In 1936, the left-wing Popular Fronts formed coalition governments
in France and Spain changing the entire political picture in Europe.
The Popular Fronts were the result of the widespread realization
by the leftwing forces of the fact that the spread of fascism posed a deadly
threat to democracy and the working movement. First, the socialists and
communists formed a united workers' front which became the core of a broader-based
coalition of democratic and antifascist forces. However, the traditional
animosity existing between the socialists and communists was a big problem
and was playing right into the hands of the fascists whose victory in Germany
and their subsequent destruction of the communist and social-democratic
parties there provided a horrifying vision of what this split might eventually
lead to…
In France the idea of the Popular Front came true in 1936 effectively
preventing the right-wing parties from taking power. Not so in Spain, however,
where, despite the Popular Front's very impressive performance in the February
1936 parliamentary elections, the vanquished right-wing parties banded
together deciding to stage a coup and hand power over to a military junta.
Shortly after, an Army mutiny broke out in Spanish Morocco led by General
Francisco Franco which spread next day to the mainland and within 48 hours
had involved the whole country in civil war. In October, the Republicans
started receiving arms and military specialists from the Soviet Union and
tens of thousands of anti-fascist volunteers from many countries entered
Spain and formed the International Brigade. Still, the Nationalists we
consistently building up their military muscle, receiving combatants, technicians
and large supplies of war material from Italy and Germany. The Nationalists
had no mercy on their enemies and, at the start of their rebellion, they
even executed the country's pride and glory, the outstanding poet Garcia
Lorca.
On December 5, the Soviet Union adopted a new Constitution which
was dubbed as "the constitution of triumphant socialism". Even
though it declared universal suffrage and democratic freedoms, it also
provided legal justification for the Great Purge of the enemies of the
party and namely the party's foremost leader Joseph Stalin. The Revolution
was devouring its children and the people who had actually made it happen…
There were three spectacular trials of prominent revolutionaries where
the defendants confessed various acts of treason and sabotage. The Big
Terror was later denounced as a method of ensuring Stalin's personal power
and the confessions as false self-incriminations of exhausted and broken
men influenced by threats against their families…
1936 was the last in the life of the great Russian physiologist
Ivan Pavlov. Born in 1849, he achieved world renown for his researches
on blood circulation, the action of the digestive glands and the formation
of conditioned reflexes.
Meanwhile, chess lovers across the world were celebrating the
centennial birthday of Wilhelm Steinitz who was the first world champion
in this ancientmost game. The year 1936 was also the first in the life
of the future Czech President Vaclav Havel - a internationally recognized
human rights activist, playwright and a repeated victim of totalitarian
persecution. Across the Atlantic, another dramatist - Eugene O'Neill, became
the winner of the 1936 Nobel prize for literature.
In Britain, King Edward VIII shocked the nation by abdicating
after reigning less than a year. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin had presented
the King with an ultimatum urging him either to part with his twice-divorced
American lover Mrs.Wallis Warfield Simpson or see the resignation of the
entire Cabinet. Ever a gentleman, the King opted to abandon the throne
and marry the woman he loved. On the same evening the former King broadcast
to the nation explaining the reasons which had compelled him to abdicate.
- "I now quit altogether public affairs, and lay down my burden."
This broadcast is believed to have had a larger audience than any other
ever heard in Great Britain ...
THE 20th CENTURY:YEAR AFTER YEAR series
of historical programs is prepared by Vladimir Zhamkin.
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