The Last Stalinist: The Life of Santiago Carrillo. Paul Preston
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which had initially been scheduled to establish the structure and programme of the new organization. A congress had formal procedures that required the election of representative delegates, and wartime circumstances made that virtually impossible. A conference had the advantage of permitting Carrillo to choose the delegates himself. Thus he was able to pack the proceedings with hand-picked young Communists from the battle fronts and the factories. He then exploited that to perpetrate the sleight of hand whereby the conference made decisions corresponding to a congress. To the astonishment and chagrin of those FJS members who still harboured the illusion that the new organization was ‘Socialist’, the entire event was organized along totally Stalinist lines. All policy directives were pre-packaged, there was virtually no debate and there was no voting.134
One of the delegates from Alicante, Antonio Escribano, reflected later that ‘Ninety percent of the young Socialists present did not know that Carrillo, Laín, Melchor, Cabello, Aurora Arnaiz, etc had gone over lock, stock and barrel to the Communist Party. We thought that they were still young Socialists and they were acting in agreement with Largo Caballero and the PSOE. If we had known that these deserters had betrayed us, something else would have happened.’135 The impression that the proceedings were carried out under the auspices of Largo Caballero was shamelessly given by Carrillo, who declared, ‘It is necessary to say that Comrade Largo Caballero has, as ever, or more than ever, the support of the Spanish youth fighting at the front and working in the factories. It is necessary to say here that Comrade Largo Caballero is for us the same as before: the man who helped our unification, the man from whom we expect much excellent advice so that, in defence of the common cause, the unity of Spanish youth may be a reality.’136
As newsreel footage revealed, apart from Julio Álvarez del Vayo and Antonio Machado, the poet and alcalde (mayor) of Valencia, the stage party was made up of Communists headed by Pasionaria, Dolores Ibárruri. Carrillo opened his long speech with thanks to the Communist Youth International, the KIM, for its support. He made especially fulsome reference to the KIM representative, Mihály Farkas, introduced as ‘Michael Wolf’, with whom his relationship was growing closer. No longer the revolutionary firebrand of the Cárcel Modelo, Carrillo explained that, while the Socialist Youth, the FJS, had tried to undermine the government in 1934, now the JSU supported the Republican government’s war effort. According to Carrillo’s close collaborator Fernando Claudín, Farkas/Wolf had considerable input into Carrillo’s speech. Thus the Comintern line was paramount in Carrillo’s talk of broad national unity against a foreign invader. Central to his rhetoric was the defence of the smallholding peasants and the small businessmen with some bitter criticisms of anarchist collectives. There was also the ritual denunciation of the POUM (the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista) as a subversive Trotskyist outfit. With the guidance of Codovila and Farkas/Wolf, Carrillo had already started down the road of linking the POUM to the Francoists. The primary function of the JSU was no longer the fomenting of revolution but the education of the masses – the basic reformist aspiration of the Republican–Socialist coalition for which he had previously excoriated Prieto and the PSOE centrists. This was Comintern policy, although it also made perfect sense in the wartime context.137
Carrillo boasted that the new organization had had 40,000 members immediately after its creation but now had 250,000. He placed special emphasis on the fact that the JSU was a completely new organization entirely independent of both the PSOE and the PCE, in which neither component had the right to demand its leadership. This was a sophistry to neutralize Socialist annoyance about the fact that, since Carrillo, Cazorla and Serrano Poncela had formally joined the PCE, the JSU executive now had eleven Communists to four Socialists.138 It was hardly surprising, given the primordial role of the Soviet Union in helping the Republic, that Carrillo should express such enthusiasm for the Communist Party. It would not be long before he would clinch his betrayal of his erstwhile patron.
In the light of Largo Caballero’s incompetence as a war leader, the PCE was increasingly determined to see his removal as Prime Minister. Within barely a month of the JSU conference, the opportunity arose with the disastrous fall of Málaga to rebel forces on 8 February. The disaster could be attributed to Largo Caballero’s mistakes as Minister of War and those of his under-secretary, General José Asensio Torrado. By mid-May, mounting criticism had forced Largo Caballero to resign and he was replaced by the Treasury Minister, Dr Juan Negrín. An internationally renowned physiologist, the moderate Socialist Negrín shared the Communist view that priority should be given to the war effort rather than to revolutionary aspirations. An early contribution to the process of undermining Largo Caballero’s reputation was made by Carrillo when, in early March 1937, he headed a delegation from the JSU to an amplified plenum of the Central Committee of the PCE. In his speech, he was especially savage in his criticism of the POUM. What entirely undermined his constant claims about the JSU’s independence was his hymn of praise to the Communist Party. Moreover, the way he referred to his pride in leaving past mistakes behind must have galled Largo Caballero: ‘Finally, we found this party and this revolutionary line for which we have fought all our life, our short life. We are not ashamed of our past, in our past there is nothing deserving of reproach, but we are proud to have overcome all the mistakes of the past and to be today militants of the glorious Communist Party of Spain.’ His remarks on his reasons for joining the PCE were even more devastating for Largo Caballero. He referred to ‘those who, when the rebels were nearing Madrid, set off for Valencia’. He went on to say that ‘many of those who today are attacking the JSU were among those who fled’.139
Despite the prominence that came with his earlier position in the Junta de Defensa de Madrid and now as leader of the JSU, Carrillo’s role within the Spanish Communist hierarchy was a subordinate one. He accepted this, doing as he was told with relish. At that March 1937 meeting, he was made a non-voting member of the PCE’s politburo. He attended and listened but took little part in the discussions – being, as Claudín put it, ‘simply the man whose job it was to make sure that the JSU implemented party policy. He did not belong in the inner circles where the important issues were discussed and debated by the delegates of the Comintern (Palmiro Togliatti, Boris Stepanov, Ernst Gerö, Vittorio Codovila), by the top Soviet diplomatic, military and security staff and by the most prominent leaders of the PCE (José Díaz, Pasionaria, Pedro Checa, Jesús Hernández, Vicente Uribe and Antonio Mije).’ Carrillo himself believed at this stage that he was simply not trusted enough to be admitted to these top-secret meetings and was determined to achieve that trust. Accordingly, he was careful to maintain excellent relations with the Comintern representatives, especially with Togliatti and Codovila, the man he regarded as his mentor. Codovila was certainly satisfied with the progress made by his pupil.140
The extent to which Carrillo had transformed himself into ‘his master’s voice’ was confirmed at the JSU National Committee meeting on 15–16 May 1937 – just as Largo Caballero was being removed from the government. Carrillo roundly criticized Largo Caballero’s supporters within the organization and called for their expulsion. Indeed, throughout 1937 and 1938, together with Claudín, Carrillo presided over the systematic elimination of his erstwhile Caballerista allies from the JSU. Claudín’s efforts earned him the nickname of ‘the Jack the Ripper of the JSU’ (el destripador de las juventudes). This process would return to haunt the PCE leadership at the end of the war.141
The importance of Carrillo’s position derived from the fact that the mobilization of the male population, in which the PCE played a key role beginning with the creation of the Fifth Regiment, relied on the continued expansion of the JSU. Its members filled the ranks of the Fifth Regiment and then of the newly created Popular Army as well as those of the Republic’s rearguard security forces. For most of the time during 1937 and 1938, Carrillo devoted himself to building up the PCE’s most valuable asset. However, because he was of military age and should have been in a fighting unit, it was arranged for him to meet his obligations by spending brief periods attached to the General Staff