Suchergebnisse

During the First World War, hundreds of exiles and refugees from across Europe arrived in neutral Spain. This article investigates the colony of Russian exiles that settled in the country and their interactions with the Spanish labour movement. It contends that the exiles played a prominent role as conveyors of information on the Russian Revolution, which served as an important source of inspiration during the social upheavals that rocked Spain in 1917–20. The authorities tried to sever the connection between local activists and the Russian exiles through persecution. The article concludes with reflections on the significance of neutral countries as safe havens for internationalists during the war, comparing the Spanish and the Mexican case studies. It contends that neutrality helped preserve transnational radical networks, while contact with exiles rendered the labour movement in these countries more cosmopolitan and knowledgeable of world events and ideological trends.

AbstractThe Russian Revolution became a beacon flare for anti-capitalists across the world, including many anarchists. The Spanish anarcho-syndicalists became ardent supporters of Bolshevism, and many endorsed the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Here, I try to arrive at a political and historical understanding of this uncanny honeymoon, and question empirical explanations that present it as a simple misunderstanding. I firstly historicize the evolution of the concept of the workers' dictatorship in the Spanish labor movement and assess it through the prism of the antagonism between the anarchists and socialists. I then set the reception of the Russian Revolution in the context of social ferment that emerged in Spain after 1917, which generated enormous enthusiasm and clouded theoretical differences. I finally relate the reception of the Soviet dictatorship to the intensification of class violence in these years, which rendered many anarchists hospitable to the authoritarian methods of the Bolsheviks.

This article will follow the steps of the 1921 Spanish syndicalist delegation to revolutionary Russia. It will use the delegation as a window into the revolutionary subculture of post-war Europe and into the experience of foreign representatives in early Soviet Russia. Particular attention will be paid to the complex ways in which syndicalist militants that were strongly influenced by anarchism grappled with the realities of Soviet Russia, to argue that the thought process foreign visitors traversed was often contradictory, being simultaneously attracted and repelled by the Bolshevik regime.