Communism became strongly identified with the cause of the Republic in the Spanish Civil War and subsequently played by far the leading role in the long, unsuccessful struggle of the leftist opposition against Franco. The first fifteen years of the party in Spain had nonetheless been a complete failure, and the movement only began to achieve modest importance in 1934, at the time of the first major challenge to Republican democracy by the left. Contrary to the myth propounded by Francoism, it played only a limited role in the system’s final breakdown in 1936 and the beginning of the Civil War. The ultimate cause of this bitter conflict was the steady growth of the revolutionary process in Spain, a revolutionary process led, however, by Socialists and anarchosyndicalists. The violent collectivist revolution that accompanied the Civil War in the Republican zone alienated the Western democracies in turn and became a major obstacle to the Republicans themselves in waging the war.

This conflict provided the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) with its major opportunity, for no other force was so well designed to fight a major revolutionary civil war. When the Republican government asked the Soviet Union for assistance, Stalin soon complied, opening the way for a rapid rise in Soviet and Communist influence, as Moscow became the major source of military assistance to this “third,” or revolutionary Republic. The revolution in turn posed a major dilemma for Stalin. Though the Comintern had preached violent revolution in Spain ever since 1919,