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Also, Stalin appears to me to have had no interest in a communist regime in a country that didn't have a common border with the USSR. Such a regime would eventually be beyond the Man of Steel's complete control. What the Spanish Civil War was useful for was to provide a perfect cause for the newly launched Popular Front to use to provide entry for Soviet agents and stooges into various left liberal organizations and as in France government agencies. It also helped keep the 'capitalist' camp divided into a fascist and democratic wings thus reducing chances that all the 'capitalists' would sink their differences and line up against the USSR. So Stalin provided just enough military equipment to keep the Republic on its feet (at top dollar prices) and set the COMINTERN to recruiting a foreign legion (the International Brigades) to shore up the Republic on the battlefield. The goal was always to drag the war out for maximum soviet advantage never to realistically assist the Republic in winning.

Stalin's diplomacy is one of such studied duplicity that even the Borgias must salute him in Hades as being the master of the hidden maneuver and the unanticipated backstab.

Orwell saw this and that's why he has been hated by leftists even since.

I've heard various stories about how Stalin stole hugh amounts of gold from Spain. Any truth or just urban myth?