime of non-intervention. They were all for the revolution, but the war had to be won first and the revolution delayed until later. This was the start of the deception that strangled both the revolution and the war.

They also added that authority and unity are necessary; this latter preoccupation was far from being untrue. It was, on the contrary, the concern of every worker. But the whole point was to know precisely to whose advantage this authority would be exercised, and for what purpose was this unity to be forged. To the advantage of the workers, or of the bourgeoisie? For the construction of a new social order, or with a view to its destruction?

This was the crucial moment at which the revolutionary party could exploit to the utmost the legitimate desire for authority and unity. A strong power? Then a Militia Central Committee, with ultimate authority and full power over all matters. A united organisation? Then committees covering everything, linked together and electing and controlling the Central Committee. Within the army there should be political commissars, who had the confidence of the militias, controlling the military specialists until such time as military specialists could emerge from the training schools or the revolutionary ranks.

In the revolutionary conditions in Catalonia in particular such a state would have stood for the maximum unity, authority and democracy, though in the beginning, in comparison with the Anarchists, the Marxists would have been a small minority. But the creation of such a workers’ and peasants’ state (which at the time, let us repeat, would only have formalised what was actually existing) would in itself have signified a great victory for Marxist ideas, and would have meant the likelihood of our cadres, working under conditions of workers’ democracy, being able to enrich the experience of the Anarchist masses.

Unfortunately, as we have emphasised over and over again, to our deep regret [11] (and without any acknowledgment) it was the enemy of the revolution who, by this blackmail of unity and authority, forced concessions from the CNT and thus from the POUM in favour of the bourgeoisie and against the revolution. It was the classic apoliticism of the CNT that prevented it from seeing the danger. As for the POUM we felt that, in the best of faith, it continued to aid the revolution without losing its temper with the other anti-Fascist parties (among whom were to be found supporters of the counter-revolution).

Thus it was that the coalition government of 27 September 1936 was formed, including the bourgeois democrats, the Stalinist-reformist parties (UGT-PSUC), the Anarchist organisation (CNT) and the revolutionary party (POUM). President Taradellas, the bourgeois republican, gave the leading rôle to the bourgeois Republicans and the Stalinist-reformists with seven out of 12 government portfolios.

In Solidaridad Obrera the CNT and the FAI justified their participation in the government in the following way:

The Generalitat has so far existed on a petit-bourgeois basis with a certain preponderance of the industrial bourgeoisie ... The revolution has certain needs ... In a regional plenum the CNT ... took the decision in the circumstances to accept responsibility and to participate in the government, and, through the agency of a delegation of comrades from the CNT, decided to allow the formation of a council which would be formed by the representatives of the various anti-Fascist factions ... For the benefit of the revolution and for the future of the working class it was no longer possible for dual power to continue in Catalonia. To put it simply, the organisation which controls the immense majority of the working population had to be able to rise to the level of administrative and executive decisions ...

As far as the bourgeois Republican leaders (the Esquerra) and Stalinist-reformists (PSUC-UGT) were concerned, they were well pleased, though they expressed themselves with moderation. They welcomed the start of order and normalisation in the interests of the anti-Fascist war.

After expressing some reservations, the Central Committee of the POUM on its part expressed itself thus:

In this sense, the Central Committee considers today, as it did yesterday, that the government should be exclusively composed of working class parties and trade union organisations, but if this point of view is not shared by the other working class organisations, we will not insist on it, all the more so because the left Republican movement in Catalonia has a deeply popular character that radically distinguishes it from the essentially bourgeois republicanism of the Spanish left ... We are living in a transitional epoch, in which the force of events drives us into direct collaboration inside the Council of the Generalitat ...

In reality the questions that the advanced workers were posing, and not without some unease, were the following:

Is this the case of a government which will move to the restoration of the old bourgeois state, or of a government that will rest upon this new power, that of the committees? Moreover, can we construct the state and move towards the regime of the Socialist revolution alongside democrats and Stalinist-reformists, who are against this revolution? If a workers’ and peasants’ government is not yet possible, would it not be better to prepare for it by remaining in political opposition to this transitional bourgeois government, whilst maintaining strictly the unity of the anti-Fascist front within the military conflict, instead of joining hands with a government controlled by the enemies of the revolution?

All these questions could have been resolved in principle by looking at previous experiences, beginning with the most recent in Asturias. In his book Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain, Maurín gave a striking description of the mechanism of betrayal by the democrats and the petit-bourgeoisie at the time of the working class insurrection. He quoted the damning Document no.1, of 6 October 1934, issued by the Catalan left Republicans (the selfsame Companys and Co), in which these good apostles admitted that at the time of the working class insurrection their plan was to “attempt to divert the movement and prevent a surging and disordered tide from engulfing Catalonia”. They said “either abandon power [to the enemy] or get it back”. They went on cynically, “the three commandments of bourgeois democracy in its relations with the working class are: give in, take over again, or betray (divert)!” For these gentlemen it was, after 19 July 1936, a matter of “diverting”, together with an exceptionally skilled and powerful ally which was a past-master of police methods: Stalinism.

All these questions were to receive a practical response in the actions of the Taradellas government.