Acronym for Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista; (“Workers’ Marxist Union Party”) A small Spanish anti-Stalinist communist party led by Andrés Nin and Joaquín Maurín, prominent during the Spanish Civil War. Since Republican Spain received most of its external help from the USSR, the Spanish communist party used this to force the suppression of POUM in 1937. POUM supporters included the English writer George Orwell, who chronicled events in his book Homage to Catalonia.