The author of “1984” and “Abellion on the Farm” participated in the Republican resistance during the Spanish Civil War. A Soviet double agent turned him in but the fortune and intelligence of his partner twisted his fate.
[”1984″ can be downloaded for free in digital format at Bajalibros by clicking here]
By Sergio Silva Velázquez
-I left.
After hearing that energetic and dry word, the dazed incipient author remained paralyzed. He didn't quite understand how serious his situation was.
-We have to leave immediately.
Just that he repeated Eileen O'Shaughnessy, Wife of George Orwell, in the lobby of the Continental Hotel in Barcelona without him suspecting that I was saving him. It was June 20 1937. The woman had had a few crucial minutes - her husband had left the hotel for a procedure, as we will see later - to prevent the Spanish Secret Police (SIM) from arresting him for treason.
The real betrayal, however, had been the denunciation of a supposed friend: the English journalist David Crook had given his pursuers Orwell's exact address. Crook had gained the trust of the future famous author and his wife after telling them that he was enrolled in the same cause.
Orwell had not yet written 1984 ni Rebelion on the farm, had been in Spain for some time in his crusade - later taken as a sign of coherence of work and life - to combat fascism and defend democracy as member of the republican side before his fall from grace for being a member of the Marxist Unification Workers' Party (POUM).
Secret raids
The purge unleashed against the members of the POUM was due to the fact that it had been declared an illegal organization, after its members assumed an anti-Stalinist position, similar to that of the Trotskyists. His wife, who in the future would serve as the first reader of his work, typist, editor and even political educator, did not lose her calm, looked to the hotel concierge for help and in seconds managed to get her husband out. of the place and take him to a cafe where he explained that nothing was as he thought.
The deliverer had done his part in a perfidious maneuver, typical of the fearsome Soviet secret service NKVD - run first by Nikolai Yezhov and then by the brutal Lavrenti Beria, the executing arm of the Stalinist regime. Four days before the police showed up at the Continental Hotel, the officers had searched Eileen's room, where they confiscated documents, diaries, photos and books by Orwell the reader. One of the texts was titled, although it may seem like a joke, Measures to liquidate the Trotskyists and other double traitors. However, they were unable to get hold of their passports and checkbooks that the woman had hidden under the bed mattress. Eileen became suspicious of Crook from then on.
Crook's conversion as a communist spy would occur after the Englishman caught the attention of Soviet intelligence agents while he was recovering in Madrid after having received three bullet wounds in his leg, working within the Republican ranks. The reason he had caught the attention of the agents was the fact that Crook had started treating the war correspondent, Martha Gellhorn, and her partner. Ernest Hemingway, along with other figures from the literary world.
Crook would end up being recruited by the NKVD and was sent to a training camp in Albacete where he trained in surveillance and sabotage techniques. The target was the Independent Labor Party (IPL), which functioned as a contingent of the POUM and in which Orwell was a leading figure. Among the endorsements of Crook, a descendant of Russian Jews, to go unnoticed was the fact that he had joined the Young Communist League in the United States and supported as a student delegate a strike of miners who had been repressed in Kentucky. Upon his return to his country, he joined the British Communist Party and enlisted in the International Brigades for the republican cause in Spain. And indeed, no one distrusted him.
The infiltrator worked in the IPL offices and took advantage of his lunchtime absences to take documents and take them to a nearby place where he would photograph them and then deliver them to the Soviets. The agents collected that information - including that of an alleged affair between Eillen and a comrade, which NKVD agents would later use as a blackmail technique. Another report photographed by Crook was Orwell's medical diagnosis of a neck wound.
Run away to survive
In the cafe, trying to regain calm after the betrayal, the future great British author born in India, listened attentively to his wife: he had to destroy his militia card and incriminating photographs. had to hide. That his arrest had not been completed had been the concurrence of a series of chance episodes: Eileen's courage to get him out of the hotel in time but also the fact that Orwell had left moments before the arrival of the Police to carry out a procedure. .
This procedure was, neither more nor less, than a license to leave the Army and leave Spain without being a deserter. At that point, with the POUM declared a orga illegal, the creator of the Gran Hermano I was already scared enough to understand that staying in Spain was a suicidal act and he could barely guess at how closely the Soviets were watching him.
[”Abellion on the Farm” can be downloaded for free in digital format at Bajalibros by clicking here]
Once the escape from the hotel was completed, Orwell and other companions experienced the odyssey of sleeping for two days in different places while pretended, in the light of day, to be a sophisticated, wealthy British citizen -he had shaved to change his appearance- that he frequented the most luxurious restaurants: that would be the last place where the police would look for a member of the POUM.
Even fate was on his side the time a police checkpoint asked him for his papers and he had to show them with a breath, without being recognized. The invaluable help of third parties - among them the anarchist manager of a local restaurant - would be necessary for Orwell and his group to escape. a Barcelona mined by spies and secret police agents towards France. The experience of that ordeal is reflected in Tribute to Catalonia, written in his desire “to tell the world the truth about what is happening in Spain.”
The escape would be on a train that left for Port Beau on June 23, 1937, after Eileen made a series of post maneuvers to reach the station. A providential intermediation, without which, two of the most original books in universal literature would not have been written. But that is another story.
Who was George Orwell
♦ He was born in Motihari, British Raj, in 1903 and died in London in 1950.
♦ He was a novelist, journalist, essayist and critic.
♦ Among his work, one of the most important of the 20th century, dystopian novels stand out Rebelion on the farm y 1984.