In Written in Red: The Communist Memoir in Spain, Gina Herrmann looks at the memoirs of six Spanish Communist writers to reveal the fascinating and often painful evolution of ... Read moretheir politics from the beginning of the war through their long years of exile. While Spanish Communist authors initially shaped their identities and autobiographies along the lines of Soviet models, Herrmann shows how, with the recognition of Stalinism's betrayal of the Communist ideal, the writers increasingly came to experience those models as straitjackets unfit to contain the stories of their rich and difficult lives.

The six writers studied here--Dolores Ibárruri, María Teresa Léon, Rafael Alberti, Jorge Semprún, and Teresa and Tomás Pàmies--devoted their lives to the cause of the revolution. Though they have told their separate stories, this book is the first to gather, compare, and interpret them within their historical and intellectual context and from a comparative perspective that takes into account recent developments in Soviet studies.