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Stanley G. Payne
American historian (born 1934) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Stanley George Payne (born September 9, 1934) is an American historian of modern Spain and European fascism at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He retired from full-time teaching in 2004 and is currently Professor Emeritus at its Department of History.[1] His works on the Spanish Civil War are known for their "revisionist" approach and have been criticized by some historians for overly benevolent treatment of Francoism and spreading Francoist narratives.[2] However, even historians who strongly disagree with some of Payne's theses have praised his works. The British Hispanist Paul Preston wrote a positive review of Payne's 1987 work The Franco Regime: 1936 - 1975', and argued that it "must surely become the standard work on this subject." In the review, Preston praised the "comparative context" in which the regime was placed, and supported its "careful attempts at an objective narrative."[3]
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Early life
Stanley Payne was born on September 9, 1934, in Denton, Texas. His father and mother were living in Colorado before moving to Texas. His father found work as a carpenter after losing his job to the Great Depression, and eventually became the foreman of a planing mill. His mother completed two years of nurse's training at a sanitarium in Chicago, but was forced to drop out due to lack of support from her family. She was a Seventh Day Adventist. The family moved to Sacramento, California, when Stanley was twelve and Stanley's parents divorced soon after.[4]
Payne received his bachelor's degree from Pacific Union College in 1955. He went on to earn a masters from Claremont Graduate School and University Center in 1957 and a doctorate (Ph.D.) from Columbia University in 1960.[citation needed]
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Known for his typological description of fascism, Payne is a specialist in the Spanish fascist movement and has also produced comparative analyses of Western European fascism. He asserts that there were some specific ways in which Nazism paralleled Russian communism to a much greater degree than Fascism was capable of doing. Payne does not propound the theory of "red fascism" or the notion that Communism and Nazism are essentially the same. He states that Nazism more nearly paralleled Russian communism than any other noncommunist system has.[5][6]
In the 1960s, his books were published in Spanish by Éditions Ruedo ibérico (ERi), a publishing company set up by Spanish Republican exiles in Paris, France, to publish works forbidden in Spain by the Francoist regime ruling the country at the time. He has been referred to by some historians as a revisionist due to his views.[7] One of his more famous books is Spanish Civil War, The Soviet Union and Communism, which analyzes Joseph Stalin and the Soviet government's intervention in Spain. He also wrote The Franco Regime, The Spanish Civil War and A History of Fascism 1914–1945.
Payne uses a lengthy itemized list of characteristics to identify fascism, including the creation of an authoritarian state; a regulated, state-integrated economic sector; fascist symbolism; anti-liberalism; anti-communism, and anti-conservatism.[8] He sees elimination of the autonomy or, in some cases, complete existence of large-scale capitalism as the common aim of all fascist movements.[9]
Francoist revisionism and criticism
Payne's work has been criticized as sympathetic to Francoism by some historians since the 1980s. In 1988, Charles Powell in a review of Payne's The Franco Regime, 1936-1975 described Payne as the "[having shown] the greatest benevolence toward the Franco regime" among "Anglo-American" scholars of the Spanish Civil War and wrote: "The attempt to summarize the origins of the civil war in a few pages leads the author to make value judgments that are not always justified... In general, his interpretation — and the use of expressions such as 'latent authoritarian situation' used to describe the political climate in the spring of 1936 — tends to justify the rebellion." According to F. J. R. Jiménez, Payne's biases have become more evident in further course of his life.[10]
Payne has been supportive of "revisionist" authors on the Spanish Civil War and Francoism. In 2003, Payne published an article in defense of the writer Pío Moa, praising Moa's work as "critical, innovative" which, according to Payne, "introduced a breath of fresh air into a vital area of contemporary Spanish historiography"; Payne accused the Spanish universities and academics of undeservedly silencing and ostracizing Moa in the vein of "fascist Italy or the Soviet Union." Santos Juliá wrote in response: "Stanley Payne's paternalistic contempt is perplexing and disappointing [...] Today, researchers who, in Payne's opinion, publish nothing but "narrow and formulaic" studies have provided the necessary data to finally put an end to the purely propagandistic disputes surrounding the violence unleashed by the victors in the construction of [Francoist Spain], during and after the war."[10] In 2022, Payne stated that Moa's work while "imperfect" and containing "several" "interpretations" that "could be questioned" in general "was a major contribution to discussion of the Civil War," "unique in adopting a thematic and problem-oriented approach and in aggressively confronting the dominant myths," and repeated that major scholars should have discussed Moa's book instead of ignoring it.[11]
Ángel Viñas is highly critical of Payne's methods of research, including Payne's founding his interpretation almost entirely on secondary sources and not on primary evidence: "Payne's methodology and assumptions simply have no basis." In particular, he writes that Payne's work The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union, and Communism (2004) which supports Burnett Bolloten's theses that the Communists and Stalin sought a takeover of Spain with the help of Juan Negrin "has now become hopelessly obsolete" due to "archival material" proving the opposite to Bolloten's and Payne's theses which, according to him, have never relied on concrete evidence. Viñas stated that while he admired Payne in the past, now he sees his works as driven by political agenda instead of research and accused him of promoting "Francoists myths" and narratives.[12][13] The Hispanist Henry Kamen praised Payne's work for utilizing research in Russian which used materials from Soviet police archives.[14]
In 2014 he published Franco. A Personal and Political Biography with Jesús Palacios, who during his youth had been a member of the now-banned neo-Nazi group CEDADE.[15] Since then, he has been considered an iconic figure in Francoist revisionism.[16][17][18] Felipe Fernández-Armesto described this work as "vindication" of Franco;[19] Juan Carlos Losada writes that "Payne and Palacios drastically reduce the amount of violence lashed out by the rebels and add some alleged factors which militated in the same direction," "extoll Franco´s strategic capability and oppose the view that his military decisions kept the war going for too long," "take refuge in the customary topics about Juan Negrin being a Moscow agent and adhere to the conveniently modernized Francoist myths of the old historiography established during the Franco regime."[20] Claudio Hernandez Burgos in his review wrote that the biography of Franco presents itself as objective and a "third path" between neo-Francoist publications and "leftist" "anti-Francoist" historiography, but in fact offers "soft revisionism" which partially disagrees with neo-Francoists, but still places Francoist myths "beyond critical enquiry", downplays Francoist violence and Franco's personal role in it, and presents an "excessively indulgent" account of Franco's life and rule.[21]
Criticism of analysis of fascism
Dave Renton has criticised Payne's approach to definition of fascism. In particular, Renton notes that in Payne's description of fascism through "three negations", anti-communism, anti-liberalism and anti-conservatism, the latter label is troublesome, since Payne "cannot explain why the rise of the two fascist parties that actually seized power was helped, in both cases, by an alliance with the conservative ruling classes." It becomes clear that "fascist anti-conservatism is different from fascist anti-communism" and the conflict of anti-communism and anti-conservatism has always been solved in the favor of the first.[22] Renton believes that Payne's method is flawed, since it posits fascism as a static set of certain beliefs, while fascism was dynamic and contradictory. According to Renton, because Payne founds his theory on description but not explanation, he and other historians "fail to generate a non-fascist understanding of fascism. Their readers are led to a conclusion that the fascist view of itself is the most important factor of the definition of the ideology. This is not a critical theory of fascism, and hardly any sort of theory, at all."[22]
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