«Let’s protect the Second Spanish Republic!» volunteers from English-speaking coun-tries and their support for the Second Republic during the Spanish Civil War, 1936 - 1939 (historiographical essay)

Abstract

The Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, which in many aspects was a "rehearsal" for the Second World War, attracted the in-terest of the world community almost from the very begin-ning and caused an unprecedented surge of volunteerism, act-ing in opposition to the "non-intervention policy" of the League of Nations. The biographies of thousands of volun-teers from 54 countries have been studied in varying detailed elaboration, and some aspects remain unexplored to this day. Volunteers from English-speaking countries, who have tradi-tionally received little attention in Russian historiography, de-serve special attention. In this paper we attempt a brief historiographical analysis of this topic using materials from Russian and foreign studies: monographic literature, essays and publications by researchers from the USA, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand, as well as digital archives, document databases and other Internet resources.

Keywords

• spanish civil war 1936 — 1939
• interbrigades
• lincoln bat-talion
• british battalion
• mackenzie-papineau battalion