The Last Stalinist: The Life of Santiago Carrillo. Paul Preston
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efforts of Prieto and Largo Caballero, and Largo Caballero was elected party president.48 In fact, the Thirteenth PSOE Congress represented the last major Socialist vote of confidence in the efficacy of governmental collaboration. It closed on 13 October. The following day, the Seventeenth Congress of the UGT began. It would be dominated by the block votes of those unions whose bureaucracy was in the hands of Besteiro’s followers, the printers (Andrés Saborit), the railway workers (Trifón Gómez) and the landworkers’ Federación Nacional de Trabajadores de la Tierra (Lucio Martínez Gil). Accordingly, and despite the growing militancy of the rank and file of those unions, the Seventeenth Congress elected an executive committee with Besteiro as president, and all his senior followers in key positions. Largo Caballero was in fact elected secretary general, but he immediately sent a letter of resignation on the grounds that the congress’s vindication of the role of Besteiro and Muiño in the December 1930 strike constituted a criticism of his own stance. He was convinced that the mood of the rank and file demanded a more determined policy.49
Largo Caballero’s position was influenced by events abroad as well as by those within Spain. He and indeed many others in the party, the union and particularly the youth movement were convinced that the Republic was seriously threatened by fascism. Aware of the failure of German and Italian Socialists to oppose fascism in time, they advocated a seizing of the initiative. Throughout the first half of 1933 the Socialist press had fully registered both its interest in events in Germany and its belief that Gil Robles and his followers intended to follow in the footsteps of Hitler and Mussolini. Largo Caballero received frequent letters from Araquistáin, now Spanish Ambassador in Berlin, describing with horror the rise of Nazism.50
In the summer of 1933, Largo Caballero and his advisers came to believe that the Republican–Socialist coalition was impotent to resist the united assault by both industrial and agricultural employers on their social legislation. In consequence, Largo Caballero set about trying to regain his close contact with the rank and file, which had faded somewhat during his tenure of a ministry. The first public revelation of his newly acquired radical views began with a speech, in the Cine Pardiñas in Madrid on 23 July, as part of a fund-raising event for Renovación. In fact, the first part of the speech was essentially moderate and primarily concerned with defending ministerial collaboration against the criticisms of Besteiro. However, a hardening of attitude was apparent as he spoke of the increasing aggression of the right. Declaring that fascism was the bourgeoisie’s last resort at a time of capitalist crisis, he accepted that the PSOE and the UGT had a duty to prevent the establishment of fascism in Spain. Forgetting that, in the wake of the defeat in 1917, he had resolved never to risk conflict with the apparatus of the state, he now announced that if the defeat of fascism meant seizing power and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, then the Socialists, albeit reluctantly, should be prepared to do so. Enthusiastic cheers greeted the more extremist portions of his speech, which confirmed his belief in the validity of his approach towards a revolutionary line. Serrano Poncela and Carrillo and others regarded Largo Caballero as their champion and themselves as the ‘pioneers’ of his new line. ‘The emblematic figure of Largo Caballero’ was described, in terms that recalled the sycophancy of the Stalinist Bolshevik Party, as ‘the highest representative of a state of consciousness of the masses in the democratic republic, as the life force of a class party’.51
With the FJS experiencing a growth in numbers, many of them poorly educated, it was decided in 1932 to hold an annual summer school to train cadres. The sessions were to take place at Torrelodones to the north-west of Madrid. The second school was held in the first half of August 1933 with appearances by the major barons of the PSOE. Besteiro spoke first on 5 August with a speech entitled ‘Roads to Socialism’. It was obvious that his aim was to discredit the new extremist line propounded by Largo Caballero in the Cine Pardiñas. Insinuating that it was merely a ploy to gain cheap popularity with the masses, he condemned the idea of a Socialist dictatorship to defeat fascism as ‘an absurdity and a vain infantile illusion’. Without naming Largo Caballero, he spoke eloquently about the dangers of a cult of personality – which was precisely what Carrillo and the radical group within the FJS were creating around their champion. This might have been the fruit of genuine wide-eyed admiration on Carrillo’s part, but it also served his ambition. Moreover, this approach would later be repeated in his relationship with Dolores Ibárruri, better known as ‘Pasionaria’. Besteiro’s speech was received with booing and jeers. El Socialista refused to publish it. This was a reflection of the fact that the paper was now edited by Julián Zugazagoitia, a follower of Prieto who was sympathetic to the FJS and, for the moment, loyally followed the line of the PSOE’s president, Largo Caballero.52
The following day, 6 August, Prieto spoke. His language was neither as patronizing nor as confrontational as that of Besteiro, although he too warned against the dangers of easy radicalism. While defending, as Largo Caballero had done, the achievements of the Republic so far, he also spoke of the savage determination of the economic establishment to destroy the Republic’s social legislation. Nevertheless, he called upon the 200 young Socialists in his audience who dreamed of a Bolshevik revolution to consider that the weakness of the ruling classes and of the state and military institutions in the war-torn Russia of 1917 was simply not present in the Spain of 1933. He also warned that, even if a Socialist seizure of power were possible, capitalists in other parts of Europe were unlikely to stand idly by. It was a skilful speech, acknowledging that the FJS was morally justified in hankering after a more radical line, but rejecting such radicalism as practical PSOE policy. This was not what the assembled would-be cadres wanted to hear. Prieto was received with less outright hostility than Besteiro but the response was nonetheless cool, and his speech was also ignored by El Socialista.53
Largo Caballero was not at first scheduled to speak at the summer school. However, Carrillo informed him that the speeches by Besteiro and Prieto had caused great dissatisfaction and invited him to remedy the situation. Largo Caballero accepted readily, convinced that he had a unique rapport with the rank and file. In a somewhat embittered speech, he revealed his dismay at the virulence of rightist attacks on Socialist legislation and suggested that the reforms to which he aspired were impossible within the confines of bourgeois democracy. He claimed to have been radicalized by the intransigence of the bourgeoisie during his twenty-four months in government: ‘I now realize that it is impossible to carry out a Socialist project within bourgeois democracy.’ Although he affirmed a continuing commitment to legality, he asserted that ‘in Spain, a revolutionary situation that is being created both because of the growth of political feeling among the working masses and of the incomprehension of the capitalist class will explode one day. We must be prepared.’ Just as it alarmed the right, the speech delighted the young Socialists and shouts could be heard of ‘¡Viva el Lenin Español!’ The coining of the nickname has been attributed variously to the Kremlin, to Araquistáin and to Carrillo.54
Less than a month after the summer school, on 11 September, the Republican–Socialist coalition had fallen. Largo Caballero was interviewed by Carrillo for Renovación. Among other incendiary statements, he declared that ‘we are at the gates of an action that will lead the proletariat to social revolution … Socialism will have to resort to the maximum violence to displace capitalism … It is the task of the youth movement to firm up those who are indecisive and to push aside the passive elements who are of no use for the revolution.’55 A new government was formed by the leader of the corrupt Radical Party, Alejandro Lerroux. Lacking adequate parliamentary support, Lerroux was rapidly obliged to resign. He was replaced at the beginning of October by his deputy, Diego Martínez Barrio, who governed with the Cortes closed. Elections were called for 19 November.
In the run-up to the November 1933 elections, Carrillo’s editorial line in Renovación increasingly adopted an extremist rhetoric of violence intermingled with frequent quotations from Lenin. Carrillo himself wrote on 7 October that a general strike would not be sufficient for