A-Infos (en) France, UCL AL #373 - Culture - Read Jean Batou, Stefanie Prezioso, and Ami-Jacques Rapin (eds.), "When Night Falls: International Volunteers Against Fascism (Spain 1936-1939)" (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The pact of silence surrounding the democratic transition has led to a 
situation where today, ninety years after the Spanish Revolution, only 
one in seven Spaniards views Francoism positively. According to a 
survey, less than half of those polled attribute the Civil War to a coup 
d'état. Upon reading these few facts presented in the introduction to 
this edited volume, one can only commend Syllepse publishers for 
revisiting the subject with this almost entirely revised edition. With 
the rise of the far right and rampant revisionism, this work provides 
invaluable additional insight into a mythical, and often distorted, 
episode: that of the international volunteers.

The myth surrounding them transformed them into heroes and heroines, 
often of intellectual background, and the communist parties appropriated 
this legacy. Thanks to access to Moscow archives, this book has been 
able to set the record straight on many issues.

Syllepses Publishing, true to its commitment to diverse perspectives, 
has achieved the remarkable feat of exploring a significant portion of 
the diverse backgrounds of these volunteers, who cannot be reduced to 
the narrow concepts of seasoned activists close to the communist 
parties. Coming from varied backgrounds, sociological analysis reveals a 
far broader and more diverse group than the commonly held narrative 
suggests.

The first part of the book is devoted to the formation of the 
International Brigades and the choices made by Stalin and the Comintern. 
Recruitment channels and methods of arms procurement are also examined. 
The second section of the book is devoted to the militiamen, those 
lesser-known volunteers of the POUM[1]or the anarchists. The third part 
addresses the diverse backgrounds and motivations of the volunteers from 
democracies. They came from a variety of places: Belgium, Great Britain, 
Canada, Scotland, Scandinavia, France, the United States, Switzerland, 
and Luxembourg. This section differs from the following two, which focus 
first on volunteers from dictatorships: Italians, Germans, Austrians, 
Greeks, Japanese, Hungarians, Yugoslavs, and exiles for whom the Spanish 
experience resonated differently, more brutally. The second section 
focuses on volunteers from colonized peoples, those oppressed and 
dominated by these same democracies and dictatorships, from Iraq, 
Palestine, Egypt, China, Ireland, and the Maghreb, as well as African 
Americans and Latin Americans. These diverse experiences, backgrounds, 
and motivations explain this judicious division. Women are not 
forgotten, with Magdalena Rosende's contribution on international female 
involvement in Spain. The following section brings together what could 
be summarized as the fate and trajectories of these volunteers who found 
themselves in the aftermath: internment in camps, the Resistance... This 
section also explores the evolution of these stories: historiography, 
memorial and literary accounts, and the varied archival material (from 
Moscow, Salamanca, political and trade union organizations, and the 
private archives of these men and women in the shadows).

These multiple and intersecting contributions have allowed us to 
authenticate these individual and collective journeys, dispelling myths 
such as the overrepresentation of women in arms during the Civil War. 
Their armed involvement in the militias was extremely rare and brief. 
Another persistent myth is that of the brigadistas' social origins, very 
often attributed to and reduced to intellectuals and men of letters 
(Hemingway, Malraux, or Orwell). However, "the typical volunteer, 
foreign militiaman or brigadista, was a young, skilled worker in the 
metalworking or construction sectors, made precarious by the crisis."

Finally, the legend of the volunteers for freedom is analyzed, following 
"an enthusiastic and largely spontaneous surge[...]at the heart of the 
formation of the International Brigades." This vision and imagery align 
with the political line of the Spanish Communist Party.

Dominique Sureau (UCL Angers)

Jean Batou, Stefanie Prezioso, Ami-Jacques Rapin (eds.), When Night 
Falls: International Volunteers Against Fascism (Spain 1936-1939), 
Syllepse, 2026, 192 pages, EUR30.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Lire-Jean-Batou-Stefanie-Prezioso-et-Ami-Jacques-Rapin-dir-Quand-vient-la-nuit
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