Spanish Republicans' Struggle and Its Impact on the Soviet Wartime Generation

The Spanish Civil War (1936–39) was one of the most exciting topics of international affairs for the USSR: it constituted a significant part of the news, was discussed by all segments of society, and provoked genuine feelings of solidarity with the struggling Republicans. To date, various aspects of Soviet participation in the Spanish events have been studied, ranging from military assistance and the methods of warfare to the granting of asylum to about 3,000 Spanish children. Less studied is the perception of Spanish events in Soviet society.¹ Even less studied in the spectrum of social reactions is the youth component. Those who were in middle and high school at that time soon became the Soviet frontline generation. For this group, the struggle of the Republicans became a kind of experiment, which predetermined, in many respects, perceptions of World War II. Understanding the impact that the Iberian events had on the Soviet frontline generation leads to a number of specific questions: how information about the Spanish conflict was refracted in the minds of young people, what ideological filters it passed through, what conclusions and lessons the future wartime generation drew, and what types of ties connected them with their peers from Spain.

The sources are mostly letters from schoolchildren addressed to their Spanish peers and deposited into the Comintern Foundation and now in the Russian State Archive of Sociopolitical History (RGASPI), as well as the diaries of high-school students and children's statements recorded by teachers, journalists, and writers. Additional materials are provided by the instructional letters of the People's Commissariat of Education (Narkompros) to lower-level bodies, transcripts of teaching conferences, reports of educational institutions and teachers, and party and Komsomol correspondence on school and educational issues, kept in the archives of the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), Central State Archive of Moscow (TsGAM), and Research Archive of the Russian Academy of Education (NA RAO). While reflecting on the issues of teaching and raising children at that time, these documents also recorded reactions to Spanish events and the welcome of Republican children by the USSR. Taken as a whole, these sources make it possible to overcome the one-sided approach within which the study of childhood has been based on the flow of information and educational practices aimed at children, not on information from children revealing their reactions and experiences.²

The Soviet Union's official policy, and the propaganda campaign it supported, was the main factor that initiated and defined the younger generation's attitude to the events in Spain. Modern researchers unanimously assess the political line of the USSR as balanced and not aimed at further revolutionizing Spanish society. According to Stanley Payne, after the parliamentary elections of February 1936, the Comintern's instructions, which the Spanish Communists strictly followed, were to strengthen the Popular Front and support the Republican government through legal mechanisms. They rejected the old schemes of revolutionary insurrection, and their goals were the establishment of "a new type of democratic republic" and the prevention of civil war. This line was maintained even when war had already broken out.³ According to Francis Lannon, the dual and interrelated goals of the USSR in the war of 1936–39 were the support of the Left and the Republic, and the engagement of England and France in an alliance against Germany and Italy. Lannon notes that there was "no place for a socialist revolution."⁴ These assessments are generally consistent with the findings of Frank Schauff, who believes that the Soviet Union actually sought peace on the Iberian Peninsula in order to ensure the support of Western powers. Stalin pursued a Popular Front policy that was unsuccessful because of the incompatible interests of its participants.⁵ According to Daniel Kowalsky, hopes for cooperation with France and England were reflected in the content of the Soviet newsreel shot on the Iberian Peninsula for a Soviet and a Western audience: it was devoid of Stalin, Soviet symbols, and an ideological evaluation of events.⁶ Even with an unachieved strategic goal, such a...