Vanishing act

Born in the small town of El Vendrell, Tarragona, Andreu Nin was the son of a shoemaker and a peasant. Despite humble beginnings, Nin moved to Barcelona in 1909 and excelled as an educator and journalist. An interest in activism steered him towards a life in politics, and in 1917 he joined the Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). He soon became a leader of the Spanish workers’ movement and, subsequently, one of the founders of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE).

Inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution, Nin left Spain in 1921 to work for Communism International in the Soviet Union, where he stayed for almost a decade. Working in the USSR, Nin became disillusioned with Joseph Stalin’s ascending faction and, as a result, joined the Left Opposition against Stalin, working briefly as Leon Trotsky’s secretary in Moscow. It was there that Nin, like Trotsky, became threatened by Stalin’s purges of the Left Opposition, and in 1930 he was expelled from the country.

On returning to Spain, Nin set about forming the Spanish Communist Left (ICE), a small Trotskyist group. In 1935, after several disagreements with his former mentor, Nin split from the Trotskyist ICE and created the POUM, the Marxist Unification Workers’ Party. Still a left-leaning party, the POUM offered an alternative to the Moscow-aligned Spanish Communist Party, being both revolutionary and highly critical of Stalin. It frequently published articles denouncing the atrocities in the USSR, rousing hostility from pro-Stalinist communists in Spain. 

“Here on June 16th, 1937, Andreu Nin (1892-1937) was seen by his companions for the final time. Political Secretary of the POUM, a fighter for socialism and freedom, a victim of Stalinism.

His comrades.

Barcelona. June 16th, 1983.” 

This animosity turned violent during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). The POUM was one of several left-wing groups united against Franco on the front line. Behind the lines, however, the POUM faced continuous isolation as Soviet influence over the Spanish Republican government began to grow.

During the ‘May Days’ of 1937, as chronicled in George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia (1938), the POUM were blamed for the street fighting that erupted among left-wing groups in Barcelona. The government declared the POUM an illegal party and the pro-Stalinist Communist parties began a violent campaign against them. On June 16th, 1937, Nin was arrested near La Rambla, and was never to be seen again by his comrades.

The fate of the POUM leader was not revealed until the Nineties when Moscow archives were opened to Spanish researchers for a brief time. A file was found stating that Nin had been handed over to the NKVD (predecessors of the KGB) and tortured to death in a Soviet-controlled encampment outside Madrid.