Comparing Orwell's Homage To Madrid

The atmosphere was so promising that Trotsky commented: “on the political and cultural level, the Spanish proletariat stood on the first day of the revolution, not below, but above the Russian proletariat at the beginning of 1917” (Trotsky 322). Orwell's arrival in Barcelona, the reddest of Spanish cities, was, according to Crick, an accident (Crick 208). Newsinger sees that what particularly struck Orwell was the disappearance of the rich which he recognized, something worth fighting for: “What Orwell had encountered in Barcelona was a working class that was becoming a class for itself” (Newsinger 45).
Orwell was dismayed by the conditions, as he says often in Homage to Catalonia. He was deeply engaged in the debate around what to do about the revolution, siding with the most revolutionary line to take the revolution forward. He thought it a mistake that the Republican government had been left in nominal control and was critical that, “in spite of various changes in personnel, …show more content…
When you have had a glimpse of such a disaster as this ‒ and however it ends the Spanish war will turn out to have been an appalling disaster, quite apart from the slaughter and physical suffering ‒ the result is not necessarily disillusionment and cynicism. Curiously enough the whole experience has left me with not less but more belief in the decency of human beings (Orwell, Homage 183).
So Homage to Catalonia shows how hard Orwell tried at first to discover some logic in the Communist cause. What opened his eyes and aroused his anger was the Communist disregard for law and truth. In Barcelona, he saw men who have risked their lives for Republican cause flung into prison without charge. He saw thousands of ill-armed POUM militiamen, suddenly described by Communist propaganda as Trotskysts, Fascists, traitors, murderers, cowards, spies and so