Andrés Nin
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Andreu Nin Pérez, (Spanish: Andrés Nin; February 4, 1892, El Vendrell, Tarragona—June 20, 1937, near Madrid) was a Spanish Communist revolutionary.
[edit] Early life
Born to a poor family (his father was a shoemaker and his mother was a peasant), Nin moved to Barcelona shortly before World War I; he taught briefly in a secular, anarchist school, but soon became a journalist and activist. In 1917 he joined the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE).
Nin became a leader of the Spanish workers' movement, and was among the founders of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE). He consequently worked for the Comintern and Red International of Labour Unions (RILU or Profintern) in the Soviet Union and was on the staff of Leon Trotsky for a period. While in Russia, he was won to the Left Opposition to Joseph Stalin's ascending faction within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
When he returned to Spain, Nin was instrumental in forming the Communist Left of Spain (ICE) the self-designated Leninist group affiliated to the International Left Opposition (ILO). However, the ICE was a small group and largely isolated. Nin had a number of disagreements with Trotsky in this period, specifically when Trotsky advised the ICE leader that entry into the Spanish Socialist Youth would augment the forces at their disposal, while Nin advocated forming of a united party with the Workers and Peasants Bloc (BOC), a group coming out of the Communist movement but seen as being on its right wing.
[edit] POUM
Eventually Nin broke with Trotsky and the ILO on this question, and the merger went ahead. He (along with Joaquín Maurín) formed the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) in 1935, as a Communist alternative to the Comintern-loyalist PCE.
After the Spanish Popular Front won the 1936 election, he became the Justice minister. He supported the government, but was far more radical than most of its members.
After the Spanish region of Catalonia saw its regional government reinstated by the Spanish Republic in the opening phase of the Spanish Civil War, Nin joined the devolved government, Generalitat, in Catalonia, headed by Lluís Companys i Jover, but, owing to the demands of Stalin's Soviet Union threatening to cut off Soviet military aid, was removed from office along with other POUM appointees.
Following the Events of Barcelona and the Communist coup, in June 1937, Nin and most of the leadership of POUM were arrested and sent to a camp near Madrid. Andreu Nin was tortured and murdered, under direct orders from Stalin and the supervision of the NKVD, by the Republican Government's secret police on June 20; apparently "Comandante Contreras" Vittorio Vidali, and Iosif Romualdovich Grigulevich were involved. His fate was kept secret by those involved, resulting in a campaign of the clandestine POUM, centered on the slogan-question addressed to the Juan Negrín government: Gobierno Negrín: ¿dónde está Nin? ("To the government of Negrín: where is Nin?"). As an answer, the propaganda launched by the PCE proclaimed: En Salamanca o en Berlín ("Either in Salamanca [deep in the territory controlled by Francisco Franco's forces] or Berlin [in Nazi Germany]"), elaborating the slander campaign that Nin would have been a fascist.
[edit] External links
- Andrés Nin Archive on Marxist Internet Archive
- (Spanish) The Fundación Andreu Nin has a Spanish-language site containing an extensive collection of documents, biographical notes, and links related to the POUM and to Nin himself.
- (Spanish) Andrés Nin: El crimen que remató la República.
