October 11, 2020
WHAT FRANCO WAS FIGHTING AGAINST:
Revealed: Soviet spies targeted George Orwell during Spanish civil war: Newly unearthed files reveal that the author and his wife were under Soviet surveillance while fighting in civil war (Harriet Sherwood, 11 Oct 2020, The Observer)
[N]ew evidence has emerged that one of the most famous international fighters on the Republican side of the Spanish civil war was under surveillance by communist military intelligence.George Orwell, whose book Homage to Catalonia became a celebrated account of fighting in the civil war, and his wife Eileen were spied on in Barcelona at the time of a vicious internal conflict on the Republican side of the war in May 1937.Reports on the couple's actions, lodged in a Moscow archive after the war, were unearthed by author Giles Tremlett while researching a book, The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War, published by Bloomsbury on 15 October."The papers are documentary evidence that not only Orwell, but also his wife Eileen, were being watched closely. They add fuel to the thesis that Orwell developed in Homage to Catalonia, and later in Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, that Stalin was intent on transforming communism from a social and political ideal into a tyranny headed by a single man," Tremlett told the Observer.
Posted by Orrin Judd at October 11, 2020 12:00 AM