In the Name of the Martyrs
ABSTRACT This article explores how the Francoist victors of the Spanish Civil War (1936–9) remembered their dead. Eschewing a top-down approach alone, it also looks at the reception and production of memory from below. In this way, the article shows how many of the Francoist bereaved both came to identify with and gained solace from the regime's message that it was involved in a sacred struggle against centre and left political groups. Moreover, many ordinary Francoists came to believe that taking part in the repression of those from the defeated side could offer a way of honouring their dead.
Alfonsist Monarchism and the Coming of the Spanish Civil War
The Second Republic in Spain (I931-36) witnessed a process of working class radicalization which the conservative classes were ill-equipped to face. The radicalization was not of recent origin; the lack of a suitable conservative posture was. When the normal political mechanism had been found incapable of dealing with social and economic unrest in I917 recourse was had to the army; the crisis found its resolution in the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, which anaesthetized the situation for nearly seven years. When Primo fell, conservatives could turn only to the derelict 'historic' parties. Now, deprived of the machinery of caciquismo (electoral rigging) and resentful of the treatment accorded them by the dictator, the old politicans had neither the power nor the will to resume their former function.1
PLEASURE, POWER, AND THE PURSUIT OF COMMUNISM: SOVIET YOUTH AND STATE-SPONSORED POPULAR CULTURE DURING THE EARLY COLD WAR, 1945-1968
art, with certain students accused of “showing political immaturity, failing to understand the Party’s positions on art.” This episode constituted part of a broader crackdown on abstract art by the Khrushchev administration from late 1962, precipitated the the Soviet leader’s derision of such art forms in December 1962 at the Manege exhibit. Such instances demonstrate the limitations of the top-level promotion of youth grassroots initiative, as the Khrushchev leadership reigned in youth autonomy when it threatened to go beyond the boundaries of the permissible. The dates cited above have particular resonance, since both 1957-58 and 1962-63 represent two periods when those at the top of the Party hierarchy moved away from pursuing a more pluralistic, tolerant policy course, due to anxiety inspired by both sharpening Cold War hostilities and domestic developments. In these periods, official rhetoric censured what it labeled as 639 TsAOPIM, f. 635, op. 13, d. 546, ll. 56-57. This is likely related to criticism of the Party associated with the fallout from the Secret Speech and the Hungary invasion. For more, see Polly Jones, “From the Secret Speech to the Burial of Stalin: Real and Ideal Responses to De-Stalinization,” in Jones ed., The Dilemmas, 41-63. 640 TsAOPIM, f. 6083, op. 1, d. 52, ll. 166-67. 641 Susan E. Reid, “In the Name of the People: The Manege Affair Revisited,” Kritika 6.4 (Fall 2005): 673716. 642 On these anxieties, see Dobson, Khrushchev’s Cold Summer, 156-88.