The Spanish Civil War
After Mexico, Vidali and Modotti left for Spain during the Spanish Civil War, where Vidali headed the anti-Trotskyist faction of the International Brigades known as the 5th Regiment (Quinto Regimiento). He is known to have participated in the assassinations of many suspected anti-Stalinists, in collaboration with GPU agent Iosif Romualdovich Grigulevich. In Republican Spain, many of the "accidental deaths" of fellow Republicans, especially those of the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification and probably the "disappearance" of their leader Andreu Nin were said to have been carried out under his direction. As a result, Vidali was greatly feared. Vidali, identified as "Carlos Contreras, one of the first Commanders of the 5th Regiment " was shown addressing an assembly of military personnel in the 1937 pro-Republican propaganda film The Spanish Earth.
Read more about this topic: Vittorio Vidali
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