How it was №1688 10/03/2001 (2001)

Participation of the USSR in the Civil War in Spain, 1936-1939.

Russian history knew all sorts of wars - liberation, civil and religious, domestic and even counter-terrorism.

Any normal person refers to a war with natural disgust, because it is always grief, blood, unlimited violence, the death of thousands of innocent people.

But there are wars that stand apart, covered with a romantic fleur, which have become legends.

In the XIX century for the Russians it was the war for independence in Greece, in the XX - the war in Spain.

Even after many years, for some reason, it seems to us that it was a beautiful war, although there are no beautiful wars.

It is known that officially the Soviet Union did not take part in this conflict.

Nevertheless, even then the facts of the Soviet military presence in the Spanish theater of military operations and economic assistance to the USSR Republicans were known to both Franco and Hitler.

According to official statistics, more than 3,000 Soviet volunteers - pilots, artillerymen, tankmen, military advisers - fought in Spain.

In the skies of Spain our pilots dominated, the Spanish aces could not compete with them.

The teams of international brigades defending Madrid and Toledo, who fought in Valencia and Grenada, included hundreds of our compatriots, mostly professional soldiers;  all of them fought under foreign names, having French, Polish, Dutch passports.

The war is remembered by its immediate participants: the chairman of the association of Soviet volunteers who participated in the civil war in Spain Victor Lavsky (1937-1938), military translators Elizabeth Parshina (1936-1937) and Adeline Kondratyeva (1937-1938), pilot Sergei Timofeyevich Fomenko (1938) evacuated to the USSR by the Spanish Francisco Mansilla and Alberto Fernandez (1937).

Interview in the recording: the chief editor of the magazine "Military illustration" Roberto Palacios-Fernandez.

The program is supplemented by the Spanish military chronicle and cadres of revolutionary events in Germany.