Soviet Russia's part in Spanish War revealed (press cutting)

              SOVIET RUSSIA'S PART IN SPANISH WAR REVEALED (1)
By LUIS ARAQUISTAIN
Inside facts of Russia's intervention in the Spanish civil war are told here by the former Republican Ambassador to France, who was closely associated with Francisco Largo Caballero when the latter was Spanish Premier and was combating the Communists' attempts to seize power. Señors Araquistain and Largo Caballero are now in exile.
Soon after the beginning of the military insurrection against the Spanish republic in July of 1936, the name of Francisco Largo Caballero, the most popular Socialist leader of Spain, was being acclaimed in workers' meetings and at the fronts with the addition of "The Spanish Lenin."
The order to use this qualifying phrase came from Moscow.
The Communists needed a figurehead in Spain. In their own party there was not one outstanding intellectual, political or labour personality. The mental or moral level of its own best-known men and women — Jose Diaz, Jesus Hernandez, Vincente Uribe, " La Pasionaria," Margarita Nelken — was too low. They aspired to be directors of the Spanish tragedy on the republican side, while other men, of other parties, would be the visible actors.
The chief rôle in the cast was assigned to Largo Caballero. They gave him a grand title: that of "Spanish Lenin." That was the greatest honour they could bestow upon a man who was not a Communist.
A few months later, at the beginning of 1937, the Communists started to pull down the man they themselves had raised to tne clouds.
The idol they had manufactured was made of clay.
The man they had chosen for his diamantine character, for his energy as a ruler, for his popularity as a leader of masses, became exactly the opposite — a weak old man, vacillating, without roots in the working class.
Why this sudden change? Nothing could be simpler. " The Spanish Lenin " had turned out to be excessively Leninian, too personal and independent, a Spaniard who wanted to govern his country according to the spirit and the interests of his fatherland and not to the dictates of a policy placed at the service of a foreign nation.
It was the fable of Pygmalion in reverse — of a man whom the Communists wanted to make a lifeless puppet, docile in their hands
When he rebelled against the Soviet Pygmalion, who was more dull than astute, the latter decided to destroy him.
That and no other was the meaning of the May, 1937, crisis, in which Dr. Juan Negrin replaced Largo Caballero in the premiership. It meant the triumph of the Communist policy in Spain.
The day of that crisis was the day the war was lost for the Republic.
The Spanish war was lost through the fault of the Communists. Did they really want to win it?
ON POLITICAL COMMISSARS
The first conflict between Largo Caballero and the Communists hinged on the political commissars of the army.
One day, Premier Largo Caballero learned that, without consulting him, though he was also minister of war, the commissar-general, Julio Alvarez Del Vayo, who was also foreign minister, had appointed hundreds of political commissars in the republican army. The majority were communists
(1) These articles were distributed in the North and South American press by the North American Newspaper Alliance.
The idea of the political commissars had also been imported from Russia.
The Communists wanted to have a monopoly on commissars, not to educate and inflame the soldiers, but to compel them to enrol in the party, offering them advantages and promotions if they did and persecuting them by every means - including attempts against their lives - if they refused.
From the first moment, the Communists were the most privileged part, the aristocracy of the republican army. For that they made use of the political commissars and for that Alvarez Del Vayo appointed them.
Largo Caballero cancelled those appointments, which had been made behind his back and in favour almost exclusively of the Communist party - that is to say, of Soviet policy in Spain.
On that day the Socialist leader signed his death warrant as head of the government. The Communists did not want a "Spanish Lenin" of flesh and blood, but of straw.
It will surprise some that Alvarez Del Vayo, a Socialist, should lend himself to this policy of favouring communism.
For those of us who know him from long ago, there is nothing surprising in it.
Since much before the war, his conduct was that of a perfect " libellatic." (In the early days of Christianity the word " libellatic " was applied to those who, being already Christians, displayed a " libel " or certificate attesting that they worshipped the pagan idols.)
That is, he was a Communist without officially having ceased to belong to the Socialist party.
His body belonged to this party; his heart, to communism. The Soviet witches found in him an easy Macbeth.
All of us who have had some contact with the Communists know this tactic of stimulating the ambitions and flattering those they want to seduce.
When I was ambassador in Paris, a certain agent of the Comintern used to come every day to offer me I don't know how many political and social kingdoms in Spain.
Finally, one day, tiring of so much adulation, I ended by saying to him: " Don't tire yourself. Neither am I Macbeth, nor do I believe in witches."
Alvarez Del Vayo lent an ear to the witches of Communism and offered himself as the Macbeth of the Spanish proletariat.
He would sacrifice his own party and the Spanish people, if necessary, to serve Russia.
He would be the king of revolutionary Spain; the political and labour heir of Largo Caballero, the supreme leader of the Spanish workers united in a single labour party controlled by the Communists.
This labour of unification, that is to say, of absorption of the Socialist proletariat by Communism, had its start in the youth groups. One had to unify the Socialist and the Communist youth.
The preparatory operations were conducted in the home of Alvarez Del Vayo.
I lived in Madrid one floor above Alvarez Del Vayo and could witness the daily visits made to him by young Socialist leaders with the purpose of interviewing the Comintern agent then operating in Spain, one Codovila, who used the false name of Medina and spoke Spanish with a strong South American accent.
There it was that a voyage to the Muscovite Mecca was organised for them; there it was arranged to deliver the Socialist youth, the working generation of Spain to Soviet