"STALIN'S HAND IN SPAIN"

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23931, 5 October 1939, Page 11

"STALIN'S HAND IN SPAIN"

TO THE EDITOR Sir—Attempts to prejudice people against Stalin and everything Russian are probably more justified to-day than ever before, and I for one do not belong (as " One Bar " and "Avila " might have you believe) to "the army of Communist supporters who believe that Stalin can do no wrong," but, I do hold that such propaganda as has been broadcast by "Avila" is misleading and distorted in the extreme. "Avila " claims that " what Krivitsky said was in no way refuted," and commends your paper for its publication of extracts from articles in the San Francisco Evening Post on " Stalin s Hand in Spain." Perhaps a statement made by the New Renublic, which is not a Communist periodical and has. on its statement, often criticised the views of the New Masses, the Communist periodical, may be of interest at this time. Under the heading "Spanish Fairv Story," there appears the following:— The Saturday Evening Post has been printing a series of articles by General Krivitsky on the subject of Russian politics and the Spanish Civil War. There is some truth in them; there are also some fantastic fabrications, and a whole volume would be needed to disentangle one from the other. But a few of the statements are so wild that no well-informed person can let them pass without saying the simple words of refutation. The first article asserts that volunteers to the International Brigades were interviewed by O.G.P.U. agents; that is just not true, as any veteran of the brigades can tell you. We know that one boy who did the very routine questioning of volunteers In New York city later turned up as a soldier in Spain, with the high rank of corporal. More fundamental to the whole story of the war as these articles tell it is the account of the May, 1937, revolt in Barcelona. That, says Krivitsky, was organised by the O.G.P.U. to allow the Communists to suppress all other parties and the trade unions In Catalonia. Leaving aside the facts that neither the trade unions nor the other parties in Catalonia were ever suppressed (except for the P.O.U.M. after it publicly accepted responsibility for the revolt), and that there is no record of the Communists making any such demand, which would have been directly contrary to their Popular Front policy, we wonder why it was that the P.O.U.M. and some of the anarchists played into the hands of the O.G.P.U. Their leaflets, newspapers, and magazines had for a long time covertly—and, in the case of the P.0.U.M., sometimes openly—demanded revolt: " Turn your guns the other way." And, of course, it is untrue that the International Brigades took any part in putting down the Barcelona uprising; they were not even In Catalonia at that

time. Whoever wrote the articles has spent a lot of time thinking up ideas, but his tales do not fit the widely-known facts of the matter. The last sentence might just ab well have referred to "Avila's" so-called " hard facts." A volume would certainly be needed to deal with both Krivitsky and 'Avila," but the latter's taunting, sneering conclusion, cannot go unanswered. He wrote: "Most people will remember the pathetic bleatings (of the Reds, sentimentalists and woolly-minded) • upholding the Reds (in Spain> as ' democrats,' but where are those anguished voices today? " Those voices never denied Russian limited intervention in Spain, but always claimed that the Loyalist Government was fighting democracy's w,ar aganist Fascism, the Fascism of Franco, aided in no uncertain manner by Nazi airmen, and consequently the forces we. as British people, are fighting today. Those voices are not anguished. They are rejoicing that at last the challenge thrown down by Fascism has been taken up. that the policy of appeasement is ended, and that the first steps have been taken towards the establishment of an ordered world wherein men can live at peace free from the domination of Hitlers, Francos, and other dictators.—l am, etc., Defence of Madrid.