STALIN'S support for the republican Government in Spain during the civil war was not quite as Ralph Prothero (Letters, September 5) imagines it.

Stalin's main pre-occupation was Hitler, and the main thrust of his foreign policy (right up to his non-aggression pact with Hitler) was to delay the attack he knew Hitler was bound to make on the USSR.

To this end the communist parties of Europe were trying to forge popular fronts with other left-wing groups, with the aim of fighting fascism.

Indeed, in Spain this went to such lengths that the communists were the driving force behind reversing revolutionary gains such as collectivisation in the countryside and the control of factories and public services by workers, notably in Barcelona.

The International Brigades performed a key role in the new Republican army, which gradually took over from the militias which were formed by groups (such as the anarchists) which had their own political agendas and in many cases were opposed to what they considered to be the "bourgeois democracy" of the Second Republic.

Many members of the International Brigades may have wanted a communist state in Spain, but that would not have suited the Comintern, any more than it would have suited the Allies after the Second World War to kick out Franco and restore the Republic.

Yes, Mr Prothero, those volunteers were fighting for democracy, and their actions, even if they didn't prevent or delay the Second World War, at least may have alerted people in this country and elsewhere to that imminent danger.

JOHN HEATH (by e-mail).