Paul Preston - The Last Stalinist - The Life of Santiago Carrillo

The final report was only for the eyes of Stalin, Dimitrov and the very top echelons of the PCE. The debate was not widened to the rank and file, on the plausible grounds that this could only cause scandal and demoralization among the militants at a time when the Party was scattered around the world and still suffering the trauma of defeat. The Russians wanted the Comintern to be cleared of any responsibility and Dolores Ibárruri exonerated, especially as she was being groomed to take over the Party leadership. Carrillo emerged unscathed. On the few occasions that he was mentioned, his work with the JSU was commended. 8The way the process was managed ensured PCE loyalty to Moscow but left the Party committed to the unswerving defence of its own behaviour during the Civil War. It is difficult to see what else the exiled PCE leaders could have done in the context of the Soviet purges given their dependence on Russian charity. Nevertheless, the commitment to Stalinism deprived the Party of flexibility and credibility at a time when the unity of the entire anti-Francoist opposition was of the first importance. 9

During the summer of 1939, Carrillo was occupied in a vain effort to prevent the expulsion of the JSU from the International Union of Socialist Youth. In July, at the congress in Lille at which the issue was to be decided, his position was definitively undermined when the letter to his father was distributed to all the delegates. 10This disappointment was followed by the news of the signing on 23 August of the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact, the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Such was the adherence of Carrillo to the Stalinist cause that it caused him no distress. His view of the consequences for the Western Powers, which he blamed for the defeat of the Spanish Republic, was: ‘Those bastards have got exactly what they deserved.’ 11

Carrillo claimed that it was around this time that his wife Chon and their daughter Aurora arrived in Paris. He told María Eugenia Yagüe, with whom he prepared an authorized biography as part of his electoral campaign in 1977, that the Party leadership had not allowed him to risk going to get them out of Madrid. The dual implication was that he was far too valuable and that he put his loyalty to the Party above family considerations. The description that he gave Yagüe of their experiences in the ten months since he had last seen them is contradictory and also differs from that in his memoirs. Nevertheless, both versions recount intense suffering and hardship. He told Yagüe that Chon and Aurora had managed to get across the French border and, thanks to help from French Communists, had avoided internment in a concentration camp. In the same text, he also claimed that they had

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