The Return from the USSR to Franco’s Spain in the Cold War

This book tells the story of how and why Spaniards who had been catapulted to the USSR by the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and the Second World War came home.It examines the repatriation, mainly during the Cold War, of Spaniards in the USSR--nearly three thousand children evacuated there during the Spanish Civil War (and their caretakers), communists in exile, Republican aviators and sailors, and prisoners of war who had been soldiers and officers in the 'Blue Division' (the 250th Infantry Division of the Nazi Wehrmacht) that fought against the USSR. In the post-war years, as the Cold War escalated, the repatriation of this politically, socially, and culturally diverse contingent of Spaniards mattered not just in Spain and the Soviet Union, but to people around the world.Yet there were formidable obstacles to repatriation, among them that Spain and the Soviet Union did not have diplomatic relations. For the first time, Glennys Young reveals the behind-the-scenes negotiations between S