Parti Communiste français - 1934-1939 - Popular Front
Political life in the 1920s was dominated from then on by right-wing coalitions, except for the period 1924-1926 when the Cartel des Gauches (an alliance between Socialists and Radicals) was in power. Since December 1920, when the French Communist Party was formed, the Socialist Left had been divided. The Depression in the Thirties, financial and social problems and the worsening international situation, with Fascists coming to power in Italy and Nazis in Germany, deepened the divisions in France and fostered the rise of many nationalist conservative or extreme right-wing anti-parliamentary movements ("Leagues"). These held an increasing number of violent demonstrations, including the one on 6 February 1934 which prompted the formation of an anti-fascist alliance of Socialists, Communists and Radicals, and gave birth to the Popular Front.
Maurice Thorez, secretary general of the PCF, was the first to call for the formation of a "Popular Front", first in the party press organ "L'Humanité" in 1934, and subsequently in the Chamber of Deputies. The Popular Front was supported, without participation ("soutien sans participation") by the French Communist Party, which did not provide any of its ministers, just as the SFIO had supported the "Cartel des gauches" (Coalition of the Left) in 1924 and 1932 without entering the government. Maurice Thorez, French Communist chief listening to Moscow orders, extended a friendly hand to French Catholics, brazenly telling them that no incompatibility existed between atheistic Communism and Catholicism.
The reunited Left won the 1936 elections and the Popular Front government, headed by Léon Blum, implemented major reforms: the 40-hour working week, collective bargaining, paid holidays, the first nationalizations and a change in the status of the Bank of France. However, internal divisions had not disappeared, and external difficulties still less so.
During the Great War the German revolutionary, Karl Liebknecht had declared "the main enemy is at home”. Lenin, elaborated the policy of "revolutionary defeatism". By this he meant that the defeat or an imperialist power at war was preferable to a victory won at the cost of the class truce at home. At a moment when almost all groups in France, of whatever political stripe, saw the necessity to prepare for war, "revolutionary defeatism" was a disastrous policy.
The Stalinist Popular Front policy, inaugurated in 1935 with the Stalin-Laval pact, had seen the Stalinist parties following and adding to the mass pro-war sentiment. When the Popular Front was in power in France, from May 1934 to August 1939, the French CP supported any attempt to increase French armament, preparing France against Nazi Germany.
On 23 August 1939 the Hitler-Stalin pact was signed: the Soviet Union pledged to stay out of any war between Germany and the Western “democracies.” Little more than a week later the pact was consummated when the Nazis invaded Poland.
As a result of the Hitler-Stalin pact, the parties of the Communist International did an about-face. Now they suddenly discovered the imperialist ambitions of the “democratic” Allies. This new phase was 'revolutionary defeatism' from September 1939 to June 1941. During this phase, Communists in France and elsewhere were urged to sabotage the efforts of their own countries.
The new president of the Council, Edouard Daladier, initially believed that concessions to Hitler at Munich in 1938 would make it possible to avoid hostilities, but on 3 September 1939 he committed France to the Second World War, alongside the British.
Maurice Thorez was a foreign agent who had deserted from the French Army at the time of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, when Moscow was attacking French mobilization against the Nazis. In 1939 the reason the Germans felt secure in invading Poland was that they were hand-in-glove with the Russians in doing so.
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