After taking a walk and taking time for some reflection. Yeah. You’re right. I don’t really know what I’m talking about and am taking a “vibes-based” approach. However for me that’s preferable to giving vanguardists any credit for anything.

That being said I did find this: https://socialismtoday.org/archive/38/spain38.html

Arms for Spain: The Untold Story of the Spanish Civil War. By Gerald Howson, John Murray, 1998. Reviewed by Dave Murray

The biggest myth to bite the dust, is that the Soviet Union under Stalin materially aided the republican side. He has tracked down documentary proof that the vast bulk of military material supplied to the republicans by Stalin was of poor quality, that the republic was charged at or above market price and that by falsifying the currency exchange rates employed in these deals, the Soviet Union defrauded the republic of at least $51m (at 1936 prices). Helpfully, Stalin arranged for the Spanish government to ship its gold reserves (in 1936 the fifth largest in the world at $518m) to the Soviet Union and, guess what, by the end of the civil war most of it had been transferred to the Soviet government as payment for arms procurement or in return for credits at the Soviet Bank in Paris. That Stalin was one of the executioners of the Spanish revolution is no surprise to us Trots, but Howson has done us a favour in furnishing us with cold hard facts.

Now I can’t find an actual open copy of the book (nor am I spending that much effort looking for it) so I can’t really give you anything more.