Artur London’s The Confession

L'Aveu (The Confession) co-written by former member of the IBs, Artur London and his wife Lise, was published in Paris in 1968. (It was made into a film by director Costa-Gavras two years later). The book became one of the most recognized symbols of the Western European left's break with Stalinism and unconditional support for the Soviet Union. However, the book also became a more general example of both the internal dilemmas and conflicts of individuals and the suspicions and accusations by the state authorities in their homeland, a situation in which many members of the International Brigades found themselves after their return from Spain.

In a strongly nationalized and politically divided postwar Europe, their transnationalism was viewed with suspicion. In the West, they were suspected of left-wing views and support for communists and the Soviet bloc, while in Stalinist Eastern Europe, they were suspected of previous contacts and experiences with the "West." In this autobiographical work, Artur London presents a hero guided by ideals who becomes a victim of spy-mania, vile intrigues, and subsequent persecution by a cruel regime. 

Although The Confession brought its author worldwide fame, it also sparked widespread debate. Artur London was certainly not an ideal hero. He was a long-serving and staunch Stalinist cadre. In Spain, he worked directly in the leadership of the feared Republican secret police, the Military Investigation Service (SIM), and personally participated in its “red terror”, which was greatly feared by the Republican soldiers. Later, within the communist resistance movement in France during World War II, he was in charge of personnel policy and membership supervision; and he became Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs in post-war Czechoslovakia. In that post, he was directly involved in launching the Stalinist purges in Czechoslovakia and throughout Eastern Europe. Only then did he himself become a victim of the mechanism he had helped to create as a co-defendant in the notorious 1952 Slansky trial. London confessed and was sentenced to life imprisonment, although in 1956 he was freed and rehabilitated as part of the de-Stalinization policies of Nikita Khruschev.

This story is also an integral part of the legacy of the International Brigades. The political leadership in particular, but also many ordinary soldiers, espoused a militant Stalinist line. This was already evident in Spain, where the declared slogans of cooperation between all democratic forces were mere propaganda, and did not correspond to the reality of the suppression of all "traitors," from "Trotskyists" to anarchists and all the “others” who did not want to fully submit to Communist instructions. Blinded by ideology, they also clearly demonstrated their attitude towards the values of democracy and law after the war, when they participated in the takeover of power in a number of Eastern European countries and, for a certain period of time, in its exercise with all their illegal methods, interrogations, torture, and abuse. Unfortunately, it turned out that while the International Brigades were irreconcilable fighters against fascism, too many of its members of them were definitely not fighters for democracy.

ZM