The Republican exile in the Soviet paradise. Spaniards in Stalin’s Gulag

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article provides analysis of some less well-known aspects of the Republican exile in 1939 in the USSR, such as the incarceration in Soviet prisons and internment in forced labour camps of hundreds of Spaniards during the Stalinist era. Based on the memoirs of survivors, specialised literature and documentation from various archives, the text describes the purges against members of different collectives of Spaniards that arrived in the Soviet Union during and after the Civil War (1936–1939), the causes of their arrest and incarceration in the Gulag, life inside the Soviet concentration camp system, and the struggle for survival, freedom and repatriation to Spain.