The only non-Bolshevik on all three leading Comintern bodies. And author of the first critical Stalin biography.
Ten days after the Bolsheviks seized power, the twenty-two-year-old Souvarine wrote on 17 November 1917: "It is to be feared that, for Lenin and his friends, the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' must be the dictatorship of the Bolsheviks and their leader. This could become a calamity for the Russian working class, and eventually, for the world proletariat. […] What we wish is agreement among socialists to organise a stable power that truly becomes the power of the people and not the power of a man." — 'La Commune maximaliste,' *Ce qu'il faut dire*, No. 78
The only non-Bolshevik to serve on all three leading Comintern bodies. Expelled in 1924 for defending Trotsky, he turned independent anti-Stalinist and published the first critical biography of Stalin (1935), remaining a pioneering Sovietologist throughout his life.
Career Timeline
- 1914Mobilised into the French Army; experiences trench warfare on the Western Front
- 1916Joins the SFIO and writes for the anti-war minority paper *Le Populaire*; adopts pseudonym 'Souvarine'
- 1919Joins the Committee for the Third International; distributes Comintern propaganda across Europe
- 1920.5Arrested in government crackdown on 'anarchist plot'; writes *Bulletin Communiste* from La Santé prison
- 1920.12Tours Congress: Souvarine motion adopted, creating the French Communist Party (SFIC); named honorary president
- 1921–1924Member of the ECCI, Presidium, and Secretariat — the only non-Bolshevik on all three leading Comintern bodies
- 1924Defends Trotsky at the 13th Bolshevik Congress; expelled from the Comintern and the French Communist Party
- 1926First publishes Lenin's Testament in France, received from Krupskaya via Christian Rakovsky
- 1927–1935Breaks with Trotsky, analysing the USSR as state-capitalist; organises the Democratic Communist Circle (CCD)
- 1935Publishes *Staline, aperçu historique du bolchévisme* — the first critical biography of Stalin
- 1935Founds the Institute of Social History — French branch of the Amsterdam-based IISH
- 1939.5Predicts the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact 100 days in advance in *Le Figaro*
- 1940–1947Arrested by the Vichy regime, freed through an officer's intervention, exiles to the USA; returns to Paris in 1947
- 1947–1976Edits *Est & Ouest* and *Le Contrat Social* — leading voice of anti-Stalinist left Sovietology during the Cold War
The Tours Congress and the Founding of the French Communist Party (1920)
On 17 May 1920, in a government crackdown on an alleged 'anarchist plot,' Souvarine was arrested alongside Fernand Loriot and Pierre Monatte and imprisoned at La Santé Prison. From his cell he wrote almost non-stop for Bulletin Communiste, L'Humanité, La Vague, and La Vie Ouvrière. And it was there that he drafted the motion that would split the SFIO and bring its majority into the Communist International.
When the 18th SFIO Congress opened in Tours on 25–30 December 1920, Souvarine, still behind bars, was named honorary president alongside Loriot. The Congress divided into three factions: the pro-Comintern majority led by Loriot, Souvarine, Ludovic Frossard, and Marcel Cachin; a minority that accepted affiliation only with reservations; and a rejectionist wing led by Léon Blum, who famously declared that 'someone has to stay and keep the old house.' The Souvarine motion carried with 3,208 votes to 1,022, over three-quarters of the delegates, creating the French Section of the Communist International (SFIC), which took with it the party daily L'Humanité and was soon reorganised as the French Communist Party. Souvarine, the architect of this decisive split, was soon elected to the Comintern Executive and spent the next three years working from Moscow.
Stalin: A Critical Survey of Bolshevism (1935)
Published in 1935 by Plon in Paris, Staline, aperçu historique du bolchévisme (574 pp.) was the first critical biography of Stalin ever written. Souvarine went beyond individual biography to trace the structural roots of the Stalin phenomenon through the organisational principles and internal power struggles of the Bolshevik Party. The work was immediately banned by the French Communist Party and attacked fiercely in Comintern publications. Nevertheless it was translated into English (1939), German, Italian, and Spanish, securing international influence. Even Trotsky conceded it contained 'an abundance of interesting quotations and facts.' C.L.R. James translated the English edition; the Hoover Institution reissued it in 1964, and successive editions established it as a pioneering foundational text of Sovietology. Souvarine donated all royalties from the book to his Institute of Social History.