About the Book:The intense struggle of political ideals that blazed through early-twentieth-century Europe reached its climax in Spain, where Spanish and foreign revolutionaries, liberals, and reactionaries found themselves caught in a ferocious civil war. For many intellectuals who fought and chronicled the conflict, the war became a political test case that either strengthened their political convictions and commitments or caused them to question their own and others’ service to a particular cause. In Written in Red: The Communist Memoir in Spain, Gina Herrmann looks at the memoirs of six Spanish Communist writers to reveal the fascinating and often painful evolution of their politics from the beginning of the war through their long years of exile. While Spanish Communist authors initially shaped their identities and autobiographies along the lines of Soviet models, Herrmann shows how, with the recognition of Stalinism’s betrayal of the Communist ideal, the writers increasingly came to experience those models as straitjackets unfit to contain the stories of their rich and difficult lives. The six writers studied here–Dolores Ibrruri, Mara Teresa Lon, Rafael Alberti, Jorge Semprn, and Teresa and Toms Pmies–devoted their lives to the cause of the revolution. Though they have told their separate stories, this book is the first to gather, compare, and interpret them within their historical and intellectual context and from a comparative perspective that takes into account recent developments in Soviet studies.Table of Contents: Preface ix Acknowledgments xxi Introduction: The Subject of Communist Autobiography 1 1. Dolores Ibarruri and the Mothering of the Party 25 2. The Road to Consciousness: Youth and Conversion 54 3. The War in Spain 84 4. Exile and Left Melancholia: Maria Teresa Leon and Rafael Alberti 128 5. Between Devotion and Disillusion: Jorge Semprun, Teresa Pamies, and the Recovery of Communist Memory 166 Notes 203 Bibliography 219 Index 235