The Republican exile in the Soviet paradise. Spaniards in Stalin’s Gulag

ABSTRACT

This article provides analysis of some less well-known aspects of the Republican exile in 1939 in the USSR, such as the incarceration in Soviet prisons and internment in forced labour camps of hundreds of Spaniards during the Stalinist era. Based on the memoirs of survivors, specialised literature and documentation from various archives, the text describes the purges against members of different collectives of Spaniards that arrived in the Soviet Union during and after the Civil War (1936–1939), the causes of their arrest and incarceration in the Gulag, life inside the Soviet concentration camp system, and the struggle for survival, freedom and repatriation to Spain.

KEYWORDS:

• Spanish Civil war
• Republican exile
• forced labour camps
• Gulag
• USSR

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. During this period there were two unofficial expeditions with a total of 95 children evacuated – children of pilots, soldiers and PCE cadres. Added to this figure are the 87 minors who accompanied their parents in their Soviet exile in 1939.

2. The process of these children’s evacuation, their stay, their experiences and their return to Spain were the subject of considerable research (Zafra, Crego, and Heredia 1989; Alted Vigil, Nicolás Marín, and González Martell 1999; Alonso Carballés 1999; Devillard et al. 2001; Nicolás Marán 2003; Castillo 2009; Sierra 2009; Colomina Limonero 2010; Aguirre Hernández 2015; Kharitonova 2015; Young 2016; Moreno Izquierdo 2017, among others).

3. The FEDIP promoted a campaign in favour of the release of the Spanish inmates in Karaganda, conducted between 1947 and 1948 at political, diplomatic, journalistic and humanitarian level, with the backing of Republican political forces in exile and the French political authorities.

4. Along with the Republicans were hundreds of other prisoners from the Spanish Volunteer Division, known as the Blue Division, whose members fought on the Eastern Front, in the context of the German-Soviet war. Over 42,000 returned to Spain, while around 5,000 fell in combat and several hundred were taken prisoner (Moreno Julià 2006).

5. Three are repeated references to visits by the commissions in the memoirs of pilots and sailors who did not wish to work or who did so on a provisional basis. (Rico 1950; Velasco Pérez 1995; Monclús  Guallar 1959; Sánchez-Ferragut 2011).

6. Biographical profiles of sailors and pilots conserved in the IISH, FEDIP Archives and AFUE, GP/8.1., Karaganda. For the political affiliations of the Spaniards see the biographical entries in Encinas Moral (2008).

7. This influence is also appreciable in the memoirs of other pilots who chose to remain in the USSR. See Pararols (2002, 37–38).

8. Available in IISH, FEDIP Archives, Box 99–122, File 121, Dossier 7.074. Spaniards Arrested in Berlin.

9. The arrests and deaths of minors from illness during World War II were denounced by dissidents and foreign diplomats in Moscow (Miralles 1947; Cruz Goyenola 1947; Conde Magdaleno 1951; Vanni 1950). Those facts are also evident in the book Memoria (Fernández 2000) and the biographical list of Spanish emigration to the USSR in the AHPCE (National Archive of the Communist Party of Spain), 98/1.3, “Emigración en URSS”.

10. Foreigners, communists and non-communists, were purged in the USSR: French (see, e.g., Rigoulot and Crunelle 1984; Rigoulot 1990; Moullec 2001 on this subject); Italians (see, e.g., Dundovich 1998; Dundovich and Gori 2006; Dundovich, Gori, and Guercetti 2003 on this subject); and many other nationalities (see, e.g., Polian 2003; Blum, Craveri, and Nivelon 2012 on this subject).

11. Razgón (2006, 170) included in this category Poles, Baltics, Ukrainians, Belarusians and Moldavians, deported after the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland, Bessarabia, Moldavia and the Baltic nations.

12. AMAE (Foreign Ministry Archive), R1261/103-116, “Excmo. Sr. Embajador de España en París”, Mosow, 31/01/1940.

13. APJFR (Personal Archive Julián Fuster Ribó), Fuster Ribó, Julián: Testimonio del “Paraíso Comunista”. Yo ya estoy de vuelta: 12.

14. APJFR, Fuster Ribó, Julián: Testimonio del “Paraíso Comunista”. Yo ya estoy de vuelta: 12.

15. BC (Biblioteca de Catalunya), llegat Emili Salut Payá, M 4947/7, Salut Paya, Emili: “Memòries”: 23.

16. BC, llegat Emili Salut Payá, M 4947/7, SALUT PAYA, Emili: “Memòries”, p. 18.

17. APJFR, Fuster Ribó, Julián: “Carta sin sobre del Dr. Julián Fuster Ribó a Nikita Jrushchov.”

18. IISH, FEDIP Archives, Box 65–94, File 78, Emilio Salut Payá.

19. BC, llegat Emili Salut Payá, M 4947/8, Salut Paya, Emili: “Poemes. Documents Biogràfics”.