synopsis:
George Orwell went to Spain in late 1936 as a journalist but then put down his pen and spent the next year fighting with the P.
O.
U.
M (Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxista) Militia against the Fascist forces under Francisco Franco, an anti-Stalinist party of anarchist tendency led by Andres Nin, called trotskyist by the enemies. After weeks of approximate battle training he was sent to the front, where he lived weeks of inactivity, suffering from cold, badly armed and badly equipped. He went on leave in Barcelona few days before the "days of Barcelona": the battle between the orthodox Communist party and the Anarchist and P.
O.
U.
M.. Then he went back to the front, where he was badly wounded in the siege of Huesca.
Homage to Catalonia, written immediately after his return and published in 1938, tells the story of his military service with the P.
O.
U.
M., both against the right and the left, and, in quick succession, of his initial hopes for the classless society that he thought he had found on first arrival, then of his disappointment with the level of disorganization of the Leftist forces and finally of his disillusionment when pro-Stalinist allies began attacking socialists and anarchists who refused to toe the Soviet line. Orwell and his wife were ultimately forced to flee from Spain, to avoid Stalinist security forces, which had labeled him pro-fascist.
on this book:
The Spanish Civil War is second only to the Hitler/Stalin pact as a dividing line between mere Left-Wingers and genuine Communists. It was here that the true nature of the Soviet Union first intruded itself upon the public consciousness to such a degree that its defenders truly had to be considered apologists, not simply naive do-gooders.
Orwell wrote only about what he saw, so his portrayal of events is necessarily incomplete and, writing while the conflict was still going on, he was not able to form the really harsh judgments that our historical perspective allows us to make. This book is seen as one of the most authentic and true reports on the war. The other reports mostly are Soviet-propaganda or attacks against trotskyists, marxists or anarchists, whom were all entitled as ‘wrong'.
