It has been decided to kill Raymond Poincaré as soon as possible because he is too detrimental to French, Russian and German workers." In May 1923, Andreu Nin informed his Barcelona comrades from Moscow of the action being prepared by a group of Parisian Bolsheviks against the President of the French Council of Ministers. "Although all precautions are taken, Poincaré will die this summer for the well-being of all communists around the world," he insists on the center-right politician who governs the country in the midst of an economic crisis. The French security services intercept the letter from Nin, whom they consider to be a "well-known" Bolshevik.
The report from the Sûreté générale that gives an account of the attack that was being prepared —which did not materialize— is part of the hundred documents of the French secret services monitoring Andreu Nin that La Vanguardia has located in the French National Archives. The material includes reports from 1922 explaining the unsuccessful attempt by the Spanish authorities to extradite him from Germany. From that year on, the French police portray him as a communist trusted by Vladimir Lenin and Lev Trotsky, "honest and disinterested", central to the link between the Russian Bolsheviks and the Soviet organizations in Germany and France, and identifies him with two images.
In the years 1923 and 1924 the French police also monitored his stays in Paris, as the documentation shows. In February 1925, the Minister of the Interior passed on to the Minister of War a photograph that had been seized some time ago from Nin's former comrade in ranks, the CNT member Ángel Pestaña. The Vendrellense Marxist, Ramon Casanellas -one of the assassins of the president of the Spanish council of ministers, Eduardo Dato- and other communists appeared. In the enlargement made by the Sûreté, Andreu Nin sports a large mustache.
In January 1926 Nin, after having received Francesc Macià in Moscow a couple of months earlier in his search for funds to set up Estat Català, traveled to Paris to prospect the French trade union movement on behalf of the Red Trade Union International, of which He was deputy secretary general. Shortly after arriving, the immigration service police arrested him on the 13th. The Catalan pretended to be the Swiss shoemaker Albert Freiman and was quick to confess that he was carrying a false passport. After spending a month in prison, on February 12 he was expelled from France. He left for Berlin.
Detailed knowledge of this process was obtained in 2019 when the main expert on the Marxist leader, Pelai Pagès, published Perseguint Nin. Reports, telegrams and confidences of the Spanish police. The professor emeritus of the University of Barcelona gathered the reports that the mole, a certain Álvarez, that the Spanish General Directorate of Security had in the Sûreté had sent them translated into Spanish. Among which, a long article by Nin on the Catalan national question, written during the month of seclusion. Among the documentation that La Vanguardia has located are the originals in French.
That the Vendrellense was a figure that worried the French administration for fear that he would contribute to awakening the extremism embodied in the French Republic is shown by another document. The Ministry of the Interior, despite having proof of his expulsion, at the beginning of 1927 asked the prefect of La Gironde if Nin had attended the National Congress of the Unitary General Confederation of Labor in Bordeaux at the end of September on behalf of the Red Trade Union International and the Communist International. The answer was negative.
He was in Moscow. So he had already fallen out of favor for aligning himself with Trotskyism. Seeing himself banished by Joseph Stalin, Nin strove to leave the Soviet Union. He did not get it until in August 1930 he was expelled. On the way to Barcelona he passed through France again. On September 10, the French police, who were aware of his situation, were already waiting for him. "A few years ago Nin was considered one of the most important figures in the international revolutionary movement."
After returning to Barcelona at the end of that month, in November 1930, the Sûreté reported "from a good source" that Nin considered that "Russia will soon find itself in the same chaotic state as China," but that according to this "a monarchical movement, capable of restoring order, cannot be considered." Very critical of Stalinist economic policy, he added that "hunger is real in the countryside, but the workers suffer less from scarcity."
Given the seriousness of the internal situation, "it does not seem likely that Russia could think of a war adventure." Regarding a confrontation between Germany and Russia, Nin assured "very categorically" that the latter "will not take part in a European war given the current state of decomposition of the country."
The analysis proved successful. Stalin did not do so until Hitler, in 1941, invaded the USSR and pushed him into World War II. In the late 1930s, however, there was still a decade to go. In Spain the Second Republic had to be proclaimed and Nin acted as translator of Russian literature into Catalan and Spanish in Barcelona. "At the moment he tends to remain in expectation and refuses to participate in current political events in Spain," said the latest French police report that this newspaper has recovered at the time. Not by long, however. Andreu Nin carried the revolution too far inside to stay on the sidelines. During the Civil War his ideas would cost him his life.
