Deep into the third year of war, Red Spaniards like the Ukrainians today knew they would lose, and the only question was how many more people would have to die
One minor quibble: I think, for the vast majority of Ukraine sympathisers, it was not “perceived political allegiance” but rather a simple preference for the defender over the aggressor (plus admiration for the extraordinary courage of those defenders) that was the decisive factor. Certainly true in my case.
"One minor quibble: I think, for the vast majority of Ukraine sympathisers, it was not “perceived political allegiance” but rather a simple preference for the defender over the aggressor (plus admiration for the extraordinary courage of those defenders) that was the decisive factor."
But Ukraine was not the defender; they were the aggressor, along with the United States.
Obviously, you have no understanding of the term REALISTIC. The United States overthrew the democratically elected president of Ukraine in 2014 in an effort to weaken and break up Russia.
I assume that your handle is a nod to “realism” in the foreign policy/international relations sense. I do understand that term, and the corresponding adjective is “realist”, not “realistic.” I used the latter advisedly, because I think your commitment to a realist stance à la Mearscheimer has led you to an unrealistic view of what has been happening in the world. Even granting the idea that the Orange Revolution was a CIA op (which I don’t, but hey…), there’s a clear sense in which the country that sends in the armoured divisions and starts the war that kills the millions of people is the *aggressor*. Just as the USA was the aggressor at the Bay of Pigs. You can make a realist argument to try and account for or even, I suppose, justify that aggression. Denying it just sounds silly.
" Even granting the idea that the Orange Revolution was a CIA op (which I don’t, but hey…), there’s a clear sense in which the country that sends in the armoured divisions and starts the war that kills the millions of people is the *aggressor*."
After the 2014 coup, Ukraine started shelling the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine which is mostly Russian speaking people. The truth is the 2014 coup was CIA contrived and conducted.
You are either ignorant or stupid...your choice. At some point ignorance becomes stupidity.
Let us hope that the complete parallelism will not be fulfilled, and once the war in Ukraine is stopped, then the third world war will begin with an invasion, for example, of Taiwan/Poland.
Thank you for posting this story, Spanish Civil War is not well know outside of very pro-Republican narrative created thanks to Hemingway and Orwell.
Have you thought about the reason for that visible preference from Anglosphere? That preference of the Republican side was immediate and put both the UK/US on the same side with the USSR. If you think about it, the US was shipping its leftists and communists to fight in the International brigades which were armed by the Soviets. Hemingway wrote his For Whom The Bell Toll - basically a story of the American member of ISIS who travelled to a different country to participate in a civil war he had no relation to. If anything, Spanish Civil War is similar to Syrian one. Strange bedfellows.
(I am not sure where France’s sympathies were, they probably looked at both sides with disdain)
For Whom the Bell Tolls is a terrible novel, but I quite enjoyed Homage to Catalonia, and I believe it's a pretty useful book, helpful to understand at least on part of the conflict. It's too bad Hemingway was so famous.
Thank you, I’ll check it out. Have you thought about why media preference in the UK and US was so pro-Republican? Just a regular left leaning of the intellectuals?
Nwvert imagine, yours grandparents fight side by side with my own granparends.
Felix Mouchet fight on Madrid from, to allmost the end. And see when italians come at the port were ho and thousands more are try to flee, many cases of people take his own lives.
At the other part of my family, the brother of my grandfather Clemente López was and oficer of and destroyer, the Jose Luis Diez.
Over at my Substack I have a depository of sorts for the Spanish Civil War. Would you mind if I linked to your post? The personal recollections of yours are great.
you provide an excellent side glance at RussoUkrainian war, and the commenters emphasise your point, some perhaps unwillingly.
At the bottom in RussoUkrainian war, beneath even the US/CIA coup/intervention, there is a deeper level, and at this level, it is a civil war.
At least a civil war like combination of being the same/similar, and seeing one's future completely differently.
Differences inside Ukraine, between more conservative, more proEast, and more proWest,
differences inside Donbas, differences between Ukraine and Russia.
And like in a real civil war, these differences cannot be bridged by talking, negotiating,
because there is no middle, and there is no trust.
And US/West used/misused this potential to instigate a war, they are now refusing to end.
It is very, very difficult to end the civil war, without letting it go its natural course - outright victory of the stronger side.
If one puts the whole civil war aspect of RussoUkrainian war into one sentence;
where will the natural border between Ukraine and Russia be, now, when there is no more brotherhood and shared destiny. If RussoUkrainian border is to be determined by war, where will it be?
I keep thinking about that, all the more the longer the war goes on. The very fact that this is such a bitter contest, that both sides are willing to take huge losses (especially the smaller side, where the same losses are larger as a percentage) proves the point that, under all the rest, this is a civil war and the the Ukraine, as it evolved as an idea over the 20th century and as a geopolitical reality over the 21st century, became a sort of Russian Al-Andalus or Taiwan: not so much a different country as an alternative, replacement modernity. Some sort of Ukraine will survive the war, that's for sure, but it will be all the smaller and all the more hopeless the longer the war goes on.
The part of the Spanish Civil War that continues to speak to some of us on the Left was the way a somewhat viable anarchist movement was allowed to flourish briefly.
Stalin and his thugs wouldnt let it last much longer and were somewhat responsible for having the war end the way it did.
Needless to say nothing like that kind of Anarchism in today's rather repressive Ukraine.
One minor quibble: I think, for the vast majority of Ukraine sympathisers, it was not “perceived political allegiance” but rather a simple preference for the defender over the aggressor (plus admiration for the extraordinary courage of those defenders) that was the decisive factor. Certainly true in my case.
Fair, good point.
"One minor quibble: I think, for the vast majority of Ukraine sympathisers, it was not “perceived political allegiance” but rather a simple preference for the defender over the aggressor (plus admiration for the extraordinary courage of those defenders) that was the decisive factor."
But Ukraine was not the defender; they were the aggressor, along with the United States.
How… realistic.
"How… realistic."
Obviously, you have no understanding of the term REALISTIC. The United States overthrew the democratically elected president of Ukraine in 2014 in an effort to weaken and break up Russia.
I assume that your handle is a nod to “realism” in the foreign policy/international relations sense. I do understand that term, and the corresponding adjective is “realist”, not “realistic.” I used the latter advisedly, because I think your commitment to a realist stance à la Mearscheimer has led you to an unrealistic view of what has been happening in the world. Even granting the idea that the Orange Revolution was a CIA op (which I don’t, but hey…), there’s a clear sense in which the country that sends in the armoured divisions and starts the war that kills the millions of people is the *aggressor*. Just as the USA was the aggressor at the Bay of Pigs. You can make a realist argument to try and account for or even, I suppose, justify that aggression. Denying it just sounds silly.
" Even granting the idea that the Orange Revolution was a CIA op (which I don’t, but hey…), there’s a clear sense in which the country that sends in the armoured divisions and starts the war that kills the millions of people is the *aggressor*."
After the 2014 coup, Ukraine started shelling the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine which is mostly Russian speaking people. The truth is the 2014 coup was CIA contrived and conducted.
You are either ignorant or stupid...your choice. At some point ignorance becomes stupidity.
Okay. Bye mate.
Ukraine is not the defender. They have been shelling Donetsk since 2014.
Unfortunate that the roles of "defender" and "aggressor" were so thoroughly (and deliberately) muddled.
"From 2022, the war became something very unlike the Spanish Civil War in that it became an invasion"
Franco's army had to be flown in from North Africa to fight, so I guess it was also an "invasion" of a kind.
Hmm.
This is a very different conflict from Ukraine.
The Spanish are very different people than the Ukrainians.
The Russians in no way are comparable to what invaded Poland.
We agree on this; the fighting should stop today.
(I have a non-standard take on Ukraine, BTW.)
Let us hope that the complete parallelism will not be fulfilled, and once the war in Ukraine is stopped, then the third world war will begin with an invasion, for example, of Taiwan/Poland.
Do not live in fear.
Do not be seen to be fearful.
The future is unpredictable
therefore speculation is of
extremely limited utility.
Keep your principles and endeavor to prevail.
It’s the Substack way!
David,
Thank you for posting this story, Spanish Civil War is not well know outside of very pro-Republican narrative created thanks to Hemingway and Orwell.
Have you thought about the reason for that visible preference from Anglosphere? That preference of the Republican side was immediate and put both the UK/US on the same side with the USSR. If you think about it, the US was shipping its leftists and communists to fight in the International brigades which were armed by the Soviets. Hemingway wrote his For Whom The Bell Toll - basically a story of the American member of ISIS who travelled to a different country to participate in a civil war he had no relation to. If anything, Spanish Civil War is similar to Syrian one. Strange bedfellows.
(I am not sure where France’s sympathies were, they probably looked at both sides with disdain)
For Whom the Bell Tolls is a terrible novel, but I quite enjoyed Homage to Catalonia, and I believe it's a pretty useful book, helpful to understand at least on part of the conflict. It's too bad Hemingway was so famous.
Thank you, I’ll check it out. Have you thought about why media preference in the UK and US was so pro-Republican? Just a regular left leaning of the intellectuals?
It's a complex subject. A lot of that, certainly.
Nwvert imagine, yours grandparents fight side by side with my own granparends.
Felix Mouchet fight on Madrid from, to allmost the end. And see when italians come at the port were ho and thousands more are try to flee, many cases of people take his own lives.
At the other part of my family, the brother of my grandfather Clemente López was and oficer of and destroyer, the Jose Luis Diez.
Powerful and true.
Love this!
Over at my Substack I have a depository of sorts for the Spanish Civil War. Would you mind if I linked to your post? The personal recollections of yours are great.
Plus that picture with Franco! Wow!
Sure thing, go for it!
David,
you provide an excellent side glance at RussoUkrainian war, and the commenters emphasise your point, some perhaps unwillingly.
At the bottom in RussoUkrainian war, beneath even the US/CIA coup/intervention, there is a deeper level, and at this level, it is a civil war.
At least a civil war like combination of being the same/similar, and seeing one's future completely differently.
Differences inside Ukraine, between more conservative, more proEast, and more proWest,
differences inside Donbas, differences between Ukraine and Russia.
And like in a real civil war, these differences cannot be bridged by talking, negotiating,
because there is no middle, and there is no trust.
And US/West used/misused this potential to instigate a war, they are now refusing to end.
It is very, very difficult to end the civil war, without letting it go its natural course - outright victory of the stronger side.
If one puts the whole civil war aspect of RussoUkrainian war into one sentence;
where will the natural border between Ukraine and Russia be, now, when there is no more brotherhood and shared destiny. If RussoUkrainian border is to be determined by war, where will it be?
I keep thinking about that, all the more the longer the war goes on. The very fact that this is such a bitter contest, that both sides are willing to take huge losses (especially the smaller side, where the same losses are larger as a percentage) proves the point that, under all the rest, this is a civil war and the the Ukraine, as it evolved as an idea over the 20th century and as a geopolitical reality over the 21st century, became a sort of Russian Al-Andalus or Taiwan: not so much a different country as an alternative, replacement modernity. Some sort of Ukraine will survive the war, that's for sure, but it will be all the smaller and all the more hopeless the longer the war goes on.
Only thing i take from this is that one of your grandparents was a traitor
Both
I removed your comment, because if you want to in insult my grandparents, you come here to do it to my face and then you get to see what happens
Interesting background.
The part of the Spanish Civil War that continues to speak to some of us on the Left was the way a somewhat viable anarchist movement was allowed to flourish briefly.
Stalin and his thugs wouldnt let it last much longer and were somewhat responsible for having the war end the way it did.
Needless to say nothing like that kind of Anarchism in today's rather repressive Ukraine.
A really good and informative read.
Anecdotal evidence, self-reports, first hand accounts and the calm eyewitness are the finest sources by far.
You did some clever little literary things - I love it. Thank you…