For anyone interested, George Orwell's account of his experiences during the civil war, "Homage to Catalonia" is a good english language read on the subject. Not an expert, but it seems pretty impartial. And its Orwell so its easy to read.
Great book, but George Orwell is absolutely not impartial. While yeah, he did almost get purged, he still fought quite a bit. If nothing else, his glowing praise of the Republican Militias is, despite his couching, incredibly biased.
If true, it would be very ironic given that in 'Looking Back on the Spanish War’ Orwell wrote: ‘But what impressed me then, and has impressed me ever since, is that atrocities are believed in or disbelieved in solely on the grounds of political predilection. Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence.’
The fact that you oppose something bad doesn't automatically make you good. For example, despite fighting a war against Nazi Germany, USSR still was an undoubtedly evil tyrannical regime.
>USSR still was an undoubtedly evil tyrannical regime.
Well, not much more than what western empires have been for their colonial subjects (who, in addition to slavery, forced labor, mass killings, political rule, torture and so on, they also considered inferior beings). So there's that. Of course another being wrong doesn't make one right -- but at least helps put things in perspective and reduce one-sided smugness.
The difference is that the USSR did so upon its own subjects (which is probably better for the rest of world -- if you weren't their subject).
USSR had a dictatorship of upper echelons of the party, which degenerated into full scale war against large parts of its own population (including ...the upper echelons of the party).
But there are some subtleties too: it's not like people weren't supportive of the regime, especially early on. (Of course Germans were also supportive of the Nazi regime, so there's that).
So, in a sense, they got what they wanted -- it just happened to turn to tyranny. That said, they also had many positive changes from the tsarism on its early days. And they also become a less tyrannical state after Stalin.
Yups. A real impartial read would just describe the events without favoring any party. A bit like those Nazi documentaries that repeat on Discovery Channel at night in my region. They describe the horrors without any value judgment.
There is no such thing as a "real impartial read".
Any communication of information will inevitably be limited, and the way that limitation manifests will be influenced by the subjectivity of the person communicating.
The documentaries may present the facts they choose to include in a more dispassionate style than other sources, but this should not be confused with objectivity.
He did simply described what he saw and experienced.
And he liked the spirit in the militia and so he wrote about it. And since he did not join the fascists, he could not and did not wrote, how the experience was for them.
Not more.
And all the ugly things he saw, stealing, dirt, unprofessionalism, etc. he states very clearly.
He says that they were crucial in the early part of the war and is pretty clear about why they lacked effectiveness for organizational reasons. If he is biased, he is biased for because he shares a lot of their values.
The POUM were Trotskyists and most definitely did not have "anarchist leanings". The only commonality they had with the anarchists (who were far more numerous and militarily effective) was that the Communists attacked both of them.
Not exactly Trotskyist either: Andres Nin the leader of POUM had his differences with Trotsky and they did not have contact after 1935 - so it was something like an independent Communist party.
POUM had its differences with Moscow controlled Communists (the third International) - Moscow was for a broad coalition government that would postpone socialist reforms (that's called the 'Popular Front' approach, similar to what was done in France); while POUM was all for pressing on with socialist reforms right during the civil war (mostly within Catalonia). So POUM was more similar to the anarchists in its politics, but the anarchists were much larger movement than the Marxist POUM.
In any event POUM was a small local party that did not matter a lot, but its suppression (that went on with the persecution of the Anarchists) in later stages opened rifts within the Spanish Republic. All that happened once the Spanish government came under increasing control of Moscow - that came as a result of international isolation while the Soviet Union remained as the only backer.
Left wing politics is all very factional, so it gets complicated. I think the Popular Front approach would have been more productive, but Orwell for example did not think so; in any event it became quite bad once the NKVD came in.
I was going to say.. one of my all time favorite books. If you want to know the kinds of experiences that lead a person to write "Politics and the English Language", "Animal Farm", and "1984".
It shows the true possibilities for social change and the dangerous forces that can undermine idealism.
Yes, I can highly recommend it as well for an honest review. Orwell did not bend the truth if what he saw did not fit with what he wanted to see .. which is otherwise a very common trait in the whole socialism sector.
But yes, he simply saw only parts of the whole picture, but what he saw, he gave an accurate review about.
