The Janis Jansons-Brauns Group

During the summer of 1937 two larger Latvian groups formed on the Republican side. One of them was assigned to the Third Kolarev Bulgarian battery of the First Slavic Heavy Artillery Group (Primero Grupo Eslavo de Artillería Pesada) and chose to be named after Latvian social democrat Janis Jansons-Brauns. The group briefly participated in the Battle of Brunete and afterwards was located in Extremadura until the foreign volunteers were withdrawn from the Republican side. A total of fourteen Latvian volunteers served in this group over the course of the war. 

The Extremadura front was relatively calm. One of the major battles was the Closing of the Mérida Pocket (July 1938). Latvian volunteers were often frustrated that they did not have many opportunities to participate in large battles. However, it was difficult to change their location as the First Slavic Heavy Artillery Group had received old 155 mm guns which the political commissar of the Artillery Group dated to around 1877 to 1879. According to volunteer Ruvins Fels, each of the guns had to be transported in three separate trucks, and their instability on the wet ground made them unusable after heavy rains. In these circumstances the Latvian group had a lot of spare time, which they used to learn Spanish, arrange different training activities, read newspapers, and give lectures on different topics as well as to evaluate the quality of political activity of each member. Most of the group had strong communist beliefs. 

During this spare time, Žanis Folmanis actively participated in the creation of the First Slavic Heavy Artillery Group’s newspaper Fuego. The issue of Fuego published in May 1938 contained an image of the Latviana as well as a description of their training activities in such topics as mathematics, Spanish language and history, the history of worker’s movement, Spanish issues etc. After the Spanish Civil War, Žanis Folmanis, better known after his pen name Žanis Grīva, became a famous Soviet writer. Some of his stories and books described the Spanish Civil War and a Soviet-era movie Noktirne by Latvian director Rostislavs Gorjajevs (1966) was based on his short story about the conflict. Today, however, Folmanis’s writing has completely lost its popularity.

GIB