Spaniards in the Great Patriotic War

Hundreds of Spanish volunteers who had ended up in the Soviet Union in various ways during or after the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) took part in the Great Patriotic War. First, they were Spanish children, including teenagers. Secondly, several thousand members of the Spanish Communist Party and its leaders evacuated after the fall of the Republic. Thirdly, Spanish Republicans rescued by Soviet diplomats from French internment camps in 1939–1940. In addition, after the outbreak of war, the last of the pilots who had taken a pilot training course at the aviation school in Kirovabad remained in the USSR. The aim of this article is to systematise the information available in memoirs, archival sources and literature on the participation of Spanish volunteers in the war on the Soviet side and to draw conclusions as to the nature and forms of that participation. Soviet conscription centres did not have the authority to enrol Spaniards who did not have Soviet citizenship into the Red Army, and Spanish volunteers were allowed to go to the front thanks to several Soviet military officers who had fought in the Spanish Civil War. It is for this reason that the most massive and effective military efforts of the Spaniards behind enemy lines were in partisan and sabotage groups, as well as in the air force. The Spanish volunteers wrote a glorious chapter both in the history of their country and in the annals of the Great Patriotic War.

Keywords

Great Patriotic War, volunteers, Spain, anti-fascism, guerrilla warfare, military aviation, I.G. Starinov, Ruben Ruiz Ibarruri, Jose Maria Bravo

Received

23.11.2021

Publication date

25.01.2022

Number of characters

35647

Cite

GOST	Sagomonyan A. Spaniards in the Great Patriotic War // Novaia i noveishaia istoriia – 2022. – Issue 1 C. 227-239 [Electronic resource]. URL: https://nni.jes.su/S013038640018289-5-1 (circulation date: 07.05.2024). DOI: 10.31857/S013038640018289-5
MLA	Sagomonyan, Alexander "Spaniards in the Great Patriotic War." Novaia i noveishaia istoriia 1 (2022):227-239. DOI: 10.31857/S013038640018289-5
APA	Sagomonyan A. (2022). Spaniards in the Great Patriotic War. Novaia i noveishaia istoriia (1), pp.227-239 DOI: 10.31857/S013038640018289-5

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