Page 141 - The Chief Culprit

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Immediately upon arrival in the country, their passports and all other documents were taken
away from them. Once he had become part of an international brigade, a volunteer ceased
to be a volunteer. He turned into an armed slave, for whom escape was virtually impos-
sible. Somehow, for some reason, fires occurred more frequently in buildings in which the
volunteers’ documents were kept, and the cars that transported these documents were more
frequently in the line of fire. As the result, the majority of fighters from international bri-
gades were left without any documents, while the Soviet intelligence network received real
passports and other personal documents for thousands of young men from fifty-four coun-
tries. ese documents were used by the Military Intelligence to provide authentic identity
documents for illegal agents and to improve Soviet document falsification techniques.
Antonov-Ovseenko was called back from Spain to Moscow, arrested, and executed. Yan
Berzin returned from Spain to his post as head of the Military Intelligence but soon after was
also arrested and executed. Meanwhile, the military advisors who really were fighting, not
dealing with politics and espionage, rapidly climbed to the peaks of military power. Some of
them fell under Stalin’s axe but for other mistakes and errors, not for Spain.
Stalin did not count on military victory in Spain, and understood that it was impos-
sible under such conditions. What was he fighting for? is is no riddle. It is enough to look
at the actions of Stalin’s diplomats and propaganda from that time period. ree countries
with totalitarian regimes—Germany, Italy, and Portugal—were helping General Franco. e
Spanish Republic, on a state level, was being helped by the Soviet Union alone. Great Britain
and France had policies of nonintervention in Spain’s affairs. Soviet propaganda screamed
in outrage: children are dying in Spain, while France and Britain issue no reaction! Soviet
propaganda scorned Britain and France and accused them of heartless indifference to the
fates of Spanish children. Many Communist historians in Russia still cannot forgive Britain
and France for their policies of nonintervention. How could they calmly have watched the
suffering of the Spanish people? How could they have stayed on the sidelines, while Spanish
children were dying?
But the issue was not the fate of children. (In the Soviet Union, Stalin enacted a law
on April 7, 1935, that made the death penalty applicable to children aged twelve and older.)
Stalin’s most obvious goal, which was expressed clearly and openly, was to draw Britain and
France into the Spanish war. If this plan had been successful, then a great clash between
Germany, Italy, and Portugal on one side and France and Britain on the other would have
occurred in the far west of the European continent, on Spanish territory. e Soviet Union
was far away. Stalin’s advisors and “volunteers” would also have fought, but the war would
never have touched the territories of the Soviet Union. All Stalin had to do was pour fuel
into a war that was heating up. e international volunteers from fifty-four countries were
also a part of his plan. Stalin’s agents all over the world agitated honest young men to go to
Spain. Stalin was generous with money to fund the agitators, paid for the travels and living
costs of the volunteers, and armed the international brigades. His plan was simple: to draw
citizens of the entire world into war. First separate citizens, then entire groups, and then the
governments of the various nations would have been forced to rescue their citizens. is
would have meant a conflict, one way or another, with the governments of Franco, Hitler,
Mussolini, and Salazar.
But the war in Spain never went beyond its borders. All the efforts of Stalin’s political
agents, diplomats, and spies were not enough to spread the Spanish fire throughout Europe.
Stalin did not blame his generals, because military victory could not be expected. But he