![]() ![]() ![]() I first heard Alexander lying about the POUM and Nin’s fate while sitting in the audience of a sixth-form history conference at the Imperial War Museum a quarter of a century ago. Andreu Nin, the leader of the POUM, let it be remembered, was literally flayed alive by the torturers of Stalin’s NKVD.Īlso, I have in my possession a video tape of an interview Alexander gave in 1996 in which he says: ‘Stalin – he made mistakes, but good mistakes.’Īnyone who spent a lifetime defending man-made famine, show trials, torture, murder and the Gulags – whatever admirable qualities he may have had – deserves a rather more critical obituary than the one your newspaper gave him. ![]() I well remember the spleen of the late Bill Alexander (obituary, 14 July letters, 17 July obituary, 20 July) at a meeting in Rochester in 1986, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, when I and others had the temerity to mention the fate of the POUM. David Turner: Letter - "Guardian" CensorshipĮncyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line: Revolutionary History, Vol. 7 No. 4īelow is the text of a letter I sent to the Guardian as a balance to the gushing obituaries of Bill Alexander, the former member of the International Brigades, who died last July. ![]()
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