ON the eastern side of Huesca, until late March, nothing happened — almost literally1 nothing. We were twelve hundred metres from the enemy. When the Fascists3 were driven back into Huesca the Republican Army troops who held this part of the line had not been over-zealous in their advance, so that the line formed a kind of pocket. Later it would have to be advanced — a ticklish4 job under fire — but for the present the enemy might as well have been nonexistent; our sole preoccupation was keeping warm and getting enough to eat. As a matter of fact there were things in this period that interested me greatly, and I will describe some of them later. But I shall be keeping nearer to the order of events if I try here to give some account of the internal political situation on the Government side.
At the beginning I had ignored the political side of the war, and it was only about this time that it began to force itself upon my attention. If you are not interested in the horrors of party politics, please skip; I am trying to keep the political parts of this narrative5 in separate chapters for precisely6 that purpose. But at the same time it would be quite impossible to write about the Spanish war from a purely7 military angle. It was above all things a political war. No event in it, at any rate during the first year, is intelligible8 unless one has some grasp of the inter-party struggle that was going on behind the Government lines.
When I came to Spain, and for some time afterwards, I was not only uninterested in the political situation but unaware9 of it. I knew there was a war on, but I had no notion what kind of a war. If you had asked me why I had joined the militia10 I should have answered: ‘To fight against Fascism,’ and if you had asked me what I was fighting for, I should have answered: ‘Common decency11.’ I had accepted the News Chronicle-New Statesman version of the war as the defence of civilization against a maniacal12 outbreak by an army of Colonel Blimps in the pay of Hitler. The revolutionary atmosphere of Barcelona had attracted me deeply, but I had made no attempt to understand it. As for the kaleidoscope of political parties and trade unions, with their tiresome13 names — P.S.U.C., P.O.U.M., F.A.I., C.N.T., U.G.T., J.C.I., J.S.U., A.I.T. — they merely exasperated14 me. It looked at first sight as though Spain were suffering from a plague of initials. I knew that I was serving in something called the P.O.U.M. (I had only joined the P.O.U.M. militia rather than any other because I happened to arrive in Barcelona with I.L.P. papers), but I did not realize that there were serious differences between the political parties. At Monte Pocero, when they pointed15 to the position on our left and said:
‘Those are the Socialists16’ (meaning the P.S.U.C.), I was puzzled and said: ‘Aren’t we all Socialists?’ I thought it idiotic18 that people fighting for their lives should have separate parties; my attitude always was, ‘Why can’t we drop all this political nonsense and get on with the war?’ This of course was the correct’ anti-Fascist2’ attitude which had been carefully disseminated20 by the English newspapers, largely in order to prevent people from grasping the real nature of the struggle. But in Spain, especially in Catalonia, it was an attitude that no one could or did keep up indefinitely. Everyone, however unwillingly21, took sides sooner or later. For even if one cared nothing for the political parties and their conflicting ‘lines’, it was too obvious that one’s own destiny was involved. As a militiaman one was a soldier against Franco, but one was also a pawn22 in an enormous struggle that was being fought out between two political theories. When I scrounged for firewood on the mountainside and wondered whether this was really a war or whether the News Chronicle had made it up, when I dodged23 the Communist machine-guns in the Barcelona riots, when I finally fled from Spain with the police one jump behind me — all these things happened to me in that particular way because I was serving in the P.O.U.M. militia and not in the P.S.U.C. So great is the difference between two sets of initials!
To understand the alignment24 on the Government side one has got to remember how the war started. When the fighting broke out on 18 July it is probable that every anti-Fascist in Europe felt a thrill of hope. For here at last, apparently26, was democracy standing27 up to Fascism. For years past the so-called democratic countries had been surrendering to Fascism at every step. The Japanese had been allowed to do as they liked in Manchuria. Hitler had walked into power and proceeded to massacre28 political opponents of all shades. Mussolini had bombed the Abyssinians while fifty-three nations (I think it was fifty-three) made pious29 noises ‘off’. But when Franco tried to overthrow30 a mildly Left-wing Government the Spanish people, against all expectation, had risen against him. It seemed — possibly it was — the turning of the tide.
But there were several points that escaped general notice. To begin with, Franco was not strictly31 comparable with Hitler or Mussolini. His rising was a military mutiny backed up by the aristocracy and the Church, and in the main, especially at the beginning, it was an attempt not so much to impose Fascism as to restore feudalism. This meant that Franco had against him not only the working class but also various sections of the liberal bourgeoisie — the very people who are the supporters of Fascism when it appears in a more modern form. More important than this was the fact that the Spanish working class did not, as we might conceivably do in England, resist Franco in the name of ‘democracy’ and the status quo’, their resistance was accompanied by — one might almost say it consisted of — a definite revolutionary outbreak. Land was seized by the peasants; many factories and most of the transport were seized by the trade unions; churches were wrecked34 and the priests driven out or killed. The Daily Mail, amid the cheers of the Catholic clergy35, was able to represent Franco as a patriot36 delivering his country from hordes37 of fiendish ‘Reds’.
For the first few months of the war Franco’s real opponent was not so much the Government as the trade unions. As soon as the rising broke out the organized town workers replied by calling a general strike and then by demanding — and, after a struggle, getting — arms from the public arsenals38. If they had not acted spontaneously and more or less independently it is quite conceivable that Franco would never have been resisted. There can, of course, be no certainty about this, but there is at least reason for thinking it. The Government had made little or no attempt to forestall39 the rising, which had been foreseen for a long time past, and when the trouble started its attitude was weak and hesitant, so much so, indeed, that Spain had three premiers40 in a single day.1 Moreover, the one step that could save the immediate41 situation, the arming of the workers, was only taken unwillingly and in response to violent popular clamour. However, the arms were distributed, and in the big towns of eastern Spain the Fascists were defeated by a huge effort, mainly of the working class, aided by some of the armed forces (Assault Guards, etc.) who had remained loyal. It was the kind of effort that could probably only be made by people who were fighting with a revolutionary intention — i.e. believed that they were fighting for something better than the status quo. In the various centres of revolt it is thought that three thousand people died in the streets in a single day. Men and women armed only with sticks of dynamite42 rushed across the open squares and stormed stone buildings held by trained soldiers with machine-guns. Machine-gun nests that the Fascists had placed at strategic spots were smashed by rushing taxis at them at sixty miles an hour. Even if one had heard nothing of the seizure43 of the land by the peasants, the setting up of local Soviets44, etc., it would be hard to believe that the Anarchists47 and Socialists who were the backbone48 of the resistance were doing this kind of thing for the preservation49 of capitalist democracy, which especially in the Anarchist46 view was no more than a centralized swindling machine.
1 Quiroga, Barrios, and Giral. The first two refused to distribute arms to the trade unions.
Meanwhile the workers had weapons in their hands, and at this stage they refrained from giving them up. (Even a year later it was computed50 that the Anarcho-Syndicalists in Catalonia possessed51 30,000 rifles.) The estates of the big pro25-Fascist landlords were in many places seized by the peasants. Along with the collectivization of industry and transport there was an attempt to set up the rough beginnings of a workers’ government by means of local committees, workers’ patrols to replace the old pro-capitalist police forces, workers’ militias52 based on the trade unions, and so forth53. Of course the process was not uniform, and it went further in Catalonia than elsewhere. There were areas where the institutions of local government remained almost untouched, and others where they existed side by side with revolutionary committees. In a few places independent Anarchist communes were set up, and some of them remained in being till about a year later, when they were forcibly suppressed by the Government. In Catalonia, for the first few months, most of the actual power was in the hands of the Anarcho-syndicalists, who controlled most of the key industries. The thing that had happened in Spain was, in fact, not merely a civil war, but the beginning of a revolution. It is this fact that the anti-Fascist press outside Spain has made it its special business to obscure. The issue has been narrowed down to ‘Fascism versus54 democracy’ and the revolutionary aspect concealed55 as much as possible. In England, where the Press is more centralized and the public more easily deceived than elsewhere, only two versions of the Spanish war have had any publicity56 to speak of: the Right-wing version of Christian57 patriots58 versus Bolsheviks dripping with blood, and the Left-wing version of gentlemanly republicans quelling59 a military revolt. The central issue has been successfully covered up.
There were several reasons for this. To begin with, appalling60 lies about atrocities61 were being circulated by the pro-Fascist press, and well-meaning propagandists undoubtedly62 thought that they were aiding the Spanish Government by denying that Spain had ‘gone Red’. But the main reason was this: that, except for the small revolutionary groups which exist in all countries, the whole world was determined63, upon preventing revolution in Spain. In particular the Communist Party, with Soviet45 Russia behind it, had thrown its whole weight against the revolution. It was the Communist thesis that revolution at this stage would be fatal and that what was to be aimed at in Spain was not workers’ control, but bourgeois33 democracy. It hardly needs pointing out why ‘liberal’ capitalist opinion took the same line. Foreign capital was heavily invested in Spain. The Barcelona Traction64 Company, for instance, represented ten millions of British capital; and meanwhile the trade unions had seized all the transport in Catalonia. If the revolution went forward there would be no compensation, or very little; if the capitalist republic prevailed, foreign investments would be safe. And since the revolution had got to be crushed, it greatly simplified things to pretend that no revolution had happened. In this way the real significance of every event could be covered up; every shift of power from the trade unions to the central Government could be represented as a necessary step in military reorganization. The situation produced was curious in the extreme. Outside Spain few people grasped that there was a revolution; inside Spain nobody doubted it. Even the P.S.U.C. newspapers. Communist-controlled and more or less committed to an anti-revolutionary policy, talked about ‘our glorious revolution’. And meanwhile the Communist press in foreign countries was shouting that there was no sign of revolution anywhere; the seizure of factories, setting up of workers’ committees, etc., had not happened — or, alternatively, had happened, but ‘had no political significance’. According to the Daily Worker (6 August 1936) those who said that the Spanish people were fighting for social revolution, or for anything other than bourgeois democracy, were’ downright lying scoundrels’. On the other hand, Juan Lopez, a member of the Valencia Government, declared in February 1937 that ‘the Spanish people are shedding their blood, not for the democratic Republic and its paper Constitution, but for . . . a revolution’. So it would appear that the downright lying scoundrels included members of the Government for which we were bidden to fight. Some of the foreign anti-Fascist papers even descended65 to the pitiful lie of pretending that churches were only attacked when they were used as Fascist fortresses66. Actually churches were pillaged67 everywhere and as a matter of course, because it was perfectly68 well understood that the Spanish Church was part of the capitalist racket. In six months in Spain I only saw two undamaged churches, and until about July 1937 no churches were allowed to reopen and hold services, except for one or two Protestant churches in Madrid.
But, after all, it was only the beginning of a revolution, not the complete thing. Even when the workers, certainly in Catalonia and possibly elsewhere, had the power to do so, they did not overthrow or completely replace the Government. Obviously they could not do so when Franco was hammering at the gate and sections of the middle class were on their side. The country was in a transitional state that was capable either of developing in the direction of Socialism or of reverting69 to an ordinary capitalist republic. The peasants had most of the land, and they were likely to keep it, unless Franco won; all large industries had been collectivized, but whether they remained collectivized, or whether capitalism70 was reintroduced, would depend finally upon which group gained control. At the beginning both the Central Government and the Generalite de Cataluna (the semi-autonomous Catalan Government) could definitely be said to represent the working class. The Government was headed by Caballero, a Left-wing Socialist17, and contained ministers representing the U.G.T. (Socialist trade unions) and the C.N.T. (Syndicalist unions controlled by the Anarchists). The Catalan Generalite was for a while virtually superseded71 by an anti-Fascist Defence Committee2 consisting mainly of delegates from the trade unions. Later the Defence Committee was dissolved and the Generalite was reconstituted so as to represent the unions and the various Left-wing parties. But every subsequent reshuffling of the Government was a move towards the Right. First the P.O.U.M. was expelled from the Generalite; six months later Caballero was replaced by the Right-wing Socialist Negrin; shortly afterwards the C.N.T. was eliminated from the Government; then the U.G.T.; then the C.N.T. was turned out of the Generalite; finally, a year after the outbreak of war and revolution, there remained a Government composed entirely72 of Right-wing Socialists, Liberals, and Communists.
2 Comite Central de Milicias Antifascistas. Delegates were chosen in proportion to the membership of their organizations. Nine delegates represented the trade unions, three the Catalan Liberal parties, and two the various Marxist parties (P.O.U.M., Communists, and others).
The general swing to the Right dates from about October-November 1936, when the U.S.S.R. began to supply arms to the Government and power began to pass from the Anarchists to the Communists. Except Russia and Mexico no country had had the decency to come to the rescue of the Government, and Mexico, for obvious reasons, could not supply arms in large quantities. Consequently the Russians were in a position to dictate73 terms. There is very little doubt that these terms were, in substance, ‘Prevent revolution or you get no weapons’, and that the first move against the revolutionary elements, the expulsion of the P.O.U.M. from the Catalan Generalite, was done under orders from the U.S.S.R. It has been denied that any direct pressure was exerted by the Russian Government, but the point is not of great importance, for the Communist parties of all countries can be taken as carrying out Russian policy, and it is not denied that the Communist Party was the chief mover first against the P.O.U.M., later against the Anarchists and against Caballero’s section of the Socialists, and, in general, against a revolutionary policy. Once the U.S.S.R. had intervened the triumph of the Communist Party was assured. To begin with, gratitude74 to Russia for the arms and the fact that the Communist Party, especially since the arrival of the International Brigades, looked capable of winning the war, immensely raised the Communist prestige. Secondly75, the Russian arms were supplied via the Communist Party and the parties allied76 to them, who saw to it that as few as possible got to their political opponents. 3 Thirdly, by proclaiming a non-revolutionary policy the Communists were able to gather in all those whom the extremists had scared. It was easy, for instance, to rally the wealthier peasants against the collectivization policy of the Anarchists. There was an enormous growth in the membership of the party, and the influx77 was largely from the middle class — shopkeepers, officials, army officers, well-to-do peasants, etc., etc. The war was essentially78 a triangular79 struggle. The fight against Franco had to continue, but the simultaneous aim of the Government was to recover such power as remained in the hands of the trade unions. It was done by a series of small moves — a policy of pin-pricks, as somebody called it — and on the whole very cleverly. There was no general and obvious counter-revolutionary move, and until May 1937 it was scarcely necessary to use force. The workers could always be brought to heel by an argument that is almost too obvious to need stating: ‘Unless you do this, that, and the other we shall lose the war.’ In every case, needless to say, it appeared that the thing demanded by military necessity was the surrender of something that the workers had won for themselves in 1936. But the argument could hardly fail, because to lose the war was the last thing that the revolutionary parties wanted; if the war was lost democracy and revolution. Socialism and Anarchism, became meaningless words. The Anarchists, the only revolutionary party that was big enough to matter, were obliged to give way on point after point. The process of collectivization was checked, the local committees were got rid of, the workers patrols were abolished and the pre-war police forces, largely reinforced and very heavily armed, were restored, and various key industries which had been under the control of the trade unions were taken over by the Government (the seizure of the Barcelona Telephone Exchange, which led to the May fighting, was one incident in this process); 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 differential pay rate, a privileged officer-caste, etc., etc. In the special circumstances this was the really decisive step; it happened later in Catalonia than elsewhere because it was there that the revolutionary parties were strongest. Obviously the only guarantee that the workers could have of retaining their winnings was to keep some of the armed forces under their own control. As usual, the breaking-up of the militias was done in the name of military efficiency; and no one denied that a thorough military reorganization was needed. It would, however, have been quite possible to reorganize the militias and make them more efficient while keeping them under direct control of the trade unions; the main purpose of the change was to make sure that the Anarchists did not possess an army of their own. Moreover, the democratic spirit of the militias made them breeding-grounds for revolutionary ideas. The Communists were well aware of this, and inveighed80 ceaselessly and bitterly against the P.O.U.M. and Anarchist principle of equal pay for all ranks. A general ‘bourgeoisification’, a deliberate destruction of the equalitarian spirit of the first few months of the revolution, was taking place. All happened so swiftly that people making successive visits to Spain at intervals81 of a few months have declared that they seemed scarcely to be visiting the same country; what had seemed on the surface and for a brief instant to be a workers’ State was changing before one’s eyes into an ordinary bourgeois republic with the normal division into rich and poor. By the autumn of 1937 the ‘Socialist’ Negrin was declaring in public speeches that ‘we respect private property’, and members of the Cortes who at the beginning of the war had had to fly the country because of their suspected Fascist sympathies were returning to Spain. The whole process is easy to understand if one remembers that it proceeds from the temporary alliance that Fascism, in certain forms, forces upon the bourgeois and the worker. This alliance, known as the Popular Front, is in essential an alliance of enemies, and it seems probable that it must always end by one partner swallowing the other. The only unexpected feature in the Spanish situation — and outside Spain it has caused an immense amount of misunderstanding — is that among the parties on the Government side the Communists stood not upon the extreme Left, but upon the extreme Right. In reality this should cause no surprise, because the tactics of the Communist Party elsewhere, especially in France, have made it clear that Official Communism must be regarded, at any rate for the time being, as an anti-revolutionary force. The whole of Comintern policy is now subordinated (excusably, considering the world situation) to the defence of U.S.S.R., which depends upon a system of military alliances. In particular, the U.S.S.R. is in alliance with France, a capitalist-imperialist country. The alliance is of little use to Russia unless French capitalism is strong, therefore Communist policy in France has got to be anti-revolutionary. This means not only that French Communists now march behind the tricolour and sing the Marseillaise, but, what is more important, that they have had to drop all effective agitation82 in the French colonies. It is less than three years since Thorez, the Secretary of the French Communist Party, was declaring that the French workers would never be bamboozled83 into fighting against their German comrades;4 he is now one of the loudest-lunged patriots in France. The clue to the behaviour of the Communist Party in any country is the military relation of that country, actual or potential, towards the U.S.S.R. In England, for instance, the position is still uncertain, hence the English Communist Party is still hostile to the National Government, and, ostensibly, opposed to rearmament. If, however, Great Britain enters into an alliance or military understanding with the U.S.S.R., the English Communist, like the French Communist, will have no choice but to become a good patriot and imperialist; there are premonitory signs of this already. In Spain the Communist ‘line’ was undoubtedly influenced by the fact that France, Russia’s ally, would strongly object to a revolutionary neighbour and would raise heaven and earth to prevent the liberation of Spanish Morocco. The Daily Mail, with its tales of red revolution financed by Moscow, was even more wildly wrong than usual. In reality it was the Communists above all others who prevented revolution in Spain. Later, when the Right-wing forces were in full control, the Communists showed themselves willing to go a great deal further than the Liberals in hunting down the revolutionary leaders.5
3 This was why there were so few Russian arms on the Aragon front, where the troops were predominantly Anarchist. Until April 1937 the only Russian weapon I saw — with the exception of some aeroplanes which may or may not have been Russian — was a solitary84 sub-machine — gun.
4 In the Chamber85 of Deputies, March 1935.
5 For the best account of the interplay between the parties on the Government side, see Franz Borkenau’s The Spanish Cockpit. This is by a long way the ablest book that has yet appeared on the Spanish war.
I have tried to sketch86 the general course of the Spanish revolution during its first year, because this makes it easier to understand the situation at any given moment. But I do not want to suggest that in February I held all of the opinions that are implied in what I have said above. To begin with, the things that most enlightened me had not yet happened, and in any case my sympathies were in some ways different from what they are now. This was partly because the political side of the war bored me and I naturally reacted against the viewpoint of which I heard most — i.e. the P.O.U.M.–I.L.P. viewpoint. The Englishmen I was among were mostly I.L.P. members, with a few C.P. members among them, and most of them were much better educated politically than myself. For weeks on end, during the dull period when nothing was happening round Huesca, I found myself in the middle of a political discussion that practically never ended. In the draughty evil-smelling barn of the farm-house where we were billeted, in the stuffy87 blackness of dug-outs, behind the parapet in the freezing midnight hours, the conflicting party ‘lines’ were debated over and over. Among the Spaniards it was the same, and most of the newspapers we saw made the inter-party feud32 their chief feature. One would have had to be deaf or an imbecile not to pick up some idea of what the various parties stood for.
From the point of view of political theory there were only three parties that mattered, the P.S.U.C., the P.O.U.M., and the C.N.T.–F.A.I., loosely described as the Anarchists. I take the P.S.U.C. first, as being the most important; it was the party that finally triumphed, and even at this time it was visibly in the ascendant.
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 Cataluna) was the Socialist Party of Catalonia; it had been formed at the beginning of the war by the fusion88 of various Marxist parties, including the Catalan Communist Party, but it was now entirely under Communist control and was affiliated89 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 swollen90 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 overlapped92, 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.
The P.S.U.C. ‘line’ which was preached in the Communist and pro — Communist press throughout the world, was approximately this:
‘At present nothing matters except winning the war; without victory in the war all else is meaningless. Therefore this is not the moment to talk of pressing forward with the revolution. We can’t afford to alienate93 the peasants by forcing Collectivization upon them, and we can’t afford to frighten away the middle classes who were fighting on our side. Above all for the sake of efficiency we must do away with revolutionary chaos94. We must have a strong central government in place of local committees, and we must have a properly trained and fully19 militarized army under a unified95 command. Clinging on to fragments of workers’ control and parroting revolutionary phrases is worse than useless; it is not merely obstructive, but even counterrevolutionary, because it leads to divisions which can be used against us by the Fascists. At this stage we are not fighting for the dictatorship of the proletariat, we are fighting for parliamentary democracy. Whoever tries to turn the civil war into a social revolution is playing into the hands of the Fascists and is in effect, if not in intention, a traitor96.’
The P.O.U.M. ‘line’ differed from this on every point except, of course, the importance of winning the war. The P.O.U.M. (Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxista) was one of those dissident Communist parties which have appeared in many countries in the last few years as a result of the opposition97 to ‘Stalinism’; i.e. to the change, real or apparent, in Communist policy. It was made up partly of ex-Communists and partly of an earlier party, the Workers’ and Peasants’ Bloc91. Numerically it was a small party,6 with not much influence outside Catalonia, and chiefly important because it contained an unusually high proportion of politically conscious members. In Catalonia its chief stronghold was Lerida. It did not represent any block of trade unions. The P.O.U.M. militiamen were mostly C.N.T. members, but the actual party-members generally belonged to the U.G.T. It was, however, only in the C.N.T. that the P.O.U.M. had any influence. The P.O.U.M. ‘line’ was approximately this:
6 The figures for the P.O.U.M. membership are given as: July 1936, 10,000; December 1936, 70,000; June 1937, 40,000. But these are from P.O.U.M. sources; a hostile estimate would probably divide them by four. The only thing one can say with any certainty about the membership of the Spanish political parties is that every party over — estimates its own numbers.
‘It is nonsense to talk of opposing Fascism by bourgeois “democracy”. Bourgeois “democracy” is only another name for capitalism, and so is Fascism; to fight against Fascism on behalf of “democracy” is to fight against one form of capitalism on behalf of a second which is liable to turn into the first at any moment. The only real alternative to Fascism is workers’ control. If you set up any less goal than this, you will either hand the victory to Franco, or, at best, let in Fascism by the back door. Meanwhile the workers must cling to every scrap98 of what they have won; if they yield anything to the semi — bourgeois Government they can depend upon being cheated. The workers’ militias and police-forces must be preserved in their present form and every effort to “bourgeoisify” them must be resisted. If the workers do not control the armed forces, the armed forces will control the workers. The war and the revolution are inseparable.’
The Anarchist viewpoint is less easily defined. In any case the loose term ‘Anarchists’ is used to cover a multitude of people of very varying opinions. The huge block of unions making up the C.N.T. (Confederacion Nacional de Trabajadores), with round about two million members in all, had for its political organ the F.A.I. (Federacion Anarquista Iberica), an actual Anarchist organization. But even the members of the F.A.I., though always tinged99, as perhaps most Spaniards are, with the Anarchist philosophy, were not necessarily Anarchists in the purest sense. Especially since the beginning of the war they had moved more in the direction of ordinary Socialism, because circumstances had forced them to take part in centralized administration and even to break all their principles by entering the Government. Nevertheless they differed fundamentally from the Communists in so much that, like the P.O.U.M., they aimed at workers’ control and not a parliamentary democracy. They accepted the P.O.U.M. slogan: ‘The war and the revolution are inseparable’, though they were less dogmatic about it. Roughly speaking, the C.N.T.–F.A.I. stood for: (i) Direct control over industry by the workers engaged in each industry, e.g. transport, the textile factories, etc.; (2) Government by local committees and resistance to all forms of centralized authoritarianism100; (3) Uncompromising hostility101 to the bourgeoisie and the Church. The last point, though the least precise, was the most important. The Anarchists were the opposite of the majority of so-called revolutionaries in so much that though their principles were rather vague their hatred102 of privilege and injustice103 was perfectly genuine. Philosophically104, Communism and Anarchism are poles apart. Practically — i.e. in the form of society aimed at — the difference is mainly one of emphasis, but it is quite irreconcilable105. The Communist’s emphasis is always on centralism and efficiency, the Anarchist’s on liberty and equality. Anarchism is deeply rooted in Spain and is likely to outlive Communism when the Russian influence is withdrawn106. During the first two months of the war it was the Anarchists more than anyone else who had saved the situation, and much later than this the Anarchist militia, in spite of their indiscipline, were notoriously the best fighters among the purely Spanish forces. From about February 1937 onwards the Anarchists and the P.O.U.M. could to some extent be lumped together. If the Anarchists, the P.O.U.M., and the Left wing of the Socialists had had the sense to combine at the start and press a realistic policy, the history of the war might have been different. But in the early period, when the revolutionary parties seemed to have the game in their hands, this was impossible. Between the Anarchists and the Socialists there were ancient jealousies108, the P.O.U.M., as Marxists, were sceptical of Anarchism, while from the pure Anarchist standpoint the ‘Trotskyism’ of the P.O.U.M. was not much preferable to the ‘Stalinism’ of the Communists. Nevertheless the Communist tactics tended to drive the two parties together. When the P.O.U.M. joined in the disastrous109 fighting in Barcelona in May, it was mainly from an instinct to stand by the C.N.T., and later, when the P.O.U.M. was suppressed, the Anarchists were the only people who dared to raise a voice in its defence.
So, roughly speaking, the alignment of forces was this. On the one side the C.N.T.–F.A.I., the P.O.U.M., and a section of the Socialists, standing for workers’ control: on the other side the Right-wing Socialists, Liberals, and Communists, standing for centralized government and a militarized army.
It is easy to see why, at this time, I preferred the Communist viewpoint to that of the P.O.U.M. The Communists had a definite practical policy, an obviously better policy from the point of view of the common sense which looks only a few months ahead. And certainly the day-to-day policy of the P.O.U.M., their propaganda and so forth, was unspeakably bad; it must have been so, or they would have been able to attract a bigger mass-following. What clinched110 everything was that the Communists — so it seemed to me — were getting on with the war while we and the Anarchists were standing still. This was the general feeling at the time. The Communists had gained power and a vast increase of membership partly by appealing to the middle classes against the revolutionaries, but partly also because they were the only people who looked capable of winning the war. The Russian arms and the magnificent defence of Madrid by troops mainly under Communist control had made the Communists the heroes of Spain. As someone put it, every Russian aeroplane that flew over our heads was Communist propaganda. The revolutionary purism of the P.O.U.M., though I saw its logic111, seemed to me rather futile112. After all, the one thing that mattered was to win the war.
Meanwhile there was the diabolical113 inter-party feud that was going on in the newspapers, in pamphlets, on posters, in books — everywhere. At this time the newspapers I saw most often were the P.O.U.M. papers La Batalla and Adelante, and their ceaseless carping against the ‘counter-revolutionary’ P.S.U.C. struck me as priggish and tiresome. Later, when I studied the P.S.U.C. and Communist press more closely, I realized that the P.O.U.M. were almost blameless compared with their adversaries114. Apart from anything else, they had much smaller opportunities. Unlike the Communists, they had no footing in any press outside their own country, and inside Spain they were at an immense disadvantage because the press censorship was mainly under Communist control, which meant that the P.O.U.M. papers were liable to be suppressed or fined if they said anything damaging. It is also fair to the P.O.U.M. to say that though they might preach endless sermons on revolution and quote Lenin ad nauseam, they did not usually indulge in personal libel. Also they kept their polemics115 mainly to newspaper articles. Their large coloured posters, designed for a wider public (posters are important in Spain, with its large illiterate116 population), did not attack rival parties, but were simply anti — Fascist or abstractedly revolutionary; so were the songs the militiamen sang. The Communist attacks were quite a different matter. I shall have to deal with some of these later in this book. Here I can only give a brief indication of the Communist line of attack.
On the surface the quarrel between the Communists and the P.O.U.M. was one of tactics. The P.O.U.M. was for immediate revolution, the Communists not. So far so good; there was much to be said on both sides. Further, the Communists contended that the P.O.U.M. propaganda divided and weakened the Government forces and thus endangered the war; again, though finally I do not agree, a good case could be made out for this. But here the peculiarity117 of Communist tactics came in. Tentatively at first, then more loudly, they began to assert that the P.O.U.M. was splitting the Government forces not by bad judgement but by deliberate design. The P.O.U.M. was declared to be no more than a gang of disguised Fascists, in the pay of Franco and Hitler, who were pressing a pseudo-revolutionary policy as a way of aiding the Fascist cause. The P.O.U.M. was a ‘Trotskyist’ organization and ‘Franco’s Fifth Column’. This implied that scores of thousands of working-class people, including eight or ten thousand soldiers who were freezing in the front-line trenches119 and hundreds of foreigners who had come to Spain to fight against Fascism, often sacrificing their livelihood120 and their nationality by doing so, were simply traitors121 in the pay of the enemy. And this story was spread all over Spain by means of posters, etc., and repeated over and over in the Communist and pro-Communist press of the whole world. I could fill half a dozen books with quotations122 if I chose to collect them.
This, then, was what they were saying about us: we were Trotskyists, Fascists, traitors, murderers, cowards, spies, and so forth. I admit it was not pleasant, especially when one thought of some of the people who were responsible for it. It is not a nice thing to see a Spanish boy of fifteen carried down the line on a stretcher, with a dazed white face looking out from among the blankets, and to think of the sleek123 persons in London and Paris who are writing pamphlets to prove that this boy is a Fascist in disguise. One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting. The P.S.U.C. militiamen whom I knew in the line, the Communists from the International Brigade whom I met from time to time, never called me a Trotskyist or a traitor; they left that kind of thing to the journalists in the rear. The people who wrote pamphlets against us and vilified124 us in the newspapers all remained safe at home, or at worst in the newspaper offices of Valencia, hundreds of miles from the bullets and the mud. And apart from the libels of the inter-party feud, all the usual war-stuff, the tub-thumping, the heroics, the vilification125 of the enemy — all these were done, as usual, by people who were not fighting and who in many cases would have run a hundred miles sooner than fight. One of the dreariest126 effects of this war has been to teach me that the Left-wing press is every bit as spurious and dishonest as that of the Right.7 I do earnestly feel that on our side — the Government side — this war was different from ordinary, imperialistic127 wars; but from the nature of the war-propaganda you would never have guessed it. The fighting had barely started when the newspapers of the Right and Left dived simultaneously128 into the same cesspool of abuse. We all remember the Daily Mail’s poster: ‘REDS CRUCIFY NUNS’, while to the Daily Worker Franco’s Foreign Legion was ‘composed of murderers, white-slavers, dope-fiends, and the offal of every European country’. As late as October 1937 the New Statesman was treating us to tales of Fascist barricades129 made of the bodies of living children (a most unhandy thing to make barricades with), and Mr Arthur Bryant was declaring that ‘the sawing-off of a Conservative tradesman’s legs’ was ‘a commonplace’ in Loyalist Spain. The people who write that kind of stuff never fight; possibly they believe that to write it is a substitute for fighting. It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench118, except on the briefest of propaganda-tours. Sometimes it is a comfort to me to think that the aeroplane is altering the conditions of war. Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecedented130 in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him.
7 I should like to make an exception of the Manchester Guardian131. In connexion with this book I have had to go through the files of a good many English papers. Of our larger papers, the Manchester Guardian is the only one that leaves me with an increased respect for its honesty.
As far as the journalistic part of it went, this war was a racket like all other wars. But there was this difference, that whereas the journalists usually reserve their most murderous invective132 for the enemy, in this case, as time went on, the Communists and the P.O.U.M. came to write more bitterly about one another than about the Fascists. Nevertheless at the time I could not bring myself to take it very seriously. The inter-party feud was annoying and even disgusting, but it appeared to me as a domestic squabble. I did not believe that it would alter anything or that there was any really irreconcilable difference of policy. I grasped that the Communists and Liberals had set their faces against allowing the revolution to go forward; I did not grasp that they might be capable of swinging it back.
There was a good reason for this. All this time I was at the front, and at the front the social and political atmosphere did not change. I had left Barcelona in early January and I did not go on leave till late April; and all this time — indeed, till later — in the strip of Aragon controlled by Anarchist and P.O.U.M. troops, the same conditions persisted, at least outwardly. The revolutionary atmosphere remained as I had first known it. General and private, peasant and militiaman, still met as equals; everyone drew the same pay, wore the same clothes, ate the same food, and called everyone else ‘thou’ and ‘comrade’; there was no boss-class, no menial-class, no beggars, no prostitutes, no lawyers, no priests, no boot-licking, no cap-touching. I was breathing the air of equality, and I was simple enough to imagine that it existed all over Spain. I did not realize that more or less by chance I was isolated133 among the most revolutionary section of the Spanish working class.
So, when my more politically educated comrades told me that one could not take a purely military attitude towards the war, and that the choice lay between revolution and Fascism, I was inclined to laugh at them. On the whole I accepted the Communist viewpoint, which boiled down to saying: ‘We can’t talk of revolution till we’ve won the war’, and not the P.O.U.M. viewpoint, which boiled down to saying: ‘We must go forward or we shall go back.’ When later on I decided134 that the P.O.U.M. were right, or at any rate righter than the Communists, it was not altogether upon a point of theory. On paper the Communist case was a good one; the trouble was that their actual behaviour made it difficult to believe that they were advancing it in good faith. The often-repeated slogan: ‘The war first and the revolution afterwards’, though devoutly135 believed in by the average P.S.U.C. militiaman, who honestly thought that the revolution could continue when the war had been won, was eyewash. The thing for which the Communists were working was not to postpone136 the Spanish revolution till a more suitable time, but to make sure that it never happened. This became more and more obvious as time went on, as power was twisted more and more out of working-class hands, and as more and more revolutionaries of every shade were flung into jail. Every move was made in the name of military necessity, because this pretext137 was, so to speak, ready-made, but the effect was to drive the workers back from an advantageous138 position and into a position in which, when the war was over, they would find it impossible to resist the reintroduction of capitalism. Please notice that I am saying nothing against the rank-and-file Communists, least of all against the thousands of Communists who died heroically round Madrid. But those were not the men who were directing party policy. As for the people higher up, it is inconceivable that they were not acting139 with their eyes open.
But, finally, the war was worth winning even if the revolution was lost. And in the end I came to doubt whether, in the long run, the Communist policy made for victory. Very few people seem to have reflected that a different policy might be appropriate at different periods of the war. The Anarchists probably saved the situation in the first two months, but they were incapable140 of organizing resistance beyond a certain point; the Communists probably saved the situation in October-December, but to win the war outright141 was a different matter. In England the Communist war-policy has been accepted without question, because very few criticisms of it have been allowed to get into print and because its general line — do away with revolutionary chaos, speed up production, militarize the army — sounds realistic and efficient. It is worth pointing out its inherent weakness.
In order to check every revolutionary tendency and make the war as much like an ordinary war as possible, it became necessary to throw away the strategic opportunities that actually existed. I have described how we were armed, or not armed, on the Aragon front. There is very little doubt that arms were deliberately142 withheld143 lest too many of them should get into the hands of the Anarchists, who would afterwards use them for a revolutionary purpose; consequently the big Aragon offensive which would have made Franco draw back from Bilbao, and possibly from Madrid, never happened. But this was comparatively a small matter. What was more important was that once the war had been narrowed down to a ‘war for democracy’ it became impossible to make any large-scale appeal for working-class aid abroad. If we face facts we must admit that the working class of the world has regarded the Spanish war with detachment. Tens of thousands of individuals came to fight, but the tens of millions behind them remained apathetic144. During the first year of the war the entire British public is thought to have subscribed145 to various ‘aid Spain’ funds about a quarter of a million pounds — probably less than half of what they spend in a single week on going to the pictures. The way in which the working class in the democratic countries could really have helped her Spanish comrades was by industrial action — strikes and boycotts146. No such thing ever even began to happen. The Labour and Communist leaders everywhere declared that it was unthinkable; and no doubt they were right, so long as they were also shouting at the tops of their voices that’ red’ Spain was not ‘red’. Since 1914-18 ‘war for democracy’ has had a sinister147 sound. For years past the Communists themselves had been teaching the militant148 workers in all countries that ‘democracy’ was a polite name for capitalism. To say first ‘Democracy is a swindle’, and then ‘Fight for democracy!’ is not good tactics. If, with the huge prestige of Soviet Russia behind them, they had appealed to the workers of the world in the name not of ‘democratic Spain’, but of ‘revolutionary Spain’, it is hard to believe that they would not have got a response.
But what was most important of all, with a non-revolutionary policy it was difficult, if not impossible, to strike at Franco’s rear. By the summer of 1937 Franco was controlling a larger population than the Government — much larger, if one counts in the colonies — with about the same number of troops. As everyone knows, with a hostile population at your back it is impossible to keep an army in the field without an equally large army to guard your communications, suppress sabotage149, etc. Obviously, therefore, there was no real popular movement in Franco’s rear. It was inconceivable that the people in his territory, at any rate the town-workers and the poorer peasants, liked or wanted Franco, but with every swing to the Right the Government’s superiority became less apparent. What clinches150 everything is the case of Morocco. Why was there no rising in Morocco? Franco was trying to set up an infamous151 dictatorship, and the Moors152 actually preferred him to the Popular Front Government! The palpable truth is that no attempt was made to foment153 a rising in Morocco, because to do so would have meant putting a revolutionary construction on the war. The first necessity, to convince the Moors of the Government’s good faith, would have been to proclaim Morocco liberated154. And we can imagine how pleased the French would have been by that! The best strategic opportunity of the war was flung away in the vain hope of placating155 French and British capitalism. The whole tendency of the Communist policy was to reduce the war to an ordinary, non-revolutionary war in which the Government was heavily handicapped. For a war of that kind has got to be won by mechanical means, i.e. ultimately, by limitless supplies of weapons; and the Government’s chief donor156 of weapons, the U.S.S.R., was at a great disadvantage, geographically157, compared with Italy and Germany. Perhaps the P.O.U.M. and Anarchist slogan: ‘The war and the revolution are inseparable’, was less visionary than it sounds.
I have given my reasons for thinking that the Communist anti — revolutionary policy was mistaken, but so far as its effect upon the war goes I do not hope that my judgement is right. A thousand times I hope that it is wrong. I would wish to see this war won by any means whatever. And of course we cannot tell yet what may happen. The Government may swing to the Left again, the Moors may revolt of their own accord, England may decide to buy Italy out, the war may be won by straightforward158 military means — there is no knowing. I let the above opinions stand, and time will show how far I am right or wrong.
But in February 193^ I did not see things quite in this light. I was sick of the inaction on the Aragon front and chiefly conscious that I had not done my fair share of the fighting. I used to think of the recruiting poster in Barcelona which demanded accusingly of passers — by: ‘What have_yoy done for democracy?’ and feel that I could only answer:’ I have drawn107 my rations159.’ When I joined the militia I had promised myself to kill one Fascist — after all, if each of us killed one they would soon be extinct — and I had killed nobody yet, had hardly had the chance to do so. And of course I wanted to go to Madrid. Everyone in the army, whatever his political opinions, always wanted to go to Madrid. This would probably mean exchanging into the International Column, for the P.O.U.M. had now very few troops at Madrid and the Anarchists not so many as formerly160.
For the present, of course, one had to stay in the line, but I told everyone that when we went on leave I should, if possible, exchange into the International Column, which meant putting myself under Communist control. Various people tried to dissuade161 me, but no one attempted to interfere162. It is fair to say that there was very little heresy-hunting in the P.O.U.M., perhaps not enough, considering their special circumstances; short of being a pro-Fascist no one was penalized163 for holding the wrong political opinions. I spent much of my time in the militia in bitterly criticizing the P.O.U.M. ‘line’, but I never got into trouble for it. There was not even any pressure upon one to become a political member of the party, though I think the majority of the militiamen did so. I myself never joined the party — for which afterwards, when the P.O.U.M. was suppressed, I was rather sorry.
1 literally | |
adv.照字面意义,逐字地;确实 | |
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2 fascist | |
adj.法西斯主义的;法西斯党的;n.法西斯主义者,法西斯分子 | |
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3 fascists | |
n.法西斯主义的支持者( fascist的名词复数 ) | |
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4 ticklish | |
adj.怕痒的;问题棘手的;adv.怕痒地;n.怕痒,小心处理 | |
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5 narrative | |
n.叙述,故事;adj.叙事的,故事体的 | |
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6 precisely | |
adv.恰好,正好,精确地,细致地 | |
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7 purely | |
adv.纯粹地,完全地 | |
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8 intelligible | |
adj.可理解的,明白易懂的,清楚的 | |
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9 unaware | |
a.不知道的,未意识到的 | |
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10 militia | |
n.民兵,民兵组织 | |
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11 decency | |
n.体面,得体,合宜,正派,庄重 | |
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12 maniacal | |
adj.发疯的 | |
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13 tiresome | |
adj.令人疲劳的,令人厌倦的 | |
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14 exasperated | |
adj.恼怒的 | |
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15 pointed | |
adj.尖的,直截了当的 | |
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16 socialists | |
社会主义者( socialist的名词复数 ) | |
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17 socialist | |
n.社会主义者;adj.社会主义的 | |
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18 idiotic | |
adj.白痴的 | |
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19 fully | |
adv.完全地,全部地,彻底地;充分地 | |
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20 disseminated | |
散布,传播( disseminate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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21 unwillingly | |
adv.不情愿地 | |
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22 pawn | |
n.典当,抵押,小人物,走卒;v.典当,抵押 | |
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23 dodged | |
v.闪躲( dodge的过去式和过去分词 );回避 | |
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24 alignment | |
n.队列;结盟,联合 | |
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25 pro | |
n.赞成,赞成的意见,赞成者 | |
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26 apparently | |
adv.显然地;表面上,似乎 | |
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27 standing | |
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的 | |
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28 massacre | |
n.残杀,大屠杀;v.残杀,集体屠杀 | |
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29 pious | |
adj.虔诚的;道貌岸然的 | |
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30 overthrow | |
v.推翻,打倒,颠覆;n.推翻,瓦解,颠覆 | |
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31 strictly | |
adv.严厉地,严格地;严密地 | |
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32 feud | |
n.长期不和;世仇;v.长期争斗;世代结仇 | |
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33 bourgeois | |
adj./n.追求物质享受的(人);中产阶级分子 | |
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34 wrecked | |
adj.失事的,遇难的 | |
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35 clergy | |
n.[总称]牧师,神职人员 | |
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36 patriot | |
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37 hordes | |
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38 arsenals | |
n.兵工厂,军火库( arsenal的名词复数 );任何事物的集成 | |
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39 forestall | |
vt.抢在…之前采取行动;预先阻止 | |
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40 premiers | |
n.总理,首相( premier的名词复数 );首席官员, | |
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41 immediate | |
adj.立即的;直接的,最接近的;紧靠的 | |
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42 dynamite | |
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43 seizure | |
n.没收;占有;抵押 | |
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44 soviets | |
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45 Soviet | |
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46 anarchist | |
n.无政府主义者 | |
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47 anarchists | |
无政府主义者( anarchist的名词复数 ) | |
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48 backbone | |
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49 preservation | |
n.保护,维护,保存,保留,保持 | |
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50 computed | |
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51 possessed | |
adj.疯狂的;拥有的,占有的 | |
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52 militias | |
n.民兵组织,民兵( militia的名词复数 ) | |
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53 forth | |
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54 versus | |
prep.以…为对手,对;与…相比之下 | |
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55 concealed | |
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56 publicity | |
n.众所周知,闻名;宣传,广告 | |
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57 Christian | |
adj.基督教徒的;n.基督教徒 | |
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58 patriots | |
爱国者,爱国主义者( patriot的名词复数 ) | |
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59 quelling | |
v.(用武力)制止,结束,镇压( quell的现在分词 ) | |
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60 appalling | |
adj.骇人听闻的,令人震惊的,可怕的 | |
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61 atrocities | |
n.邪恶,暴行( atrocity的名词复数 );滔天大罪 | |
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62 undoubtedly | |
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63 determined | |
adj.坚定的;有决心的 | |
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64 traction | |
n.牵引;附着摩擦力 | |
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65 descended | |
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66 fortresses | |
堡垒,要塞( fortress的名词复数 ) | |
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67 pillaged | |
v.抢劫,掠夺( pillage的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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68 perfectly | |
adv.完美地,无可非议地,彻底地 | |
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69 reverting | |
恢复( revert的现在分词 ); 重提; 回到…上; 归还 | |
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70 capitalism | |
n.资本主义 | |
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71 superseded | |
[医]被代替的,废弃的 | |
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72 entirely | |
ad.全部地,完整地;完全地,彻底地 | |
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73 dictate | |
v.口授;(使)听写;指令,指示,命令 | |
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74 gratitude | |
adj.感激,感谢 | |
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75 secondly | |
adv.第二,其次 | |
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76 allied | |
adj.协约国的;同盟国的 | |
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77 influx | |
n.流入,注入 | |
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78 essentially | |
adv.本质上,实质上,基本上 | |
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79 triangular | |
adj.三角(形)的,三者间的 | |
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80 inveighed | |
v.猛烈抨击,痛骂,谩骂( inveigh的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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81 intervals | |
n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 );间隔时间;[数学]区间;(戏剧、电影或音乐会的)幕间休息 | |
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82 agitation | |
n.搅动;搅拌;鼓动,煽动 | |
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83 bamboozled | |
v.欺骗,使迷惑( bamboozle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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84 solitary | |
adj.孤独的,独立的,荒凉的;n.隐士 | |
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85 chamber | |
n.房间,寝室;会议厅;议院;会所 | |
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86 sketch | |
n.草图;梗概;素描;v.素描;概述 | |
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87 stuffy | |
adj.不透气的,闷热的 | |
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88 fusion | |
n.溶化;熔解;熔化状态,熔和;熔接 | |
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89 affiliated | |
adj. 附属的, 有关连的 | |
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90 swollen | |
adj.肿大的,水涨的;v.使变大,肿胀 | |
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91 bloc | |
n.集团;联盟 | |
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92 overlapped | |
_adj.重叠的v.部分重叠( overlap的过去式和过去分词 );(物体)部份重叠;交叠;(时间上)部份重叠 | |
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93 alienate | |
vt.使疏远,离间;转让(财产等) | |
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94 chaos | |
n.混乱,无秩序 | |
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95 unified | |
(unify 的过去式和过去分词); 统一的; 统一标准的; 一元化的 | |
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96 traitor | |
n.叛徒,卖国贼 | |
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97 opposition | |
n.反对,敌对 | |
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98 scrap | |
n.碎片;废料;v.废弃,报废 | |
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99 tinged | |
v.(使)发丁丁声( ting的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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100 authoritarianism | |
权力主义,独裁主义 | |
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101 hostility | |
n.敌对,敌意;抵制[pl.]交战,战争 | |
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102 hatred | |
n.憎恶,憎恨,仇恨 | |
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103 injustice | |
n.非正义,不公正,不公平,侵犯(别人的)权利 | |
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104 philosophically | |
adv.哲学上;富有哲理性地;贤明地;冷静地 | |
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105 irreconcilable | |
adj.(指人)难和解的,势不两立的 | |
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106 withdrawn | |
vt.收回;使退出;vi.撤退,退出 | |
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107 drawn | |
v.拖,拉,拔出;adj.憔悴的,紧张的 | |
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108 jealousies | |
n.妒忌( jealousy的名词复数 );妒羡 | |
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109 disastrous | |
adj.灾难性的,造成灾害的;极坏的,很糟的 | |
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110 clinched | |
v.(尤指两人)互相紧紧抱[扭]住( clinch的过去式和过去分词 );解决(争端、交易),达成(协议) | |
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111 logic | |
n.逻辑(学);逻辑性 | |
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112 futile | |
adj.无效的,无用的,无希望的 | |
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113 diabolical | |
adj.恶魔似的,凶暴的 | |
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114 adversaries | |
n.对手,敌手( adversary的名词复数 ) | |
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115 polemics | |
n.辩论术,辩论法;争论( polemic的名词复数 );辩论;辩论术;辩论法 | |
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116 illiterate | |
adj.文盲的;无知的;n.文盲 | |
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117 peculiarity | |
n.独特性,特色;特殊的东西;怪癖 | |
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118 trench | |
n./v.(挖)沟,(挖)战壕 | |
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119 trenches | |
深沟,地沟( trench的名词复数 ); 战壕 | |
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120 livelihood | |
n.生计,谋生之道 | |
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121 traitors | |
卖国贼( traitor的名词复数 ); 叛徒; 背叛者; 背信弃义的人 | |
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122 quotations | |
n.引用( quotation的名词复数 );[商业]行情(报告);(货物或股票的)市价;时价 | |
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123 sleek | |
adj.光滑的,井然有序的;v.使光滑,梳拢 | |
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124 vilified | |
v.中伤,诽谤( vilify的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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125 vilification | |
n.污蔑,中伤,诽谤 | |
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126 dreariest | |
使人闷闷不乐或沮丧的( dreary的最高级 ); 阴沉的; 令人厌烦的; 单调的 | |
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127 imperialistic | |
帝国主义的,帝制的 | |
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128 simultaneously | |
adv.同时发生地,同时进行地 | |
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129 barricades | |
路障,障碍物( barricade的名词复数 ) | |
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130 unprecedented | |
adj.无前例的,新奇的 | |
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131 guardian | |
n.监护人;守卫者,保护者 | |
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132 invective | |
n.痛骂,恶意抨击 | |
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133 isolated | |
adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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134 decided | |
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的 | |
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135 devoutly | |
adv.虔诚地,虔敬地,衷心地 | |
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136 postpone | |
v.延期,推迟 | |
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137 pretext | |
n.借口,托词 | |
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138 advantageous | |
adj.有利的;有帮助的 | |
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139 acting | |
n.演戏,行为,假装;adj.代理的,临时的,演出用的 | |
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140 incapable | |
adj.无能力的,不能做某事的 | |
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141 outright | |
adv.坦率地;彻底地;立即;adj.无疑的;彻底的 | |
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142 deliberately | |
adv.审慎地;蓄意地;故意地 | |
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143 withheld | |
withhold过去式及过去分词 | |
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144 apathetic | |
adj.冷漠的,无动于衷的 | |
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145 subscribed | |
v.捐助( subscribe的过去式和过去分词 );签署,题词;订阅;同意 | |
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146 boycotts | |
(对某事物的)抵制( boycott的名词复数 ) | |
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147 sinister | |
adj.不吉利的,凶恶的,左边的 | |
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148 militant | |
adj.激进的,好斗的;n.激进分子,斗士 | |
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149 sabotage | |
n.怠工,破坏活动,破坏;v.从事破坏活动,妨害,破坏 | |
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150 clinches | |
n.(尤指两人)互相紧紧抱[扭]住( clinch的名词复数 );解决(争端、交易),达成(协议)v.(尤指两人)互相紧紧抱[扭]住( clinch的第三人称单数 );解决(争端、交易),达成(协议) | |
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151 infamous | |
adj.声名狼藉的,臭名昭著的,邪恶的 | |
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152 moors | |
v.停泊,系泊(船只)( moor的第三人称单数 ) | |
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153 foment | |
v.煽动,助长 | |
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154 liberated | |
a.无拘束的,放纵的 | |
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155 placating | |
v.安抚,抚慰,使平静( placate的现在分词 ) | |
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156 donor | |
n.捐献者;赠送人;(组织、器官等的)供体 | |
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157 geographically | |
adv.地理学上,在地理上,地理方面 | |
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158 straightforward | |
adj.正直的,坦率的;易懂的,简单的 | |
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159 rations | |
定量( ration的名词复数 ); 配给量; 正常量; 合理的量 | |
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160 formerly | |
adv.从前,以前 | |
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161 dissuade | |
v.劝阻,阻止 | |
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162 interfere | |
v.(in)干涉,干预;(with)妨碍,打扰 | |
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163 penalized | |
对…予以惩罚( penalize的过去式和过去分词 ); 使处于不利地位 | |
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