POUM
The Workers' Party of Marxist Unification ( es, Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, POUM; ca, Partit Obrer d'Unificació Marxista) was a Spanish communist party formed during the Second Spanish Republic, Second Republic and mainly active around the Spanish Civil War. It was formed by the fusion of the Trotskyism, Trotskyist Communist Left of Spain ( es, Izquierda Comunista de España, ICE, links=no) and the Workers and Peasants' Bloc (BOC, affiliated with the Right Opposition) against the will of Leon Trotsky, with whom the former broke. The writer George Orwell served with the party's militia and witnessed the Stalinism, Stalinist repression of the movement, which would help form his Anti-authoritarianism, anti-authoritarian ideas in later life, and motivated him to cooperate with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, British Foreign Office in Orwell's list, anti-communist propaganda activities. Formation In 1935, POUM was formed as a communist opposition to ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Wilebaldo Solano
Wilebaldo Solano Alonso (7 July 1916, in Burgos, Spain – 7 September 2010, in Barcelona, Spain) was a Spanish Communist activist during the Spanish Civil War, especially noted for his work with Socialist youth organizations as a member of the ''Workers' Party of Marxist Unification'' (POUM). Most of his activities before and during the Second Spanish Republic were centered in Catalonia. Youth Solano completed his secondary studies at the Institut Balmes, in Barcelona. He distinguished himself as a leader of the student movement, organizing his institute's first student group during the fall from power of General Miguel Primo de Rivera, and later founding the Catalan National Student Federation. Solano went on to study medicine at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. In 1932 he joined the youth wing of the Marxist Bloque Obrero y Campesino (BOC – Workers' and Peasants' Bloc) —a major workers' organization, at the time under the influence of the Soviet Union's Right Oppositio ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Homage To Catalonia
''Homage to Catalonia'' is George Orwell's personal account of his experiences and observations fighting in the Spanish Civil War for the POUM militia of the Republican army. Published in 1938 (about a year before the war ended) with little commercial success, it gained more attention in the 1950s following the success of Orwell's better-known works ''Animal Farm'' (1945) and ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (1949). Covering the period between December 1936 and June 1937, Orwell recounts Catalonia's revolutionary fervor during his training in Barcelona, his boredom on the front lines in Aragon, his involvement in the interfactional May Days conflict back in Barcelona on leave, his getting shot in the throat back on the front lines, and his escape to France after the POUM was declared an illegal organization. The war was one of the defining events of his political outlook and a significant part of what led him to write in 1946, "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Andreu Nin
Andreu Nin Pérez (4 February 1892 – 20 June 1937) was a Spanish communist politician, translator and publicist. In 1937, Nin and the rest of the POUM leadership were arrested by the Moscow-oriented government of the Second Spanish Republic on trumped up charges of collaborating with Francisco Franco's Nationalists and were tortured to death by Soviet NKVD agents. On 17 June 2013, 76 years after his death, the Parliament of Catalonia officially paid homage to him and his work on politics with special emphasis on his work as Justice Minister of Catalonia. Early life Born in El Vendrell, Tarragona, to a poor family (his father was a shoemaker and his mother was a peasant), Nin moved to Barcelona shortly before World War I; he taught briefly in a secular anarchist school but soon became a journalist and activist. In 1917, he joined the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE). Nin became a leader of the Spanish workers' movement, and was among the founders of the Communist ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitarianism, and support of democratic socialism. Orwell produced literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. He is known for the allegorical novella ''Animal Farm'' (1945) and the dystopian novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (1949). His non-fiction works, including ''The Road to Wigan Pier'' (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the industrial north of England, and ''Homage to Catalonia'' (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics, literature, language and culture. Blair was born in India, and raised and educated in England. After school he became an Imperial policeman in Burma, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Joaquín Maurín
Joaquín Maurín Juliá (Catalan: Joaquim Maurín, 12 January 1896 – 5 November 1973) was a Spanish communist politician and activist. The leader of the Workers and Peasants Bloc (BOC) and of the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM), he was active mainly in Catalonia. Early life Born in Bonansa in Huesca, Aragon, Maurín engaged in socialist politics from early youth and stood trial on several occasions. CNT and Profintern After law studies, he practiced in Lleida (Catalonia), where he became affiliated with the anarchist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT, "National Confederation of Labour"). In 1920, Joaquín Maurín was elected local secretary for the trade union, as well as the editor of its weekly ''Lucha Social''. In 1921, he represented the movement at the Profintern Congress in Moscow, the capital of Soviet Russia. Upon his return, he was elected general secretary of the CNT shortly before was arrested and detained in February 1922. After his release, M ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Right Opposition
The Right Opposition (, ''Pravaya oppozitsiya'') or Right Tendency (, ''Praviy uklon'') in the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) was a conditional label formulated by Joseph Stalin in fall of 1928 in regards the opposition against certain measures included within the first five-year plan by Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, Mikhail Tomsky and their supporters within the Soviet Union that did not follow the so called "general line of the party". It is also the name given to "right-wing" critics within the Communist movement internationally, particularly those who coalesced in the International Communist Opposition, regardless of whether they identified with Bukharin and Rykov. Emergence The struggle for power in the Soviet Union after the death of Vladimir Lenin saw the development of three major tendencies within the Communist Party. These were described by Leon Trotsky as left, right and centre tendencies, each based on a specific class or caste. Trotsky argued that his tende ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, link=no) or The Uprising ( es, La Sublevación, link=no) among Republicans. was a civil war in Spain fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republicans and the Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the left-leaning Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic, and consisted of various socialist, communist, separatist, anarchist, and republican parties, some of which had opposed the government in the pre-war period. The opposing Nationalists were an alliance of Falangists, monarchists, conservatives, and traditionalists led by a military junta among whom General Francisco Franco quickly achieved a preponderant role. Due to the international political climate at the time, the war had many facets and was variously viewed as cla ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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International Revolutionary Marxist Centre
The International Revolutionary Marxist Centre was an international association of left-socialist parties. The member-parties rejected both mainstream social democracy and the Third International. Organizational history The International was formed in 1932, following a fringe meeting at the Socialist International conference in Vienna in 1931. The IRMC underwent a variety of names. It was initially called the Committee of Independent Revolutionary Socialist Parties and later the International Bureau of Revolutionary Socialist Unity, but throughout the period it was generally known simply as the London Bureau (and nicknamed by some the 3½ International, in an analogy with the so-called 2½ International of 1921-3), although its headquarters were transferred from London to Paris in 1939 (on the grounds that in addition to the French affiliate, five parties-in-exile had their central committees there). Its youth wing was the International Bureau of Revolutionary Youth Organizat ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Popular Front (Spain)
The Popular Front ( es, Frente Popular) in Spain's Second Republic was an electoral alliance and pact signed in January 1936 by various left-wing political organizations, instigated by Manuel Azaña for the purpose of contesting that year's election. In Catalonia and today's Valencian Community the name of the coalition was Front d'Esquerres (in Catalan, meaning ''Front of the Lefts''). The ''Popular Front'' included the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), Communist Party of Spain (PCE), and the republicans: Republican Left (IR), (led by Azaña) and Republican Union (UR), led by Diego Martínez Barrio. This pact was supported by Galician ( PG) and Catalan nationalists ( ERC), the POUM, socialist union Workers' General Union (UGT), and the anarchist trade union, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT). Many anarchists who would later fight alongside ''Popular Front'' forces during the Spanish Civil War did not support them in the election, urging abstention inste ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Workers And Peasants' Bloc
The Workers and Peasants' Bloc (; es, Bloque Obrero y Campesino, BOC) was a "Right Opposition" communist group in Spain. History BOC was founded in Barcelona in 1931, as the mass front of the Catalan-Balearic Communist Federation (FCCB), after the merger of the Catalan Communist Party into FCCB. FCCB, which made up the nucleus of BOC, later changed its name to Iberian Communist Federation, thus stating its intention to expand itself and BOC throughout Spain. Prominent leaders of BOC were Joaquín Maurín, Hilari Arlandis, Jordi Arquer, Pere Bonet, Víctor Colomer and Abelard Tona Nadalmai. In November 1935, the majority of BOC merged with the Trotskyist Communist Left of Spain, to form the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM; Catalan: ''Partit Obrer d'Unificació Marxista''). The minority stayed out of the merger and later joined the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSUC). Publications The central publication of BOC was ''La Batalla''. BOC also published ''L'Ho ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Communist Left Of Spain
Communist Left of Spain ( es, Izquierda Comunista de España) was a Trotskyist political party during the Second Spanish Republic. Its leader was Andrés Nin Pérez, who had been a supporter of the Left Opposition while living in Russia. Although the group was affiliated to the International Left Opposition, Leon Trotsky objected to its name, believing that it failed to stress that the organisation viewed itself as an external faction of the Communist Party. By April 1936, on the brink of the Spanish Civil War, Trotsky had denounced the Spanish left communists: At present we must say openly that the Spanish “left communists” have allowed this extremely favorable interval to pass by completely and have revealed themselves as in no way better than the socialist and “communist” traitors. Really, there has been no lack of warnings! All the greater is the culpability of an Andres Nin, of an Andrade, ''etc.'' – With a correct policy the “Communist Left”, as a section of t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Left Bloc For National Liberation
Left Bloc for National Liberation ( ca, Bloc d'Esquerra d'Alliberament Nacional, BEAN) was a coalition and, later, political party in Catalonia and Valencia, Spain. BEAN was an independentist and socialist party, that defended a Socialist Federal Republic of the Catalan Countries. History Formed in 1979 as a coalition between the Catalan Workers Bloc (BCT) and the Socialist Party of National Liberation (PSAN), along with some independents, like Lluís Maria Xirinacs. In the local elections of that year the coalition gained 19 town councillors and 2 mayors (Arbúcies and Sant Pere de Ribes). In the city of Barcelona the Bloc withdrew the candidacy, supporting the PSUC and the Socialists' Party of Catalonia. In the general elections of the same year the coalition obtained 46,962 votes for Congreso de los Diputados in Catalonia (1.59%) and 9,620 votes (0.51%) in the Valencian Country. For Senate BEAN supported the successful independent candidacy of Lluís Maria Xirinacs in Barcelo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |