Andres Nin
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Andres Nin, a.k.a. Andreu Nin (February 4, 1892 - June 20, 1937) was a Spanish revolutionary.
Born to a poor family in El Vendrell, Tarragona (his father was a shoemaker and his mother was a peasant), Nin moved to Barcelona shortly before World War I; he taught briefly in a secular, anarchist school, but soon became a journalist and activist. In 1917 he joined the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE).
Nin became a leader of the Spanish workers' movement, and was among the founders of the Communist Party of Spain. He consequently worked for the Communist International and Red International of Labour Unions (RILU or Profintern) in Russia and was on the staff of Leon Trotsky for a period. While in Russia, he was won to the Left Opposition to Stalin's ascending faction within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
When he returned to Spain, Nin was instrumental in forming the Left Communists of Spain (ICE) the Bolshevik Leninist group affiliated to the International Left Opposition (ILO). However, the ICE was a small group and largely isolated. Nin had a number of disagreements with Trotsky in this period, specifically when Trotsky advised the ICE leader that entry into the Spanish Socialist Youth would augment the forces at their disposal. Nin disagreed and sought to forge a united party with the Workers and Peasants Bloc (BOC), a group coming out of the Communist movement but seen as being on its right wing.
Eventually Nin broke with Trotsky and the ILO on this question and the fusion went ahead. Nin (along with Joaquin Maurin) formed the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) in 1935 as a Communist alternative to the Third-International-loyalist Communist Party of Spain.
After the Spanish Popular Front won the 1936 election, Nin became councillor of justice. He supported the government but was far more radical than most of its members.
After Catalonia was granted autonomy by the Spanish Republic in the opening phase of the Spanish Civil War, Nin joined the devolved government in Catalonia, headed by Lluís Companys i Jover, but owing to the demands of Stalin's Soviet Union, was removed from office along with other POUM appointees.
In June 1937, Nin and most of the leadership of POUM were arrested and sent to a camp near Madrid. Andrés Nin was murdered, under direct orders from Stalin and the supervision of the NKVD by the Republican Government's secret police on June 20, 1937.
External link
- The Fundación Andreu Nin (http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/9444) has a Spanish-language site containing an extensive collection of documents, biographical notes, and links related to the POUM and to Nin himself.ca:Andreu Nin i Pérez