New Leader, 8 July 1938
Frank Jellinek’s book on the Paris Commune2 had its faults, but it revealed him as a man of unusual mind. He showed himself able to grasp the real facts of history, the social and economic changes that underlie spectacular events, without losing touch with the picturesque aspect which the bourgeois historian generally does so much better. On the whole his present book – The Civil War in Spain – bears out the promise of the other. It shows signs of haste, and it contains some misrepresentations which I will point out later, but it is probably the best book on the Spanish War from a Communist angle that we are likely to get for some time to come.
Much the most useful part of the book is the earlier part, describing the long chain of causes that led up to the war and the fundamental issues at stake. The parasitic aristocracy and the appalling condition of the peasants (before the war 65 per cent of the population of Spain held 6.3 per cent of the land, while 4 per cent held 60 per cent of it), the backwardness of Spanish capitalism and the dominance of foreign capitalists, the corruption of the Church, and the rise of the Socialist and Anarchist labour movements – all these are treated in a series of brilliant chapters. The short biography which Mr. Jellinek gives of Juan March,3 the old tobacco-smuggler who is one of the men behind the Fascist rebellion (although, queerly enough, he is believed to be a Jew), is a wonderful story of corruption. It would be fascinating reading if March were merely a character in Edgar Wallace; unfortunately he happens to be a real man.
The chapter on the Church does not leave much doubt as to why practically all the churches in Catalonia and eastern Aragón were burnt at the outbreak of war. Incidentally, it is interesting to learn that, if Mr. Jellinek’s figures are correct, the world organisation of the Jesuits only numbers about 22,000 people. For sheer efficiency they must surely have all the political parties in the world beaten hollow. But the Jesuits’ ‘man of affairs’ in Spain is, or was, on the board of directors of forty-three companies!
At the end of the book there is a well-balanced chapter on the social changes that took place in the first few months of the war, and an appendix on the collectivisation decree in Catalonia. Unlike the majority of British observers, Mr. Jellinek does not under-rate the Spanish Anarchists. In his treatment of the P.O.U.M., however, there is no doubt that he is unfair, and – there is not much doubt of this either – intentionally unfair.
Naturally I turned first of all to the chapter describing the fighting in Barcelona in May, 1937, because both Mr. Jellinek and myself were in Barcelona at the time, and this gave me a measure of checking his accuracy. His account of the fighting is somewhat less propagandist than those that appeared in the Communist Press at the time, but it is certainly one-sided and would be very misleading to anyone who knew nothing of the facts. To begin with, he appears at times to accept the story that the P.O.U.M. was really a disguised Fascist organisation, and refers to ‘documents’ which ‘conclusively proved’ this and that, without telling us any more about these mysterious documents – which, in fact, have never been produced. He even refers to the celebrated ‘N’ document4 (though admitting that ‘N’ probably did not stand for Nin), and ignores the fact that Irujo,5 the Minister of Justice, declared this document to be ‘worthless’, i.e., a forgery. He states merely that Nin was ‘arrested’, and does not mention that Nin disappeared and was almost certainly murdered. Moreover, he leaves the chronology uncertain and – whether intentionally or not – gives the impression that the alleged discovery of a Fascist plot, the arrest of Nin, etc., took place immediately after the May fighting.
This point is important. The suppression of the P.O.U.M. did not occur immediately after the May fighting. There was a five weeks’ interval. The fighting ended on May 7 and Nin was arrested on June 15. The suppression of the P.O.U.M. only occurred after, and almost certainly as a result of, the change in the Valencia Government. I have noticed several attempts in the Press to obscure these dates. The reason is obvious enough; however, there can be no doubt about the matter, for all the main events were recorded in the newspapers at the time.
Curiously enough, about June 20, the Manchester Guardian correspondent in Barcelona sent here a despatch6 in which he contradicted the absurd accusations against the P.O.U.M. – in the circumstances a very courageous action. This correspondent must almost certainly have been Mr. Jellinek himself. What a pity that for propaganda purposes he should now find it necessary to repeat a story which after this lapse of time seems even more improbable.
His remarks on the P.O.U.M. occupy a considerable share of the book, and they have an air of prejudice which would be obvious even to anyone who knew nothing whatever about the Spanish political parties. He thinks it necessary to denigrate even useful work such as that done by Nin as Councillor of Justice, and is careful not to mention that the P.O.U.M. took any serious part either in the first struggles against the Fascist rising or at the front. And in all his remarks about the ‘provocative attitude’ of the P.O.U.M. newspapers it hardly seems to occur to him that there was any provocation on the other side. In the long run this kind of thing defeats its own object. Its effect on me, for instance, is to make me think: ‘If I find that this book is unreliable where I happen to know the facts, how can I trust it where I don’t know the facts?’ And many others will think the same.
Actually I am quite ready to believe that in the main Mr. Jellinek is strictly fair besides being immensely well-informed. But in dealing with ‘Trotskyism’ he writes as a Communist, or Communist partisan, and it is no more possible for a Communist today to show common sense on this subject than on the subject of ‘Social Fascism’ a few years ago. Incidentally, the speed with which the angels in the Communist mythology turn into devils has its comic side. Mr. Jellinek quotes approvingly a denunciation of the P.O.U.M. by the Russian Consul in Barcelona, Antonov Ovseenko,7 now on trial as a Trotskyist!
All in all, an excellent book, packed full of information and very readable. But one has got to treat it with a certain wariness, because the author is under the necessity of showing that though other people may sometimes be right, the Communist Party is always right. It does not greatly matter that nearly all books by Communists are propaganda. Most books are propaganda, direct or indirect. The trouble is that Communist writers are obliged to claim infallibility for their Party chiefs. As a result Communist literature tends more and more to become a mechanism for explaining away mistakes.
Unlike most of the people who have written of the Spanish war, Mr. Jellinek really knows Spain: its language, its people, its territories, and the political struggle of the past hundred years. Few men are better qualified to write an authoritative history of the Spanish war. Perhaps some day he will do so. But it will probably be a long time hence, when the ‘Trotsky-Fascist’ shadow-boxing has been dropped in favour of some other hobby.
Orwell was mistaken in thinking the Manchester Guardian correspondent was Jellinek. See his letter to Jellinek, 20 December 1938, below. On 13 January 1939, he wrote a letter of correction to the New Leader, which was printed under the heading ‘A Mistake Corrected’.
In my review of Mr. Frank Jellinek’s Civil War in Spain I stated that Mr. Jellinek had expressed certain opinions which were in contradiction to one of his own despatches to the Manchester Guardian. I now find that this despatch was actually sent not by Mr. Jellinek, but by another correspondent. I am very sorry about this mistake and hope you will find space for this correction.
1. Frank Jellinek (1908-75) was an American correspondent in London for the New York Herald Tribune and in Spain for the Manchester Guardian. See Orwell’s letter to Jellinek, below.
2. The Paris Commune of 1871 (1937; reprinted 1973).
3. Primo de Rivera’s government sold the Moroccan tobacco monopoly to Juan March Ordinas (1884-1962). See Thomas, 28.
4. The ‘N’ document was a forged letter to Franco, purported by the Communists to be from Andrés Nin (see pp. 210 and 241, n. 6, above), a prominent member of the POUM, on which they based their charges of conspiracy between the POUM and Franco to justify their suppression of the POUM.
5. Manuel de Irujo y Ollo was a Basque member of the Republican government, as Minister without Portfolio, from 25 September 1936, then Minister of Justice until he resigned in January 1938, remaining Minister without Portfolio. He had attempted to restore ‘normal justice’; see Thomas, 701, 778.
6. ‘Barcelona after the Rising’, from ‘Our Special Correspondent’, Manchester Guardian, 26 June 1937.
7. Vladimir Antonov-Ovsëenko was one of those listed by Thomas as having ‘either [been] executed or died in concentration camps’ following service in Spain. He was for a time rehabilitated, and his death was ‘regretted as a mistake, in passing, by Khrushchev in his speech denouncing Stalin in February 1956’; see letter from H.N. Brailsford to Orwell above, 17 December 1937, and n.i., and Thomas, 952.