Before the Fall Out

The French Socialist Party (SFIO) is addressed at its conference in Tours in December 1920 by Marcel Cachin. Elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1914, he has been editor of the party’s paper, Humanité, since 1918 but, although the banner exhorts the workers of the world to unite, he, along with 110,000 out of a total of 180,000 Socialists, is going off to form the PCF, the French Communist Party, taking the paper with him. However, the person who will turn out to be the most successful founder member of the PCF does not appear to be in the audience, although present at Tours. Pastry chef Nguyen Ai Quoc, born in the French colony of Vietnam, transformed into Ho Chi Minh, will lead his people to independence. Soon after his death in 1969 not merely North but South Vietnam, too, will come under Communist sway.

The Socialists were disappointed by the failure of the general strike earlier in 1920 and, with the revolutions of 1789, 1830 and 1848, as well as the 1871 Paris Commune standing proud in the forefront of their collective memory, were easily persuaded to adopt the successful new Russian model. The Socialist leader, Léon Blum, warned in vain that Bolshevism was not some energised version of the reformism and human rights they were used to but autocratic and ruthless, a denial of democracy and liberty. Sure enough, for the next four years the new party devoted its energies to expelling dissident and anarchist elements, though Cachin managed to earn some sort of martyr status by being imprisoned in 1923 for denouncing the French occupation of the Ruhr and Morocco. Half the membership went and half of the rest were then also driven out, as socialists were denounced as the worst enemy. What was left was a rigidly structured and disciplined top-down organisation, entirely under the thumb of Moscow.

The PCF was saved by the rise of fascism in the 1930s. It, instead of democratic socialism, was now deemed to be the prime enemy, and the Popular Front was formed with the SFIO, winning the 1936 elections under Blum. The PCF was not harmed by his subsequent failure because it had refused office under him, but it went into serious eclipse with the volte-face of the Nazi-Soviet Pact in August 1939, with Cachin removed from office for failing to condemn it.

Once Russia had joined the Allies the PCF put its best efforts into the French Resistance in an attempt to repair the damage to its image and to be in a good position once France was liberated. Charles de Gaulle, however, was fully aware of the danger and made great efforts to prevent any coup. Maurice Thorez, the PCF leader, and four colleagues walked out from their posts in the new government formed after the declaration of the Fourth Republic in 1946. In reaction to the Truman Plan to reincorporate West Germany into Europe, and to the Marshall Plan for US aid, Moscow switched to a new hard line in 1947 and the PCF duly obliged with a wave of strikes. Troops had to be deployed and emergency powers enacted, but what finally turned public opinion against the Communists was the sabotage of an express train, which killed 16. Russia’s brutal coup in Prague in 1948 and then the Berlin Airlift further sapped support. In 1956 Jean-Paul Sartre may have regarded Khrushchev’s ‘Secret Speech’ exposing Stalin’s crimes as a bad mistake, but at least he criticised the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution that year. As far as his erstwhile friend Albert Camus was concerned, the left by now was ‘in complete decadence’.