BOOKS
171
sodes of this World Civil War No. 1: the Spanish prologue (this prologue
being an epilogue, too), the French defeat, and the Nazi-Russian war.
A prominent member of the POUM, Gorkin had a narrow escape from
the GPU jails. In the most vivid part of his book, he relates his Odysseian
experiences: heart-grinding anecdotes are mixed with oversimplified
psychological portraits, and with politico-philosophical commentaries
which, although often verging on a wordy conception of "dialectics," do
not impair the value of the facts. No historian of the Spanish civil war
can neglect such a rich (although passionate) source of information. The
introduction provides a sound analysis of the mistakes and acts of treason
which led the legal government to a fateful end. Everyone in Spain
(except the anarchists, Poumists and Trotzkists), every nation in Europe,
including the papal State, has a share of responsibility. This is not news,
but it is true.
In so far as he refused to help the Spanish Republic (and so far only)
Leon Blum is to be reckoned among the architects of the French defeat.
Marceau Pivert agrees with Gorkin. He was one of those "reds," or "Cas–
sandras," or "warmongers," who understood that the so-called "non-inter–
vention" meant France's hara-kiri, and a dirty deed, too. From Daladier's
and Blum's electoral machines to the Stalinist groups and the fascist
"leagues," everyone in France (except the members of the PSOP, Marceau
Pivert's own party) is differently but definitely to be blamed. Slightly
biased, but honestly,
A donde va Francia,
will help the American reader
to understand the "collapse" of France.
If
almost every leader of opinion was wrong in the democracies,
Stalin, for his part, led Russia through a series of purges and blunders to
its present plight: having doomed 30,000 out of 80,000 officers, 3 out of
5 Field-Marshals, having ruthlessly crushed honest as well as treacherous
opposition, how could Stalin expect from his army precisely what he him–
self thought to be the very weapon of victory: the strategic offensive, the
fight on foreign soil? Having double-crossed the Spanish leftists, the
Yugoslavian government, the French Republic, every nation but Nazi Ger–
many, how could he
be
unwise enough to wait until Hitler was ready to
strike? These are Stalin's secrets. But the past is past.
As for the present, Serge is able to appreciate the good and evil of
the Russian system: the Soviet resistance, he says, "demonstrates the supe·
riority of a revolutionary society, even the one which is dominated by an
internal counter-revolution, as compared to a traditional democracy where
the reactionary forces are free to sabotage." The same was true in 1793.
The same will always be true, in cases of emergency.
It seems to me that we are quite aware, now, of the main errors which
have been perpetrated. However, we do not yet know how to avoid more
mistakes, once Hitler is defeated. "Let us make a balance sheet and pre–
pare for the future"-such were, according to Gorkin, the first words
uttered
in
Paris by the Executive Committee of his group, after Franco's
victory. A good idea. But is it enough to offer, as a remedy to our unrest,
