Dolores Ibárruri
Date: September 25, 1936
Source: Speeches and Articles pp. 35-35, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1938; first published in Pravda
Transciption/HTML Markup: Mike B. for MIA, November 2016
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2016). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
Front the very first days of the struggle, the Spanish people were convinced of their ultimate victory over the forces of darkness, which embodied the exploitation and oppression of the people in the past and their enslavement and humiliation in the future. These forces have risen to impose the shameful yoke of fascism on the backs of the people.
"We shall defeat them!"—the people said, when they took up tile fight in the first days of the rebellion.
"We shall defeat them!"—were the words on all lips and in all hearts.
Adults and children, men and women, old people who recalled the past battles against reaction, the people's militia, all the Republican forces were fused by one urge and by one conviction:
"They shall not pass !"
Each put his whole heart into the fight. Do not forget, we entered this struggle without arms, because the traitors had delivered all the arms to our enemy on the eve of the struggle.
Nobody who was not in Spain in those days can conceive the heroism that inspired our people.
Mothers did hot weep when they bade farewell to their sons going to lace death. Women demanded that the men should display courage and self-sacrifice. They preferred to be widows of heroes rather than wives of cowards.
And in that terrible struggle, when people went into battle without rifles and waited for weapons to drop from the enfeebled hands of their fallen comrades, when women, closing the eyes of their husbands in the hospitals, placed their children in the care of others and joined the marching columns, and when others cherished and protected like their own the children left in their care, all were moved by one dream and one hope—the hope of international solidarity and aid.
But days passed, and no aid was forthcoming from the bourgeois democracies, although we were aging a mortal struggle against international fascism, which is armed to the teeth and menacing democracy all over the world. We received no assistance in the struggle on which partly depended the immediate future of all Europe and the maintenance of peace. At a time when not only munitions but even foodstuffs were becoming exhausted, provocateurs endeavoured to sow doubt in our midst.
At this juncture a country remote from us geographically, but as near to us as a sister, came to our aid. It was the Soviet Union.
"Our Soviet brothers have not abandoned us in our misfortune!" —exclaimed the fighters at the front and their families in the rear.
In an outburst of enthusiasm and gratitude, they said to all who doubted the possibility of victory:
"We shall have enough bread. Our children will receive milk. Our fighters will have more meat to nourish them, because the women at the Soviet Union are thinking and caring for us!"
Sisters of the Soviet Land, and all you comrades, who under the leadership of our great and beloved Comrade Stalin, having vanquished all dangers and difficulties, have created a socialist society your friends, the working people of Spain, who are waging a struggle against fascism, send you their ardent and grateful greetings!
Inspired by your assistance, the heroic Spanish people assure you that they will not lose heart in this struggle. Fascism shall not break through; we will bold it back, and repulse it!
This certainty is reinforced by the knowledge that we are not alone, that you, the Soviet women, are behind us. Our struggle will be more vigorous, and the desperate attacks of the enemy will recoil from the steel walls of national unity.