Review: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Under the premiership of Nikita Khrushchev there was a post-Stalin easing of oppression emerging from the Kremlin and a Cold War ‘Victorian’ Ice Age thaw for writers allowed this remarkable, unique, little tale to unbelievably evade the censor and make it into the real world, even traversing the fixed barriers of the Iron Curtain. It was common, particularly during the purges of Uncle Joe, to send the masses off to gulags in Siberia. It didn’t take much of an excuse for the NKVD to send any form of dissident or suspected dissident on a long holiday to pretty much a concentration camp where forced labour and a strict military-controlled regime was used to assist in the growth and development of the Soviet Union. Alexander Solzhenitsyn openly admitted he had spent a long time out in the harsh icy Siberian environment, a gulag survivor, with a story to tell. ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich’ is the product of this internment. Although strictly a work of fiction, the book would not be possible without direct experience of life in the gulag. It’s tale which isn’t particularly long in length but in its minute detail of a day in the life of our political prisoner, Ivan, we get a real rare and accurate and quite disturbing account of the gulag, a system which was notorious in its terror propaganda value and this is a story which literally affected many many Russian citizens and their families as such vast numbers of people ended up being relocated to gulags, whether justly or more likely as innocent victims of the regime.

I read a lot of literature about sadistic internments and prison camps etc in wacky political extreme environments as I totally empathise with the stories of condemned political prisoners after my own 25 year career as an incarcerated mental patient in Wales, a prisoner of the government here in the United Kingdom. It’s dark material and often sad and disturbing but I find that I can relate a lot more in my daily life to Ivan Denisovich than I can perhaps relate to stories on the BBC News or in newspapers or chats in pub or coffee shop etc. Try a bit of gulag-living and it sure changes your outlook on life. The drudgery of Solzhenitsyn’s tale is only set over the course of a day. Most prisoners had at least ten years of day like this, some as many as 25 or more. The what, where and why you got there is immaterial really. The fact is you aren’t getting out. You are forced to live within your community and have to accept you fellow inmates and you are set against the strict discipline of quite brutal guards and are totally powerless to resist them, to think of escape or top hope for some miraculous form of justice arriving to end your misery. It’s keep your nose down, take joy in the littlest of pleasures available, don’t dream of hope, and crack on with your work. Yes, Ivan may have to stitch stale bread crusts into his dirty mattress but this treasure of nutrition will keep him alive in the dark winter days of permafrost. If one can scrounge and extra helping of watery cabbage soup through a bit of corruption and skulduggery then it is a bonus. The joy of seeing a bird or the emergence of a single sprig of a spring flower amidst the snow. Take pride in your work, work as a team, improvise and focus on anything that eases the slow, painful passing of incomprehensible time. The psychology of fellow inmates and the psychology of the omnipotent guard detail. Harsh punishments and death awaiting in every nook and cranny and corner of your existence. To survive the day is to survive the year and to survive the whole sentence.

This book is a unique story and one that must be told and it documents one of the darker elements of twentieth century history and the Cold War. It is testament to the author that it is in our hands in the West and in the modern world. Life is a struggle and sometimes in our decadent comfort we can fail to recognise that some people on this planet really do have a tough time of it and for all material niceties and life essentials we take for guaranteed it would do us no harm to learn from Ivan and to appreciate the simplest of things and joys in life and this is evolution and natural selection in its most brutal form.

Review: War and Peace – by Leo Tolstoy

‘War and Peace’ needs no introduction. It holds its place in the minds of contemporary society as a literary classic. One cannot pick up a newspaper article on great books without a passing mention of Leo Tolstoy’s masterpiece. Like other classical works such as the Bible, I think that their obvious fame means and their influence on society and heir survival into modern times means that at the very least if you happen to pick up and read one of these rare works you will rarely face disappointment. Indeed, without further ado, I confess that ‘War and Peace’ is one of the very best books I have ever had the pleasure of reading. Critics compare it to Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey. I’d say it outflanks them. Firstly, it is a marathon read. If you’re looking on Amazon for value for money on pence per word you can’t go far wrong with Tolstoy. For about £9 you get 1400 pages. But don’t get fooled into thinking the epic will keep you going for months on end as the pages turn fast. The story is quite entrancing and addictive. I suppose one of the beauties of writing such a huge tome for an author, is that it gives you a big canvas on which to develop your story fully and also to really define your novel’s characters. ‘War and Peace, covers a timespan of about 20 years at the start of the nineteenth century, a time when enlightenment thinking and imperial nationalism had produced great changes across all of European society, including Russia. The French Revolution spread like a virus with its new emancipation ideas and politics was actively changing the shape of entire societies. Of course the guillotines of post 1789 France soon gave way to the ‘little Corsican’ to emerge and of course our hero / antihero ‘old Boney” Napoleon Bonaparte himself does play a leading role in the book. The main war is Napoleon’s initial successful attack on mother Russia followed by his ultimate failure to seize power and the retreat of his army and destruction of the Grande Armée as it backed out of a burning Moscow and headed back down through the harsh winter roads leading back to Europe where virtually his entire corps perished, famously eating their horses to dodge starvation. Of course, closer to our own times a future diminutive European dictator, Adolf Hitler, failed to learn from the mistake of Napoleon and didn’t even make it to Moscow getting his whole World War 2 campaign totally written off by the Red Army following the counterpoint of the battle of Stalingrad which swung Nazi victory away from the latest grandiose empire-builder, daring to challenge the might of the Rus Steppes. Napoleon’s enemy is Tsar Alexander I and it is warming to see the love of the Tsar demonstrated by his people, the army and the characters at peace. These were pre-Leninist times for an aristocratic Russia, still with serfs, a society directed towards the salons of Paris for its artistic and cultural influence, yet close enough to the European mainstream to be sucking in some of the candidness of enlightenment authors such as Voltaire or Rousseau with their revolutionary ideologies that would reshape modern man’s destiny. We are in an age of excitement, an age of hope, a changing world, a globalised society. Tolstoy, a novelist with direct experience of conflict, being a veteran of the Crimean War, was very eccentric in his real life, seeing much of the excesses of society, living both as a hedonist and a monk. He was a gambling philanderer, but also a loyal Russian subject with obvious amazing talent for observation and writing. Undoubtedly ‘War and Peace’ is a masterpiece and is cited as the pinnacle of Russian literary culture. Its beauty, perhaps, is in its uniqueness. The critics had no idea how to categorise it. It is such an original, creative masterpiece. Is it history, is it fiction, is it romance, is it war? Is it philosophy? The answer is that it is all. A variety of all ingredients chucked deep in with the rest of the Borsch in the pot and delivered in a unravelling exciting journey alternating between the peaceful salons of St Petersburg and the battlefields of Austerlitz and Borodino. In researching the novel, Tolstoy actually visited several battle sites just to be fully consistent in his given detail – indeed the accuracy of the book’s battle scenes has been highly lauded by military historians.
The characters (and there are over 500 throughout the book) are centred around three main aristocratic families: Thee Bezukhovs, The Bolkonskys and the Rostovs. Count Pierre Bezukhov, a wild young man, accidentally inherits a fortune and his quest for morality and happiness is an inward journey in many ways despite the outward appearance of such material wealth. Prince Andrei Nikolayovich Bolkonsky is the real military hero of the novel and fares the best out of the central characters in the fight against Napoleon. He also manages to land the love of the most delicate and fragrant female character the dainty, youthful Natalya Rostov, although her romantic life is quite meandering throughout her courting adventures. Andrei has a sister Maria and her fraught relationship with her father’s growingly irrational discipline is an interesting familial relationship. Nikolai Rostov is a hussar in the war and although perhaps not reaching the ranking heights of Prince Andrei with his more diplomatic movements in high military circles, he is yet a formidable warrior in touch with the rank and file soldiers of the Tsar.It is Nikolai Rostov’s officer friend and comrade, Denisov who steals the show for me and is my favourite character in the novel. His speech impediment, so faithfully portrayed by the English translators gives his often haphazard movements throughput the novel a genuine comedy value and to me he is the warmest and most interesting of the stars of the show. The journey moves through family life and the early scenes include salons and ballrooms where conversation and polite society in the drawing rooms of Moscow and St Petersburg reflect upon all of society’s concerns. There isa genuine nostalgia for times gone by and to see Russian high society in full flow is a forgotten world now. Oligarchs way have been the bastard children of the collapse of the Soviet Union but they are no replacement for the aristocracy who with all wealth and down to every element of the bourgeoisie, from Count to Kulak, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin et al, destroyed these societal elements completely with the Bolshevik communist revolution. The later years of Soviet Russia I think make Tolstoy even more important as an historical work in that he genuinely, even if working primarily with historical characters, captures the mood and feelings of a society in mutatis.
There is genuine love and romance and the female characters hold their own. I’m not so soppy myself and prefer the war stuff like any good redblooded bloke but it’s hard not to notice the sweet feminine grace and womanly charm of some wonderful women who do seduce and distract the gaze of our male protagonists.
Tolstoy has it all and ‘War and Peace’ is a wonderful experience from which everyone should benefit at some stage in their life. Dostoyevsky used to be my favourite Russian author but I think Tolstoy now trumps him and I’m in a mad panic to see just how many words per pence Anna Karenina contains so I can drain my piggy bank from some of my shiny rubles.

Review: The Dragons and the Snakes – How The Rest Learned to Fight The West – by David Kilcullen

This is one of the very best books I have ever read. It is up to date material and full of cutting edge military theory and ideas and I believe is critical essential reading for any politician or military personnel, especially those who conduct their employment in the NATO led West. I am no stranger to Australian soldier-scholar David Kilcullen’s work. This is the fourth book of his that I have read. This work surpasses the previous books and it is genuinely a masterpiece. What are the dragons and snakes? The dragons are the main, most powerful nation-state enemies. Russia and China are the main dragons and additionally we have Iran and North Korea who pose significant military threat and who are ideologically opposed to the West. The snakes are state and non-state actors. Less powerful nation states such as Iraq or Afghanistan and terrorist organisations and quasi nation jihadist states and their peripherals such as ISIS. Al Qaeda is a big snake, as is the Taliban as is Hezbollah and it is these snakes that have predominated active warfare measures from the USA and her allies in the post Cold War world. On the whole Kilcullen criticises Western military action in the recent past citing little evidence of genuine success. Traditional warfare and indeed highly technological modern military fighting that reached its zenith in the first Iraqi conflict of 1991 has been made redundant by adaptive enemies who have learnt how to successfully withstand dominance by coalition forces and have adapted techniques and tactics that have in effect neutralised our methods. While the world witnesses this stalemate between snakes and our armies the dragons have been sat watching, taking notes and suitably adapting their own military philosophies to take advantage of the new global environment. The way in which these dragons have re-emerged into active roles demonstrates new confidence and their upward projection into the future looks very daunting a positive to a fading Western democratic dominant imperialism. The main message of this book is that if we do not adjust ourselves and realign our military strategy we will ultimately face defeat and the political and economic collapse of our societies. When analysing the snakes we look in detail at various different organisations. ‘Combat Darwinism’ is an interesting scientific look at the decapitation of the snake that is Al Qaeda. Our strategic focus was to target leadership of this jihadist monster and every time a key leader was successfully culled a new hydra head on the snake was born and the enemy’s success in adaptation, even though its movement may have come close to complete annihilation, meant that natural selection allowed the foe to fight again with even more strength and resurge. Often our own militaries pulled back from the precipice due to economic and political factors, allowing the necessary reformation space for the enemy. This has been a key part of analysis for the War on Terror. After 9/11 We succeeded in killing the likes of Osama Bin Laden and most of the rest of the leadership but ‘The Base’ movement just became a self-perpetuating force unto itself without traditional vanguard leadership and it morphed into other jihadist factions such as AQI (Al Qaeda in Iraq) and ISIS, producing further problems. The very fact that today, The Taliban are back in government in Afghanistan demonstrates Combat Darwinism in effect and the future of global jihad seems to be a lasting phenomenon that will continue to plague the Western World for the foreseeable future. I found the case study of Hezbollah as it fights against Israel and later in Syria to have been very illuminating. Their adaptation and growth have demonstrated how a tactically weaker military force can survive, grow more powerful and be effective in the face of complicated battle odds. Looking at the snakes we see a new Russia under the autocratic reins of Vladimir Putin who is becoming ever more military active as his increasing hostility and delusion grows especially with the latest invasion of Ukraine. Liminal warfare tactics used by Russia introduce new elements to modern warfare against the West. Operating just below the detectable surface a combination of economic warfare, information warfare and cyberwarfare does just enough damage to Russian enemies without provoking military response. From cyberwarfare attacks in Estonia through to democratic election social media disinformation warfare during Trump election in USA or Brexit in the UK, Russia is undermining the West. Often it is different sides’ different perceptions of what constitutes hostile actions or warfare that our polarised views can fail to distinguish. In the last days of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev received promises that NATO would not expand any further to the East yet Western leaders lied in these reassurances. Putin and the Russian military rightfully are concerned by any move that threatens their territorial integrity. Post communist oligarch capitalism and an easing of traditional espionage has allowed a traditionally focussed long term enemy to rebuild and rekindle its old hostilities to the West. The study of China illustrates again how economic and computer technologies can be used liminally to fight out societies. The Chinese military has slowly been rebuilding and modernising. Its Navy has emerged from nowhere and it has been encroaching on island chains in the South China Sea, building barriers that can be used as both defensive and offensive bases against any future major conflict. I was particularly pleased to see Kilcullen reveal the importance of the military theory work of PLA strategists, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. I have only recently read the ‘Unrestricted Warfare’ book that since its publication at the turn of the millennium, has been a core component of the People’s Liberation Army’s development. Although he sees some of the authors’ ideas as pure paranoia and delusion this also demonstrates how perception on different sides can be very different. China has undoubtedly focussed very heavily on economic warfare and the fact the renminbi now underwrites the whole US economy and the globalisation of Chinese capital investment in key infrastructure such as ports or via tech firms such as Huawei is forecast by Qiao and Wang. The question is asked in that with China being so overexposed economically could mean that direct traditional military conflict could be less likely. The analyses of our enemies is concise and precise and unsettling. What are Kilcullen’s answers to the posed dilemma? He admits that there are no obvious solutions and although it is clear that change has to occur and is likely to come on both sides, The West and the Dragons and Snakes, it is felt that a Byzantine approach to preservation of Empire is the best path forward. Acceptance of our fading power and influence yet also a pragmatic and sustaining approach to preserving and development our military, political and economic futures.

Review: Red Notice – How I Became Putin’s No.1 Enemy – by Bill Browder

There is irony in this tale as Bill Browder was following in his grandfather’s footsteps in some ways but was also radically poles apart. Browder’s grandfather had stood for Presidential election in the USA on a Communist ticket. Bill Browder was drawn to business possibilities behind the Iron Curtain and in the post Cold War, post Soviet Union Russia, Browder’s Hermitage fund became the biggest foreign investor in Russia and also the fund, with at its peak over $1 billion in assets under its control, the best performing investment fund in the World. The start of his career was interesting. After good qualifications at Stanford University in the United States, Browder set himself up in the European financial capital of London, with a view to exploring trade in Eastern European markets, made possible by the fall of the Berlin Wall. Among early experience he worked for the notorious Robert Maxwell, shortly before his controversial yacht death just as a huge pension fraud Maxwell had been operating was being exposed and investigated. Despite this career blip, Browder went on to form his own fund, Hermitage Capital Management. He headed off to Moscow and with careful research began to take advantage of the huge available margins made in the wake of privatisation of former Soviet Industry. This was the age of emerging gangster oligarchs and widespread corruption. Browder, ever in a quest for justice and a moral code which rejects corruption began to flag the eyes of Russian potentates and in 2005 he was refused entry to Russia as Moscow airport and put back on the plane for repatriation in the U.K. Thus ends the high profit-yielding business honeymoon and the start of a quest to recover his money, keep his business afloat and expose the enemies and corruption that threatened his destruction. The whole saga spirals out of control and the Russian authorities launch a massively corrupt scheme involving police officers who tried stealing his businesses and ran a massive tax fraud amounting to about $230 million. The path led to the very top with Kremlin officials supporting every move against the Jewish American businessman. His Russian lawyer, an honest Russian gentleman by the name of Sergei Magnitsky becomes embroiled in situation and is thrown in jail and due to health complications, torture and refusal of necessary medical care, Magnitsky suffers a brutal early death in jail. Browder is deeply upset and affected by this and his role as venture capitalist businessman changes into human rights campaigner. Browder irks even the highest power in Russia and becomes the biggest public enemy of Vladimir Putin. The U.K. government were relatively unbothered in their assistance so Browder ends up campaigning with the US politicians and at the very highest level dealing with the likes of Senator John McCain, Senator John Kerry among other Washington players to take up the cause. Ultimately Browder flukes hi sway into getting President Obama to pass legislation called the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act which restricted and placed travel bans on all corrupt officials involved in the crimes and death of Browder’s lawyer and was part of a general move of sanctioning Russia and its excesses. In return Putin decided to punish sick Russian orphans by denying them access to adoptive American families. A bit sort of in tow with Vladimir’s current international reputation as a bit of an ogre…. The book is a whirlwind exploration of big business, exposes the realities of modern Russia and also in the wake of unbelievable corruption and human rights atrocities a sense of justice is achieved.

Review: The Great Game – On Secret Service in High Asia – by Peter Hopkirk

The Great Game, as immortalised by Rudyard Kipling in ‘Kim’ was the nineteenth century adventures in espionage between Russia and the U.K. across Central Asia. Both sides were on the verge of a full on military confrontation and sought advantage. The Russian Tsars sought territorial expansion across Asia and always had their eye on the riches of British-controlled India. The Empire under Queen Victoria was to be protected at all costs. A series of adventurers mapped out the relatively unknown regions that separated the two great powers. The regions of Persia, Afghanistan, India, Tibet, Turkmenistan and China became the board on which this Great Game was played out. Deep political intrigue and outright treachery features heavily in these factual adventure tales. Wild eccentric characters fill the landscape on both sides of the divide. Often when the two sides meet on the field war in averted and gentlemanly camp meals and Vodka accompany the standoffs. It is the unruly under-civilised Asian powers that often produce the venomous brutal murders and beheadings and downright scandalous betrayals in this period. The explorers are feted by the British Geographical society and often write bestselling books about their travels. Russophobes and Anglophobes in London and St Petersburg devour the press articles and hawks dominate doves in foreign policy decisions between the powers although other than the Crimean War a total conflict is luckily just avoided by both sides. There are some great character sin this book and it highlights a time in the relatively recent past when Britain still had its Empire and the world was still being mapped out and explored. Very well written and a five star read.

Review: Russians Among Us – Sleeper Cells & The Hunt for Putin’s Agents – by Gordon Correra

I’ve read Gordon Correra’s previous work in espionage literature and for this reason I was drawn to seek out this new offering. In the current climate of the Russian invasion of Ukraine under ex KGB spy, Vladimir Putin, I felt that this relatively recent work would highlight some of the ongoing dangers of Russian spies that have infiltrated our societies in the West. I did enjoy watching the TV series ‘The Americans’ that presented a fictional version of what Correra exposes as a fait accompli, the reality of embedded Russian illegals, sleeper cells inside the USA. The story skips between the lives of several of these trained Russian agents who take on fake identities of dead people in the West with a view to setting up ‘normal’ lives in the country of the Cold War enemy state. These illegals get normal jobs, buy houses, live in suburbia and slowly but surely are always looking for ways of undermining their host nation, seeking out potential contacts in their business and social lives who might be able to prove advantageous to Russia. They could be within powerful political circles or in technology or finance. These identified potential real people could be approached to become KGB / FSB / GRU agents or could be blackmailed. Obviously the game of espionage is cat and mouse and played equally voraciously by both sides. The CIA and FBI counter-intelligence in the case of many of the more recent illegals manoeuvred the whole expensive operation. A very valuable CIA source, Alexander Poteyev was head of the illegals program in the FSB and for over a decade was revealing all the critical information of the whole affair. Thus, the FBI maintained close surveillance on the spies for over a decade, watching their every move from their marital lives, their children growing up to any movements towards vital US targets in their operational activity. Putin has a twisted logic about the West and is an avid supporter of covert intelligence operations against his Cold War adversaries. His absolute detestation of treason and spy turncoats led him to attacking two ex-KGB comrades on U.K. soil. Alexander Litvinenko was murdered in London by radioactive poisoning (Polonium) and later, Sergei Skripal, who had been granted an official pardon by Putin, and had been part of a Vienna exchange by for the arrested Russian illegals, was attacked in Salisbury by a Novichok biological nerve agent but survived the assassination attempt. He had been an active MI6 agent and was released from Russian prison. It was interesting seeing how technology change and the post Soviet Union era redefined the illegals program and how Russian agents were just masquerading in the West using their real identities. The internet and social media brought a new dimension to espionage with active political meddling in the US election leading to the Donald Trump Presidential election of 2016. The book details shocking secrets of the clandestine world of international espionage and is an entertaining tale. One can only wonder how little we actually know and just how many illegals actually are still active and who successfully evaded the capture net.

Review: Fragile Empire – How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin – by Ben Judah

This is a very well researched study of Russia under Vladimir Putin. Always concerned with the political angle of this modern day Tsar, Judah studies the rise of Putin from a relatively unflattering career in the FSB through to him becoming an immovable rock in the Kremlin. Putin’s early years are interesting and I enjoyed the reminiscences of his early teachers. His whole calculated rise through the Russian political structure always displays a calculating and cool yet opportunistic politician. His consolidation of power has been very extreme and in spite of United Russia being a new form of one party state apparatus, endemic with corruption, there is no doubt that Putin is a force that is here to stay. What is perhaps surprising is that in spite of genuine mass popularity, the Russian people are now discontent with their leader and although they face steep obstacles, credible democratic opposition is emerging, headed by the interesting internet hero, Navalny. Russia’s move from democracy towards a quasi-Soviet style economy, the empire dominated by Moscow, paints an interesting picture of this huge superpower nation. I found the author’s trips around the hinterland to reveal some fascinating insights into Modern Russia and the problems that it and its people face. This is a very good book, if perhaps a little too biased against Putin, it is a worthy opinion of the situation of this new Russian empire.

Review: We – by Yevgeny Zamyatin

This science-fiction classic was written in 1920s Russia and was cited by George Orwell as a key inspiration for his seminal 1984. We are in the 26th century and following victory in a 200 year war, society has reached its apogee in a walled off universal nation called OneState. All submit to the will of the Benefactor and individuality has essentially been erased. The people have no names and are instead assigned numbers. They live in transparent apartment blocks and have a rigorous timetable for every daily activity, including sex. We see the novel through the eyes of D-503, the number in charge of the building of the INTEGRAL, a spaceship that will advance this technology-rich society even further. O-90 is a female who regularly produces pink tickets for intimate sessions with our protagonist D-503 and all is sailing smoothly until the entrance of I-330, a new woman who begins to spread an ‘illness’ to D-503 as her ancient ideas cause an awakening of his soul. Ever evading the careful monitoring of the guardians, D-503 and I-330 embark on a romantic adventure of nostalgia, setting up discreet meetings in the Ancient House where eventually I-330 reveals her liaisons with survivors beyond the wall who live in nature. They want to hijack the INTEGRAL and eventually lead OneState into a revolution, just as the masses are being exposed to the latest innovation from the Benefactor, X-Ray brains surgery to annihilate the population’s imagination and to create perfect happiness. Zamyatin writes fluently and I found myself rapidly burning through the pages of a story that bears signs of 1984 and Brave New World yet on the whole I feel, is a slightly more romantic tale, less political and the beauty of the writing is that the imagery and ideas are florid in the reader’s imagination. It is a journey, a battle of logic and a futuristic adventure where the dystopia resembles much of our 21st century life almost a hundred years after the author first penned the words. A great, unmissable book, five stars.

Review: For Whom the Bell Tolls

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Farewell to Arms is said to be Hemingway’s best book. Set in the Spanish Civil War, Robert Jordan is an American fighting in the International Brigades for the Republicans. He is tasked with blowing a bridge behind enemy lines and joins a band of guerrillas based in a cave, nor far from the chosen target. He falls in love with a rescued young girl and for three days enjoys true love. The book is feted as the best fictional account of the Spanish Civil War. I feel that Hemingway truly captures the feelings of this conflict. He worked as a war correspondent during the actual war and For Whom The Bell Tolls contains his accurate observations from the field. From the Madrid luxuries of the (primarily Russian) General staff, to the isolation, bonding, disputes and emotions of the guerrilla band, Hemingway weaves a splendid tale of loyalty, betrayal, fear, elation, romance and the horrors of war. I really enjoyed the Spanish language being used in conversation and it really helped to set the scene to hear the people cursing with real Spanish phrases. This work could be used in Translation Studies. It demonstrates the spirit of the Spanish people during their civil war. There is a sense of reality that these people were dealing with many foreigners and it is interesting to see how Robert Jordan, an American or ‘Ingles’, who spoke perfect Spanish, was so well-received and respected by the close-knit band of warriors. For me the ultimate conclusion was disappointing. The tragic twist was quite not as stomach-churning as in that of Farewell to Arms, for example, yet was perhaps the pessimistic outcome that Robert Jordan had envisaged as events conspired against him. Perhaps the book is an accurate description of the desperation of the Republicans as they on the whole unsuccessfully dealt with the formidable fascist foe with all their superior military equipment and force. Farewell to Arms is a great book but I am sure that in the Hemingway archives there is better work still to discover.

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Review: The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939

The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 by Antony Beevor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a definitive history of the Spanish Civil War. The book has been regarded by the Spanish themselves as one of the best-researched volumes on this dark period of turmoil in their country’s history. The breakdown of democracy saw the split of the nation and a leftist democratically elected government was forced to deal with the rise of a militaristic fascist rising headed by Franco. The precursor to World War 2, this civil war attracted the interests of the rising Fascist movement across Europe with the Caudillo’s forces being supplemented and supported by Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. They got to test out their modern weaponry in the field of action and a lack of international support for the actual government left them with little alternative but to rely on the Soviet Union for their support. This led to the republicans being over-reliant on the Spanish communists who struggled to take over and erode democracy from their own angle, constantly infighting and vying for strength with the other elements of the Spanish left; the Anarchists and the POUM. This history details how all the events unfolded and describes how each of the key battles was won and lost. There was a ferociousness during this conflict which only civil wars attract. The horrors of modern war truly unfolded disasters such as Guernica only emphasised how critical air support had become. The German Condor Legion and their Meschersmitts, backed up by Italian Fiats, consistently demolished the Republican resistance and paved the way for an overall Nationalist victory. Poor military judgement, combined with Stalinist purges of even the more successful Russian generals, left the Republicans constantly making errors in their military tactics. The lack of proper international support (with the exception of the volunteer International Brigades), in particular from Britain led to the inevitable crushing of the elected government and their forces. Appeasement was in the air as Western politicians tried to avoid the inevitable European conflict that was brewing and the Spanish were sacrificed. It was a war of experimentation which left the Spanish people at the mercy of the violent forces which dominated the time. Franco consolidated his own power well and was relentless and unforgiving, not accepting any olive branch of peace when offered and pursuing an ultimate military victory so he could proceed to rebuild his country in his own image. The book is highly detailed and covers every angle well, though I would have perhaps wanted a more lengthy conclusion to discuss more of what happened in the post-conflict period. I look forward to tracking down some of the author’s other work, in particular, his account of the battle of Stalingrad which was often mentioned in this most excellent history of the Spanish Civil War.

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