Julian Gorkin

Julian Gorkin

Julián Gorkin , actually Julián Gómez García (* January 1901 in Valencia ; † August 20, 1987 in Paris ), was a Spanish revolutionary and writer who changed from a supporter to an opponent of Soviet communism around 1930 . In the Spanish Civil War leading activist of the POUM , he could in 1939 from a prison controlled by the Communists Catalonia flee and thus probably narrowly escape death. He spent the rest of his life in exile in France and Mexico. In Germany he was best known for his book Stalin's long arm (1980), which deals mainly with the role of the communists in the civil war and in the persecution of Gorkin and his comrade Andreu Nin .

Life

The man, who later named himself after Maxim Gorki , grew up in a working-class family near Valencia (Spanish east coast), educated himself both with the help of the press and the French classics from the 19th century and went to the city of Valencia at the age of 15, to get involved in the social struggles. At 17 he became secretary of the local Socialist Youth, at 21 he was one of the founders of the Spanish Communist Party . Persecution for conscientious objection and alleged high treason led him into exile for the first time in early 1922: to France. Here his son Claude was born. Gorkin was now a full-time cadre of the (Soviet-dominated) Comintern , and also friends with Henri Barbusse . A trip through the USSR in 1929 opened his eyes to the repressive development there, so that he came closer to the Trotskyist opposition. During this time, Gorkin wrote articles and novels and dramas for the first time. With the fall of Primo de Rivera and the proclamation of the Republic (1931), he returned to Spain, broke with the CP and joined the workers and peasants' block (BOC) led by Joaquín Maurín .

POUM and La Batalla (1935)

The POUM was created in September 1935 from a merger of the BOC and the Izquierda Comunista around Andreu Nin . Gorkin was a member of the Central Committee and also headed the Barcelona daily La Batalla . The POUM fought at that time against the Franco troops more or less in contact with anarchist organizations. In May 1937 real battles between communists and anarchists took place in Barcelona for days, which resulted in around 500 dead, 1,000 injured "and many murders". In connection with this, Gorkin was arrested in June by the victorious communists who ruled the regional authorities. The trial against him received strong international attention. The French writers André Gide , Francois Mauriac , Roger Martin du Gard , Georges Duhamel and the ethnologist Paul Rivet protested at the then President Negrin . Although Gorkin was exonerated of the allegation of having collaborated with the fascists, he had criticized and slandered the Republican authorities. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison "and pushed around for eighteen months" before he and other death row inmates were able to escape "between two fires" in early 1939 thanks to escape assistance.

After the war, before the war (1939)

Once again in exile in Paris, Gorkin met his wife and son again. Like-minded people like Victor Serge and Marceau Pivert gave him a hand. In 1939 he was still secretary of the so-called (international) London office of left-wing socialist organizations. He gave up this post a year later to look for a new exile in Mexico, which was one of the few countries that did not recognize the victorious Franco regime in Spain. Meanwhile the Second World War had started. His wife and son, who is now 13 years old, were only able to join Gorkin in 1941. In his new exile he met his friends Serge and Pivert again, as well as Gustav Regulator and John Dos Passos . Gorkin took on Mexican citizenship and was also assisted by the temporary President and Minister Lázaro Cárdenas del Río . To this end, Gorkin worked tirelessly on behalf of numerous emigrants, followed the events surrounding the assassination of Trotsky (August 20, 1940), was constantly threatened by the Stalinist side, directed the POUM's émigré magazine and wrote books, including the one with Sanchez Salazar on Trotsky The End.

Working for a united Europe

In order to better devote himself to the struggle against Franco and Stalin and for a united Europe, Gorkin returned to France in 1948. Here he found his new companion Rita H. Régnier. In 1950 their son Fabien was born. They lived in Saint-Mandé , which became a meeting place for the persecuted and friends. However, Gorkin was often on trips all over the world, for example Congo, Cuba, Chile. It was not until the 1960s that he came to rest and settled with his family in Paris. Since 1953 he was the secretary responsible for Latin America of the Congress for Cultural Freedom (until 1966) founded in Berlin in 1950 and then in Paris , a camouflaged anti-communist organization financed by the CIA . In this capacity he also headed the cultural magazine Cuadernos , and also founded the magazine Mañana . In 1969 he became president of the international PEN club. In 1979 Gorkin received the Prix ​​Voltaire for his life's work. With Franco's death (1975) he could have returned to his homeland after 36 years in exile, but preferred to stay in France, where he died in 1987 at a relatively old age.

Works

• Dias de bohemia , novel. Ediciones Ulises, Madrid 1930 (with a foreword by Henri Barbusse )
• La corriente y una famililia , drama. Ediciones Zeus, Madrid 1932
• La guerra estella mañana , drama. Ediciones Sol, Valencia 1934
• Canibales politicos (Hitler y Stalin en España) . Ediciones Quetzal, Mexico 1941
• La GPU prepara un nuevo crimen . Ediciones Quetzal, Mexico 1942
• Ainsi fut assassiné Trotski . Editions Self, Paris 1948
• La Vie et la Mort en URSS Les Iles d'Or, Paris 1950
• Communista en España y antistalinia en la URSS Editorial Guarania, Mexico 1952
• Destin you XXe siècle . Les Iles d'Or, Paris 1954
• Marx y la Russia de ayer y de hoy . Editorial Bases, Buenos Aires 1956
• La muerte en las manos , novel. Ediciones Claridad, Buenos Aires 1957 and Libro Mex-Editores, Mexico 1959 (with a foreword by John Dos Passos )
• Douze chaises , television play. ORTF 1960
• Fantasmas de la Historia y El otro mundo , drama. Libro Mex-Editores, Mexico 1961
• España, primer ensayo de democracia popular . Biblioteca de la Libertad, Buenos Aires 1961
• El Imperio Soviético . Editions Claridad, Buenos Aires 1969
• L'assassinat de Trotski . Julliard, Paris 1970 and Livre de Poche, Paris 1973
• El proceso de Moscu in Barcelona . Aymá SA Editora, Barcelona 1973
• El revolucionario profesional . Aymá SA Editora, Barcelona 1975
• Les communistes contre la revolution espagnole . Belfond, Paris 1978, German Stalin's long arm (translation by Heinz Abosch , preface by Willy Brandt ), Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1980, ISBN 3-462-01408-0 .

literature

• Leandro A. Sanchez Salazar: Murder in Mexico. The murder of Leon Trotsky - a prime example of political crime. In collaboration with Julian Gorkin . Parma Edition, Frankfurt am Main 1952
• Charles Jacquier: Presentation de Julian Gorkin. Histoire radicale . In: Revue Agone 37, 2007

Web links

Commons : Julián Gómez García  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Extensive bibliography: Fundación Andreu Nin , accessed on May 14, 2011

References and comments

1. ↑ Willy Brandt , Foreword to Gorkin 's Stalin's Long Arm , page 15
2. ↑ "with Nin, Maurin, Andrade, Bonet, Portela and many others" - Stalin's long arm , page 139
3. ↑ His companion Louise, "always my best colleague", worked at the time in the union of the French communists - Stalin's long arm , p. 132
4. ↑ Temporarily and almost by chance she also belonged to the Spanish fighter George Orwell , see his book My Catalonia from 1938
5. ↑ which Orwell witnessed
6. ↑ Stalin's long arm , page 79
7. ↑ Willy Brandt in the foreword, page 22: "Communist police officers arrested the POUM people, and communist functionaries worked out the indictment document - with the help of lies and forgeries, as was subsequently proven in court."
8. ↑ Stalin's long arm , page 241
9. ↑ Willy Brandt, foreword, page 21. For Gorkin himself, the main sin of the POUM was to accuse the "executioners" of the sensational Moscow trials at the time - Stalin's long arm , page 112
10. ↑ Willy Brandt, foreword on page 11
11. ↑ namely the approaching fascists and the crumbling communists, Stalin's long arm , page 273
12. ↑ According to the English language Wikipedia, accessed on May 12, 2011, he also helped Serge and his son to exile
13. ↑ Probably not a bulwark of anti-capitalism: At the end of his book Stalin's Long Arm (page 283), the aged revolutionary states that happily after Franco's death "a new democratic and federalist Spain" "that is worthy of joining the European Community" had formed " .
14. ↑ See also Accociation ( Memento of the original from March 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed May 14, 2011 
15. ↑ The book also deals extensively with the lot of Gorkin's comrade Andreu Nin . Incidentally, it may be oversubscribed to call the book like Lilly Marcou "a single indictment against the communists" ( We greatest acrobats in the world. Ilja Ehrenburg - A Biography , German edition as a structure paperback, Berlin 1996, page 163, ISBN 3-7466 -1259-4 ), but Gorkin's personalization of the Stalinist structures on the party and state leader is striking . In addition, the book could, in part because of its conspiratorial subject, inevitably suffer from a certain weakness in evidence.