Gaston Leval Papers

Period 1937-1978
Total size  0.55 m.
Consultation  Not restricted

Biography

Pseudonym of Pierre Piller; born in France 1893, died in Paris 1978; anarchist, writer; fled to Spain in 1915 to escape conscription; wrote for Tierra y Libertad and other libertarian papers and periodicals; had to stay undercover to evade the police; edited in 1918 his own journal La Guerra Social in Valencia; in 1921, though Frenchman, representative of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) to the Congress of Trade Unions in Moscow; lived in Argentina from 1923; in Spain during the Civil War, he visited and studied the collectives; returned to France at the end of 1937, arrested and sentenced to jail by the military court in Paris; escaped when the Germans invaded France; remained underground until 1951 when his `crime' of 1915 became statute-barred; published `Cahiers pour un socialisme libertaire', books on Spanish collectivization, etc.

Content

Correspondence c. 1957-1978; manuscripts of his memoirs (incomplete) n.d., poems 1944-1946 and n.d., short stories n.d., `Economía Española y la Socialización' 1943, etc.; files consisting of notes and other documents containing data for his book `Collectives in the Spanish Revolution' 1937-1938 and n.d.