Seventy years ago, as the Spanish Republic faced an internal military revolt led by General Francisco Franco, compounded by an external fascist invasion, the progressive and anti-fascist youth of the world adopted the Spanish rallying cry “¡No Pasarán!,” or “They Shall Not Pass,” as the mantra of their generation’s struggle against fascism and war. Spain was far more than a symbolic struggle for anti-fascist youth, but quickly became, especially for Communist youth, an ideological testing ground for putting Popular Front theory into practice. The Spanish anti-fascist struggle permeated the literature and campaigns of the Young Communist League USA, showing anti-fascist youth of their generation the Communists’ sincere dedication to the causes of internationalism, peace and democracy. The historical political lesson learned and applied by the YCL in Spain was that only through complete unity could youth battle the reactionary social forces that were bent on unleashing fascism and imperialist war upon the world.
The Civil War in Spain was a manifestation of a larger international reconfiguration of social forces during the 1930s. The main international struggle, after 1933, became an open ideological conflict of fascism versus democracy. The rise and consolidation of Hitler’s Nazi regime in Germany facilitated a political change for a generation where youth and democratic republics of all ideologies and economic systems were faced with the common enemy of fascism and a Second World War. In this new era, Young Communist Leagues worldwide were transformed from small sectarian and oppositional propaganda organizations into mass populist youth movements. With the adoption of the Popular Front policy, the youth came to embrace one unified goal: to isolate and defeat fascism culturally and politically in order to save the world from the horrors of another World War.
The American and French YCLs were praised internationally in 1935 as innovators of the Popular Front strategy, but it was the Spanish YCL that quickly became the international vanguard for the youth anti-fascist struggle. One of the first goals of the Popular Front was to heal the historical splits among Socialist youth and to work towards the formation of a united youth league. In the beginning of 1936, before Franco’s revolt, the Spanish Socialist and Communist Youth Leagues began issuing a joint newspaper in February entitled “Renovación Juventud Roja” on the upcoming Popular Front coalition elections. After the February elections the Spanish Socialist and Communist youth agreed on a full merger of their organizations into the Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas (JSU), or the United Socialist Youth League. Since Socialist youth movements had been split between Socialist and Communist factions since the Russian Revolution, the JSU claimed their merger was an event that would “be formidable from the international point of view and the national point of view.” Once the Civil War began, the JSU drastically increased its size and unity and became a vanguard force in youth recruitment for the anti-fascist struggle, praised in the international Communist press as one of the greatest triumphs and symbols of the youth Popular Front.
The YCLUSA used the example of the JSU not just to support the Spanish Republic, but to urge similar ventures of anti-fascist youth unity in the United States. In articles in its Young Communist Review, the American YCL praised how the “whole Spanish youth was united in a struggle to the end against the fascists” and that this showed American youth “what a powerful weapon unity was.” The British YCL took a similar rhetorical approach in their weekly newspaper Challenge stating, “The heroic struggle of the Spanish people has awakened millions in Britain and America. It has shown them the way to defeat fascism, by uniting their forces to oppose it.” The World Youth Review propagated comparable associational themes arguing, “The cause of Spain is the cause of youth!” The Soviet Leninist YCL used Spain as a rallying cry stating, “Your motto, ‘United as in Spain,’ at the side of your Spanish brothers, must triumph. Long live the anti-fascist unity of struggle of the youth of the world!”
The greatest service that young Communists gave the Spanish Republic was not in their literature and domestic campaigns of solidarity, but in the voluntary military service they offered as members of the International Brigades. Willi Münzenberg, the founding leader of the young communist movement, proposed the idea of the International Brigades to international Communist Leader Georgi Dimitrov in September, 1936 to lend international military and political assistance to the Spanish Republic. Throughout the short history of the International Brigades, over 40,000 volunteers representing over 50 nationalities fought in Spain, offering their lives in the protection of “democracy, freedom and the peace of the world.” In all, over 3,000 young volunteers from the United States, 1,500 from Canada and 2,300 from Britain, Ireland and the British Commonwealth volunteered in Spain and were organized in the Fifteenth International Brigade. Of these international volunteers, a large portion came directly from the ranks of the Young Communist Leagues.
The Brigades did not exist simply to offer practical international assistance to Democratic Spain, but served as a rallying symbol for anti-fascist youth. Wolf Michal, a prominent anti-fascist youth leader spoke of how the Brigades served to show youth how a “mighty column of democratic and anti-fascist youth can act as a magnet and attract the entire freedom loving youth of the world!” The YCLUSA used their volunteers in Spain to show the effectiveness of anti-fascist internationalism and to draw historical parallels between the struggles in Spain and national youth struggles in the United States.
The adoption of their Spanish unit’s “Abraham Lincoln Brigade” name was not a random coincidence. In their literature the YCL used the symbol of Lincoln to show the parallels between the American, Russian and Spanish Civil War experiences. Lincoln and Lenin were personified as similar revolutionaries who intended to break the power of the slave owners and aristocracy of their nation to inspire further international advances for humanity. The Spanish Civil War experience was said to be directed at the remnants of feudal power and the fascists who sought to protect this traditional barbaric order of exploitation against the rising international forces of democracy. In this analogy, historical comparisons were drawn between the volunteers of the Union Army, Red Army and International Brigades as revolutionary champions of human freedom and progress.
One exemplary member of the YCLUSA in Spain was Dave Doran. Doran went to Spain in June, 1937 and quickly rose to the rank of War Commissar for the Fifteenth Brigade. After his death Doran was eulogized heroically by Gil Green, the Popular Front secretary of the YCL who later became a leading member of the CPUSA and the Committees of Correspondence. Green spoke of Doran as “a native son” who “personified the best traditions of the American people” as “an internationalist, a son of world humanity.” Green continued that Doran recognized that “it was the fight of all progressive humanity to defeat world fascism, to preserve world peace… it therefore was his fight to give his life that democracy might live!” Doran and other YCL members offered anti-fascists worldwide a shining example of a lifetime dedicated to struggle, offering their own lives in unified international solidarity and writing one of the most exemplary chapters of YCL history.
The young Communist movement was born out of the anti-war struggles of WWI, inspired by the spirit of Lenin to create a new world where youth would be saved not only from capitalist exploitation, but the horrors of further imperialist wars. Though the Spanish Republic eventually fell to the fascist invaders due to the treacheries of a farcical non-intervention pact, the YCLers of Spain and the International Brigades set a historical example to show youth the power of unity in the struggle against reaction and war. Prior to the period of the Popular Front, the YCLs of the United States and Western Europe had been small sectarian organizations simply critiquing national and international politics with revolutionary slogans. In rejecting these ineffective practices of the past, the YCL quickly became one of the most influential youth groups in the USA, facilitating the greatest popular youth unity against fascism and war and in support of the Spanish Republic.
In these times of increasing domestic and international reaction and the drive towards future imperialist wars, let us pay tribute to the spirit of our comrades who laid down their lives seventy years ago in Spain to create an international united front young people against fascism and war. In our current struggles for the future of our generation against the policies of the ultra-right, may the valiant spirit of unity in struggle of Dave Doran and all of our fallen comrades inspire us to organize and unite the youth of our communities to take back our country and to build a brighter future for everyone. With the upcoming elections, the slogan of the International Brigades still rings clear and true for the YCL: “¡No Pasarán!”
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