The Soviet Union and the International Brigades, 1936–1939

Abstract

This article's principal conclusion is twofold: First, that the creation and sustenance of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War was part of Stalin's goal of linking the Loyalist cause with that of the Soviet Union and international communism, a component of a larger geo-strategic gamble which sought to create united opposition to fascist aggression, one which might eventually bring Moscow and the West into a closer alliance. The second conclusion is that the deployment of the Brigades, like the broader projection of Soviet power and influence into the Spanish theater, was an overly ambitious operational failure whose abortive retreat is indicative of the basic weakness of the Stalinist regime in the years prior to the Second World War.