The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives Collection is an ongoing project begun by the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (VALB) in the late 1970s. These Spanish Civil War veterans recognized the importance of preserving the history of the role of North American volunteers. They formed the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives organization (ALBA) and began to collect letters, writings, oral histories, photographs, posters, artifacts, and ephemera that would preserve this history and contextualize it within the ongoing struggle for radical social change. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives Collection was initially deposited with Brandeis University. In December, 2000 it was relocated to New York University's Tamiment Library.
The core of the archive is the roughly 300 individual collections documenting the life stories of Lincoln Brigade and Medical Bureau volunteers. Soldiers, nurses, and doctors are represented in these collections which contain documentation on approximately 10% of the U.S. volunteers who fought in Spain. There are also more than 10,000 photographs, 200 full color posters, postcards, oral history interviews, biographical materials, radio scripts, and artifacts (buttons, badges, uniforms, and a rifle).
The Tamiment Library continues to build the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, and is always interested in hearing from families and friends of volunteers, as well as researchers and collectors who may have relevant material to contribute to the archives.
At the end of the Spanish Civil War the administrative records of the International Brigades (IB) were taken to Moscow so that they would not be seized by Franco. They are deposited in the Russian State Archive for Social and Political History where they form part of the Comintern Archive. Sections of the IB records relating to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade were microfilmed for ALBA and the microfilm is now part of the collection at NYU. These administrative records of the International Unit and Brigades of the Spanish Republican Army include: selected files of the Military Commission, Communist Party organizations (Spanish and international), official military bulletins, records relating to: command and headquarters, mail service and censorship, transport, supplies, training, and prisoners. These records document the way the Abraham Lincoln Brigade was organized and functioned, its relationships with other international brigades, its political organizations, and relations with Spain's Republican government.
Please contact NYU Special Collections at special.collections@nyu.edu for access to the International Brigades Archive (Moscow): Collection Guide for Fond 545 and for a list of volunteers. Please note that these items are only available as PDF files.
The ALBA Vertical Files are a rich source for background information on the people, events and topics related to the ALBA collections in the Tamiment Library and include coverage of the International Brigades as well. The files contain a variety of documents such as:
These collections are a great place to start your research for background on specific volunteers or subjects related to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and Spanish Civil War.
The Tamiment holds a rich collection of over 200 posters related to the Spanish Civil War.
A selection of ca. 35 Spanish posters from Tamiment's collections which were produced by different (and sometimes opposing) leftist political parties, labor unions, and other organizations that supported the Spanish Republican government during Spain's Civil War from 1936 to 1938, have been digitized and are on display via ARTstor (available to NYU-affiliated researchers only).