In October 1936, the
loyalists were having an increasingly hard time defending their dwindling
status quo against the relentless forces of General Franco. As the latter was
about to lay siege to Madrid, the frazzled Republican government decided to
move the Spanish capital from its current location in Central Spain, to the
shores of the Mediterranean Sea, where prompt evacuation by ship would be
possible and the danger of encirclement, unlike in Madrid, was practically nonexistent.
First, they moved their government offices to Valencia, and later to Barcelona.
In the process of moving
the capital, the Gold Reserve of Spain was supposed to be moving too, in
bullion and coin worth well over three quarters of a billion US dollars in the
currency of the 1930’s.
Concerning this gold,
Dolores Ibarruri had a wonderful brainstorm, which would have made the
following adventure an all-time classic, had it not been too hot for the
printing presses. To make a long story short, amidst certain confusion and even
panic in some Republican quarters, she used her authority as a Member of the
Spanish Government, to commandeer the Gold shipment, then in the process
of being evacuated, to the Spanish port city of Cartagena. There, it was loaded
onto a ship, and taken across the Mediterranean, through the Straits, into the
Black Sea, and into the Soviet port of Odessa.
To cut the long story
short, Dolores delivered it all to Stalin, in exchange for his promise to
assist her with every possible means available in becoming one day soon
President of the new Spanish Republic. Finding it very much in concert with his
own thinking, Stalin was quite happy to oblige.
The loss of the nation’s
Gold Reserve became a shocking embarrassment for the Republican Government .
The Socialist Prime Minister of Spain Francisco Largo Caballero suspected
Stalin’s direct complicity in the theft, and would become so bitterly
anti-Soviet, that he had to be replaced by the equally disgusted Finance
Minister Juan Negrín, who was however somewhat better capable of concealing his
feelings. Then, President Manuel Azaña y Díaz secretly appealed to Stalin,
begging him to help to remedy the situation. The Republic was now practically
penniless. But how could the miserable victim take the robber to court, when
the robber was the only friend the victim had, while any judge or jury looking
at the victim would have only murder in mind!
Stalin chose to be
“generous,” and offered Sr. Azaña a nice way out. Of course, he was not going
to return even one ounce of his loot to the legitimate owner. But he would
happily consider all this Gold of Spain as payment-in-full for all Soviet
expenses on weapons and troops made in the course of the war. You can see
vintage Stalin in this vignette.
Their deal did not mean,
however, that Stalin would expedite a single military shipment to the
Republican Government. The historians of the Spanish Civil War have been
puzzled by the pathetic ineffectiveness of Stalin’s help to his Socialist
friends. My readers should be well equipped by now to solve this “mystery” for themselves.
As for Dolores Ibarruri,
she returned to the war-ravaged Spain, to remain extremely active in the Civil
War business. She had little to worry about, well-protected by a whole regiment
of dedicated Communists, who now saw her safety as their best insurance for a
safe retreat to Russia, after losing the war, as expected. Her Republican colleagues, whom she had so shockingly
swindled, could not complain, because she was now under Stalin’s personal
protection, and Stalin was still their only remaining hope to survive.
But no matter what, in
1939 Franco emerged victorious, Dolores found herself permanently settling down
in Moscow as the Queen of all displaced foreigners… and World War Two had not
even officially begun.
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