CHAPTER XVI. Stalin’s shadow over Spain

A rebel offensive against the area occupied by the Durruti Column coincided with the Bujaraloz assembly and the Sariñena military conference. Fascist Lieutenant Colonel Urrutia led a large force made up of infantry battalion number 19, three armored car companies, the “Tercio of the Pillar,” three machine-gunner companies from the Gerona Regiment, machine-gunners fighting under the “Palafox” flag, five Falange companies, two squadrons, and two batteries. There were approximately 4,500 men, as well as air support. On October 4, he attacked to the north of Osera and Villafranca. On October 8, he launched another assault in the direction of Farlete and got within three kilometers of the town. On October 10, the rebels sent a large number of reinforcements to Perdiguera, Zuera, Villanueva, and Quinto. That night, fascist troops took off from Perdiguera to ascend the heights that run along the east from Perdiguera to Leciñena, while other forces seized the more distant heights of the Sierra de Alcubierre in order to later fall on the port of the same name. The operation ended when the nationalist units entered Leciñena on October 12, after inflicting heavy losses on their adversaries. [651]

José Mira explains how the Durruti Column responded to the offensive:

The Mobile Column attacked our position at Calabazares-La Puntaza on October 4. They were trying to break through the Osera-Monegrillo road and occupy Osera. They made some progress at first, but we held them back and later repelled them completely, despite the constant machine-gun fire that their new air force rained down upon us from a low altitude. They initiated a much more vigorous offensive the following day. Moving their artillery and tanks along the Villamayor-Farlete road, the majority of their forces got to the outskirts of Farlete. The right flank was in the area of the previous attack. There was a heavy presence of Cavalry detachments among their troops. The left flank was in the area around the Perdiguera-Farlete road.

The battle was intense and although our small number of combatants in the area fought well, they had to give ground due to the enemy’s enormous superiority. We quickly organized a powerful Column made up by Artillery and forces from other sectors in order to counter-attack, but we were alarmingly short on ammunition. We withdrew ammunition from other units to equip the operating forces, which meant that militiamen in the calm parts of the front had only ten cartridges each.

Our reinforcements came when the enemy was less than a kilometer from Farlete. Their cavalry tried to circle around the southern edge of the town, but one of our light batteries placed its artillery on the road, in front of the trucks, and opened fire. This was extremely effective. It forced them to make a bloody, hasty retreat. Armored trucks set off in pursuit, which turned the enemy’s retreat into a chaotic flight.

The enemy was in disarray after our action against its right flank but then launched a successful counter-attack. It withdrew shortly thereafter, when our bombers appeared and bombarded a few times from a low altitude. This leveled enemy concentrations and caused them a high number of casualties, turning the adversary’s withdrawal into a complete rout. The assailants dispersed in various directions, abandoning weapons and other materiel in the process. We seized a large number of prisoners, almost all falangists and Carlists. Many enemy soldiers deserted as well, who came over to our lines with arms.

Our forces were in complete control by the end of the day, despite our indisputable inferiority in men and materiel. We pursued the enemy, which retreated fifteen kilometers in the direction of Perdiguera.

Days later [on October 12], the rebels attacked positions covered by a POUM column to the north of the Sierra de Alcubierre. Their occupation of Leciñena caused a dangerous rupture in our lines and threatened the security of the entire front. Fortunately, our reinforcements managed to contain the assailants in the vicinity of Alcubierre. To clear the besieged Column from the front in Leciñena and assist in the counter-attack, our Column attempted to make contact with the enemy [on October 14], which had been lost since its defeat in Farlete. We also intended to put pressure on the Villamayor-Perdiguera-Leciñena road.

Our troops were cohesive, disciplined, and followed the orders that they received. The International Group, which was covering our right flank, advanced toward Perdiguera. However, it went too far, due to excessive combative ardor, and lost touch with the rest of the forces.

The International Group attacked the enemy’s defenses on the outskirts of Perdiguera with hand grenades. They managed to enter the town and defeat the adversarial garrison [October 16]. But more than two enemy battalions from Zaragoza arrived in trucks and laid siege to the site. Our internationals fought energetically and some broke through enemy lines and retreated toward our positions. The others, taking cover in the town’s houses, fought to the end. The rebels captured and executed three Red Cross nurses of various nationalities there.

Several of our centuries approached Perdiguera, in hopes of helping the International Group, but a much larger number of adversarial forces appeared simultaneously, which made our efforts impossible.

We finally established a continuous front, as ordered by the Column’s War Committee. Our lines stretched northward to the Oscuro Mountain, the highest point of the Sierra de Alcubierre, once we cleared the enemy from the area, which offered scant resistance. We secured a connection with the neighboring POUM Column, which used its patrols around Alcubierre to counterattack.[652]

Corman writes the following about the internationals:

Berthomieu and forty of his men had been too daring. They advanced impetuously and, as a result, separated from the rest of the Column. The fascists realized this and surrounded them with their Moorish cavalry.

Cornered in several houses, the forty men faced a force twenty times larger and soon ran out of ammunition. Two militiamen, Ridel and Charpentier, took on the dangerous task of slipping through the Moroccans to warn Durruti. They were the only ones among the forty who entered Perdiguera to survive. The rest died fighting. Among the dead were Berthomieu, Giralt, Trontin, Bourdom, Emile Cottin, Georgette (a young militant from Paris’s Revista Anarquista) Gertrudis (a German Trotskyist youth), and two nurses whose names are unknown.

We improved our lines by eight kilometers, but the territory gained didn’t compensate for the Column’s losses. Berthomieu alone was worth more than all that.

If war is the great devourer of men, here she took men of quality. The most valiant and generous were the first to fall.[653]

When calm returned to the area, Durruti went back to the Santa Lucía Inn , where Besnard told him that Largo Caballero had broken the pact. [654]

This infuriated Durruti. He cursed Santillán for not following through with the plan to rob the Bank of Spain and himself for taking Largo Caballero at his word. But this wasn’t the only news: there was also the militarization decree, which reestablished the hierarchy of command in the military forces and reinstituted the old Military Code. Many fighters asked Durruti for leave, because they did not want to submit to these government edicts. What could Durruti tell them? That they submit to them? He didn’t say anything. He was truly dispirited and realized that they were heading toward the precipice and that nothing could prevent them from going over it. Should he resign? He, who had never given up on any of his undertakings! How greatly he missed Ascaso!

Durruti didn’t sleep in his headquarters that night. Instead, he went to meet with the Hijos de la noche, who were going to carry out a surprise attack.

The militarization decree was a significant victory for the Russians. The Spanish government had instituted their military policy and Largo Caballero was in their hands. The decree also coincided with the shipment of the Bank of Spain’s gold to Odessa. Clearly Caballero had mortgaged his future by following Stalin’s orders. Who knew then that so many would trade Spain’s freedom for their short-term gains?

The Russians’ influence increased the strength of the Spanish Communist Party, which suddenly became the master of the new situation. Previously its leaders only attacked the anarchists and Trotskyists verbally, but now they moved to deeds. The militarization decree permitted this. The militiamen on the front fought for the revolution without worrying about the Party, but the Party fought for itself alone. While soldiers fell on the battlefield, the Communist Party, at the orders of the Stalinist Carlos Contreras, created a “commanders’ school:” this was the “Fifth Regiment,” which simply groomed future leaders of the Popular Army. Professional soldiers, which the militias only tolerated as advisers, joined the “Fifth Regiment” and shielded themselves under the Communist Party flag. The “Fifth Regiment” also contained a large number of intellectuals, functionaries, and former state bureaucrats. The CP, presenting itself as a “party of order,” was really a party of the middle class. [655]

The Russians became increasingly more demanding on the political terrain, as Largo Caballero, their captive, went from concession to concession. He had no clue that each compromise brought him a step closer to his own political abyss.

The situation was even more tragic in Catalonia than Madrid. The Russians first set out to eliminate the POUM and then to render the CNT-FAI powerlessness. Although Antonov Ovssenko’s efforts were staggered, he operated so quickly that the passage from one stage to the next was nearly imperceptible. The Aragón front and the Catalan war industry were the CNT’s weak points. The militias in Aragón needed arms and the factories needed raw materials. If they held back the revolution, Ovssenko promised that they would get one or the other. The CNT and FAI Committees accepted his pledge and made the maximum concession by agreeing to dissolve the CCAMC. This set a whole chain of events into motion. The unity pact between the CNT and the UGT and between the PSUC and the FAI (marked by Mariano R. Vázquez and Rafael Vidiella’s [656] embrace on October 25, 1936) facilitated the POUM’s elimination from the Generalitat and was the prelude to the May days of 1937.

To escape the pressure of the CNT and FAI, the Esquerra Republicana tried to form an alliance with the PSUC, but the PSUC’s first condition was Andreu Nin’s removal as Justice Minister in the Generalitat. Lluís Companys assented and simulated a government crisis in order to form a new government without the POUM. The PSUC had thus improved its position, so much so that its leader, Joan Comorera, felt strong enough to attack the Aragón militias directly (disdainfully comparing them to tribes). The great militarization push had begun.

The CNT and FAI Committees responded by securing their control over their militias. However, that didn’t worry the government or the Communist Party, because they knew that the regular army, once established, would eliminate the CNT’s influence in the combative forces by the very logic of its operation. The CNT and FAI Committees were too absorbed with their political maneuvering to see “the forest for the trees,” although militia fighters did grasp things much more clearly. The internationals in the Ascaso Column on the Huesca front raised the issue of “revolution or war.”

If we divest the war of its revolutionary content—its idea of social transformation and sense of universal struggle—then nothing will remain but a war for national independence. While it may force us to confront life or death choices, it will not be a war fought out for a new social regime. We don’t think everything is lost, but do believe that everything is at risk. Victory is unlikely unless something unanticipated occurs. [657]

The confederal militias of the Center raised the same question: By what right does the government forge new chains on a proletariat that already broke those that restrain it? By what right does it resurrect militarism, which we have suffered for so long? For us, militarism is an integral part of fascism. The army is a typical instrument of authoritarianism. To destroy the army is to crush authoritarianism’s ability to oppress the people. The state hasn’t decreed our war; it’s a popular reaction against forces that want to strip us of our dignity. It’s the people who have to choose the best method and strategy for carrying it out. The working class doesn’t want to lose what has cost it so much blood to achieve. Forming an army is nothing but a return to the past, a past that was buried on July 19.

Durruti replied to the new developments in comments that he made to L’Espagne Nouvelle. The newspaper, before printing his reflections, made some remarks about the situation on the front:

Forced to choose between submitting to the new law or laying down their arms and leaving the militias, most of the fighters will refuse to do either. They believe that either option would be destructive to the revolution that they intend to carry forward, regardless of the orders received. But it’s a blow to the militiamen’s fighting spirit. The Durruti Column decided to feign ignorance of the new regulations, although it did institute some of their positive aspects and, by doing so, protected itself from charges of indiscipline. This demonstrates Durruti’s personal realism as well as his moral influence on the men in his Column and the country. His peasant slyness is evident in his obstinate and astute responses to our questions:

“Is it true that they’re going to reestablish the old army Military Code and hierarchy of command in the militias?”

“No! That’s not how things are. Some conscripts have been mobilized and the single command has been instituted. The discipline necessary for street battles wasn’t enough for a long and hard military campaign against a well-equipped, modern army. We had to overcome that deficiency.” “What does the reenforcement of discipline mean exactly?”

“Up to now, we had a large number of units, each with their own leaders and forces (which varied radically from one day to the next), with their own armory, transport, supply, a distinct policy toward rearguard inhabitants, and often a very unique way of seeing the war. That had to stop. Some corrections have been made and surely others will follow.”

“But the ranks, military salutes, punishments, and rewards?”

“We don’t need any of that. Here we are anarchists.”

“Hasn’t a recent decree from Madrid put the old Military Code of Justice into effect?”

“Yes, and the government’s decision has had a deplorable effect. They have absolutely no sense of reality. The spirit of that decree totally contradicts the sentiment among the militiamen. We’re very conciliatory, but we know that those two ways of approaching the struggle can’t coexist.”

“If the war is prolonged, do you think that militarism could stabilize itself and put the revolution in danger?”

“Well, that’s exactly why we have to win the war as soon as possible!” With this reply, comrade Durruti smiles at us and we shake hands. [658] For its part, the CNT and the FAI published the following note: It would be childish to give the government absolute control of the proletarian forces. A mobilized worker is not a soldier, but a worker who has exchanged his tool for a rifle. The struggle is the same in the factory as on the battlefield, and so the organizations should control their own forces. The CNT, without waiting for orders from anyone, accepts its responsibilities and gives the following instructions to the member workers affected by the mobilization: “Immediately go to the CNT barracks or to your unions or defense committees, where you will receive the militiaman’s card for your incorporation into the Confederal Columns.” Making this decision, the working class once again affirms its faith in the revolution in progress. [659] The CNT was trying to harmonize the attitude of the anarchist militiamen with the government’s decisions. But what the CNT didn’t know was that the statist machinery led by Largo Caballero was insatiable; and not because Caballero wanted it to be that way, but simply because that was the nature of the apparatus he was reconstructing.

The militarization decree was followed by the nationalization of the war industry, which tore that industry from the workers’ hands and put it under the control of a state bureaucracy seeking to return expropriated businesses to their former owners.

Camilo Berneri denounced the progress of the counterrevolution in his newspaper Guerre di clase, the publication of Italian exiles in Spain. He wrote that “a certain scent of Noske is floating in the air.” [660] Yet complaining wasn’t enough, it was necessary to respond. But how?

Largo Caballero’s policy was clearly directed against the working class and therefore against the CNT. But could his policy have been different? Wasn’t his government formed precisely to reconstruct the old Republican, bourgeois, statist apparatus?

And hadn’t the CNT facilitated that reconstruction by accepting collaboration with the other anti-fascist tendencies? The revolution was in a stalemate and there was no way to break out of it except by crushing the counterrevolutionary forces within the anti-fascist camp while simultaneously fighting Franco’s troops. Was that possible?

A national CNT meeting came up with a solution that might have been feasible if the Soviet Union had not infiltrated Spain, didn’t have Largo Caballero in its grips, and hadn’t moved the Spanish treasury to Russia. The plan was to form a workers’ government called the National Defense Council, which would be based on the CNT and UGT and in which the political parties would play a secondary role. Largo Caballero found the idea attractive momentarily, but a light jostle from Russian Ambassador Marcel Rosemberg returned him to his political senses. Likewise, the Communist Party launched a campaign against the “CNT-UGT conspiracy” and the entire pro-Stalinist wing of the Socialist Party (led by Indalecio Prieto) rose up against the attempt to exclude the political parties from the leadership of the war.

Largo Caballero felt the ground crumbling beneath him. [661] And the Communists, not caring if they provoked a civil war among the anti-fascists, went on the attack against the working class. Vicente Uribe, the Communist Minister of Agriculture, released a decree stating that lands could not be expropriated unless there was incontrovertible evidence that the former owners were truly fascists. This threatened the existence of the 1,500 agricultural collectives that the CNT had organized in Levante, Aragón, Andalusia, and Castilla. But the counterrevolutionaries didn’t stop there: they also went after collective management in the transportation industry, the mines, and elsewhere. All the workers’ conquests were now at risk. There would have to be an armed confrontation, and that would be Franco’s victory.

On July 20, all Spanish militants knew that the revolution would fail if the international proletariat, or at least the French, didn’t come to its aid. By October, any hope that the world proletariat might go into action had dissipated and Spanish revolutionaries had to fight not only against the fascist and “democratic” powers but also the USSR, the “fatherland of the proletariat.”

The Socialist Federation of the Seine held a rally on September 6 in Luna Park demanding that the French Popular Front government give real support to the Spanish revolution. Léon Blum was not invited, but decided to defy the people’s rage and attend anyway. The crowd received him with shouts of “Cannons for Spain! Cannons for Spain!” Then, once the initial commotion had passed, he delivered a sentimental speech:

Those who know me well understand that I haven’t changed. Do you think that I don’t support and share your feelings? You heard the representatives of the Spanish Popular Front the other night in the Winter Velodrome. I spoke with them that day, in the morning. Do you think that I listened to them with any less emotion than you? (Applause.) We have to do everything possible to eliminate the threat of war.[662]

For the sake of peace, it mattered little if the Spanish people perished! That was the essence of Léon Blum’s message to those workers. And, since crowds can be fickle, he won the day. Everyone stood up and yelled “Viva Léon Blum!” in unison, while the notes of The International mixed with their cheers. They went from “Cannons for Spain!” to applauding Blum, which was the equivalent to applauding the nonintervention policy. That sad scene announced the sure defeat of the Spanish revolutionaries! But in Spain, where the counterrevolutionary noose tightened daily, there was no way to stop fighting.

Given the CNT’s failure to form the National Defense Council, and that it was now maneuvering on the political terrain, it was inevitable that it 556 Stalin’s shadow over Spainwould join the central government. After dissolving the CCAMC and entering the Generalitat, the last stop had to be Madrid. By choosing that route, the CNT selected the worst of all possible routes, since it not only threw all its anti-statist ideas overboard but also deprived itself of its own strength: its activist base, which abhorred that political “turn.” By trying to avoid a battle among anti-fascists, it only delayed it while simultaneously reducing its capacity for fight.

The Stalinists followed the CNT and the anarchists’ internal crisis attentively and hoped to make the most of it. Antonov Ovssenko played a central role here. He constantly repeated that “Comrade Stalin has no political ambitions in Spain and sincerely wants victory for the Spanish Republic.” And the Communist’s propaganda offensive did have some impact inside the CNT and FAI. The Russian Consul confidentially told Lluís Companys that it would be good if a large group of Catalans attended the anniversary commemoration of the October Revolution in Moscow. He even insinuated that it would be magnificent if Durruti was among them. Lluís Companys conveyed Ovssenko’s suggestion to the CNT Regional Committee, which agreed to send CNT men to Russia and also dispatched a group to Bujaraloz to convince Durruti to join the delegation. When the CNT envoys in Bujaraloz finished explaining the idea, Durruti said:

Maybe, for propagandistic purposes, it would be good if the CNT sent someone along, but to think that there will be an opportunity to tell the Russian people what our revolution really means and needs is to misunderstand Soviet reality. GPU agents and other authorities will besiege our comrades. They’ll go from celebration to celebration and be a banner on the official rostrum. The government will use them to show the Russian people that Spain is grateful for its help. So, I think it’s a mistake to send CNT representatives and of course useless to send someone from the Column. But, nonetheless, the War Committee will have to make the decision.[663]

The War Committee decided that Francisco Carreño would represent the Column in Moscow. Durruti insisted on drafting a greeting to the Russian workers, which Carreño pledged to release in the Soviet capital. If we place Durruti’s text in its historical context—when Stalin’s cult of personality had reached the most absurd extremes—we can be certain that Carreño did not read his statement in Moscow. A letter to Russian workers that didn’t mention the “glorious” Stalin, the “heroic” Bolshevik party, or recognize the Soviet Union as the “fatherland of the proletariat” would necessarily be received as an insult by the Stalinist bureaucracy. Here is the text in question:

Comrades:

The purpose of these lines is to send you a fraternal salutation from the Aragón front, where thousands of your brothers fight, as you fought twenty years ago, for the emancipation of a class that has been offended and humiliated over the centuries. Twenty years ago the Russian workers flew the red flag in the East. It was a symbol of the international proletariat, in which you placed all your trust, in hopes that it would help you carry out the momentous work that you had begun. We, the workers of the world, honored that trust and responded selflessly.

Today a revolution has been born in the West and a flag also flies that represents an ideal, which, triumphant, will fraternally unite two peoples once mocked by Czarism on the one hand and a despotic monarchy on the other. Today, Russian workers, we place the defense of our revolution in your hands. We have no faith in self-styled democratic or anti-fascist politicians. We rely on our class brothers, the workers: they are the ones who have to defend the Spanish revolution, just like we defended the Russian Revolution two decades earlier.

Trust us. We are authentic workers. Nothing in the world will make us forsake our principles. We will never betray the working class.

Greetings from all the workers who fight against fascism with weapons in hand on the Aragón front.

Your comrade: B. Durruti

Osera, October 23, 1936[664]

The military situation in the Center was becoming more desperate daily and rebel troops had come dangerously close to Madrid. The government began to assume that the city would fall into insurgent hands and seriously considered relocating, taking the leaders of the political parties and labor organizations with it. On October 18, Largo Caballero called a meeting of Popular Front and CNT representatives (despite the fact that the CNT was not a member of the Popular Front).

Horacio Martínez Prieto—who had recently become the organization’s General Secretary—represented the CNT at the meeting. Largo Caballero gave a pathetic speech in which he argued that moving the government would be good for the war effort. No one, not even the Communist Party representative, thought his suggestion was foolish. Just when it seemed like everyone supported the move, Prieto declared that the people would think the government was abandoning Madrid and see its action as a cowardly flight. That, in addition to the continuous defeats that they had been suffering, would be a mortal blow to the militias’ fighting spirit. Caballero’s only response was to say that the CNT “doesn’t have a realistic view of the situation.” But Prieto held firm, adding that “if the government does move, the CNT will stay in Madrid: its National Committee won’t follow.” Given their stance, the Socialist leader had to give up the projected relocation. The CNT thus earned the antipathy of all the Popular Front representatives, who had always imagined themselves “beyond the line of fire” and were now up to their necks in the war thanks to the CNT’s failure to have a “realistic view of the situation.” [665]

Horacio M. Prieto won the first battle. However, Largo Caballero, who didn’t appreciate the CNT’s autonomy, intensified his efforts to get it to share in governmental responsibility. The militarization of the militias and the nationalization of industry and agriculture were designed with that end in mind. Caballero knew that Prieto supported the CNT’s entrance into the government and thought his stubbornness at the October 18 meeting was more of a political maneuver than a reflection of a genuine concern for mass feeling. He assumed that the CNT’s willingness to participate in the government depended on the distribution of ministries. Largo Caballero and Horacio M. Prieto began discreet conversations in which they negotiated the CNT’s admittance into the Cabinet. Ultimately, they decided that the CNT would receive four ministries and that it could select its own ministers. Prieto also promised that they would send Durruti to help defend Madrid. Things began moving quickly.

Prieto knew that getting leading figures of the CNT’s leftwing—that is, militants identified with the FAI—to agree to be ministers would be the best way to make the organization’s rank and file accept its entry into the government. Federica Montseny and Juan García Oliver were the most well-known “FAIistas.” Prieto didn’t consult anyone when selecting the ministers, not even his comrades on the National Committee. He operated like a typical party boss. He called the moderates, Juan López and Juan Peiró, and told them that they would occupy the ministries of Trade and Industry, respectively. Things were different with Montseny and Oliver: not only did they have to overcome anarchist “scruples,” but they also had tactical concerns. A phone call wasn’t sufficient in their cases and so Horacio went to Barcelona to resolve the matter directly. Montseny felt horribly torn when he pressed her to accept the position. At first she refused, claiming that others were better suited. She also consulted her father, the old anarchist Federico Urales, and despite the fact that he counseled her to consent, she continued to resist.

She didn’t agree until Prieto, using all the prerogatives of his post, appealed to her sense of “organizational responsibility.”

Encouraged by his success with Montseny, Prieto then spoke with García Oliver. Things were more difficult with him. For García Oliver, the question of whether or not to join the government wasn’t something that kept him up at night. There were more important tactical concerns that inclined him to say no. He believed that the nerve center of the revolution and the war was in Barcelona and that the CNT would lose everything if it lost its influence and political control there. He thought that it had been a significant mistake to dissolve the CCAMC, but that the CNT had compensated for it by securing its command over the Ministry of Defense, where he occupied the most important post and directly oversaw the militias in Aragón, the War College, and the Air Force school. Likewise, Aurelio Fernández and Dionisio Eroles still ran the police and José Assens still led the “Control Patrols.” It was possible to use these positions to contain the PSUC, which was gaining ground thanks to the weakness of the CNT’s Regional Committee. García Oliver justly claimed that he was an integral part of that fragile equilibrium and that, if he left the Ministry of Defense, someone without his influence would replace him and their positions would slowly fall to the PSUC. García Oliver’s analysis was coherent, and to deny it was to put all the revolutionary conquests at risk. But Prieto didn’t really believe in the revolution and simply wanted to turn the FAI into a political party, using the CNT as an electoral trampoline. He pressured García Oliver, who ended up accepting, but not without first saying that he would hold the National Committee responsible for the consequences. In our opinion, García Oliver committed a serious error here: his experience with the demise of the CCAMC should have led him to emphatically reject Prieto’s proposition. Once again, García Oliver’s reputation as an “anarcho-Bolshevik” seemed to be confirmed, although the charge was unjust, since one of his biggest flaws was an unwavering respect for and submission to CNT decisions.

Prieto only had to convince Durruti to come to Madrid to be successful in his entire endeavor and he took off for Bujaraloz to accomplish the task. However, García Oliver had already informed Durruti about Horacio’s intentions by the time he arrived and, when the discussion came up, Durruti immediately cut off the CNT General Secretary: “No, I won’t leave Aragón, especially when the Aragón Defense Council is in such a precarious position, still unrecognized by the CNT, treated as an ‘uncontrolled’ body by the Communists, and ignored by the Madrid government.” Horacio insisted, reminding him of his “responsibilities” and the need to be “disciplined.” To lecture Durruti about “responsibility” and “disciple,” given everything that he was experiencing, was enough to drive him crazy: “I don’t recognize any discipline other than revolutionary discipline,” he said angrily. And, with respect to “responsibility,” he told Prieto that “in the rearguard, you’ve replaced the old militant responsibility with a disastrous bureaucratic responsibility.” [666]

Prieto had no choice but to leave Aragón, cursing “the irresponsibility of the fighters on the front.”

What led Durruti to oppose the CNT? One thinks of a comment that Francisco Ascaso made to Manuel Buenacasa, when the latter was CNT Secretary and told him that the “organization is always right.” Ascaso responded: “Not always and, on this occasion, I’m the one who’s right.” [667] The fact that Durruti, who had always submitted to the organization’s decisions, was saying no to its Secretary can be seen as a “revolt” against the bureaucratism of the Committees, which had been working in the CNT’s name and standing in for its militants. One could say that Durruti’s revolt began on July 20 and affirmed itself when he made himself the “axis” of libertarian Aragón. [668]

Durruti had learned endless things during the months of civil war, but the main lesson that he received was a full confirmation of the working class’s capacity to govern itself and the damage done by the committees’ bureaucratic leaderism.

Prieto hurried to finalize the details of the CNT’s admission into the government with Largo Caballero as soon as he returned to Madrid. But Durruti’s attitude could ruin everything, if García Oliver went back on his word and a CNT regional meeting in Catalonia was called, at which there would be a debate about the serious step that the National Committee was taking behind closed doors.

On November 4, the press reported that four new ministers had joined Largo Caballero’s government. This surprised the immense majority of CNT and FAI militants. The whole “upstanding” bourgeoisie world was also shocked when it found out that García Oliver—an old outlaw and “legendary bandit”—ran nothing less than the Ministry of Justice.