Activities and affiliations

Social movements and organizing General Confederation of Labour (CGT, France) 1877–1964 ○ Natural causes

From syndicalism through the Comintern to the Fourth International: a French internationalist across a century of revolution

Lenin described Rosmer as "a man who knows how to keep his mouth shut in five or six languages." — quoted in Philippe Robrieux's internal history of the French Communist Party

American-born French revolutionary syndicalist and a key figure in the Comintern leadership. With Pierre Monatte he published La Vie ouvrière and organised anti-war internationalism; he spent seventeen months in Moscow helping found the Red International of Labour Unions (Profintern). A Political Bureau member of the French Communist Party, he was expelled in 1924 for defending Trotsky, thereafter committing to the Left Opposition and Trotskyism. In 1938 he hosted the founding conference of the Fourth International at his home in Périgny. In his later years he signed the Manifesto of 121 against the Algerian War and wrote the classic memoir Lenin's Moscow.

Political and party leadership French Communist Party (PCF) 1886–1956 ○ Lung cancer

The naval engineer who led the Black Sea mutiny and rose to the Comintern Secretariat

On 19 April 1919, the red flag rose above the battleship Jean Bart in the Black Sea. André Marty, ringleader of the sailors who refused to fight the Bolsheviks, was arrested and sentenced to twenty years at hard labour by a Constantinople court-martial.

A French naval mechanic who in 1919 led the mutiny aboard the battleship Jean Bart in the Black Sea, refusing intervention against the Bolsheviks. He was sentenced to 20 years' hard labour. Pardoned in 1923, he joined the PCF as a deputy and Central Committee member, rising to Comintern Secretary and Presidium member in 1935. As political commissar of the International Brigades in Spain, he organized the Albacete base and earned the epithet 'Butcher of Albacete' for his harsh discipline. Expelled from the PCF in 1952, he remained a central figure in French communism and Comintern work for three decades.

Political and party leadership French Communist Party (PCF) 1896–1975 ○ Pulmonary congestion

The PCF's number two for 37 years: a Stalinist who moved between parliament and the underground

'There was opportunism, legalitarianism and parliamentary illusions... If we courageously carry out this self-criticism before the Party, we shall arouse among the masses a state of mind favourable for the fight,' founding Cominform conference, Szklarska Poręba, September 1947

Number two in the French Communist Party leadership for 37 years alongside Maurice Thorez, entering parliament by defeating Léon Blum in Paris's 20th arrondissement. He directed the clandestine PCF throughout the German occupation and served as vice-president of the National Assembly after the war. At the founding Cominform conference in 1947, he publicly admitted that the party's participation in government had been 'parliamentary illusions,' symbolising the PCF's turn to militant opposition against the Marshall Plan. In 1969, he won 21.3% of the vote as the Communist presidential candidate, the party's best-ever result.

Political and party leadership French Communist Party (PCF) 1900–1964 ○ Illness

A miner's son who built the Popular Front and led the French Communist Party for 34 years

'The French people will never make war against the Soviet Union' — address to the PCF Central Committee, February 1949, as France prepared to join NATO (reported by The New York Times, 23 Feb. 1949)

A coal miner's son who led the French Communist Party for 34 years (1930–1964). He designed the 1936 Popular Front and pioneered the 'French road to socialism' after the war, becoming a forerunner of Eurocommunism.