Insurrection

In May, 1937, one of the most advanced revolutions in modern history was defeated. In Insurrection, Agustín Guillamón explains how Stalinist counterrevolution and republican reformism disarmed the threat of the anarchist working class in the Spanish Revolution. While anarchist “leadership” flailed, the defense committees were weakened, which allowed bourgeois institutions to gain power and strengthened the republican state. Using new information gathered from archives and interviews, Guillamón tackles some of the most vexing questions about the Spanish Civil War, retelling the story George Orwell recounted but failed to fully understand in Homage to Catalonia.

Agustín Guillamón is an independent historian; editor of Balance, a magazine dedicated to new research on the Spanish Revolution; and the author of The Friends of Durruti Group, 1937–1939 and Ready for Revolution, among numerous other books.

Paul Sharkey is an accomplished translator who has made a vast body of anarchist texts available to English-language readers. His numerous translations include the works of Nestor Makhno, Osvaldo Bayer, Errico Malatesta, Daniel Guérin, José Peirats, and Antonio Téllez.