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Yugoslav Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War

Eighty years after rebel army officers fired the first bullets against their own government, the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) continues to spark passionate historical debates, both dividing the Spanish political scene, and serving as an inspiration for international antifascist activism. Scholars, artists, journalists, politicians, and other social actors from across the political spectrum still fervently defend rival historical interpretations in numerous books, memoirs, movies, and exhibitions in Spain and abroad, even though the conflict was overshadowed by the greater tragedy of the Second World War. For the Left, the war in Spain remains a romanticized episode that revealed the emancipatory potential of revolution, epitomized by dramatic transformations which took place in cities such as Barcelona, or the agrarian reforms in the impoverished Spanish countryside. This Spanish Revolution inspired thousands of volunteers from more than fifty countries – communists, anarchists, workers, intellectuals, and antifascists of all political persuasions – to fight in the International Brigades, the Comintern’s military units that play a major role in the Spanish Civil War. For the Right, the Civil War represents the dangers of “left- wing extremism” in the form of militant labor movements, anti-clericalism, and the insidious nature of Stalinism. The opening of Soviet archives in the 1990s revealed the extent of Stalinist crimes and political intrigues in Spain, which continue to serve as justification for the brutal methods of the Franco regime and open collaboration with Nazi-fascism.

Spanish Civil War, Yugoslav volunteers, International Brigades, History

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