REVISITING THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
THE SPINE BLOG
Long-time contributor to The New Republic Ronald Radosh who, with co-author Joyce Milton, long ago both in the pages of TNR and in a decisive work of scholarship, The Rosenberg File, proved Julius Rosenberg's guilt and Ethel's legal innocence of atomic espionage, has been warning us of the new anti-American chic about Communism among the current left. Edward Rothstein, former music critic at TNR and now the distinguished cultural commentator at the Times, published a devastating piece on Saturday morning about the romance of the Spanish Civil War.
Some of our readers may remember from their youth Pete Seeger's 78 rpm album "Songs of the Lincoln Brigade," which, sometime with the lubrication of hash, was all that we knew about the history of Spain. "Los Quatros Generales" and "Viva La Quinte Brigades" made us even feel heroic, damn what George Orwell established in Homage to Catalonia.
In any case, Rothstein knows his history and he grasps the psychology and ideological politics. The legends of the Spanish Civil War were mostly lies, and an exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York, "Facing Fascism: New York and the Spanish Civil" presents the local version as if it were still 1939 and no history had been done, including Ronald Radosh's path-breaking history, Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War. By the way, I believe that the acquisition by the NYU library of 12,000 cartons of archival materials from the Communist Party will be a boon to scholarship, providing that the rules of access are truly open. tnr.com |
