We Saw Spain Die

by Preston Paul

  3 Robert C. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 1879–1929 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973), pp. 469–70.

  4 Reinhold Görling, ‘Dinamita Celebral’ Politischer Prozeß und ästhetische Praxis im Spanischen Bürgerkrieg (1936–1939) (Frankfurt: Verlag Klaus Dieter Vervuert, 1986), p. 311.

  5 Viktor Shklovsky, Mayakovsky and His Circle (London: Pluto Press, 1972), pp. 202, 220.

  6 Paulina and Adelina Abramson, Mosaico roto (Madrid: Compañía Literaria, 1994), p. 36.

  7 Arthur Koestler, The Invisible Writing 2nd edn (London: Hutchinson, 1969), pp. 368, 372.

  8 Gustav Regler, The Owl of Minerva (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1959), pp. 236–9.

  9 Yuri Rybalkin, Stalin y España. La ayuda militar soviética a la República (Madrid: Marcial Pons Historia, 2007) p. 50.

  10 Mijail Koltsov, Diario de la guerra de España (Paris: Ruedo Ibérico, 1963), p. 14. All subsequent references to Diario are to this edition. See also Jonathan Haslam, The Soviet Union and the Struggle for Collective Security in Europe 1933–39 (London: Macmillan Press, 1984), p. 108.

  11 Koltsov, Diario, pp. 412–24; Mikhail Koltsov, Ispanskaya vesna (Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo pisatelei v Leningrade, 1933).

  12 Koltsov, Diario, pp. 12, 15–18, 23, 29, 33–4.

  13 Koltsov, Diario, pp. 39–42, 50–1, 55–8.

  14 Koltsov, Diario, pp. 77–9.

  15 Ursula El-Akramy, Transit Moskau: Margarete Steffin und Maria Osten (Hamburg: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1998), pp. 195–6.

  16 Cockburn recounted the episode with the telephone extension to Peter Wyden, The Passionate War. The Narrative History of the Spanish Civil War (New York: Simon + Schuster, 1983), pp. 328, 537. The untitled article by Claud Cockburn, in Philip Toynbee (ed.), The Distant Drum. Reflections on The Spanish Civil War (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1976), p. 53; Patricia Cockburn, The Years of the Week (London: MacDonald, 1968), p. 208. A meeting with Cockburn is described by Koltsov, Diario, pp. 264–5.

  17 Koltsov to Stalin, 4 December 1937. I am immensely grateful to Ángel Viñas for providing me with a copy of this document.

  18 Santiago Carrillo, interview with the author, 20 September 2006. On transmissions, see Koltsov, Diario, pp. 202, 205, 217.I am equally grateful to Dr Ángel Viñas for his help on this point.

  19 Louis Fischer, Russia’s Road from Peace to War. Soviet Foreign Relations 1917–1941 (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), p. 273.

  20 Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls (London: Jonathan Cape, 1941), p. 397.

  21 Ilya Ehrenburg, Eve of War 1933–1941 (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1963), p. 148; José Fernández Sánchez, ‘El ultimo destino de Mijail Koltsov’, Historia 16, no. 170, junio 1990, p. 21.

  22 Alexander Orlov, The March of Time. Reminiscences (London: St Ermin’s Press, 2004), p. 215.

  23 Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, 3rd edn (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1977), p. 393; Olga Novikova, ‘Las visiones de España en la Unión Soviética durante la guerra civil española’, unpublished manuscript.

  24 Koltsov, Diario, pp. 9, 66 (glasses); pp. 66, 68, 147, 366 (WWI and Russian Civil War).

  25 Koltsov, Diario, pp. 9–12, 404 (threatening Guides), p. 59 (Mundo Obrero), pp. 71, 87, 197 (María Teresa’s pistol). José Fernández Sánchez, ‘Introducción’, Mijail Koltsov, Diario de la guerra de España (Madrid: Akal Editor, 1978), pp. 5–6.

  26 Boris Efimov, in Mikhail’ Kol’tsov, kakim on byl. Vospominaniya (Moscow: Sovetskii Pisatel’, 1965), p. 65; A. Rubashkin, Mikhail’ Kol’tsov. Kritiko-biograficheskii ocherk (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaya literature, 1971), p. 174; Gleb Skorokhodov, Mikhail’ Kol’tsov. Kritiko-biograficheskii ocherk (Moscow: Sovetskii Pisatel’, 1959), pp. 160–3. The most convincing identification of Koltsov with ‘Miguel Martínez’ can be found in Ian Gibson, Paracuellos: cómo fue (Barcelona: Argos Vergara, 1983), pp. 55–9. See also Broué, Staline et la révolution, p. 105; Günther Schmigalle, André Malraux und der spanische Bürgerkrieg: Zur Genese, Funktion und Bedeutung von ‘L’Espoir’ (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, 1980), p. 160; Carlos Serrano, L’enjeu espagnol: PCF et guerre d’Espagne (Paris: Messidor/Éditions Sociales, 1987), p. 52. I am immensely grateful to my friend Dr Frank Schauff for his inestimable help with the Russian references cited in this chapter.

  27 General Vicente Rojo, Así fue la defensa de Madrid (México D.F.: Ediciones Era, 1967), p. 214; Koltsov, Diario, pp. 275–8; José Andrés Rojo, Vicente Rojo. Retrato de un general republicano (Barcelona: Tusquets Editores, 2006), pp. 87–8.

  28 Boris Volodarsky, KGB: The West Side Story (unpublished manuscript); Ángel Viñas, El escudo de la República, El oro de España, la apuesta soviética y los hechos de mayo de 1937 (Barcelona: Crítica, 2007) pp. 57–68. On Grigulevich, see Marjorie Ross, El secreto encanto de la KGB. Las cinco vidas de Iósif Griguliévich (Heredia, Costa Rica: Farben Grupo Editorial Norma, 2004) pp. 40–67; Christopher Andrew & Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books, 1999) pp. 99, 162. The claim that Koltsov had links with the GRU derives from Novikova, ‘Las visiones’.

  29 Koltsov, Diario, pp. 99–100 (Maqueda), p. 142 (Álvarez del Vayo), pp. 145–6 (radio intercepts), pp. 158–9 (5º Regimiento).

  30 Koltsov, Diario, pp. 114, 167, 176–8, 185–6, 192.

  31 Boris Volodarsky, KGB: The West Side Story, Chapter 16.

  32 Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, p. 300; Germán Sánchez, ‘El misterio Grigulévich’, Historia 16, no. 233, septiembre de 1995, p. 118. On Koltsov and Paracuellos, see Viñas, El escudo, pp. 57–74.

  33 Koltsov, Diario, pp. 196, 281–3.

  34 Gleb Skorokhodov, Mikhail’ Kol’tsov. Kritiko-biograficheskii ocherk (Moscow: Sovetskii Pisatel’, 1959), pp. 154–5.

  35 Santiago Álvarez, Los Comisarios Políticos en el Ejército Popular de la República (Sada-A Coruña: Ediciós do Castro, 1989), pp. 93–7, 115–27; Juan Andrés Blanco Rodríguez, El Quinto Regimiento en la política militar del P. C.E. en la guerra civil (Madrid: UNED, 1993), pp. 171–93.

  36 Milicia Popular, 2, 3, 8, 11, 13, 14, 15, 20, 21 October 1936.

  37 Koltsov, Diario, p. 151.

  38 Stéphane Courtois and Jean-Louis Panné, ‘The Shadow of the NKVD in Spain’, in Stéphane Courtois et al., The Black Book of Communism. Crimes, Terror, Repression (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 337.

  39 Arturo Barea, The Forging of a Rebel (London: Davis-Poynter, 1972), pp. 596–7.

  40 Regler, The Owl, p. 276.

  41 Skorokhodov, Mikhail’ Kol’tsov, pp. 158–60.

  42 Orlov, The March, p. 231.

  43 Communication from Boris Volodarsky; Emma Wolf in Mikhail’ Kol’tsov, kakim on byl’, pp. 305–7. On the collaboration between Gorev and Koltsov, see Frank Schauff, Der verspielte Sieg. Sowjetunion, Kommunistische Internationale und Spanischer Bürgerkrieg 1936–1939 (Frankfurt: Campus, 2005), p. 238.

  44 Abramson, Mosaico roto, pp. 63–5.

  45 Sefton Delmer, Trail Sinister. An Autobiography (London: Secker & Warburg, 1961), p. 387.

  46 Orlov, The March, p. 229. I am grateful to Dr Ángel Viñas, who pointed out that, by June 1937, only seventeen such decorations had been awarded in total and that it was highly unlikely that eleven of them were for a minor tank skirmish.

  47 Schmigalle, André Malraux, p. 159; Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, 3rd edn (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1977), p. 495. See Koltsov, Diario, pp. 257–9, 303, 339.

  48 Abramson, Mosaico roto, p. 62.

  49 Haslam, The Soviet Union, p. 262.

  50 Boris Efimov, in Mikhail’ Kol’tsov, kakim on byl’, p. 65; Abramson, Mosaico roto, p. 62.

  51 Roman Karmen, ¡No pasarán! (Moscow: Editorial Progreso, 1976), pp. 249–53.

  52 Abramson, Mosaico roto, pp. 61, 91–100; Koltsov, Diario, pp. 123–41; Karmen, ¡No pasarán!, pp. 265, 277.

  53 Karmen, ¡No pasarán!, pp. 272–3.

  54 Karmen, ¡No pasarán!, pp. 276–8.


  55 Karmen, ¡No pasarán!, pp. 277–81, 301.

  56 Karmen, ¡No pasarán!, pp. 303, 307; Koltsov, Diario, pp. 93, 118.

  57 Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls, p. 221.

  58 Abramson, Mosaico roto, pp. 175–82.

  59 Edward P. Gazur, Secret Assignment. The FBI’s KGB General (London: St Ermin’s Press, 2001), pp. 139–40.

  60 Martha Gellhorn, ‘Memory’, London Review of Books, 12 December 1996, p. 3.

  61 Claud Cockburn, A Discord of Trumpets (New York: Simon + Schuster, 1956), p. 304.

  62 Abramson, Mosaico roto, p. 62.

  63 Broué, Staline et la révolution, p. 105.

  64 Koltsov, Diario, p. 202.

  65 El-Akramy, Transit Moskau, pp. 93–7, 125–9, 135, 173, 329–30; Vaksberg, Hotel Lux, p. 161. Koltsov’s involvement in the writing of Hubert im Wonderland in David Pike, German Writers in Soviet Exile, 1933–1945 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), p. 340.

  66 Delmer, Trail Sinister, p. 387.

  67 Gustav Regler, ‘Civil War Diary’, unpublished manuscript (Southworth Papers), entry for 14 March 1937, p. 44.

  68 Ehrenburg, Eve of War, pp. 148–9.

  69 Regler, The Owl, p. 294.

  70 Regler, The Owl, pp. 294–6.

  71 Stephen Koch, The Breaking Point. Hemingway, Dos Passos and the Murder of José Robles (New York: Counterpoint, 2005), p. 99.

  72 Vaksberg, Hotel Lux, pp. 52, 64.

  73 Ronald Radosh, Mary R. Habeck and Grigory Sevostianov (eds), Spain Betrayed. The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 267, 521 n. 60. See also Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin. The Court of the Red Czar (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003), p. 208.

  74 ‘A book that has not yet been written’, Mikhail Koltsov, The Man in Uniform (Moscow: Cooperative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the USSR, 1933), pp. 43–5, 48, 53.

  75 David Cotterill (ed.), The Serge-Trotsky Papers (London: Pluto Press, 1994), p. 139; Miquel Koltzov, Proves de la traició trotskista (Barcelona: Secretariat de Propaganda del C.E., 1937), Broué, Staline et la revolution, pp. 171–3.

  76 Walter Held, ‘Le Stalinisme et le POUM dans la Révolution espagnole’, reprinted in Trotsky, La Revolution espagnole, p. 688.

  77 Broué, Staline et la revolution, p. 183.

  78 Koltsov, Diario, pp. 311–16, 414, 425–7.

  79 Koltsov, Diario, pp. 366–7; V. P. Verevkin, Mikhail’ Efimovich Kol’tsov (Moscow: Mysl’, 1977), p. 77.

  80 Posetiteli kremlovskogo kabineta I. V. Stalina [1936–1937], Istoričeskij archiv, 4/1995, p. 50.

  81 Orlov, The March, p. 338.

  82 Boris Efimov, in Mikhail’ Kol’tsov, kakim on byl’, p. 66; Abramson, Mosaico roto, p. 62; Fernández Sánchez, ‘El ultimo destino’, p. 21.

  83 Alexander Orlov, The Secret History of Stalin’s Crimes (London: Jarrolds, 1954), p. 196.

  84 El-Akramy, Transit Moskau, pp. 197–202; Orlov, The March, p. 250; Gazur, Secret Assignment, pp. 96–7. It is likely that Orlov is confusing the adoption by Koltsov and Osten with the fact the child adopted by the Yezhovs was a girl, which probably had nothing to do with Koltsov.

  85 Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin. Triumph and Tragedy (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1991), p. 330.

  86 On Yezhov’s degeneracy, see Sebag Montefiore, Stalin, pp. 150–3, 211.

  87 Posetiteli kremlovskogo kabineta I. V. Stalina [1936–1937], in Istoričeskij archiv, 4/1995, p. 52.

  88 Koltsov, Diario, pp. 376–406.

  89 Stephen Spender, World within World (London: Readers Union, 1953), pp. 205–10; Jef Last, The Spanish Tragedy (London: Routledge, 1939), pp. 196–8.

  90 Koltsov, Diario, pp. 435–40; El Sol, 8 July 1937. For a long commentary on this, see Görling, ‘Dinamita Cerebral’, pp. 337–46.

  91 Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls, pp. 234–5.

  92 Ehrenburg, Eve of War, p. 180.

  93 Schauff, Der verspielte Sieg, p. 104.

  94 Cockburn, A Discord, pp. 304–5.

  95 Lord Chilston (Moscow) to FO, 16 September 1937, FO 371/21300, W17349/1/41. The article is not reproduced in the diary.

  96 Trotsky’s attack from an article written in November 1937, Leon Trotsky, La Revolution espagnole 1930–40, Pierre Broué (ed.) (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1975) p. 466. The recall and Koltsov’s reaction, Koltsov, Diario, p. 485; Vaksberg, Hotel Lux, pp. 161–2.

  97 Posetiteli kremlovskogo kabineta I. V. Stalina [1936–1937], in Istoričeskij archiv, 4/1995, p. 69.

  98 Görling, Dinamita Cerebral, p. 312.

  99 Robert C. Tucker, Stalin in Power. The Revolution from Above, 1928–1941 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990), pp. 463–4; Roy Medvedev, Let History Judge. The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism (London: Macmillan, 1971), p. 354.

  100 Emma Vol’f, Mikhail’ Kol’tsov, kakim on byl, p. 310.

  101 Pike, German Writers, p. 194.

  102 Louis Fischer, Men and Politics. An Autobiography (London: Jonathan Cape, 1941), p. 467.

  103 Fernández Sánchez, ‘El ultimo destino’, p. 22.

  104 Boris Efimov, Mikhail’ Kol’tsov, kakim on byl, p. 70.

  105 Efimov, Mikhail’ Kol’tsov, kakim on byl, pp. 71–2; Medvedev, Let History Judge, p. 402.

  106 Gleb Skorokhodov, Mikhail’ Kol’tsov. Kritiko-biograficheskii ocherk (Moscow: Sovetskii Pisatel’, 1959), pp. 229–30.

  107 Cockburn, A Discord, pp. 310–11.

  108 Cockburn, A Discord, pp. 311–12.

  109 Cockburn, A Discord, p. 314; Cockburn, The Years, pp. 258–9. On Russian policy towards Czechoslovakia, see Fischer, Russia’s Road, pp. 311–15; Men and Politics, pp. 524, 537. On Russian aircraft deliveries, see Hugh Ragsdale, The Soviets, the Munich Crisis, and the Coming of World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 82–6, 120, 140–8. For Western accounts of the Soviet response to the Munich crisis, see Jiri Hochman, The Soviet Union and the Failure of Collective Security, 1934–1938 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984), pp. 144–75; Igor Lukes, ‘Stalin and Czechoslovakia in 1938–39: An autopsy of a myth’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, vol, 10, nos 2 & 3, July 1999.

  110 Stephen F. Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution. A Political Biography 1888–1938 (London: Wildwood House, 1974), pp. 360, 368.

  111 Fischer, Russia’s Road, p. 306.

  112 Martha Gellhorn, ‘Memory’, London Review of Books, 12 December 1996, p. 3.

  113 Cockburn, The Years, pp. 257–61; Cockburn, A Discord, pp. 311–14.

  114 Vaksberg, Hotel Lux, p. 162.

  115 Boris Efimov, in Mikhail’ Kol’tsov, kakim on byl, p. 73.

  116 Efimov, in Mikhail’ Kol’tsov, kakim on byl, pp. 73–6. Fernández Sánchez, ‘El ultimo destino’, p. 22, gives the date as 12 October but all other sources agree on 12 December: Rayfield, Stalin and His Hangmen, p. 352; Tucker, Stalin in Power, p. 524; Medvedev, Let History Judge, p. 231; Robert Conquest, The Great Terror. Stalin’s Purge of the Thirties, 2nd edn (Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, 1971), p. 441; Abramson, Mosaico roto, pp. 63, 101; Skorokhodov, Mikhail’ Kol’tsov, p. 2.

  117 Fischer, Russia’s Road, p. 300; Conquest, The Great Terror, p. 118.

  118 Regler, The Owl, pp. 277–9.

  119 Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls, pp. 397–9; Herbst to Watson, 2 August 1967, Za Herbst Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University.

  120 Author’s interview with Adelina Kondratieva in Madrid in 1998; Vaksberg, Hotel Lux, p. 152.

  121 Volkogonov, Stalin, p. 317.

  122 Broué, Staline et la révolution, pp. 142–3.

  123 Fischer, Russia’s Road, p. 273.

  124 Tucker, Stalin in Power, p. 463.

  125 Geoffrey Roberts, The Unholy Alliance. Stalin’s Pact with Hitler (London: I.B. Tauris, 1989), pp. 109–19.

  126 Lubyanka. Stalin i glavnoe upravlenie Gosbesopasnosti NKVD 1937–1939 (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnyi fond ‘Demokratiya’, 2004), pp. 556–61; Vaksberg, Hotel Lux, pp. 154
–8. Koltsov’s life of Gorki was published in 1938 as Burevestnik: zhizn’I smert’Maksima Gorkoga.

  127 Vaksberg, Hotel Lux, pp. 159–60.

  128 Sebag Montefiore, Stalin, pp. 236, 287.

  129 Donald Rayfield, Stalin and His Hangmen. An Authoritative Portrait of a Tyrant and Those Who Served Him (London: Viking, 2004), pp. 249–50.

  130 Rayfield, Stalin and His Hangmen, pp. 351–2; Regler, The Owl, pp. 230–3; Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary 1901–1941 (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), pp. 317–18; Conquest, The Great Terror, pp. 666–7; Vaksberg, Hotel Lux, pp. 73–5.

  131 Leonid Maximenkov and Christopher Barnes, ‘Boris Pasternak in August 1936’, Toronto Slavic Quarterly, no.17, 2003.

  132 Moscow Chancery to Northern Department, 30 December 1938. FO 371/22287, N6398/26/38.

  133 Evgenii Gnedin, Sebya ne poteryat’ in Novyi Mir, no. 7/1988 (pp. 173–209), pp. 193–4.

  134 Rayfield, Stalin and His Hangmen, pp. 353–4.

  135 Fernández Sánchez, ‘Introducción’, p. 6.

  136 Konstantin Simonov, Glazami Cheloveka Moego Pokoleniya (Razmyshleniya o I. V. Staline), Znamya, no. 3, March 1988, pp. 3–66; Robert Conquest, Stalin. Breaker of Nations (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1991), p. 323.

  137 Document of 4 November 1954, Reabilitatsiya. Kak eto bylo. Fevral’1956 – nachalo 80-ch godov, vol. I (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnyi fond ‘Demokratiya’, 2000), p. 173.

  138 Simonov, Glazami Cheloveka Moego Pokoleniya, pp. 31–2.

  139 Boris Efimov, in Mikhail’ Kol’tsov, kakim on byl, pp. 75–6; Rayfield, Stalin and His Hangmen, pp. 352–3; Tucker, Stalin in Power, pp. 524, 575.

  140 Abramson, Mosaico roto, p. 101.

  141 Ehrenburg, Eve of War, p. 239.

  142 Vaksberg, Hotel Lux, pp. 163–4; El-Akramy, Transit Moskau, pp. 267–9, 301–3; Pike, German Writers, pp. 340–1. Vaksberg gives the date of her execution as 8 August, El-Akramy as 16 September. On Ignacio Hidalgo de Cisneros’ friendship with Maria Osten, there is a letter in the Moscow archives from Mikhail Suslov to Soledad Sancha of the Spanish Republican Embassy, dated 9 July 1939. I am grateful to Dr Soledad Fox for her kindness in drawing my attention to this document.