To start things well: I’m not trying to start an argument, and I’m not trying to ask for this in bad faith. I’m a Spanish Marxist-Leninist who despises the fact that the Second Republic did nothing about fascists until it was too late.
When I discuss the topic of the Soviets being the only ones to materially help the antifascists in Spain (selling modern tanks and aviation, rifles, munitions and teaching them how to use them), very often I encounter anarchists bringing up the repression of anarchists by communists, particularly related to the Barcelona events. However, when I’ve asked for literature with a quantitative analysis of this, I’ve never been given any numerical estimate of the extent of the repression. The Proles Pod episode (Timestamp: 1:18:00) on the Stalin Eras that touches the Spanish Civil War quotes the estimate that less than 20 anarchists were confirmed to have been killed by Soviet agents during the entirety of the conflict, but they only mention the study and they don’t name it as far as I’ve found.
When this happens, I’m often told to read a book. I’ve found and read many estimates of Soviet repression in the USSR in different works, but never encountered anything about communist repression of anarchists with numerical data attached regarding Spain. So this is my request: I don’t want personal anecdotes of an anarchist in prison, I want actual, modern, historically sound numerical estimates of this repression. There are such things for, for example, the Makhnovschina, so there must be something similar for republican Spain. Ofc, I can accept sources both in English and in Spanish!
Thanks a lot <3
@Riverside
i think it’s a mistake to believe there “must” be records of illegal war crimes from an era and situation where documentation was less likely, and where the records themselves would rely on people conducting repression-based executionsif anecdotes of people who were alive in the era aren’t sufficient, you might not find what you’re looking for
Well, the Soviets are known for holding extremely accurate of such repressions within the USSR, the soviet archive on the Great Terror is universally recognized as the best source of information on the Great Terror itself, and those events are simultaneous. Even regarding the repression of some anarchists in Barcelona, the Soviets conserved the intelligence provided the spy Harro Schulze-Boysen of a Nazi plot to promote an anarchist insurrection in Barcelona during the war. I can understand it’s not easy to give exact figures, but at least there must be estimates that can give information on the order of magnitude. Regardless, thanks for your time and good faith.
As for why anecdotal evidence is insufficient to me: my great-grandad was actually murdered by the Spanish reds (not the communists). If anecdotal evidence was sufficient to me, I’d draw equivalencies between “both sides of the war being the same” because they both unfairly executed people. Referring to anecdotal evidence of nuns being sexually assaulted by the republicans and of innocent men being executed during the war is what the right wing does to equate both sides of the conflict, and what distinguishes one side from the other to me is not anecdotal evidence of war crimes, but actual numerical estimates and the goal of such repressions. The reds repressed to prevent fascism from spreading, the fascists repressed because they wanted to exterminate socialism and anarchism.
one will depend on their trust of States in the abstract & in particular pertaining to statistics and their legitimacy
if that is true of the Soviets, it’s no guarantee that the Spanish kept similarly thorough documentation. i could also point to the tendency of pro-state socialists/communists to downplay those same statistics/repression
i don’t know about stats for the Spanish civil war repression but they might be out there, tho estimates might come from anecdotal reports too
I edited my comment as you were replying, just letting you know.
Well, hopefully I can encounter some numerical sources. I understand that there’s good intention behind anecdotal evidence, but I’ve further explained in the comment above to which you replied why it’s not enough for me to form my opinion fully.
@Riverside
i can understand why you’d rather rely on material sources like documented statisticson the other hand, we simply only have to go back a few hundred years or so and all we have are inexact estimates for almost anything
the historical record is not as exact as we would like it to be, even in the modern era
