Why Orwell Matters

by Christopher Hitchens

This is not the place to tell the entire tale. But most chroniclers and historians are now in agreement: Orwell told the truth, in his Homage to Catalonia, about the deliberate subversion of the Spanish Republic by the agents of Stalin, and about the especially ruthless way in which they tried to destroy Catalonia’s independent Left. As it happens, he was an eyewitness of the attempted Communist coup in Barcelona in early May 1937, and newly available documents from the Soviet Military Archive in Moscow make it plain that a full-scale putsch was in fact intended. Had it succeeded, then plans for another ‘show trial’, along the lines of the Moscow frame-ups, were in train. Even as it was, the great Catalan leader Andrés Nin, founder of the POUM, was kidnapped, savagely tortured and — on refusing to crack — murdered. It was then said by Communist spokesmen that he had fled to join the Nazis.