CHAPTER V. Conclusion

Today, with the Red Army captive and disarmed, National troops have achieved their final military objectives.

THE WAR HAS ENDED.

Burgos, April 1, 1939. Year of the Victory.

(Final war report of the National Army)

Time was passing. The French and international proletariat did not rise up and Spanish revolutionaries lost their first battle. General Franco’s forces imposed the “white peace of the cemeteries” described by Georges Bernanos. [781]

More than 250,000 executed, 500,000 exiled in France, and a million dead or disappeared—that was the tragic balance of the military adventure initiated in Morocco on July 17, 1936.

And Spain, the so-called “red” Spain that Socialist León Blum and Bolshevik Stalin abandoned to its fate, entered the tragic night of fascist domination that would last for nearly forty years.

The nonintervention policy, which was supposed to prevent the Second World War, met its greatest failure in August 1939 when the world began the most horrific war known to man.

Joseph Stalin carried out his purges and his most “faithful servants” in Spain fell. Arthur Stashevsky, who negotiated the shipment of gold to Russia with Negrín, was one of the purges’ victims. And there were many more: Antonov Ovssenko, Mikhail Koltsov, General Benin, Ambassador Marcel Rosemberg... As Arthur London noted, the purges impacted almost every Communist activist, regardless of their country of origin, that could have had direct contact with the International Brigades or the Spanish question. The “cleansing” was so severe that it seemed like Stalin was possessed by a diabolic desire to erase his tracks in Spain. The French Communist Party went along with the other Communist International affiliates in the application of the abuse. André Marty, the principal inquisitor in the International Brigades, was a casualty, as was Charles Tillon, who administered a part of the Spanish gold entrusted to the French Communists. That money was used to subsidize French guerrillas fighting the Germans, while Spanish guerrillas died without support in the mountains.

Why was Stalin so savage with anything connected to the Spanish civil war? Was it because his envoys, after seeing what had happened in Spain, understood the true meaning of Stalinism? What other reason could there be? A serious investigation of this issue would reveal a good deal about the present crisis of international communism. Indeed, Fernando Claudín has only thrown the first rock into the Stalinoid “pool”... [782]

Of course Spanish Communists did not escape the witch-hunt. The men who most helped Stalin betray the Spanish revolution and lead the Republic to defeat, like José Díaz and Jesús Hernández, were also victims of the “arbitrary” (Ilya Ehrenburg’s euphemism for Stalinist terror). The first was thrown out a fifth floor window in a remote part of Greater Russia and the second had to flee to Mexico to save his skin.

The conflict in Spain is still unresolved. Enrique Líster’s attacks on the “opportunist” Santiago Carrillo put the importance of the Communist record during the Spanish war in greater relief than Yo fui ministro de Stalin [trans.: I was Stalin’s Minister].[783] Those who say that they want to “wipe the slate clean” are doing a lot of wiping away...

On January 26, 1939, Franco’s Headquarters sent an order to the man in charge of occupied Barcelona: “Erase all signs identifying the burial sites of red leaders in the Montjuich Cemetery and prevent their graves from becoming meeting places for the people.” Military bureaucrats transmitted General Franco’s order to the civil governor, who sent the cemetery managers the following note: “Erase anything from the graves of anarchist and Catalanist leaders that could attract people’s attention, especially from Buenaventura Durruti’s tomb, which is there. Security guards, appointed for this purpose, must prevent all visits to those graves and detain anyone who expresses the desire to see them. I hold you personally responsible for fulfilling of this order.” [784]

There are three graves shielded by a large cypress tree in the Montjuich Civil Cemetery, more commonly known as the Casa Antúnez Cemetery: the first, next to the cypress, belongs to Francisco Ferrer y Guardia, who was executed for his anti-authoritarian pedagogy on October 13, 1909. The adjoining one is Durruti’s and the third belongs to Francisco Ascaso Abadía, born in 1901 in Almudévar (Huesca) and killed at the Atarazanas barracks on July 20, 1936.

Covered with smooth stone, these three graves lack any inscription, thanks to El Caudillo (Franco). General Franco had unintentionally rendered a great homage to these men, since he not only stripped them of their leaderism but also made their graves easier to identify thanks to their anonymity.

We have come to the end of our work, although the debate over Durruti’s death will surely continue. It is undeniably a historical enigma. Unfortunately, men are more attracted to enigmas for their mystery than out of a desire to reflect deeply on a life, but that needn’t concern us. What matters for us is Durruti’s action-packed, revolutionary life. This is presumably what the poet León Felipe had in mind when he wrote: “The nobility of Durruti’s life will inspire the birth of a legion of Durrutis in the times to come.” Paris, April 1972 Revised in Paris, February 1977.