Submitted by Bennett Muraskin, Apr 9, 2007 12:27

If the Soviet Union intended to turn Spain into a communist dictatorship it would have been a lot more generous in providing weaponry to the Spanish Republic and it would have sent its own army as well. In fact the Soviets never came close to matching the military aid that Italy and Germany provided to Franco and began to scale back the limited aid it did provide in 1938, in anticipation of the Stalin-Hitler Pact. Far from formenting communism in Spain, the Soviet Union demanded that the Spanish government disavow socialist objectives in favor of a broad anti-fascist coalition. Its true aim was to curry favor with England and France by showing how moderate it could be. When England and France spurned these Soviet overtures, Stalin turned to Hitler instead.

Yes, the Soviets were duplicitious, but not in the way Radosh alleges. They wanted to help the Spanish Republic to further its own diplomatic/foreign policy agenda, which did not include a communist dictatorship in Spain.

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