The International Newsletter of Communist Studies Online IX

The International Newsletter of Communist Studies Online 16/2003 53
The list of the victims of Stalinist repression during the Civil War in Spain is extensive. It is enough to indicate
the names of the main ones here: the former minister of Justice of Catalunha Andrés Nin, the members of the
POUM Juan Hervas, Jaime Trepat, the Trotskyists Erwin Wolf and Hans Freund, the former Trotskyist, the
Austrian Kurt Landau, the Anarchists Alfredo Martínez and Camillo Berneri, the Russian Social-democrat Marc
Rein, the American teacher José Robles and the officer Gaston Delasalle, perhaps also the German former
deputy of the Reichstag Hans Beimler and the Italian former deputy Guido Picelli (the latter were all members
of the International Brigades). One of the victims of Stalins men in Spain was probably also the soldier Alberto
Bomilcar Besouchet, the first Brazilian volunteer who arrived in Spain in order to fight for the republican
government against the Francoist troops.
Apolino de Carvalho, in his Memoirs, tells that Besouchet, his colleague in the Military School of Realengo, had
been »cowardly killed« at the end of 1938, but he does not specify by whom. 43 We try here to emphasize the
»modus operandi« through which the repression of the NKVD defined its vitims and to show the paradox of a
situation where idealistic militants gave their active solidarity to the cause to defend the Spanish Republic but
were then eliminated by supposed companions because their ideas were not considered »appropriate«.
However they executed their engament in the best possible way, and the military curriculum of many of them
is the best proof of that, including that of Alberto Besouchet. Born in 1912, Alberto was the youngest of four
children. Like him, his brothers and sister Augusto, Lídia and Marino, were also militants of the Communist
Party of Brazil (PCB). They were expelled from the party because of their criticism of the irresponsible way the
party prepared the movement that resulted in the »putsch« organized by the communists in November 1935, in
the cities of Natal, Recife and Rio de Janeiro. Together with Barreto Leite Filho, author of a well-known letter to
the leader of the uprising, Luiz Carlos Prestes, where such critics are articulated 44 , and Phoebus Gikovate, they
were the main leaders of the Trade Union Section of the PCB. Thereafter, this group approached the Brazilian
Trotskyist movement, and was then associated with the »Internationalist Communist League«. Later they
created the »Leninist Workers Party« of Brazil.
Alberto, who, like his father, followed a military career, joined the PCB in 1933, as a student at the Military
School. In the first hours of November 24, lieutnant Alberto Besouchet integrated the group of civilians and
military that rebelled against the 29th Batallion of Hunters of the Floriano Peixoto Military Ville in Socorro, near
Recife, and then organised a march on the capital of Pernambuco. In doing so he was wounded in both his
legs. Besouchet succeded in escaping without being arrested. He arrived in Rio de Janeiro, where he tried to
work as a journalist in the »Diários Associados«. Like his brothers and sisters, who were already very close to
Trotskyism, Alberto Besouchet approved some of the conceptions defended by Leon Trotsky’s followers in
Brazil, among them the criticisms of the uprising movement under Luis Carlos Prestes in November 1935.
43 Apolônio de Carvalho: Vale a pena sonhar, Rio de Janeiro, Rocco, 1997.
44 José Nilo Tavares e.a.: Novembro de 1935. Meio século depois, Petr´polis, Vozes, 1985, 145-161.