Maurice Thorez (; 28 April 1900 – 11 July 1964) was a French politician and longtime leader of the

French Communist Party The French Communist Party (, , PCF) is a Communism, communist list of political parties in France, party in France. The PCF is a member of the Party of the European Left, and its Member of the European Parliament, MEPs sit with The Left in the ...

(PCF) from 1930 until his death. He also served as Deputy Prime Minister of France from 1946 to 1947.

Pre-war

Thorez, born in Noyelles-Godault,

Pas-de-Calais The Pas-de-Calais (, ' strait of Calais'; ; ) is a department in northern France named after the French designation of the Strait of Dover, which it borders. It has the most communes of all the departments of France, with 890, and is the ...

, became a coal miner at the age of 12. He joined the

French Section of the Workers' International The French Section of the Workers' International (, SFIO) was a major socialist political party in France which was founded in 1905 and succeeded in 1969 by the present Socialist Party. The SFIO was founded in 1905 as the French representativ ...

(SFIO) in 1919 and was imprisoned several times for his political activism. After the 1920 split in the SFIO led to the formation of the

(PCF) in December 1920, Thorez became party secretary in 1923 and, in 1930, general secretary of the party, a position he held until his death. After he took office as secretary general, he was supported by Soviet leader

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...

and the

Communist Party of the Soviet Union The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU),. Abbreviated in Russian as КПСС, ''KPSS''. at some points known as the Russian Communist Party (RCP), All-Union Communist Party and Bolshevik Party, and sometimes referred to as the Soviet ...

. In 1932 Thorez became the companion of Jeannette Vermeersch; they had three sons before marrying in 1947, and remained married until his death. Rassemblement-populaire-14-juillet-1936

Thorez was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1932 and reelected in 1936. In 1934, following a Comintern directive, he helped form the Popular Front, an alliance between Communists, Socialists, and radical Socialists. The Front, because of strong popular support as France was reeling from the impact of the

Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...

, won the 1936 election. With the support of the Communists under Thorez, the socialist Léon Blum became Prime Minister of a Popular Front government and managed to enact much of the Front's social-legislation programme. Meanwhile, Thorez presided over massive growth of the Communist Party, beginning with the elections of 1936.

World War II

Following the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 and the subsequent Soviet response to German

invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign, Polish Campaign, and Polish Defensive War of 1939 (1 September – 6 October 1939), was a joint attack on the Second Polish Republic, Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Slovak R ...

, the Communist Party was against the French war effort against Soviet Union, because the Daladier government planned sending troops to fight against Soviet Union. The party was outlawed by the French government. The Party supported the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

's tactical treaty with Germany in order to direct German aggression away from the USSR and toward the United Kingdom and France. For impeding the fight against the Nazis, the Party's publications were banned and many Party members were interned. Thorez himself had his passport revoked. Shortly thereafter, he was drafted. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the French Communist Party openly declared it would violently resist the German occupation; even before this, the Communist Party organized a demonstration of thousands of students and workers against the occupation on 11 November 1940, and in May 1941 organized a strike of 100,000 miners in the Nord and

departments. During this time, articles written by and ghostwritten for Thorez appeared frequently in the party's underground newspaper, ''Humanité Clandestine''. Each of these letters was signed 'Maurice Thorez, somewhere in France'. It was not until several years after the war that the party admitted that this was false, and that Thorez had been in

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for the entire war. In his absence, the affairs of the PCF and of the '' Francs-Tireurs et Partisans'', the party's resistance movement, in France were organised by his second in command, Jacques Duclos. When General

Charles de Gaulle Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle (22 November 18909 November 1970) was a French general and statesman who led the Free France, Free French Forces against Nazi Germany in World War II and chaired the Provisional Government of the French Re ...

's Free French Forces liberated France in 1944, Thorez received a pardon. After the Liberation, Thorez was ordered by Stalin to lead the PCF immediately after the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

to a non-revolutionary road to power. The instructions were not to seize power as had been done elsewhere, but have the reluctant wartime Communist partisans surrender their weapons, and the party would become a powerful force in the post-war governments since it thought that it would soon win legally.

Post-war

In November 1944, Thorez returned to France from his exile in the Soviet Union, and in 1945 his citizenship was restored. The PCF emerged from the Second World War as the largest political party in France based on its role in the anti-Nazi resistance movement during the occupation of France, at least after 1941. Thorez was again elected to the Chamber of Deputies and reelected throughout the Fourth Republic (1946–1958).

In power

Forming a popular front with the Socialist Party in the 1945 elections, Thorez became vice premier of France from 1946 to 1947. By 1947 a combination of the emerging

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

between the

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and the Soviet Union and growing social conflicts in France, linked to the increasing gap between wages and prices, put the three party union (SFIO, PCF and MRP) under heavy pressure, culminating in the May 1947 crisis. Prime Minister Paul Ramadier received threats from the United States that the presence of Communist ministers in the government would have consequences, such as the blocking of U.S. aid from the coming Marshall Plan, or worse: "I told Ramadier," Jefferson Caffery, then U.S. ambassador to France, wrote in his diary, "no Communists in gov. or else." Simultaneously, the 1947 strikes in France caused rumours to spread among the non-Communist members of the government that the PCF would attempt a

coup d'état A coup d'état (; ; ), or simply a coup , is typically an illegal and overt attempt by a military organization or other government elites to unseat an incumbent leadership. A self-coup is said to take place when a leader, having come to powe ...

on 1 May: Jules Moch, SFIO Public Works Minister, claimed to have "certain information" on preparations of a coup by the PCF. Ramadier is alleged to have worked secretly with Georges Revers, the Army Chief of Staff, to set up a secret transport and communications network within the military to safeguard against such a coup, all without the knowledge of François Billoux, the Communist Minister of Defence. The crisis was also escalated by the beginnings of the colonial war in Vietnam, with the communist deputies in the National Assembly voting against the war. Combined, that led Ramadier to look for a pretext to dismiss Thorez and his colleagues from the ruling coalition. On 4 May, the PCF ministers voted against the government over deflationary policies such as wage and price controls, which was given as the reason for the PCF ministers being forced out of the ruling coalition on 7 May 1947. Thorez later recalled the May 1947 events:

In opposition

In 1950, at the height of his popularity among party members, Thorez suffered a

stroke Stroke is a medical condition in which poor cerebral circulation, blood flow to a part of the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: brain ischemia, ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and intracranial hemorrhage, hemor ...

and remained in the Soviet Union for medical care until 1953. That March, Stalin died and Thorez was a member of the French delegation to Stalin's funeral. During the absence of Thorez, the party was ''de facto'' controlled by Jacques Duclos. Thorez resumed his duties upon returning to France. Although his health had deteriorated, Thorez remained party leader until shortly before his death in 1964 on a

Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal sea, marginal Mediterranean sea (oceanography), mediterranean sea lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bound ...

cruise. He published in 1937 an autobiography, ''Fils du peuple'' (''Son of the People'', 1938). The book had been written with the help of :fr:Jean Fréville, who had inserted in the story a passage where the initials of the words formed the phrase "Fréville a écrit ce livre" ("Fréville wrote this book"). The passage, present on pages 36-37 of the first edition, was deleted in the following editions. In 1945, he published ''Une politique de grandeur française'' (1945; "Politics of French Greatness"). A French research institution linked to the French Communist Party and set up in the mid-1960s was named the Institut Maurice Thorez. The city of Torez in

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

was named after him in 1964. In 2016, the city was given back the former name of Chystyakove by decision of the

Ukrainian Parliament The Verkhovna Rada ( ; VR), officially the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, is the unicameral parliament of Ukraine. It consists of 450 deputies presided over by a speaker. The Verkhovna Rada meets in the Verkhovna Rada building in Ukraine's capi ...

. The Moscow State Linguistic University was named the ''Maurice Thorez Moscow Institute of Foreign Languages'' ( Russian: Московский институт иностранных языков имени Мориса Тореза) between 1964 and 1990.

References

External links

at marxists.org * Marcel Cachin, Maurice Thorez, André Martybr>''The People's Front in France''
1935. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Thorez, Maurice 1900 births 1964 deaths People from Pas-de-Calais French Section of the Workers' International politicians French Communist Party politicians State ministers of France Deputy prime ministers of France Government ministers of France Members of the 15th Chamber of Deputies of the French Third Republic Members of the 16th Chamber of Deputies of the French Third Republic Members of the Provisional Consultative Assembly Members of the Constituent Assembly of France (1945) Members of the Constituent Assembly of France (1946) Deputies of the 1st National Assembly of the French Fourth Republic Deputies of the 2nd National Assembly of the French Fourth Republic Deputies of the 3rd National Assembly of the French Fourth Republic Deputies of the 1st National Assembly of the French Fifth Republic Deputies of the 2nd National Assembly of the French Fifth Republic Members of Parliament for Seine Members of Parliament for Paris Anti-revisionists French Anti-Francoists People granted political asylum in the Soviet Union French expatriates in the Soviet Union Recipients of French presidential pardons French people of World War II French people of the First Indochina War French people of the Algerian War People who died at sea Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery People convicted in absentia