THE COMINTERN FIASCO IN SPAIN: THE BORODIN MISSION AND THE BIRTH OF THE SPANISH COMMUNIST PARTY

摘要

Soviet contempt towards national peculiarities and the Bolsheviks' dogmatism undermined rather than aided the expansion of Communism. Of course, many Communist parties in Western Europe became powerful, both in state politics and within the organized labour movement, but there were some glaring exceptions. This article reveals how, paradoxically (given the country's initial massive enthusiasm for Bolshevism), the Spanish Communist Party was, ab initio, a virtually irrelevant organization in the 1920s. Largely based on primary sources (including the documents compiled by the first delegation of Comintern agents to arrive in Spain), it considers the extent to which the ignorance, ultra-leftism and impatience of these 'first bearers of the new gospel' were largely responsible for the shambles that Spanish Communism became in its early years.