Oro, guerra, diplomacia

The proclamation of the Second Republic also meant an attempt to normalize Spanish foreign policy, whose absence from the great global chessboard had a negative impact on its economy and its international projection. Within this new diplomatic dynamic, there was a rapprochement with a USSR, whose official recognition until then had been ignored. It was not about ideology, but pure interests: it was about gaining access to oil and raw materials and finding new markets for exports decimated by the crisis of the 1930s. And, to this, governments of all colors dedicated their efforts. However, the beginning of the civil war distorted, when it did not make us forget from the Franco regime, all this previous relationship. Not being able to count on the help of contemporary democracies, the Republic had to entrust everything to Soviet support and this link was used for propaganda by the rebel side. It is at this moment that the Francoist myths emerge -some of them taken up by current revisionism- about the sovietization of Spain, about Moscow's gold and about the supposed will of the Communist International to make the Peninsula its own. Thanks to enormous archival work and the location of new Spanish and Russian "relevant primary evidence of the time", the renowned historian Ángel Viñas has achieved the definitive book on the Spanish Republic in Stalin's time, updating his previous research on the financing of the war , Soviet aid or the role of President Juan Negrín and inserting them into an ambitious and complete interpretation of the period.