Chomsky on Anarchism.pdf - Zine Library

OBJECTIVITY AND LIBERAL SCHOLARSHIP
did not press their revolutionary aims, he feels, because "for the moment it was
essential not to frighten the middle classes or the Western governments ."
4.
As to the concern for Soviet security, Jackson is no doubt correct. It is clear
that Soviet support of the Republic was one aspect of the anempt to make
common cause with the Western democracies against the fascist threat.
However, Jackson's conception of the Soviet Union as a revolutionary powerhopeful
that a Republican victory would advance "the interrupted movement
toward world revolurion" and seeking to identify itself with "the calise of the
worldwide 'people's revolution'''-seems to me entirely mistaken. Jackson presems
no evidence to Sllpport this interpretation of Soviet policy, nor do I know
of any. It is imeresting to see how differently the evems were interpreted at the
time of the Spanish Civil War, not only by anarchists like Rocker bur also by
such commemators as Gerald Brenan and Franz Borkenau, who were imimateiy
acquainted with the simation in Spain. Brenan observes that the counterrevolutionary
policy of the Communists (which he thinks was "extremely
sensible") was
the policy mOSt suited to the Communists themselves. Russia is
a totalitarian regime ruled by a bureaucracy: the frame of mind
of its leaders, who have come through the mOSt terrible upheaval
in history, is cynical and opportunist: the whole fabric of the
state is dogmatic and authoritarian. To expect such men to lead
a social revolucion in a cOllmry like Spain, where the wildest idealism
is combined with great independence of character, was our
of the question. The Russians could, it is true, command plenty
of idealism among their foreign admirers, but they could only
harness it to the creation of a cast-iron bureaucratic state, where
everyone thinks alike and obeys the orders of the chief above
him.74
He sees nothing in Russian conduct in Spain to indicate any imerest in a "people's
revolution." Rather, the Communist policy was to oppose "even such
rural and industrial collectives as had risen spomaneously and flood the country
with police who, like the Russian Ogpu, acted on the orders of their party
rather than (hose of (he Ministry of (he Interior." The Communists were concerned
to suppress altogether the impulses towards "spontaneity of speech or
action," since "their whole nature and history made them distrust the local and
spontaneous and put their faith in order, discipline and bureaucratic uniformiry"-hence
placed them in opposition to the revolutionary fo rces in Spain.
As Brenan also notes, the Russians withdrew their support once it became clear
that the British would not be swayed from the policy of appeasement, a fact
which gives additional confirmation to the thesis that only considerations of
Russian fo reign policy led the Soviet Union to support the Republic.
Borkenau's analysis is similar. He approves of the Communist policy,
because of its "efficiency," but he points out that the Communists "put an end