Full Description:
A small anti-Stalinist Marxist party in Spain, led by Andreu Nin, a former Trotskyist. The POUM advocated for socialist revolution rather than the Popular Front’s moderate republican line. During the war, it allied with the anarchists in opposing Communist Party dominance. In May 1937, the POUM was suppressed by Republican forces acting on Soviet orders; Nin was tortured and murdered by Soviet agents.
Critical Perspective:
The POUM is the Spanish Civil War’s most famous victim of internecine leftist violence, immortalized in George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia. The party’s crime was not collaboration with Franco (a false accusation) but opposition to Stalin’s strategy of moderating the revolution. The Soviet NKVD’s elimination of the POUM—complete with show trials, torture, and execution—demonstrated that Stalin feared revolution more than fascism. Orwell’s account remains the definitive indictment of communist realpolitik.
