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The Last Stalinist: The Life of Santiago Carrillo Paperback – 26 Feb 2015

4.5 out of 5 stars 10 customer reviews

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Product details

  • Paperback: 448 pages
  • Publisher: William Collins; Reprint edition (26 Feb. 2015)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0008106215
  • ISBN-13: 978-0008106218
  • Product Dimensions: 12.8 x 3 x 19.9 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 561,430 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Product Description

Review

‘Enormously engaging … authoritative … fascinating … ‘The Last Stalinist’ is yet another reminder that Paul Preston remains the most reliable historian in the English speaking world for anyone wishing to understand the complicated power struggles between left and right in Spanish politics over the course of the 20th century’ Spectator

Praise for ‘The Spanish Holocaust’:

‘A book of extraordinary moral and emotional power, a classic of historical scholarship and a deeply affecting record of man’s inhumanity to man.’ Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times

'A harrowing and moving account of the immense terror and enormous atrocities, especially perpetrated by General Franco's followers, during and after the Spanish Civil War, meticulously researched and superbly written by an outstanding historian.' Ian Kershaw

‘Essential reading for anyone wishing to understand Spain and its recent history…. Preston’s excellent, spine-chilling narrative explains just how deep Franco’s early investment in terror was….this is an invaluable book that does not shrink from even the harshest of truths’ Guardian

‘Preston’s staggeringly detailed powerful and affecting chronicle of the savagery unleashed during the Spanish civil war….is a history of rare moral and emotional power, which alters forever our view of one of the most symbolic conflicts of the last century’ Sunday Times, History Book of the Year

About the Author

Paul Preston CBE is Príncipe de Asturias Professor of Contemporary Spanish History and Director of the Cañada Blanch Centre of Contemporary Spanish Studies at LSE. He was lecturer at the University of Reading and Professor of History at Queen Mary University. In 2006 he was awarded the International Ramon Llull Prize by the Catalan Government. Among his many works are 'The Triumph of Democracy in Spain' (1986), 'Franco: A Biography' (1993), 'A Concise History of the Spanish Civil War' (1996), 'Comrades' (1999), 'Doves of War: Four Women in Spain' (2002), 'Juan Carlos' (2004) and 'The Spanish Civil War' (2006). He was decorated by Spanish King Juan Carlos a 'Comendador de la Orden de Mérito Civil' and in 2007, the 'Gran Cruz de la Orden de Isabel la Católica'.


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Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
Who was Santiago Carrillo?

An answer – of sorts – is provided by Paul Preston, renowned historian of modern Spain.

First a quick [positive summary] of Carrillo’s life. He was born in 1915 into a worker’s family. By his teens he was writing for newspapers and addressing political meetings. In the Civil War he organized and led the Republican youth movement. In defeat and exile he became General Secretary of the Spanish Communist Party [PCE], which he guided through the years of oppression and persecution to legality in 1977. He then facilitated the process that allowed a peaceful restoration of democracy. He stood almost alone in the Cortes against the attempted military coup of 1981. His book Eurocommunism and the State was a key text on “socialism with a human face”. His final years were times of reflection and memoir. He was 97 when he died.

Not such a bad life, then?

Paul Preston offers a different slant, adding details and reinterpreting facts. He is very critical.

Now we have a ruthless, cunning bureaucrat, proud ambition in his heart, blood on his hands. In 1937 [according to the author] he was responsible for the murder of several thousand prisoners, the Paracuellos massacres. In exile he had opponents expelled from the party, sent to labour camps and, if necessary, assassinated. He disowned his own father and, according to one story repeated here, murdered his first wife.

Politically his style was modelled on Stalin. Carrillo [Preston tells us]never could be wrong and used his control of party administration to vilify those who disagreed with him – then coopted their ideas as his own.
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Paul Preston's biography of Santiago Carrillo is a brilliant study of the life and times of this prominent Spanish communist leader, from the Spanish civil war to his final days. Particularly interesting is the story of Carrillo's ruthless methods to ensure the supreme position in the Spanish communist party in exile. In this context Preston's description of the conflict between Carrillo and Jesus Monzón in the 1940s makes particularly interesting reading, since Monzón has become one of the forgotten, and if not, much vilified, leaders of the PCE. And invaluable book for anyone interested in the Spanish civil war and its sequals.
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The Life of Santiago Carrillo presents an open goal for any Spanish specialist, and whilst Paul Preston does (to maintain the metaphor) just about scramble a score it’s a pretty mundane, forgettable, one given all the opportunities. In short, this is very much a ‘and then he…, and then he…, and then he… etc. kind of biography, leaving any analysis and assessment of the man and life to a perfunctory four page ‘Epilogue’. The preceding 331 pages are a strictly linear acronym soup (the latter forgivable in the context of the Spanish left), not exactly spoilt as such but markedly lessened by a stodginess of style and stubborn determination to never ever soar into realms of analysis or synthesis or assessment about the man. Which given Carrillo’s life and times is a remarkable anti-achievement. Also, I was put off by Preston’s attachment to certain words or phrases such that they’re repeatedly used in close succession until forgotten again (I counted a dozen such occurrences and then gave up noting them), plus his tired old boilerplate ‘LSE sub-Marxism’ and bias. For example, one passage sails nauseously close to… understanding the need for Republican prison massacres; plus the use of Stalinist euphemisms like ‘liquidate’ make the author’s subsequent employment of the plain honest word ‘murder’ come as welcome relief.
I felt not particularly wiser about Carrilo-the-man for reading this biography-cum-chronology, which should serve as the basis for someone else’s complete treatment.
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I've given this 4 stars because the research is as exhaustive and the exposition is as clear as you might expect from Preston. However, the issue from a readability perspective is that the subject of the book is so unbending in his Stalinistic pursuit of power, that is becomes astonishingly repetitive. Almost every page relates yet another example of Carrillo's ruthlessness and shamesless hypocrisy, which resulted in purges of comrades and will no doubt do the same to many readers. Perhaps the real importance of this work is that it scotches the myth that Spain would necessarily have been a land of milk and honey had Franco lost the Civil War. In some alternative reality with Carrillo and some of his cronies running the country, it may have been , dare I say it, even worse.
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A predictably splendid book by Paul Preston. Carrillo was an enigmatic figure on the Spanish and European Left who time transformed from public enemy number 1 to national treasure.
Interestingly the books title changes from the Spanish edition 'El Zorro Rojo' (the red fox), reflecting, no doubt, the national treasure aspect while the English language edition has a pejorative title which plays to the prejudice in Britain and the US towards any leftist personality.
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