The Saint-Denis Communist who demanded the popular front first and ended a fascist
In April 1934 he sent an open letter to the Comintern demanding immediate joint action with the Socialists. In June he was expelled; in July the party signed the very pact he had demanded
A metalworker from Saint-Denis who became a deputy at twenty-six and rose to the executive committee of the Comintern as one of the French Communist Party's young leaders. He was jailed for agitation against the Rif war, sent to China as a Comintern envoy in 1927, and elected mayor of Saint-Denis in 1931. Immediately after the February 1934 crisis he demanded, publicly and ahead of the party line, immediate joint action with the Socialists; he refused a summons to Moscow and was expelled on 27 June. A month later the party signed the very pact of unity of action he had called for, and he was already outside it. In 1936 he founded the Parti Populaire Français and moved toward fascism; in 1941 he helped create the Légion des Volontaires Français against Bolshevism and fought on the Eastern Front in German uniform; he was killed in Germany in February 1945 when Allied aircraft strafed his car.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1898Born to a working-class family at Bresles in the Oise
- 1915–1922Metalworker at Saint-Denis; joins the Communist youth movement
- 1923–1924Leads the Communist Youth International; elected deputy in 1924
- 1925Jailed for agitation against the Rif war
- 1927Sent to China as a Comintern envoy
- 1931–1937Mayor of Saint-Denis
- 1934.02–06Publicly demands joint action with the Socialists, refuses a summons to Moscow, expelled on 27 June
- 1936Founds the Parti Populaire Français
- 1941–1944Helps found the anti-Bolshevik French volunteer legion; serves on the Eastern Front in German uniform
- 1945.02Killed in Germany when Allied aircraft strafe his car
Related historical events
- 1914–1918First World WarFrench conscriptConscripted into the First World War, his unit was destroyed at the Chemin des Dames.
- 1934.01–07The Fascist Riot of 6 February 1934The PCF leader who demanded unity of action firstExpelled in June for demanding joint action with the Socialists ahead of the party line, a month before the party signed the same pact. Two years later he founded a fascist party.
A young leader of the French Communist apparatus, 1920-1932
Conscripted in the First World War, Doriot saw his unit destroyed at the Chemin des Dames; he was awarded the Croix de guerre for bringing a wounded comrade back from the enemy lines and at the same time sentenced to a month in prison for indiscipline. Back in Saint-Denis in 1920, he joined the pro-Third International camp inside the SFIO, and when the socialist youth organization affiliated that autumn to the Communist Youth International he was elected a substitute member of its national committee. Marked by the war and free of family obligations, he became a professional revolutionary.
From 1921 to 1922 he represented the French Communist Youth in Moscow, learning agitation and writing propaganda, and met Lenin, whom he admired deeply. After his return he took charge of the Communist Youth in 1923 and turned it into an instrument for the bolshevization of the party; he also led the communist penetration of the labour sports federation and presided from 1930 to 1934 over the Red Sport International. In January 1923, during the campaign against the French occupation of the Ruhr, he was sentenced to several years in prison for inciting soldiers to disobedience, having pasted up in the Ruhr on the eve of the troops' entry posters calling on French soldiers to fraternize with the German people. He was released only on the evening of his election as deputy for the Seine on 11 May 1924, and that summer published a pamphlet urging soldiers to fraternize with the 'enemy'.
A member of the presidium of the Comintern's executive committee from 1922 and of the PCF political bureau from 1924, he was among the best-informed of the party's leaders on international questions, denouncing the Treaty of Versailles and French imperialism and proclaiming the right of peoples to self-determination, Alsace-Lorraine included. In February 1927 he went to China with a delegation the Comintern sent to oversee the agreements between the USSR and Chiang Kai-shek's government; in April Chiang broke with the USSR and had Chinese Communists massacred in Shanghai, and at the eighth plenum of the Comintern executive in Moscow that May the Chinese question was passed over in silence to protect Stalin. At the PCF's sixth congress, which opened on 31 March 1929, he was attacked for his lukewarmness toward the 'class against class' line and performed a humiliating self-criticism. In 1931 he took over the mayoralty of Saint-Denis from a predecessor removed for irregularities, and made the city his personal fief.