Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Introduction: Community, authority and resistance to fascism
- 1 The German revolution defeated and fascism deferred: the servicemen's revolt and social democracy at the end of the First World War, 1918–1920
- 2 Dangerous communities and conservative authority: the judiciary, Nazis and rough people, 1932–1933
- 3 The anti-fascist movement in south-east Lancashire, 1933–1940: the divergent experiences of Manchester and Nelson
- 4 Spain 1936. Resistance and revolution: the flaws in the Front
- 5 The Blueshirts in the Irish Free State, 1932–1935: the nature of socialist republican and governmental opposition
- 6 Town councils of the Nord and Pas-de-Calais region: local power, French power, German power
- 7 Structures of authority in the Greek resistance, 1941–1944
- 8 Nazi Austria: the limits of dissent
- 9 ‘Homosexual’ men in Vienna, 1938
- 10 ‘The years of consent’? Popular attitudes and forms of resistance to Fascism in Italy, 1925–1940
- 11 Saints and heroines: rewriting the history of Italian women in the Resistance
- Notes
- Index
4 - Spain 1936. Resistance and revolution: the flaws in the Front
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Introduction: Community, authority and resistance to fascism
- 1 The German revolution defeated and fascism deferred: the servicemen's revolt and social democracy at the end of the First World War, 1918–1920
- 2 Dangerous communities and conservative authority: the judiciary, Nazis and rough people, 1932–1933
- 3 The anti-fascist movement in south-east Lancashire, 1933–1940: the divergent experiences of Manchester and Nelson
- 4 Spain 1936. Resistance and revolution: the flaws in the Front
- 5 The Blueshirts in the Irish Free State, 1932–1935: the nature of socialist republican and governmental opposition
- 6 Town councils of the Nord and Pas-de-Calais region: local power, French power, German power
- 7 Structures of authority in the Greek resistance, 1941–1944
- 8 Nazi Austria: the limits of dissent
- 9 ‘Homosexual’ men in Vienna, 1938
- 10 ‘The years of consent’? Popular attitudes and forms of resistance to Fascism in Italy, 1925–1940
- 11 Saints and heroines: rewriting the history of Italian women in the Resistance
- Notes
- Index
Summary
during a revolution … when events move swiftly, a weak party can quickly grow into a mighty one provided it lucidly understands the course of the revolution … But such a party must be available prior to the revolution in as much as the process of educating the cadres requires a considerable period of time and the revolution does not afford this time.
The military coup of July 1936 against the progressive, reformist Second Spanish Republic precipitated a movement of popular resistance in which could be glimpsed the revolutionary potential of the social base of Spain's Popular Front (the centre-left electoral coalition victorious at the polls in February 1936). These radical energies would dissipate and the revolutionary attempt fail largely through the internal insufficiencies and inconsistencies of the groups constituting the radical left. But it was nevertheless the driving energy of that popular response which salvaged the reformist Republic, allowing the state to be reconstituted and a three-year war effort to be sustained in desperate conditions. This chapter will suggest some structural and conjunctural reasons why a revolutionary option failed to cohere as a basis for the Republican war effort. In the process it will also seek to indicate how we might go about unpacking the components of ‘Republican disunity’ – often referred to as if it were the product of pure ideological voluntarism and a ‘monolithic’ explanation for defeat.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Opposing FascismCommunity, Authority and Resistance in Europe, pp. 63 - 79Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999