Memoria escogida

 

Estos días andamos de nuevo con lo de las calles y las placas que conmemoran al franquismo, al golpe de Estado franquista o a su represión. En algunos casos, con todo el fundamento, en otros con un poco menos y, en fin, en algunos más, con ninguno, hasta el punto de que se hayan denunciado errores de bulto en el informe que nos ha costado 17.999 €+IVA.

Como siempre que empezamos con esto de cambiar cosas, surge la discusión sobre la historia y la llamada memoria histórica (esa construcción ideológica).

Yo no soy partidario de eliminar las huellas de nuestro pasado. Es el que fue, pero hay algo que me molesta mucho más: me molesta el cinismo.

Si la razón para cambiar nombres de calles o para derribar monumentos es un supuesto estándar de lo bueno frente a lo malo, ¿por qué lo malo siempre viene del mismo lugar?

Un ejemplo lo explica mejor. Dolores Ibárruri, «La Pasionaria», da nombre a calles, paseos y plazas por toda España. Le da nombre a colegios e institutos. Hay premios Dolores Ibárruri. Hay monumentos.

Sin embargo, sabemos que fue una estalinista responsable, no solo de la muerte de derechistas, franquistas o fascistas, sino de la muerte de izquierdistas y de camaradas de su partido. Se ha contado en muchos libros y se ha documentado por historiadores que han tratado del tema; no se trata de ningún secreto.

Vean, por ejemplo, algo asombroso. Si uno examina la página de la wikipedia en español que se refiere a Dolores Ibárruri, sobre los años del exilio pueden leer esto:

Tras finalizar la Guerra Civil Española, se exilió en la URSS. En su etapa de exilio, tras el fallecimiento del secretario general del PCE José Díaz Ramos, Pasionaria fue escogida en su sustitución secretaria general del PCE en 1942. Ejerció como máxima autoridad entre los miembros del PCE exiliados en la URSS.

Su único hijo varón, Rubén Ruiz Ibárruri, murió durante los combates de Stalingrado.

En 1960 presentó su dimisión, para pasar a ocupar el cargo de presidenta del PCE. La sustituyó en sus funciones Santiago Carrillo, que ejerció el cargo hasta 1982. Fue miembro del Secretariado de la Internacional Comunista junto a Georgi Dimitrov, Palmiro Togliatti y Maurice Thorez, entre otros. Manifestó su acuerdo con Moscú con ocasión de los diversos cismas dentro del movimiento comunista internacional. Sin embargo, sus viejas convicciones ortodoxas no le impidieron condenar la Primavera de Praga en 1968.

Como ven, pese a ser española, y ser una de las figuras más prominentes del coimunismo español en el siglo XX, la información es casi telegráfica (sucede algo parecido en lo que se refiere a la Guerra Civil). Ni una sola mención a sus actividades de persecución de compatriotas y a su seguidismo perruno al régimen de Stalin.

Sin embargo, la misma página, pero inglesa, dice esto:

Exile, part I (1939–1960)

On March 6, 1939, she flew out of Spain under enemy naval fire to the major Algerian port city of Oran then under French sovereignty. Her arrival came as a surprise to the authorities, who hurriedly put her aboard a liner bound for Marseille.^[41] The ship’s captain was a Nationalist sympathizer, but a clandestine Communist cell aboard ship made sure that he did not steer the ship toward Nationalist-held Barcelona. This was the third time that Ibárruri had evaded capture by the Fascists.

She was helped in France by the Communists, who sheltered her in Paris under police surveillance (the Communist Party would be outlawed by the government of Édouard Daladier on September 26). From Paris she travelled to Moscow and stayed there with Díaz, generals Enrique Líster and Juan Modesto and others. She was reunited with Amaya and Ruben, who had escaped from a French internment camp at the end of the Spanish Civil War.

The Soviet Union received the refugees warmly. Ibárruri was given an apartment in Díaz’ building. She was assigned a chauffeur to drive her around Moscow and she was invited to dine at the Dimitrovs’. She liked to attend the Bolshoi Theatre and the Romen Theatre. She was an avid reader. She delighted in seeing the emancipation of Russian women.^[42] She helped other families adapt to their new country and overall she felt happy enough to sing on occasion.

Ibárruri worked in the Executive Committee of the Communist International Secretariat at the Communist International Headquarters near the Kremlin. The work involved the continual evaluation, analysis and discussion of the progress of Communism outside the Soviet Union. This task was complemented by internal discussions in the PCE central committee which focused on Spain. No serious disagreement existed between the Communist Party of Spain and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union until 1968 over the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. The PCE supported/excused Stalin’s domestic and foreign policies, including the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pacton August 24, 1939.

In January 1940 La Pasionaria wrote the following praise of Joseph Stalin.

To speak about the triumph of socialism over one-sixth of the earth, to write about the lush development of agriculture in the Soviet Union, a development unequalled by any other country, to admire the astonishing growth of socialist industry and the impetuous gains of the workers, to marvel at the unprecedented accomplishments of the mighty Soviet air force, at the mighty beefing up of the Soviet navy, to describe the glorious exploits of the Red Army liberator of peoples, to study the wonderful framework of the huge socialist state with its multiple nationalities united by unbreakable bonds of fraternal friendship, to observe the progress of science, art and of the culture of all Soviet peoples, the joyous life of their children, women, workers, peasants and intellectuals, the abiding security of everyone and their faith in the future, to know the daily life of socialism and the heroic actions of the Soviet people means to see Stalin, to cite Stalin, to encounter Stalin.^[43]

Ibárruri was asked to manage a new short-wave radio station that broadcast news, analysis and opinion to the citizens of Francoist Spain. The Moscow station carried the official name of Radio España Independiente, but in Spain it was nicknamed «La Pirenaica» partly on the false belief that it was located in the Pyrenees and partly because the radio itself used the label occasionally.^[44] Radio España Independiente started to broadcast on July 22, 1941, one month after Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Initial broadcasts were made from candle-lit basements under sporadic aerial bombardment. Ibárruri related that seniors, women and children kept watch on the terraces of Moscow every night for the burning sticks of incendiaries scattered by the Luftwaffe. Civilians would pick up the blazing sticks with a pair of tongs and dunk them in pails of water.

Many Spanish refugees volunteered to fight alongside the Russians despite Stalin’s initial disapproval. According to Ibárruri, more than 200 died in battle. On July 18, 1941, she greeted the Spanish 4th Special Unit assigned to the defence of the Kremlin. Elsewhere, from Crimea to Finland, the Spanish Communist volunteers fought as guerrillas deployed behind enemy lines, in the Red Army or with the Soviet air force; some made it to Berlin and at least one scouted territory held by the Spanish Fascist Blue Division.

On October 13, 1941, martial law was declared in Moscow as the German 3rd Panzer Army came within 140 kilometres (87 mi) of the capital. On October 16 the ECCI was evacuated by train from Moscow to Ufa the capital of Republic of Bashkortostan. Díaz was gravely ill and went south to Tbilisi the capital of the Republic of Georgia.

Radio España Independiente now broadcast from Ufa. She used various aliases such as Antonio de Guevara or Juan de Guernica presumably to make believe the station had an extensive network of commentators and newspapermen.

On March 19, 1942, Díaz committed suicide. La Pasionaria became secretary-general of the PCE after a brief period of consultations by Stalin.

On September 3 Ibárruri’s son Rubén Ruiz Ibárruri lost his life fighting heroically at Stalingrad.^[45][46][47] Asteroid 2423 Ibarruri is named after him.

On March 1, 1943 Stalin created the Union of Polish Patriots and on May 15 the ECCI annulled the Third International and granted theoretical independence to every national Communist party.^[48] Ibárruri agreed with the decision.

On February 23, 1945, La Pasionaria left Moscow on a trip to Tehran, Baghdad and Cairo. In Cairo she and her party booked passage on the first passenger ship to leave Alexandria, understanding it was going to Marseille. In fact the ship, part of a British convoy, headed to Boulogne-sur-Mer near the Belgian border; the voyage lasted three months and she arrived in Paris too late to meet with Juan Negrín, the last president of the Spanish Republic to work out a common political strategy against Franco.

On December 5–8 the PCE held a plenum of the central committee in Toulouse where Santiago Carrillo, the former leader of Unified Socialist Youth in pre-war Spain, who had arrived in liberated France in November 1944, «gained control of the PCE», according to fellow Communist Enrique Líster.^[49]

In his book Así destruyó Carrillo el PCE Líster criticized Ibárruri’s conduct between 1939 and 1945, writing:

[An examination of the situation of the PCE between 1939-1945] Would have shown that the political and moral conduct and behaviour of the immense majority of the members of our party, whether in Europe, America, Africa and above all in Spain, had been commendable whereas the conduct and behaviour of a portion of the leaders in exile had left a lot to be desired [he elaborates elsewhere, «there were many dirty secrets, many acts of cowardice»]. Dolores Ibárruri, Carrillo, Mije, Anton, Delicado are good examples of what we say though not the only ones.^[49]

The persecution of dissidents inside the PCE increased with time,

Between 1947–1951 things get progressively worse. The persecution inside the party increases as do the arrests of comrades who come to Spain from France. But it wasn’t just this, as we would find out later, assassination had become a tool of repression and management of the party…The decision to assassinate militants was taken in the Secretariat of the PCE. If the target of an assassination fled to Spain his presence was betrayed to the Spanish authorities through the broadcasts of Radio España Independiente.^[49]

Interrogations were cruel, «Carrillo and Anton inflicted true terror. Some comrades came to the brink of insanity during the rounds of interrogation and others were driven to suicide out of the despicable accusations made against them.»^[49]

The book names party members betrayed or murdered: Juanchu de Portugalete (1944), Gabriel León Trilla (1945; «the decision to eliminate Trilla belongs to Santiago Carrillo and Dolores Ibárruri»), Jesus Hernandez (1946), Lino (1950), Joan Comorera (1954), Monzon, Quiñones, Luis Montero, Jose el Valenciano. Even generals Modesto and Líster himself were at one point in the crosshairs of the PCE leadership, only to be saved inadvertently by Stalin who praised them before Ibárruri, Carrillo and Anton.^[49][50]

The PCE persecuted Communists in northwestern Spain during those years. In 2008 Victor Garcia found the body of his father partially buried in a wooded area of O Deza (Pontevedra). He had been shot in the head. Garcia’s father had not fled Spain after the defeat of 1939; he stayed behind and helped to organize a guerrilla force of 947 fighters in Galicia. Around the year 1944 the central committee of the PCE, then living in France and headed by Ibárruri and Carrillo ordered his execution. After it was carried out in 1948, the regional PCE liaison wrote, «At last we have hunted him down. This riffraff withstood us like a leech. We managed to catch him in Lalin from where he directed certain adventurous, uncontrolled groups. He is a provocateur who has given us many troubles; though belatedly we have eliminated him.»^[51]

Esta última historia que se menciona, apareció en El Faro de Vigo.

Una herida cicatrizó al encontrar el lugar dónde esos viejos huesos clamaban memoria y libertad. La otra nunca lo hará. «No fue asesinado en un tiroteo con la Guardia Civil, como siempre habíamos creído mi madre y yo, sino que el comité central del PC, asentado en Francia y comandado por Dolores Ibárruri y Santiago Carrillo, juzgó que la labor realizada por mi padre al frente del partido en Galicia no coincidía con sus proyectos y decidieron asesinarlo. Y los asesinos enviados por el partido lo lograron en el año 1948», relata Víctor, afincado en Orión (Cantabria).

¿Por qué Dolores Ibárruri está blindada y solo se escuchan de ella hagiografías? ¿Por qué esas décadas oscuras casi no se mencionan en España? Ayer supimos que Calvo Sotelo (ese diputado de biografía tan poco democrática) se va a quedar sin placas en Madrid. Tarradellas y Salvador de Madariaga contaron que el 16 de junio de 1936 Dolores Ibárruri amenazó de muerte a Calvo Sotelo en una sesión en las Cortes. Calvo Sotelo fue asesinado un mes más tarde. Ella siempre lo negó. Sin embargo, es sarcástico que ella, que sobrevivió, permanezca, mientras él, que murió antes de la Guerra Civil sea castigado simbólicamente.

¿Por qué una estalinista personalmente responsable de numerosos crímenes da nombre a calles y colegios, si creemos que la memoria histórica debe limpiar unas y otros de personajes nefastos?

Sí, por eso. Porque era comunista.