Spanish Revolution.pdf

Michael Seidman

Agrarian Collectives during the Spanish

Revolution and Civil War

T he history of collectivization during the Spanish civil war has

been controversial from its inception. Contemporaries who were

sympathetic to anarchism and hostile to Communism authored

the first accounts of workers’ and peasants’ collectives. 1 Sub-

sequent Republican and Communist authors dismissed or

ignored this largely apologetic literature. The rise of the New

Left in the 1960s revived interest and empathy for the revolu-

tionary experience. In particular, Noam Chomsky’s polemical

essay renewed the debate. Like his libertarian predecessors, he

accused liberals and Communists alike of hiding the successes of

anarchists during the civil war. 2 Chomsky had no doubt that their

collectives were ‘economically successful,’ and he attributed

their difficulties to state hostility and the consequent restriction

of financial credit. 3 Although questionable, Chomsky’s New Left

perspective was a sign of fresh interest in the question of the

collectives. More scholarly accounts, based on original research,

followed. 4 Some researchers synthesized serious investigation

with political concerns that were usually associated with 1960s

idealism. 5 In the 1980s Spanish scholars, armed with new docu-

ments from recently opened archives, tackled the subject with

critical distance. 6 They adopted a local or regional approach

which delved into collectivization’s difficulties and dilemmas.

Just as importantly, they began to move away from traditional

political history from above to social history from below.

The following pages attempt to develop this recent trend in the

historiography by focusing on agrarian collectives in Aragón,

Catalonia, and Valencia. Aragón was part of what one agrarian

historian has designated as the Interior, an area of relatively

backward agriculture with low soil and labor productivity. 7

The

Oaks, CA and New Delhi, Vol. 30(2), 209–235.

[0265-6914(200004)30:2;209–235;011936]

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European History Quarterly Vol. 30 No. 2

Mediterranean region — Valencia and Catalonia — was more

modern and market-oriented. The task of the Republic was to

connect these rural economies to the urban and military sectors.

The failure to resolve the conflict between urban and rural made

the Republic’s victory difficult, if not impossible. These findings

are based upon a variety of underused primary sources from mili-

tary and civilian archives. Minutes of collectives, letters from

party and union officials, government inspectors’ reports, and

military officers’ accounts will throw new light on the economic

performance of peasants.

Collectivization

Immediately after the outbreak of the civil war in July 1936,

peasants in the Republican zone confiscated the lands of ‘fascists’

and bourgeois. As in the French Revolution, the spectacle of joy-

ful bonfires of property deeds and documents symbolized the end

of the old economic order. 8 One of the major Spanish unions, the

Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), usually favored

collective ownership and exploitation of the land. Its most impor-

tant rival, the Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT), was more

ambivalent about collectivization. Some of its members were as

enthusiastic as CNT adherents, whereas others — influenced by

the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) and its Catalan counterpart

(PSUC) — were opposed to what they considered to be unwise

revolutionary experiments. Although the theme of collectiviza-

tion has fascinated historians because of its libertarian resonance,

collectivization was a minority phenomenon even in the Republi-

can zone. Only 18.5 % of the land in the Republican zone (and, of

course, none in the Nationalist zone) was collectivized. 9 Thus,

individualists in Spain continued to be overwhelmingly impor-

tant, especially in comparison to state-sponsored collectivization

of Soviet agriculture in the same period. More than 300,000

Spanish peasants acquired land in one form or another. Half of

these resided in the provinces of Albacete, Ciudad Real, Cuenca,

Toledo, and Madrid. Perhaps the extent of land reform in the

center helps to explain why in 1936 and 1937 the region resisted

repeated assaults by Nationalist forces.

In March 1937 the Communist minister of agriculture,

Vicente Uribe, announced that nearly 9 % of total Spanish farm-

Seidman, Collectives during the Spanish Civil War

211

lands had been distributed to the peasantry. By the end of the

year, the Communist press claimed that over a third of private

holdings had been redistributed or confiscated. 10 The peasants,

the party asserted, had largely opted for individual use. This

assertion was not mere propaganda. In Catalonia, collectives

were islands in a sea of medium- and small-property holders. An

inquiry by the Generalitat (Catalan regional government) at the

end of 1936 revealed that only sixty-six localities had taken some

collectivist measures, and over 1000 municipalities had not. The

relatively few collectives that did exist were, it seems, formed

by small owners. The Generalitat’s decree of 5 January 1937

reinforced the family farm by granting formal legal usufruct to

those who had cultivated the land as of 18 July 1936. 11 Even in

Aragón, supposedly the most revolutionary and anarchist of

regions and where the CNT was often the dominant left organi-

zation, most of the land was not collectivized. Notwithstanding

the presence of militias that encouraged or compelled communal

ownership, perhaps only 40 % of the land of the region was ex-

propriated. 12 In February 1937, 275 Aragón collectives had a

total of 80,000 members; in June, 450 collectives included

180,000 members, less than two-fifths of the Aragón population

in the Republican zone. 13

Collectivization occurred both spontaneously and unwillingly.

The atmosphere of terror and assassination of ‘fascists’

encouraged obedience to radical authorities. Militias composed

of urban militants, often from CNT unions of Barcelona,

marched through Aragón and imposed their idea of libertarian

communism or socialism. 14 They believed that collectives were

the best way to feed the troops. Their columns reinforced local

militancy which, in most cases, was not powerful enough to

collectivize by itself. Considerable numbers of property owners,

sharecroppers, renters, and braceros felt compelled or coerced

into joining collectives. 15 In a number of towns, wealthier owners

resented the threat to their property and the prohibitions,

enforced in some villages, on employing wage labour or shopping

in collectives’ stores. 16 They found that the collective, which in

certain pueblos enrolled the majority of inhabitants, tended to

boycott non-members. An anarchosyndicalist source reported

that ‘the small owners who don’t wish to join a collective . . . had

to wage a difficult struggle to survive.’ 17 In Aragón and Valencia,

many individualistic peasants were obliged to join a union,

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European History Quarterly Vol. 30 No. 2

whether the CNT or UGT. 18 A system of fines and sanctions

compelled new members to attend assemblies. 19 Sometimes

tensions erupted publicly. On 2 January in Albelda (Huesca),

strains between property owners and a ‘thieving’ antifascist com-

mittee stimulated an owners’ street demonstration. 20

In retalia-

tion, a few demonstrators were jailed.

In the small town of Cabra de Mora (Teruel) with ninety

inhabitants, prosperous sharecroppers ( masaderos ) — who

probably held long-term leases — were, according to their

enemies, sympathetic to their ‘feudal lords’. 21 They strongly

opposed collectivization. Nor was this town unique. Prominent

landowners who offered long-term or advantageous contracts to

the propertyless were elsewhere able to create loyal supporters. 22

The proponents of collective farming were forced to call in the

Aragón police to take over sharecropper land. In response, the

sharecroppers left the village and put themselves under the

leadership of a militia chief. In Aragón, the overwhelming

majority of peasants leased short-term and owned some property

but not enough to enable them to feed their families or to provide

economic security. Aragonese Communist officials skeptically

observed that ‘the petty bourgeoisie, medieros [poor share-

croppers] and renters ( arrendatarios ] . . . don’t have a revolu-

tionary spirit and if they enrolled in unions or parties, they did

so to defend their bits of property and their petty interests

against the attacks and pillaging of elements [i.e. anarchists] that

have dominated Aragón during the last year.’ 23 Aragón

Communists, at least among themselves in private, did not show

any greater respect for the politics of many rural proletarians:

‘Day labourers who were not in unions were always slaves of the

rural bosses [ caciques ]. They feared losing their miserable wage

or being thrown in jail.’ ‘The masses’ of Monzón (Huesca) were

‘extremely disoriented.’ 24 Even some braceros , who feared confis-

cation of their few possessions, had no interest in joining CNT

collectives. 25 Early in the Revolution, braceros were more con-

cerned with receiving back wages of July and August than in

plans for future collectivization. 26

In part, then, collectivization was forced. On the other hand, in

comparison with the Soviet precedent — where a powerful state

forced, literally at gunpoint, peasants to combine — Spanish

collectivization appears largely to have been spontaneous and

voluntary. 27

No one reported that Spanish peasants massively

Seidman, Collectives during the Spanish Civil War

213

slaughtered village animals. Many rural Spaniards may have

been attracted by the ‘welfare-state image of the good life’

promised by various forms of communism or socialism. 28 Poorer

peasants thought that collectivization might produce the perks

that urban workers had gained. They were willing to give it a

chance.

The Destruction of the Aragón Collectives

Communists and historians sympathetic to them have argued

that the CNT and its followers coerced peasants into unproduc-

tive collectives. Thus, in the summer of 1937, PCE-dominated

units of the Popular Army thought that they had a perfect right to

attack and dissolve the Aragón collectives, even though the

Republican government had legalized them in June 1937.

Communists made specific charges that, for example, in Albalate

de Cinca and in Poleniño (Huesca) collectivists destroyed trees

and were responsible for sharp declines in production. 29

Militiamen enrolled in the Battalion Largo Cabellero accused the

CNT-dominated town council of their hometown, Cantavieja

(Teruel), of forcing smallholders into collectives and expro-

priating the property of their friends and families in an effort to

impose ‘libertarian communism’. 30 Because of poor management

and corruption, Cantavieja’s meat supply and animals had dis-

appeared. Food in the village was scarce. To end the ‘terror’ five

militiamen planned to return to their village and shoot the

councilmen. The town council denied the charges and claimed

that it had acted in accordance with the directives of the Council

of Aragón, which was dominated by the CNT and the FAI

(Federación Anarquista Ibérica). The councilmen asserted that

meat had become rare not because of their own expropriations

but rather since militia columns had consumed too much of it.

The new policies imposed by the PCE-dominated army were

more favorable to private property and encouraged some owners

to reclaim their land from the collective. 31 Counter-revolutionary

and conservative peasants triumphed regionally. The dissolution

of the collectives largely coincided with that of the Council of

Aragón which the government announced on 11 August.

Anarchists counter-charged that Communists had illegally jailed

antifascist militants and disrupted production. In many villages,

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