First published in German in 1972, Enzensberger’s Anarchy’s Brief Summer is a self-described “novel” about the life of the Spanish anarchist, Buenaventura Durruti. However, the bulk of the book is actually excerpted historical documents and recollections by Durruti’s associates, arranged by Enzensberger chronologically. He intersperses his own comments infrequently, in brief chapters of editorial glosses, otherwise allowing Durruti’s contemporaries to speak for themselves.
Despite the collaged perspectives, the book manages to read like an unbroken narrative. The names attached to the quotes hardly matter—the words of the famous, such as Simone Weil, blend seamlessly with those by hardened anarchists in the trenches, repentant Catholic priests, and skeptical Bolshevik advisors. The slight discrepancies of the witnesses add to the mythic quality of Durruti’s life, by building nuance and texture.
It is in Enzensberger’s choosing and arranging of this commentary that he creates his own story. It veers towards the hagiographic, as Durruti comes to symbolize the ideals of the entire anarchist movement, especially in his shrouded death. However, the mundane details of how Durruti conducted himself and related to others allow for all his faults and sincere humanism to show through. As Enzensberger, himself, was kicked out of the Hitler Youth in his native Germany for not “being a good comrade,” an anti-hierarchical utopian movement might hold personal appeal.
Syndicalist-anarchism, like all nineteenth century utopian philosophies, attracted ardent followers who tried to will their ideas into existence. Unlike the communists, the Spanish anarchists lionized Bakunin, not Marx. They did not believe in a vanguard of the proletariat. “Durruti always insisted that the revolution should not end up with the dictatorship of one party, that the new society should be built from the bottom up, not decreed from above. That was the reason why the anarchists could never accept the result of the Russian revolution.” In the case of the anarchists, neither Spanish history nor the apparatus of the State made that easy. “The main weapons of the CNT [the anarchist federation of trade unions, the Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo], both in the country and in the towns, were strikes and guerrilla warfare… Their methods were revolutionary, going from self-defence to sabotage and from expropriation to armed revolt.”
Durruti was a man of action, not a philosopher. His particular strength was in propaganda of the deed. “Durruti went in, pistol in hand, and demanded the money, there was a shoot-out, the union got its money, the school could start, that’s all… Durruti took the money with one hand and gave it away with the other, for prisoners’ families and for the struggle.” Durruti was personally implicated in the assassinations of Prime Minister Dato and Cardinal Soldevila, the attempted assassination of King Alfonso XIII, as well as countless bank robberies and munitions thefts throughout Spain and as far afield as France, Cuba, and Argentina. The anarchists were cavalier about death—both their own, and, particularly, for enemies of the revolution. “Every day a worker died, the following day a bourgeois or a policeman.”
During the Spanish Civil War, there was another civil war within that civil war. Amongst the anti-fascists, there was a Republican wing that combined the moderate Social Democrats, ousted from power in Franco’s coup, with more ardent communists, supported by the Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union. The Syndicalist-Anarchist wing viewed these men as almost as evil as Franco’s fascists and, certainly, anti-revolutionary in nature. The anarchists could not forget that, when in control of Spain’s government, these same Republican officials had imprisoned, tortured, and executed their comrades. Now it was the anarchists who had the muscle in the streets, if not most of the weapons and money. “The wearers of proud uniforms, the gentlemen with their officers’ drawl, their medal ribbons and epaulettes, the men with swords at their side and black Homburg hats are finished, they have been defeated. The ones who have shown their power here and won the game are those who previously had no say at all, who were persecuted and imprisoned and had to crawl away to hide in any hole they could find… The politicians were afraid of fascism but they were even more afraid of the people in arms.” The feeling of animosity was reciprocated. “We went to the meetings as typical middle-class intellectuals in ties and jackets, armed with fountain pens—and suddenly found ourselves confronted with a cohort of anarchists coming in through the door: unshaven, in battle dress, armed with hand grenades, revolvers and tommy guns.” Political maneuverings, clashes over military discipline, and the withholding of artillery and ammunition for anarchist positions at the front hampered the anti-fascist cause as much as Franco’s tactics.
What becomes vivid in Enzensberger’s collection of personal testimonies is that Durruti was a revolutionary, who asked much from his comrades, but practiced what he preached. “Durruti was no parlour anarchist. He was a worker, spent his days at the workbench. Four countries had condemned him to death.” It was this sincerity that endeared him to the masses. “Durruti kept telling the workers that the republicans and the socialists had betrayed the revolution… He told the miners that bourgeois democracy was bankrupt and the time was ripe for revolution. The bourgeoisie had to be expropriated, the state abolished.” Unlike most anarchists, who were politically radical, but domestically conservative, Durruti practiced equality within his home. “When my wife goes out to work, I clean the house, make the beds, cook the meals. Moreover I give my little girl a bath and dress her. If you think a real anarchist should sit around in a bar or a cafe, then you still haven’t understood anything.”
However, in the Spanish war, impeccable personal character was no match for the systemic incentives that rewarded shrewdness and conniving stratagems. The anarchists had to fight a rearguard battle with the communists, while also bearing the brunt of the burden on the frontlines. “While we on the militias committee were of the opinion that our most popular and capable comrades ought to go to the front in order to command companies, battalions and columns there, they took the opposite view: they wanted to keep the best leaders for the time after the war… They were all waiting to divide up the spoils before we’d even got them.” The forces of integrity failed to carry the day. “The communists had gained an immense amount of influence through the Soviet Union’s arms deliveries. We were constantly afraid that the Spanish anarchists would suffer the same fate as the anarchists had in Russia.”
Anarchist foot soldiers excelled in the street battles of Barcelona. But as the fighting dragged on and turned into conventional warfare with frontlines and set-piece maneuvering, the anarchists struggled to adapt. It is hard to fight a war with no officers, no hierarchy, and no discipline. “(There being no place for officers in a column inspired by Organized Indiscipline.)” When anarchist ethics conflicted with day to day practicalities the anarchists had trouble squaring the two. The result was an idealism divorced from reality. Confusion and death reigned. “They solve local problems by means of the following three questions: ‘Where is the district court? Where is the land registry with the register? Where is the prison? Then they burn the court files and the land registers and release the prisoners.” A Russian observer commented, “Although they castigated dogmatism, they were dyed-in-the-wool dogmatists themselves. They tried to force life to conform to their theories… Now, impromptu in the hail of bombs and bullets, they had to modify what only yesterday had been inviolable truth.” Durruti was the first anarchist commander to see this tension and try to adapt. “The indiscipline at the front and the bourgeoisification at home will lead to the victory of the fascists if we don’t do something immediately… War’s a bastard. It doesn’t destroy just houses but also the highest principles… My whole life long I’ve been an anarchist, should I now start wielding a cudgel to impose discipline on my men? I will not do that. I know that discipline is necessary in war, but it has to be an inner discipline that derives from the goal we are fighting for… On no account will we deny our principles, nor will we bring disgrace on the tools of our work, the hammer and the sickle.”
Imagining that politically naive and philosophically idealistic anarchists could navigate their way into the halls of power seems fanciful in retrospect. What these men had in character and honor were their deficits in the nuanced gamesmanship that they were confronted with behind the lines. They were out-maneuvered at every turn by the communists, the republican generals, and the professional politicians. “True, there are people who mock us and call us political failures; there are even some who call themselves anarchists who say that. In reality, the undertaking was nothing more than a defeat. We have suffered many defeats. That is no reason to sully the memory of the fallen.”
Spain in the summer of 1936 turned out to be the high-water mark of international anarcho-syndicalism. It was the closest any anarchist movement would reach to controlling the levers of a European government. A Social Democrat politician quipped as he saw Durruti’s column marching off to the Aragon front, “There was almost something hippie-like about them, but they were hippies with hand grenades and MGs [machine guns] and they were determined to fight to the death.” Even when faced with political reality and the temptations of power, the anarchists remained true to their own ideals to the bitter end.
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