A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

1042 Ch. 25 • Economic Depression and Dictatorship

blow to the Soviet Union. It eliminated many engineers and other people
with badly needed technical expertise. Furthermore, at a time when the
rise of Hitler to power in Germany was increasing international tensions,
the purge weakened the Soviet armed forces. Behind Stalin’s move against
military commanders was his fear that they might one day oppose his con­
duct of foreign policy. Among the 30,000 to 40,000 officers who perished,
all 8 Soviet admirals were executed, as were 75 out of 80 members of the
Supreme Military Council.
A journalist recalled that one of the most striking things about the Russian
Revolution of 1917 “was the speed with which the masses, after the over­
throw of tsarism, created new forms of organization,” including soviets of
workers and soldiers, factory committees, military organizations at the front,
peasant soviets that supplemented township committees, and rural land
committees. But once the Bolsheviks seized power on behalf of the working
class and poor peasants, they never relinquished it. They destroyed these
popular organizations that had embodied the aspirations of millions of peo­
ple. The Russian Revolution, which had begun as a quest for economic and
social justice by intellectuals, workers, middle-class and lower-middle-class
radicals, peasants, and non-Russian nationalists, turned into the dictatorship
of the Communist Party. Under the rule of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union
took on some of the murderous characteristics of the fascist regimes its lead­
ers so bitterly denounced. This was the tragedy of the Russian Revolution.

The Spanish Civil War

Spain became the battlefield of European ideologies during the bloody

civil war that began in 1936. The world’s attention turned to Spain for the

first time since the time of Napoleon. Indeed, there was relatively little to

distinguish the Spain of 1920 from that of more than a century earlier.

The days of empire and glory had long since passed. With the exception of

relatively industrialized Catalonia and the Basque provinces in the north­

western corner of the country, Spain remained an overwhelmingly agricul­

tural society. Coalitions between the nobility, the Catholic Church, and

the army determined political power in Madrid.

Social and Political Instability

The ineffectual King Alfonso XIII (ruled 1886—1931) confronted social and

political problems that defied solution. Catalonian and Basque regional

separatism challenged the Spanish government in Madrid. Chronic politi­

cal and social instability helped push the army into the role of chief arbiter

of political life. Labor strife, assassinations, street battles, and police vio­

lence became the order of the day in the early 1920s. Spain had declared a

protectorate over northern Morocco in 1912 and used poison gas against