Revisiting Operation X: Stalin and the Spanish Republic, 1936-1939

A quarter-century century following the opening of the post-Soviet archives of the Russian Federation, scholarship on the role of the Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War has greatly expanded. The published literature includes not only declassified document collections, but conference proceedings, journal articles, and monographs on myriad connected subjects. The richness of the field is evident in examining the incorporation of this burgeoning historiography in recent biographies of Stalin, in works on the Soviet military, on European interwar cultural history, the history of the visual arts, and diplomatic history. Historians working in the UK, in France, Germany, Spain, Russia and the United States have all contributed significant, sometimes towering, works of scholarship. A subject long mired in Cold War-era tendentious controversy has finally emerged as one of the most meticulously documented and well-researched in Modern European history. Incorporating new research and surveying the most recent scholarship, this chapter examines Soviet involvement in the Spanish Civil War in all its dimensions.