From Spain to Russia with Love and More: Alejandra Soler Gilabert and Arnaldo Azzati Cutanda in the USSR, 1939-1945

• In Event: Comintern Stories: Internationalism and Intrigue in the USSR and Beyond

Abstract

This paper examines the transnational lives of Alejandra Soler Gilabert (1913-2017) and
Arnaldo Azzati Cutanda (1913-1986), a married couple sent by the Comintern to the USSR at the
end of the Spanish Civil War. Soler, who became an educator in one of the homes for the
Spanish children evacuated to the USSR during the Spanish Civil War, saved the lives of
fourteen Spanish youth during the Battle of Stalingrad. Azzati, a communist journalist, worked
for Radio Moscow. Drawing on an interview with Soler in 2016, archival materials, and Soler’s
memoir, I reconstruct their personal networks, and their subjective understanding of their exile
in the Soviet Union.

Author

• Glennys J. Young, U of Washington