IT will never be possible to get a completely accurate and unbiased account of the Barcelona fighting, because the necessary records do not exist. Future historians will have nothing to go upon except a mass of accusations2 and party propaganda. I myself have little data beyond what I saw with my own eyes and what I have learned from other eyewitnesses4 whom I believe to be reliable. I can, however, contradict some of the more flagrant lies and help to get the affair into some kind of perspective.
First of all, what actually happened?
For some time past there had been tension throughout Catalonia. In earlier chapters of this book I have given some account of the struggle between Communists and Anarchists6. By May 1937 things had reached a point at which some kind of violent outbreak could be regarded as inevitable7. The immediate8 cause of friction9 was the Government’s order to surrender all private weapons, coinciding with the decision to build up a heavily-armed ‘non-political’ police-force from which trade union members were to be excluded. The meaning of this was obvious to everyone; and it was also obvious that the next move would be the taking over of some of the key industries controlled by the C.N.T. In addition there was a certain amount of resentment10 among the working classes because of the growing contrast of wealth and poverty and a general vague feeling that the revolution had been sabotaged11. Many people were agreeably surprised when there was no rioting on i May. On 3 May the Government decided13 to take over the Telephone Exchange, which had been operated since the beginning of the war mainly by C.N.T. workers; it was alleged14 that it was badly run and that official calls were being tapped. Salas, the Chief of Police (who may or may not have been exceeding his orders), sent three lorry-loads of armed Civil Guards to seize the building, while the streets outside were cleared by armed police in civilian15 clothes. At about the same time bands of Civil Guards seized various other buildings in strategic spots. Whatever the real intention may have been, there was a widespread belief that this was the signal for a general attack on the C.N.T. by the Civil Guards and the P.S.U.C. (Communists and Socialists16). The word flew round the town that the workers’ buildings were being attacked, armed Anarchists appeared on the streets, work ceased, and fighting broke out immediately. That night and the next morning barricades19 were built all over the town, and there was no break in the fighting until the morning of 6 May. The fighting was, however, mainly defensive20 on both sides. Buildings were besieged21, but, so far as I know, none were stormed, and there was no use of artillery22. Roughly speaking, the C.N.T.–F.A.I.–P.O.U.M. forces held the working-class suburbs, and the armed police-forces and the P.S.U.C. held the central and official portion of the town. On 6 May there was an armistice23, but fighting soon broke out again, probably because of premature24 attempts by Civil Guards to disarm25 C.N.T. workers. Next morning, however, the people began to leave the barricades of their own accord. Up till, roughly, the night of 5 May the C.N.T. had had the better of it, and large numbers of Civil Guards had surrendered. But there was no generally accepted leadership and no fixed26 plan — indeed, so far as one could judge, no plan at all except a vague determination to resist the Civil Guards. The official leaders of the C.N.T. had joined with those of the U.G.T. in imploring27 everyone to go back to work; above all, food was running short. In such circumstances nobody was sure enough of the issue to go on fighting. By the afternoon of 7 May conditions were almost normal. That evening six thousand Assault Guards, sent by sea from Valencia, arrived and took control of the town. The Government issued an order for the surrender of all arms except those held by the regular forces, and during the next few days large numbers of arms were seized. The casualties during the fighting were officially given out as four hundred killed and about a thousand wounded. Four hundred killed is possibly an exaggeration, but as there is no way of verifying this we must accept it as accurate.
Secondly28, as to the after-effects of the fighting. Obviously it is impossible to say with any certainty what these were. There is no evidence that the outbreak had any direct effect upon the course of the war, though obviously it must have had if it continued even a few days longer. It was made the excuse for bringing Catalonia under the direct control of Valencia, for hastening the break-up of the militias29, and for the suppression of the P.O.U.M., and no doubt it also had its share in bringing down the Caballero Government. But we may take it as certain that these things would have happened in any case. The real question is whether the C.N.T. workers who came into the street gained or lost by showing fight on this occasion. It is pure guesswork, but my own opinion is that they gained more than they lost. The seizure31 of the Barcelona Telephone Exchange was simply one incident in a long process. Since the previous year direct power had been gradually manoeuvred out of the hands of the syndicates, and the general movement was away from working-class control and towards centralized control, leading on to State capitalism33 or, possibly, towards the reintroduction of private capitalism. The fact that at this point there was resistance probably slowed the process down. A year after the outbreak of war the Catalan workers had lost much of their power, but their position was still comparatively favourable34. It might have been much less so if they had made it clear that they would lie down under no matter what provocation35. There are occasions when it pays better to fight and be beaten than not to fight at all.
Thirdly, what purpose, if any, lay behind the outbreak? Was it any kind of coup36 d’etat or revolutionary attempt? Did it definitely aim at overthrowing38 the Government? Was it preconcerted at all?
My own opinion is that the fighting was only preconcerted in the sense that everyone expected it. There were no signs of any very definite plan on either side. On the Anarchist5 side the action was almost certainly spontaneous, for it was an affair mainly of the rank and file. The people came into the streets and their political leaders followed reluctantly, or did not follow at all. The only people who even talked in a revolutionary strain were the Friends of Durruti, a small extremist group within the F.A.I., and the P.O.U.M. But once again they were following and not leading. The Friends of Durruti distributed some kind of revolutionary leaflet, but this did not appear until 5 May and cannot be said to have started the fighting, which had started of its own accord two days earlier. The official leaders of the C.N.T. disowned the whole affair from the start. There were a number of reasons for this. To begin with, the fact that the C.N.T. was still represented in the Government and the Generalite ensured that its leaders would be more conservative than their followers39. Secondly, the main object of the C.N.T. leaders was to form an alliance with the U.G.T., and the fighting was bound to widen the split between C.N.T. and U.G.T., at any rate for the time being. Thirdly — though this was not generally known at the time — the Anarchist leaders feared that if things went beyond a certain point and the workers took possession of the town, as they were perhaps in a position to do on 5 May, there would be foreign intervention40. A British cruiser and two British destroyers had closed in upon the harbour, and no doubt there were other warships41 not far away. The English newspapers gave it out that these ships were proceeding42 to Barcelona ‘to protect British interests’, but in fact they made no move to do so; that is, they did not land any men or take off any refugees. There can be no certainty about this, but it was at least inherently likely that the British Government, which had not raised a finger to save the Spanish Government from Franco, would intervene quickly enough to save it from its own working class.
The P.O.U.M. leaders did not disown the affair, in fact they encouraged their followers to remain at the barricades and even gave their approval (in La Batalla, 6 May) to the extremist leaflet issued by the Friends of Durruti. (There is great uncertainty43 about this leaflet, of which no one now seems able to produce a copy.) In some of the foreign papers it was described as an ‘inflammatory poster’ which was ‘plastered’ all over the town. There was certainly no such poster. From comparison of various reports I should say that the leaflet called for (i) The formation of a revolutionary council (junta), (ii) The shooting of those responsible for the attack on the Telephone Exchange, (iii) The disarming44 of the Civil Guards. There is also some uncertainty as to how far La Batalla expressed agreement with the leaflet. I myself did not see the leaflet or La Batalla of that date. The only handbill I saw during the fighting was one issued by the tiny group of Trotskyists (‘Bolshevik-Leninists’) on 4 May. This merely said: ‘Everyone to the barricades — general strike of all industries except war industries.’ (In other words, it merely demanded what was happening already.) But in reality the attitude of the P.O.U.M. leaders was hesitating. They had never been in favour of insurrection until the war against Franco was won; on the other hand the workers had come into the streets, and the P.O.U.M. leaders took the rather pedantic46 Marxist line that when the workers are on the streets it is the duty of the revolutionary parties to be with them. Hence, in spite of uttering revolutionary slogans about the ‘reawakening of the spirit of 19 July’, and so forth47, they did their best to limit the workers’ action to the defensive. They never, for instance, ordered an attack on any building; they merely ordered their followers to remain on guard and, as I mentioned in the last chapter, not to fire when it could be avoided. La Batalla also issued instructions that no troops were to leave the front.9 As far as one can estimate it, I should say that the responsibility of the P.O.U.M. amounts to having urged everyone to remain at the barricades, and probably to having persuaded a certain number to remain there longer than they would otherwise have done. Those who were in personal touch with the P.O.U.M. leaders at the time (I myself was not) have told me that they were in reality dismayed by the whole business, but felt that they had got to associate themselves with it. Afterwards, of course, political capital was made out of it in the usual manner. Gorkin, one of the P.O.U.M. leaders, even spoke48 later of ‘the glorious days of May’. From the propaganda point of view this may have been the right line; certainly the P.O.U.M. rose somewhat in numbers during the brief period before its suppression. Tactically it was probably a mistake to give countenance50 to the leaflet of the Friends of Durruti, which was a very small organization and normally hostile to the P.O.U.M. Considering the general excitement and the things that were being said on both sides, the leaflet did not in effect mean much more than ‘Stay at the barricades’, but by seeming to approve of it while Solidaridad Obrera, the Anarchist paper, repudiated51 it, the P.O.U.M. leaders made it easy for the Communist press to say afterwards that the fighting was a kind of insurrection engineered solely52 by the P.O.U.M. However, we may be certain that the Communist press would have said this in any case. It was nothing compared with the accusations that were made both before and afterwards on less evidence. The C.N.T. leaders did not gain much by their more cautious attitude; they were praised for their loyalty53 but were levered out of both the Government and the Generalite as soon as the opportunity arose.
9 A recent number of Inprecor states the exact opposite — that La Batalla orders the P.O.U.M. troops to leave the front! The point can easily be settled by referring to La Batalla of the date named.
So far as one could judge from what people were saying at the time, there was no real revolutionary intention anywhere. The people behind the barricades were ordinary C.N.T. workers, probably with a sprinkling of U.G.T. workers among them, and what they were attempting was not to overthrow37 the Government but to resist what they regarded, rightly or wrongly, as an attack by the police. Their action was essentially55 defensive, and I doubt whether it should be described, as it was in nearly all the foreign newspapers, as a ‘rising’. A rising implies aggressive action and a definite plan. More exactly it was a riot — a very bloody56 riot, because both sides had fire-arms in their hands and were willing to use them.
But what about the intentions on the other side? If it was not an Anarchist coup d’etat, was it perhaps a Communist coup d’etat — a planned effort to smash the power of the C.N.T. at one blow?
I do not believe it was, though certain things might lead one to suspect it. It is significant that something very similar (seizure of the Telephone Exchange by armed police acting57 under orders from Barcelona) happened in Tarragona two days later. And in Barcelona the raid on the Telephone Exchange was not an isolated58 act. In various parts of the town bands of Civil Guards and P.S.U.C. adherents59 seized buildings in strategic spots, if not actually before the fighting started, at any rate with surprising promptitude. But what one has got to remember is that these things were happening in Spain and not in England. Barcelona is a town with a long history of street-fighting. In such places things happen quickly, the factions60 are ready-made, everyone knows the local geography, and when the guns begin to shoot people take their places almost as in a fire-drill. Presumably those responsible for the seizure of the Telephone Exchange expected trouble — though not on the scale that actually happened — and had made ready to meet it. But it does not follow that they were planning a general attack on the C.N.T. There are two reasons why I do not believe that either side had made preparations for large-scale fighting:
(i) Neither side had brought troops to Barcelona beforehand. The fighting was only between those who were in Barcelona already, mainly civilians61 and police.
(ii) The food ran short almost immediately. Anyone who has served in Spain knows that the one operation of war that Spaniards really perform really well is that of feeding their troops. It is most unlikely that if either side had contemplated62 a week or two of street — fighting and a general strike they would not have stored food beforehand.
Finally, as to the rights and wrongs of the affair.
A tremendous dust was kicked up in the foreign anti-Fascist63 press, but, as usual, only one side of the case has had anything like a hearing. As a result the Barcelona fighting has been represented as an insurrection by disloyal Anarchists and Trotskyists who were ‘stabbing the Spanish Government in the back’, and so forth. The issue was not quite so simple as that. Undoubtedly64 when you are at war with a deadly enemy it is better not to begin fighting among yourselves; but it is worth remembering that it takes two to make a quarrel and that people do not begin building barricades unless they have received something that they regard as a provocation.
The trouble sprang naturally out of the Government’s order to the Anarchists to surrender their arms. In the English press this was translated into English terms and took this form: that arms were desperately65 needed on the Aragon front and could not be sent there because the unpatriotic Anarchists were holding them back. To put it like this is to ignore the conditions actually existing in Spain. Everyone knew that both the Anarchists and the P.S.U.C. were hoarding66 arms, and when the fighting broke out in Barcelona this was made clearer still; both sides produced arms in abundance. The Anarchists were well aware that even if they surrendered their arms, the P.S.U.C., politically the main power in Catalonia, would still retain theirs; and this in fact was what happened after the fighting was over. Meanwhile actually visible on the streets, there were quantities of arms which would have been very welcome at the front, but which were being retained for the ‘non-political’ police forces in the rear. And underneath67 this there was the irreconcilable68 difference between Communists and Anarchists, which was bound to lead to some kind of struggle sooner or later. Since the beginning of the war the Spanish Communist Party had grown enormously in numbers and captured most of the political power, and there had come into Spain thousands of foreign Communists, many of whom were openly expressing their intention of ‘liquidating’ Anarchism as soon as the war against Franco was won. In the circumstances one could hardly expect the Anarchists to hand over the weapons which they had got possession of in the summer of 1936.
The seizure of the Telephone Exchange was simply the match that fired an already existing bomb. It is perhaps just conceivable that those responsible imagined that it would not lead to trouble. Company, the Catalan President, is said to have declared laughingly a few days earlier that the Anarchists would put up with anything.10 But certainly it was not a wise action. For months past there had been a long series of armed clashes between Communists and Anarchists in various parts of Spain. Catalonia and especially Barcelona was in a state of tension that had already led to street affrays, assassinations69, and so forth. Suddenly the news ran round the city that armed men were attacking the buildings that the workers had captured in the July fighting and to which they attached great sentimental70 importance. One must remember that the Civil Guards were not loved by the working-class population. For generations past la guardia. had been simply an appendage71 of the landlord and the boss, and the Civil Guards were doubly hated because they were suspected, quite justly, of being of very doubtful loyalty against the Fascists72.11 It is probable that the emotion that brought people into the streets in the first few hours was much the same emotion as had led them to resist the rebel generals at the beginning of the war. Of course it is arguable that the C.N.T. workers ought to have handed over the Telephone Exchange without protest. One’s opinion here will be governed by one’s attitude on the question of centralized government and working-class control. More relevantly it may be said: ‘Yes, very likely the C.N.T. had a case. But, after all, there was a war on, and they had no business to start a fight behind the lines.’ Here I agree entirely73. Any internal disorder74 was likely to aid Franco. But what actually precipitated75 the fighting? The Government may or may not have had the right to seize the Telephone Exchange; the point is that in the actual circumstances it was bound to lead to a fight. It was a provocative76 action, a gesture which said in effect, and presumably was meant to say: ‘Your power is at an end — we are taking over.’ It was not common sense to expect anything but resistance. If one keeps a sense of proportion one must realize that the fault was not — could not be, in a matter of this kind — entirely on one side. The reason why a one-sided version has been accepted is simply that the Spanish revolutionary parties have no footing in the foreign press. In the English press, in particular, you would have to search for a long time before finding any favourable reference, at any period of the war, to the Spanish Anarchists. They have been systematically77 denigrated78, and, as I know by my own experience, it is almost impossible to get anyone to print anything in their defence.
10 New Statesman (14 May).
11 At the outbreak of war the Civil Guards had everywhere sided with the stronger party. On several occasions later in the war, e.g. at Santander, the local Civil Guards went over to the Fascists in a body.
I have tried to write objectively about the Barcelona fighting, though, obviously, no one can be completely objective on a question of this kind. One is practically obliged to take sides, and it must be clear enough which side I am on. Again, I must inevitably79 have made mistakes of fact, not only here but in other parts of this narrative80. It is very difficult to write accurately81 about the Spanish war, because of the lack of non-propagandist documents. I warn everyone against my bias1, and I warn everyone against my mistakes. Still, I have done my best to be honest. But it will be seen that the account I have given is completely different from that which appeared in the foreign and especially the Communist press. It is necessary to examine the Communist version, because it was published all over the world, has been supplemented at short intervals82 ever since, and is probably the most widely accepted one.
In the Communist and pro-Communist press the entire blame for the Barcelona fighting was laid upon the P.O.U.M. The affair was represented not as a spontaneous outbreak, but as a deliberate, planned insurrection against the Government, engineered solely by the P.O.U.M. with the aid of a few misguided ‘uncontrollables’. More than this, it was definitely a Fascist plot, carried out under Fascist orders with the idea of starting civil war in the rear and thus paralysing the Government. The P.O.U.M. was ‘Franco’s Fifth Column’ — a ‘Trotskyist’ organization working in league with the Fascists. According to the Daily Worker (11 May):
The German and Italian agents, who poured into Barcelona ostensibly to ‘prepare’ the notorious ‘Congress of the Fourth International’, had one big task. It was this:
They were — in cooperation with the local Trotskyists — to prepare a situation of disorder and bloodshed, in which it would be possible for the Germans and Italians to declare that they were ‘unable to exercise naval83 control of the Catalan coasts effectively because of the disorder prevailing84 in Barcelona’ and were, therefore, ‘unable to do otherwise than land forces in Barcelona’.
In other words, what was being prepared was a situation in which the German and Italian Governments could land troops or marines quite openly on the Catalan coasts, declaring that they were doing so ‘in order to preserve order’. . . .
The instrument for all this lay ready to hand for the Germans and Italians in the shape of the Trotskyist organization known as the P.O.U.M.
The P.O.U.M., acting in cooperation with well-known criminal elements, and with certain other deluded85 persons in the Anarchist organizations planned, organized, and led the attack in the rearguard, accurately timed to coincide with the attack on the front at Bilbao, etc., etc.
Later in the article the Barcelona fighting becomes ‘the P.O.U.M. attack’, and in another article in the same issue it is stated that there is ‘no doubt that it is at the door of the P.O.U.M. that the responsibility for the bloodshed in Catalonia must be laid’. Inprecor (29 May) states that those who erected86 the barricades in Barcelona were ‘only members of the P.O.U.M. organized from that party for this purpose’.
I could quote a great deal more, but this is clear enough. The P.O.U.M. was wholly responsible and the P.O.U.M. was acting under Fascist orders. In a moment I will give some more extracts from the accounts that appeared in the Communist press; it will be seen that they are so self-contradictory87 as to be completely worthless. But before doing so it is worth pointing to several a priori reasons why this version of the May fighting as a Fascist rising engineered by the P.O.U.M. is next door to incredible.
(i) The P.O.U.M. had not the numbers or influence to provoke disorders89 of this magnitude. Still less had it the power to call a general strike. It was a political organization with no very definite footing in the trade unions, and it would have been hardly more capable of producing a strike throughout Barcelona than (say) the English Communist Party would be of producing a general strike throughout Glasgow. As I said earlier, the attitude of the P.O.U.M. leaders may have helped to prolong the fighting to some extent; but they could not have originated it even if they had wanted to.
(ii) The alleged Fascist plot rests on bare assertion and all the evidence points in the other direction. We are told that the plan was for the German and Italian Governments to land troops in Catalonia; but no German or Italian troopships approached the coast. As to the ‘Congress of the Fourth International’ and the’ German and Italian agents’, they are pure myth. So far as I know there had not even been any talk of a Congress of the Fourth International. There were vague plans for a Congress of the P.O.U.M. and its brother-parties (English I.L.P., German S.A.P., etc., etc.); this had been tentatively fixed for some time in July — two months later — and not a single delegate had yet arrived. The ‘German and Italian agents’ have no existence outside the pages of the Daily Worker. Anyone who crossed the frontier at that time knows that it was not so easy to ‘pour’ into Spain, or out of it, for that matter.
(iii) Nothing happened either at Lerida, the chief stronghold of the P.O.U.M., or at the front. It is obvious that if the P.O.U.M. leaders had wanted to aid the Fascists they would have ordered their militia30 to walk out of the line and let the Fascists through. But nothing of the kind was done or suggested. Nor were any extra men brought out of the line beforehand, though it would have been easy enough to smuggle90, say, a thousand or two thousand men back to Barcelona on various pretexts91. And there was no attempt even at indirect sabotage12 of the front. The transport of food, munitions92, and so forth continued as usual; I verified this by inquiry93 afterwards. Above all, a planned rising of the kind suggested would have needed months of preparation, subversive94 propaganda among the militia, and so forth. But there was no sign or rumour95 of any such thing. The fact that the militia at the front played no part in the ‘rising’ should be conclusive96. If the P.O.U.M. were really planning a coup d’etat it is inconceivable that they would not have used the ten thousand or so armed men who were the only striking force they had.
It will be clear enough from this that the Communist thesis of a P.O.U.M. ‘rising’ under Fascist orders rests on less than no evidence. I will add a few more extracts from the Communist press. The Communist accounts of the opening incident, the raid on the Telephone Exchange, are illuminating97; they agree in nothing except in putting the blame on the other side. It is noticeable that in the English Communist papers the blame is put first upon the Anarchists and only later upon the P.O.U.M. There is a fairly obvious reason for this. Not everyone in England has heard of’Trotskyism’, whereas every English-speaking person shudders98 at the name of ‘Anarchist’. Let it once be known that ‘Anarchists’ are implicated99, and the right atmosphere of prejudice is established; after that the blame can safely be transferred to the ‘Trotskyists’. The Daily Worker begins thus (6 May):
A minority gang of Anarchists on Monday and Tuesday seized and attempted to hold the telephone and telegram buildings, and started firing into the street.
There is nothing like starting off with a reversal of roles. The Civil Guards attack a building held by the C.N.T.; so the C.N.T. are represented as attacking their own building attacking themselves, in fact. On the other hand, the Daily Worker of 11 May states:
The Left Catalan Minister of Public Security, Aiguade, and the United Socialist17 General Commissar of Public Order, Rodrigue Salas, sent the armed republican police into the Telef6nica building to disarm the employees there, most of them members of C.N.T. unions.
This does not seem to agree very well with the first statement; nevertheless the Daily Worker contains no admission that the first statement was wrong. The Daily Worker of 11 May states that the leaflets of the Friends of Durruti, which were disowned by the C.N.T., appeared on 4 May and 5 May, during the fighting. Inprecor (22 May) states that they appeared on 3 May, before the fighting, and adds that ‘in view of these facts’ (the appearance of various leaflets):
The police, led by the Prefect of Police in person, occupied the central telephone exchange in the afternoon of 3 May. The police were shot at while discharging their duty. This was the signal for the provocateurs to begin shooting affrays all over the city.
And here is Inprecor for 29 May:
At three o’clock in the afternoon the Commissar for Public Security, Comrade Salas, went to the Telephone Exchange, which on the previous night had been occupied by 50 members of the P.O.U.M. and various uncontrollable elements.
This seems rather curious. The occupation of the Telephone Exchange by 50 P.O.U.M. members is what one might call a picturesque100 circumstance, and one would have expected somebody to notice it at the time. Yet it appears that it was discovered only three or four weeks later. In another issue of Inprecor the 50 P.O.U.M. members become 50 P.O.U.M. militiamen. It would be difficult to pack together more contradictions than are contained in these few short passages. At one moment the C.N.T. are attacking the Telephone Exchange, the next they are being attacked there; a leaflet appears before the seizure of the Telephone Exchange and is the cause of it, or, alternatively, appears afterwards and is the result of it; the people in the Telephone Exchange are alternatively C.N.T. members and P.O.U.M. members — and so on. And in a still later issue of the Daily Worker (3 June) Mr J. R. Campbell informs us that the Government only seized the Telephone Exchange because the barricades were already erected!
For reasons of space I have taken only the reports of one incident, but the same discrepancies101 run all through the accounts in the Communist press. In addition there are various statements which are obviously pure fabrication. Here for instance is something quoted by the Daily Worker (7 May) and said to have been issued by the Spanish Embassy in Paris:
A significant feature of the uprising has been that the old monarchist flag was flown from the balcony of various houses in Barcelona, doubtless in the belief that those who took part in the rising had become masters of the situation.
The Daily Worker very probably reprinted this statement in good faith, but those responsible for it at the Spanish Embassy must have been quite deliberately102 lying. Any Spaniard would understand the internal situation better than that. A monarchist flag in Barcelona! It was the one thing that could have united the warring factions in a moment. Even the Communists on the spot were obliged to smile when they read about it. It is the same with the reports in the various Communist papers upon the arms supposed to have been used by the P.O.U.M. during the ‘rising’. They would be credible88 only if one knew nothing whatever of the facts. In the Daily Worker of 17 May Mr Frank Pitcairn states:
There were actually all sorts of arms used by them in the outrage103. There were the arms which they have been stealing for months past, and hidden, and there were arms such as tanks, which they stole from the barracks just at the beginning of the rising. It is clear that scores of machine-guns and several thousand rifles are still in their possession.
Inprecor (29 May) also states:
On 3 May the P.O.U.M. had at its disposal some dozens of machine-guns and several thousand rines. . . . On the Plaza104 de Espana the Trotskyists brought into action batteries of’75’ guns which were destined105 for the front in Aragon and which the militia had carefully concealed106 on their premises107.
Mr Pitcairn does not tell us how and when it became dear that the P.O.U.M. possessed108 scores of machine-guns and several thousand rifles. I have given an estimate of the arms which were at three of the principal P.O.U.M. buildings — about eighty rifles, a few bombs, and no machine-guns; i.e. about sufficient for the armed guards which, at that time, all the political parties placed on their buildings. It seems strange that afterwards, when the P.O.U.M. was suppressed and all its buildings seized, these thousands of weapons never came to light; especially the tanks and field-guns, which are not the kind of thing that can be hidden up the chimney. But what is revealing in the two statements above is the complete ignorance they display of the local circumstances. According to Mr Pitcairn the P.O.U.M. stole tanks ‘from the barracks’. He does not tell us which barracks. The P.O.U.M. militiamen who were in Barcelona (now comparatively few, as direct recruitment to the party militias had ceased) shared the Lenin Barracks with a considerably109 larger number of Popular Army troops. Mr Pitcaim is asking us to believe, therefore, that the P.O.U.M. stole tanks with the connivance110 of the Popular Army. It is the same with the ‘premises’ on which the 75-mm. guns were concealed. There is no mention of where these ‘premises’ were. Those batteries of guns, firing on the Plaza de Espana, appeared in many newspaper reports, but I think we can say with certainty that they never existed. As I mentioned earlier, I heard no artillery-fire during the fighting, though the Plaza de Espana was only a mile or so away. A few days later I examined the Plaza de Espana and could find no buildings that showed marks of shell-fire. And an eye-witness who was in that neighbourhood throughout the fighting declares that no guns ever appeared there. (Incidentally, the tale of the stolen guns may have originated with Antonov-Ovseenko, the Russian Consul-General. He, at any rate, communicated it to a well-known English journalist, who afterwards repeated it in good faith in a weekly paper. Antonov-Ovseenko has since been ‘purged111’. How this would affect his credibility I do not know.) The truth is, of course, that these tales about tanks, field-guns, and so forth have only been invented because otherwise it is difficult to reconcile the scale of the Barcelona fighting with the P.O.U.M.‘S small numbers. It was necessary to claim that the P.O.U.M. was wholly responsible for the fighting; it was also necessary to claim that it was an insignificant112 party with no following and ‘numbered only a few thousand members’, according to Inprecor. The only hope of making both statements credible was to pretend that the P.O.U.M. had all the weapons of a modern mechanized army.
It is impossible to read through the reports in the Communist Press without realizing that they are consciously aimed at a public ignorant of the facts and have no other purpose than to work up prejudice. Hence, for instance, such statements as Mr Pitcairn’s in the Daily Worker of 11 May that the ‘rising’ was suppressed by the Popular Army. The idea here is to give outsiders the impression that all Catalonia was solid against the ‘Trotskyists’. But the Popular Army remained neutral throughout the fighting; everyone in Barcelona knew this, and it is difficult to believe that Mr Pitcairn did not know it too. Or again, the juggling113 in the Communist Press with the figures for killed and wounded, with the object of exaggerating the scale of the disorders. Diaz, General Secretary of the Spanish Communist Party, widely quoted in the Communist Press, gave the numbers as 900 dead and 2500 wounded. The Catalan Minister of Propaganda, who was hardly likely to underestimate, gave the numbers as 400 killed and 1000 wounded. The Communist Party doubles the bid and adds a few more hundreds for luck.
The foreign capitalist newspapers, in general, laid the blame for the fighting upon the Anarchists, but there were a few that followed the Communist line. One of these was the English News Chronicle, whose correspondent, Mr John Langdon-Davies, was in Barcelona at the tune114 I quote portions of his article here:
A TROTSKYIST REVOLT
. . . This has not been an Anarchist uprising. It is a frustrated115 putsch of the ‘Trotskyist’ P.O.U.M., working through their controlled organizations, ‘Friends of Durruti’ and Libertarian Youth. . . . The tragedy began on Monday afternoon when the Government sent armed police into the Telephone Building, to disarm the workers there, mostly C.N.T. men. Grave irregularities in the service had been a scandal for some time. A large crowd gathered in the Plaza de Cataluna outside, while the C.N.T. men resisted, retreating floor by floor to the top of the building. . . . The incident was very obscure, but word went round that the Government was out against the Anarchists. The streets filled with armed men. . . . By nightfall every workers’ centre and Government building was barricaded116, and at ten o’clock the first volleys were fired and the first ambulances began ringing their way through the streets. By dawn all Barcelona was under fire. . . . As the day wore on and the dead mounted to over a hundred, one could make a guess at what was happening. The Anarchist C.N.T. and Socialist U.G.T. were not technically117 ‘out in the street’. So long as they remained behind the barricades they were merely watchfully118 waiting, an attitude which included the right to shoot at anything armed in the open street . . . (the) genera] bursts were invariably aggravated119 by pacos — hidden solitary120 men, usually Fascists, shooting from roof — tops at nothing in particular, but doing all they could to add to the general panic. . . . By Wednesday evening, however, it began to be clear who was behind the revolt. All the walls had been plastered with an inflammatory poster calling for an immediate revolution and for the shooting of Republican and Socialist leaders. It was signed by the ‘Friends of Durruti’. On Thursday morning the Anarchists daily denied all knowledge or sympathy with it, but La Batalla, the P.O.U.M. paper, reprinted the document with the highest praise. Barcelona, the first city of Spain, was plunged121 into bloodshed by agents provocateurs using this subversive organization.
This does not agree very completely with the Communist versions I have quoted above, but it will be seen that even as it stands it is self — contradictory. First the affair is described as ‘a Trotskyist revolt’, then it is shown to have resulted from a raid on the Telephone building and the general belief that the Government was ‘out against’ the Anarchists. The city is barricaded and both C.N.T. and U.G.T. are behind the barricades; two days afterwards the inflammatory poster (actually a leaflet) appears, and this is declared by implication to have started the whole business — effect preceding cause. But there is a piece of very serious misrepresentation here. Mr Langdon-Davies describes the Friends of Durruti and Libertarian Youth as ‘controlled organizations’ of the P.O.U.M. Both were Anarchist organizations and had no connexion with the P.O.U.M. The Libertarian Youth was the youth league of the Anarchists, corresponding to the J.S.U. of the P.S.U.C., etc. The Friends of Durruti was a small organization within the F.A.I., and was in general bitterly hostile to the P.O.U.M. So far as I can discover, there was no one who was a member of both. It would be about equally true to say that the Socialist League is a ‘controlled organization’ of the English Liberal Party. Was Mr Langdon-Davies unaware123 of this? If he was, he should have written with more caution about this very complex subject.
I am not attacking Mr Langdon-Davies’s good faith; but admittedly he left Barcelona as soon as the fighting was over, i.e. at the moment when he could have begun serious inquiries124, and throughout his report there are clear signs that he has accepted the official version of a ‘Trotskyist revolt’ without sufficient verification. This is obvious even in the extract I have quoted. ‘By nightfall’ the barricades are built, and ‘at ten o’clock’ the first volleys are fired. These are not the words of an eye-witness. From this you would gather that it is usual to wait for your enemy to build a barricade18 before beginning to shoot at him. The impression given is that some hours elapsed between the building of the barricades and the firing of the first volleys; whereas — naturally — it was the other way about. I and many others saw the first volleys fired early in the afternoon. Again, there are the solitary men, ‘usually Fascists’, who are shooting from the roof — tops. Mr Langdon-Davies does not explain how he knew that these men were Fascists. Presumably he did not climb on to the roofs and ask them. He is simply repeating what he has been told and, as it fits in with the official version, is not questioning it. As a matter of fact, he indicates one probable source of much of his information by an incautious reference to the Minister of Propaganda at the beginning of his article. Foreign journalists in Spain were hopelessly at the mercy of the Ministry125 of Propaganda, though one would think that the very name of this ministry would be a sufficient warning. The Minister of Propaganda was, of course, about as likely to give an objective account of the Barcelona trouble as (say) the late Lord Carson would have been to give an objective account of the Dublin rising of 1916.
I have given reasons for thinking that the Communist version of the Barcelona fighting cannot be taken seriously. In addition I must say something about the general charge that the P.O.U.M. was a secret Fascist organization in the pay of Franco and Hitler.
This charge was repeated over and over in the Communist Press, especially from the beginning of 1937 onwards. It was part of the world-wide drive of the official Communist Party against ‘Trotskyism’, of which the P.O.U.M. was supposed to be representative in Spain. ‘Trotskyism’, according to Frente Rojo (the Valencia Communist paper) ‘is not a political doctrine127. Trotskyism is an official capitalist organization, a Fascist terrorist band occupied in crime and sabotage against the people.’ The P.O.U.M. was a ‘Trotskyist’ organization in league with the Fascists and part of ‘Franco’s Fifth Column’. What was noticeable from the start was that no evidence was produced in support of this accusation3; the thing was simply asserted with an air of authority. And the attack was made with the maximum of personal libel and with complete irresponsibility as to any effects it might have upon the war. Compared with the job of libelling the P.O.U.M., many Communist writers appear to have considered the betrayal of military secrets unimportant. In a February number of the Daily Worker, for instance, a writer (Winifred Bates) is allowed to state that the P.O.U.M. had only half as many troops on its section of the front as it pretended. This was not true, but presumably the writer believed it to be true. She and the Daily Worker were perfectly128 willing, therefore, to hand to the enemy one of the most important pieces of information that can be handed through the columns of a newspaper. In the New Republic Mr Ralph Bates stated that the P.O.U.M. troops were ‘playing football with the Fascists in no man’s land’ at a time when, as a matter of fact, the P.O.U.M. troops were suffering heavy casualties and a number of my personal friends were killed and wounded. Again, there was the malignant129 cartoon which was widely circulated, first in Madrid and later in Barcelona, representing the P.O.U.M. as slipping off a mask marked with the hammer and sickle130 and revealing a face marked with the swastika. Had the Government not been virtually under Communist control it would never have permitted a thing of this kind to be circulated in wartime. It was a deliberate blow at the morale131 not only of the P.O.U.M. militia, but of any others who happened to be near them; for it is not encouraging to be told that the troops next to you in the line are traitors132. As a matter of fact, I doubt whether the abuse that was heaped upon them from the rear actually had the effect of demoralizing the P.O.U.M. militia. But certainly it was calculated to do so, and those responsible for it must be held to have put political spite before anti-Fascist unity54.
The accusation against the P.O.U.M. amounted to this: that a body of some scores of thousands of people, almost entirely working class, besides numerous foreign helpers and sympathizers, mostly refugees from Fascist countries, and thousands of militia, was simply a vast spying organization in Fascist pay. The thing was opposed to common sense, and the past history of the P.O.U.M. was enough to make it incredible. All the P.O.U.M. leaders had revolutionary histories behind them. Some of them had been mixed up in the 1934 revolt, and most of them had been imprisoned133 for Socialist activities under the Lerroux Government or the monarchy134. In 1936 its then leader, Joaquin Maurin, was one of the deputies who gave warning in the Cortes of Franco’s impending135 revolt. Some time after the outbreak of war he was taken prisoner by the Fascists while trying to organize resistance in Franco’s rear. When the revolt broke out the P.O.U.M. played a conspicuous136 part in resisting it, and in Madrid, in particular, many of its members were killed in the street-fighting. It was one of the first bodies to form columns of militia in Catalonia and Madrid. It seems almost impossible to explain these as the actions of a party in Fascist pay. A party in Fascist pay would simply have joined in on the other side.
Nor was there any sign of pro-Fascist activities during the war. It was arguable — though finally I do not agree — that by pressing for a more revolutionary policy the P.O.U.M. divided the Government forces and thus aided the Fascists;
I think any Government of reformist type would be justified137 in regarding a party like the P.O.U.M. as a nuisance. But this is a very different matter from direct treachery. There is no way of explaining why, if the P.O.U.M. was really a Fascist body, its militia remained loyal. Here were eight or ten thousand men holding important parts of the line during the intolerable conditions of the winter of 1936-7. Many of them were in the trenches138 four or five months at a stretch. It is difficult to see why they did not simply walk out of the line or go over to the enemy. It was always in their power to do so, and at times the effect might have been decisive. Yet they continued to fight, and it was shortly after the P.O.U.M. was suppressed as a political party, when the event was fresh in everyone’s mind, that the militia — not yet redistributed among the Popular Army — took part in the murderous attack to the east of Huesca when several thousand men were killed in one or two days. At the very least one would have expected fraternization with the enemy and a constant trickle139 of deserters. But, as I have pointed140 out earlier, the number of desertions was exceptionally small. Again, one would have expected pro-Fascist propaganda, ‘defeatism’, and so forth. Yet there was no sign of any such thing. Obviously there must have been Fascist spies and agents provocateurs in the P.O.U.M.; they exist in all Left-wing parties; but there is no evidence that there were more of them there than elsewhere.
It is true that some of the attacks in the Communist Press said, rather grudgingly141, that only the P.O.U.M. leaders were in Fascist pay, and not the rank and file. But this was merely an attempt to detach the rank and file from their leaders. The nature of the accusation implied that ordinary members, militiamen, and so forth, were all in the plot together; for it was obvious that if Nin, Gorkin, and the others were really in Fascist pay, it was more likely to be known to their followers, who were in contact with them, than to journalists in London, Paris, and New York. And in any case, when the P.O.U.M. was suppressed the Communist-controlled secret police acted on the assumption that all were guilty alike, and arrested everyone connected with the P.O.U.M. whom they could lay hands on, including even wounded men, hospital nurses, wives of P.O.U.M. members, and in some cases, even children.
Finally, on 15-16 June, the P.O.U.M. was suppressed and declared an illegal organization. This was one of the first acts of the Negrin Government which came into office in May. When the Executive Committee of the P.O.U.M. had been thrown into jail, the Communist Press produced what purported142 to be the discovery of an enormous Fascist plot. For a while the Communist Press of the whole world was flaming with this kind of thing (Daily Worker, 21 June, summarizing various Spanish Communist papers):
SPANISH TROTSKYISTS PLOT WITH FRANCO
Following the arrest of a large number of leading Trotskyists in Barcelona and elsewhere . . . there became known, over the weekend, details of one of the most ghastly pieces of espionage143 ever known in wartime, and the ugliest revelation of Trotskyist treachery to date . . . Documents in the possession of the police, together with the full confession144 of no less than 200 persons under arrest, prove, etc. etc.
What these revelations ‘proved’ was that the P.O.U.M. leaders were transmitting military secrets to General Franco by radio, were in touch with Berlin, and were acting in collaboration145 with the secret Fascist organization in Madrid. In addition there were sensational146 details about secret messages in invisible ink, a mysterious document signed with the letter N. (standing for Nin), and so on and so forth.
But the final upshot was this: six months after the event, as I write, most of the P.O.U.M. leaders are still in jail, but they have never been brought to trial, and the charges of communicating with Franco by radio, etc., have never even been formulated147. Had they really been guilty of espionage they would have been tried and shot in a week, as so many Fascist spies had been previously148. But not a scrap149 of evidence was ever produced except the unsupported statements in the Communist Press. As for the two hundred ‘full confessions’, which, if they had existed, would have been enough to convict anybody, they have never been heard of again. They were, in fact, two hundred efforts of somebody’s imagination.
More than this, most of the members of the Spanish Government have disclaimed150 all belief in the charges against the P.O.U.M. Recently the cabinet decided by five to two in favour of releasing anti-Fascist political prisoners; the two dissentients being the Communist ministers. In August an international delegation151 headed by James Maxton M.P., went to Spain to inquire into the charges against the P.O.U.M. and the disappearance152 of Andres Nin. Prieto, the Minister of National Defence, Irujo, the Minister of Justice, Zugazagoitia, Minister of the Interior, Ortega y Gasset, the Procureur-General, Prat Garcia, and others all repudiated any belief in the P.O.U.M. leaders being guilty of espionage. Irujo added that he had been through the dossier of the case, that none of the so-called pieces of evidence would bear examination, and that the document supposed to have been signed by Nin was ‘valueless’ — i.e. a forgery153. Prieto considered the P.O.U.M. leaders to be responsible for the May fighting in Barcelona, but dismissed the idea of their being Fascist spies. ‘What is most grave’, he added,’ is that the arrest of the P.O.U.M. leaders was not decided upon by the Government, and the police carried out these arrests on their own authority. Those responsible are not the heads of the police, but their entourage, which has been infiltrated154 by the Communists according to their usual custom.’ He cited other cases of illegal arrests by the police. Irujo likewise declared that the police had become ‘quasi-independent’ and were in reality under the control of foreign Communist elements. Prieto hinted fairly broadly to the delegation that the Government could not afford to offend the Communist Party while the Russians were supplying arms. When another delegation, headed by John McGovern M.P., went to Spain in December, they got much the same answers as before, and Zugazagoitia, the Minister of the Interior, repeated Prieto’s hint in even plainer terms. ‘We have received aid from Russia and have had to permit certain actions which we did not like.’ As an illustration of the autonomy of the police, it is interesting to learn that even with a signed order from the Director of Prisons and the Minister of Justice, McGovern and the others could not obtain admission to one of the ‘secret prisons’ maintained by the Communist Party in Barcelona.12
12 For reports on the two delegations155 see Le Populaire (7 September), Laleche (18 September), Report on the Maxton delegation published by Independent News (219 Rue122 Saint-Denis, Paris), and McGovern’s pamphlet Terror in Spain.
I think this should be enough to make the matter clear. The accusation of espionage against the P.O.U.M. rested solely upon articles in the Communist press and the activities of the Communist-controlled secret police. The P.O.U.M. leaders, and hundreds or thousands of their followers, are still in prison, and for six months past the Communist press has continued to clamour for the execution of the ‘traitors’ But Negrin and the others have kept their heads and refused to stage a wholesale156 massacre157 of’Trotskyists’. Considering the pressure that has been put upon them, it is greatly to their credit that they have done so. Meanwhile, in face of what I have quoted above, it becomes very difficult to believe that the P.O.U.M. was really a Fascist spying organization, unless one also believes that Maxton, Mc-Govern, Prieto, Irujo, Zugazagoitia, and the rest are all in Fascist pay together.
Finally, as to the charge that the P.O.U.M. was ‘Trotskyist’. This word is now flung about with greater and greater freedom, and it is used in a way that is extremely misleading and is often intended to mislead. It is worth stopping to define it. The word Trotskyist is used to mean three distinct things:
(i) One who, like Trotsky, advocates ‘world revolution’ as against ‘Socialism in a single country’. More loosely, a revolutionary extremist.
(ii) A member of the actual organization of which Trotsky is head.
(iii) A disguised Fascist posing as a revolutionary who acts especially by sabotage in the U.S.S.R., but, in general, by splitting and undermining the Left-wing forces.
In sense (i) the P.O.U.M. could probably be described as Trotskyist. So can the English I.L.P., the German S.A.P., the Left Socialists in France, and so on. But the P.O.U.M. had no connexion with Trotsky or the Trotskyist (‘Bolshevik-Lenninist’) organization. When the war broke out the foreign Trotskyists who came to Spain (fifteen or twenty in number) worked at first for the P.O.U.M., as the party nearest to their own viewpoint, but without becoming party-members; later Trotsky ordered his followers to attack the P.O.U.M. policy, and the Trotskyists were purged from the party offices, though a few remained in the militia. Nin, the P.O.U.M. leader after Maurin’s capture by the Fascists, was at one time Trotsky’s secretary, but had left him some years earlier and formed the P.O.U.M. by the amalgamation158 of various Opposition159 Communists with an earlier party, the Workers’ and Peasants’ Bloc160. Nin’s one-time association with Trotsky has been used in the Communist press to show that the P.O.U.M. was really Trotskyist.
By the same line of argument it could be shown that the English Communist Party is really a Fascist organization, because of Mr John Strachey’s one-time association with Sir Oswald Mosley.
In sense (ii), the only exactly defined sense of the word, the P.O.U.M. was certainly not Trotskyist. It is important to make this distinction, because it is taken for granted by the majority of Communists that a Trotskyist in sense (ii) is invariably a Trotskyist in sense (iii) — i.e. that the whole Trotskyist organization is simply a Fascist spying-machine. ‘Trotskyism’ only came into public notice in the time of the Russian sabotage trials, and to call a man a Trotskyist is practically equivalent to calling him a murderer, agent provocateur, etc. But at the same time anyone who criticizes Communist policy from a Left-wing standpoint is liable to be denounced as a Trotskyist. Is it then asserted that everyone professing161 revolutionary extremism is in Fascist pay?
In practice it is or is not, according to local convenience. When Maxton went to Spain with the delegation I have mentioned above, Verdad, Frente Rojo, and other Spanish Communist papers instantly denounced him as a ‘Trotsky-Fascist’, spy of the Gestapo, and so forth. Yet the English Communists were careful not to repeat this accusation. In the English Communist press Maxton becomes merely a ‘reactionary enemy of the working class’, which is conveniently vague. The reason, of course, is simply that several sharp lessons have given the English Communist press a wholesome162 dread163 of the law of libel. The fact that the accusation was not repeated in a country where it might have to be proved is sufficient confession that it is a lie.
It may seem that I have discussed the accusations against the P.O.U.M. at greater length than was necessary. Compared with the huge miseries164 of a civil war, this kind of internecine165 squabble between parties, with its inevitable injustices166 and false accusations, may appear trivial. It is not really so. I believe that libels and press — campaigns of this kind, and the habits of mind they indicate, are capable of doing the most deadly damage to the anti-Fascist cause.
Anyone who has given the subject a glance knows that the Communist tactic49 of dealing167 with political opponents by means of trumped-up accusations is nothing new. Today the key-word is ‘Trotsky-Fascist’; yesterday it was ‘Social-Fascist’. It is only six or seven years since the Russian State trials ‘proved’ that the leaders of the Second International, including, for instance, Leon Blum and prominent members of the British Labour Party, were hatching a huge plot for the military invasion of the U.S.S.R. Yet today the French Communists are glad enough to accept Blum as a leader, and the English Communists are raising heaven and earth to get inside the Labour Party. I doubt whether this kind of thing pays, even from a sectarian point of view. And meanwhile there is no possible doubt about the hatred168 and dissension that the ‘Trotsky-Fascist’ accusation is causing. Rank-and — file Communists everywhere are led away on a senseless witch-hunt after ‘Trotskyists’, and parties of the type of the P.O.U.M. are driven back into the terribly sterile169 position of being mere45 anti-Communist parties. There is already the beginning of a dangerous split in the world working-class movement. A few more libels against life-long Socialists, a few more frame-ups like the charges against the P.O.U.M., and the split may become irreconcilable. The only hope is to keep political controversy170 on a plane where exhaustive discussion is possible. Between the Communists and those who stand or claim to stand to the Left of them there is a real difference. The Communists hold that Fascism can be beaten by alliance with sections of the capitalist class (the Popular Front); their opponents hold that this manoeuvre32 simply gives Fascism new breeding-grounds. The question has got to be settled; to make the wrong decision may be to land ourselves in for centuries of semi-slavery. But so long as no argument is produced except a scream of ‘Trotsky-Fascist!’ the discussion cannot even begin. It would be impossible for me, for instance, to debate the rights and wrongs of the Barcelona fighting with a Communist Party member, because no Communist — that is to say, no’ good’ Communist — could admit that I have given a truthful171 account of the facts. If he followed his party ‘line dutifully he would have to declare that I am lying or, at best, that I am hopelessly misled and that anyone who glanced at the Daily Worker headlines a thousand miles from the scene of events knows more of what was happening in Barcelona than I do. In such circumstances there can be no argument; the necessary minimum of agreement cannot be reached. What purpose is served by saying that men like Maxton are in Fascist pay? Only the purpose of making serious discussion impossible. It is as though in the middle of a chess tournament one competitor should suddenly begin screaming that the other is guilty of arson126 or bigamy. The point that is really at issue remains172 untouched. Libel settles nothing.
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bias
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accusations
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| n.指责( accusation的名词复数 )；指控；控告；（被告发、控告的）罪名 | |
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accusation
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| n.控告，指责，谴责 | |
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eyewitnesses
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| 目击者( eyewitness的名词复数 ) | |
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anarchist
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| n.无政府主义者 | |
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anarchists
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| 无政府主义者( anarchist的名词复数 ) | |
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inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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friction
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resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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sabotaged
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| 阴谋破坏（某事物）( sabotage的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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sabotage
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| n.怠工，破坏活动，破坏；v.从事破坏活动，妨害，破坏 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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alleged
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| a.被指控的，嫌疑的 | |
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civilian
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| adj.平民的，民用的，民众的 | |
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socialists
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| 社会主义者( socialist的名词复数 ) | |
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socialist
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| n.社会主义者；adj.社会主义的 | |
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barricade
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| n.路障，栅栏，障碍；vt.设路障挡住 | |
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barricades
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| 路障，障碍物( barricade的名词复数 ) | |
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defensive
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| adj.防御的；防卫的；防守的 | |
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besieged
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| 包围，围困，围攻( besiege的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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artillery
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| n.(军)火炮，大炮；炮兵(部队) | |
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armistice
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| n.休战，停战协定 | |
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premature
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| adj.比预期时间早的；不成熟的，仓促的 | |
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25
disarm
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| v.解除武装，回复平常的编制，缓和 | |
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26
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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27
imploring
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| 恳求的，哀求的 | |
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28
secondly
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| adv.第二，其次 | |
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29
militias
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| n.民兵组织，民兵( militia的名词复数 ) | |
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30
militia
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| n.民兵，民兵组织 | |
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31
seizure
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| n.没收；占有；抵押 | |
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32
manoeuvre
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| n.策略，调动；v.用策略，调动 | |
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33
capitalism
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| n.资本主义 | |
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34
favourable
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| adj.赞成的，称赞的，有利的，良好的，顺利的 | |
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35
provocation
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| n.激怒，刺激，挑拨，挑衅的事物，激怒的原因 | |
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36
coup
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| n.政变；突然而成功的行动 | |
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37
overthrow
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| v.推翻，打倒，颠覆；n.推翻，瓦解，颠覆 | |
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38
overthrowing
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| v.打倒，推翻( overthrow的现在分词 )；使终止 | |
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39
followers
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| 追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件 | |
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40
intervention
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| n.介入，干涉，干预 | |
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41
warships
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| 军舰，战舰( warship的名词复数 )； 舰只 | |
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42
proceeding
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| n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报 | |
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43
uncertainty
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| n.易变，靠不住，不确知，不确定的事物 | |
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44
disarming
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| adj.消除敌意的，使人消气的v.裁军( disarm的现在分词 )；使息怒 | |
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45
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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46
pedantic
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| adj.卖弄学问的；迂腐的 | |
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47
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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48
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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49
tactic
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| n.战略，策略；adj.战术的，有策略的 | |
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50
countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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51
repudiated
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| v.（正式地）否认( repudiate的过去式和过去分词 )；拒绝接受；拒绝与…往来；拒不履行（法律义务） | |
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52
solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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53
loyalty
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| n.忠诚，忠心 | |
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54
unity
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| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
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55
essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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56
bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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57
acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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58
isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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59
adherents
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| n.支持者，拥护者( adherent的名词复数 )；党羽；徒子徒孙 | |
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60
factions
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| 组织中的小派别，派系( faction的名词复数 ) | |
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61
civilians
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| 平民，百姓( civilian的名词复数 )； 老百姓 | |
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62
contemplated
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| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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63
fascist
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| 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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64
undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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65
desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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66
hoarding
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| n.贮藏；积蓄；临时围墙；囤积v.积蓄并储藏（某物）( hoard的现在分词 ) | |
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67
underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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68
irreconcilable
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| adj.（指人）难和解的，势不两立的 | |
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69
assassinations
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| n.暗杀( assassination的名词复数 ) | |
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70
sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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71
appendage
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| n.附加物 | |
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72
fascists
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| n.法西斯主义的支持者( fascist的名词复数 ) | |
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73
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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74
disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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75
precipitated
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|
| v.（突如其来地）使发生( precipitate的过去式和过去分词 )；促成；猛然摔下；使沉淀 | |
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76
provocative
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| adj.挑衅的，煽动的，刺激的，挑逗的 | |
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77
systematically
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| adv.有系统地 | |
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78
denigrated
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| v.诋毁，诽谤( denigrate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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79
inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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80
narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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81
accurately
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| adv.准确地，精确地 | |
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82
intervals
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|
| 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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83
naval
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|
| adj.海军的，军舰的，船的 | |
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84
prevailing
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| adj.盛行的；占优势的；主要的 | |
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85
deluded
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|
| v.欺骗，哄骗( delude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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86
ERECTED
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| adj. 直立的，竖立的，笔直的 vt. 使 ... 直立，建立 | |
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87
contradictory
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|
| adj.反驳的，反对的，抗辩的；n.正反对，矛盾对立 | |
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88
credible
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|
| adj.可信任的，可靠的 | |
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89
disorders
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|
| n.混乱( disorder的名词复数 )；凌乱；骚乱；（身心、机能）失调 | |
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90
smuggle
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| vt.私运；vi.走私 | |
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91
pretexts
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| n.借口，托辞( pretext的名词复数 ) | |
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92
munitions
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|
| n.军火，弹药；v.供应…军需品 | |
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93
inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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94
subversive
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| adj.颠覆性的，破坏性的；n.破坏份子，危险份子 | |
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95
rumour
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| n.谣言，谣传，传闻 | |
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96
conclusive
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|
| adj.最后的，结论的；确凿的，消除怀疑的 | |
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97
illuminating
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| a.富于启发性的，有助阐明的 | |
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98
shudders
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| n.颤动，打颤，战栗( shudder的名词复数 )v.战栗( shudder的第三人称单数 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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99
implicated
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| adj.密切关联的；牵涉其中的 | |
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100
picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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101
discrepancies
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| n.差异，不符合（之处），不一致（之处）( discrepancy的名词复数 ) | |
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102
deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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103
outrage
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| n.暴行，侮辱，愤怒；vt.凌辱，激怒 | |
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104
plaza
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| n.广场，市场 | |
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105
destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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106
concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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107
premises
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| n.建筑物，房屋 | |
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108
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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109
considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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110
connivance
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| n.纵容；默许 | |
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111
purged
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| 清除（政敌等）( purge的过去式和过去分词 )； 涤除（罪恶等）； 净化（心灵、风气等）； 消除（错事等）的不良影响 | |
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112
insignificant
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| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
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113
juggling
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| n. 欺骗, 杂耍(=jugglery) adj. 欺骗的, 欺诈的 动词juggle的现在分词 | |
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114
tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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115
frustrated
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| adj.挫败的，失意的，泄气的v.使不成功( frustrate的过去式和过去分词 )；挫败；使受挫折；令人沮丧 | |
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116
barricaded
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| 设路障于，以障碍物阻塞( barricade的过去式和过去分词 )； 设路障[防御工事]保卫或固守 | |
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117
technically
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| adv.专门地，技术上地 | |
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118
watchfully
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| 警惕地，留心地 | |
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119
aggravated
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| 使恶化( aggravate的过去式和过去分词 )； 使更严重； 激怒； 使恼火 | |
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120
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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121
plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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122
rue
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| n.懊悔，芸香，后悔；v.后悔，悲伤，懊悔 | |
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123
unaware
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| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
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124
inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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125
ministry
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| n.(政府的)部；牧师 | |
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126
arson
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| n.纵火，放火 | |
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127
doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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128
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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129
malignant
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| adj.恶性的，致命的；恶意的，恶毒的 | |
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130
sickle
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| n.镰刀 | |
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131
morale
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| n.道德准则，士气，斗志 | |
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132
traitors
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| 卖国贼( traitor的名词复数 )； 叛徒； 背叛者； 背信弃义的人 | |
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133
imprisoned
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| 下狱，监禁( imprison的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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134
monarchy
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| n.君主，最高统治者；君主政体，君主国 | |
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135
impending
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| a.imminent, about to come or happen | |
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136
conspicuous
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| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
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137
justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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138
trenches
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| 深沟，地沟( trench的名词复数 )； 战壕 | |
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139
trickle
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| vi.淌，滴，流出，慢慢移动，逐渐消散 | |
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140
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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141
grudgingly
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142
purported
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| adj.传说的，谣传的v.声称是…，（装得）像是…的样子( purport的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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143
espionage
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| n.间谍行为，谍报活动 | |
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144
confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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145
collaboration
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| n.合作，协作；勾结 | |
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146
sensational
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| adj.使人感动的，非常好的，轰动的，耸人听闻的 | |
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147
formulated
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| v.构想出( formulate的过去式和过去分词 )；规划；确切地阐述；用公式表示 | |
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148
previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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149
scrap
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| n.碎片；废料；v.废弃，报废 | |
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150
disclaimed
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| v.否认( disclaim的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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151
delegation
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| n.代表团；派遣 | |
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152
disappearance
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| n.消失，消散，失踪 | |
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153
forgery
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| n.伪造的文件等，赝品，伪造（行为） | |
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154
infiltrated
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| adj.[医]浸润的v.（使）渗透，（指思想）渗入人的心中( infiltrate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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155
delegations
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| n.代表团( delegation的名词复数 )；委托，委派 | |
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156
wholesale
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| n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售 | |
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157
massacre
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| n.残杀，大屠杀；v.残杀，集体屠杀 | |
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158
amalgamation
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| n.合并，重组；；汞齐化 | |
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159
opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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160
bloc
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| n.集团；联盟 | |
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161
professing
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| 声称( profess的现在分词 )； 宣称； 公开表明； 信奉 | |
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162
wholesome
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| adj.适合；卫生的；有益健康的；显示身心健康的 | |
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163
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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164
miseries
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| n.痛苦( misery的名词复数 )；痛苦的事；穷困；常发牢骚的人 | |
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165
internecine
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| adj.两败俱伤的 | |
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166
injustices
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| 不公平( injustice的名词复数 )； 非正义； 待…不公正； 冤枉 | |
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167
dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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168
hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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169
sterile
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| adj.不毛的，不孕的，无菌的，枯燥的，贫瘠的 | |
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170
controversy
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| n.争论，辩论，争吵 | |
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171
truthful
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| adj.真实的，说实话的，诚实的 | |
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172
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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