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.
Career Timeline
- 1912Begins work as a coal miner at age 12
- 1919–1920Joins the SFIO; helps found the PCF at the Tours Congress
- 1930–1964PCF general secretary; leads the party for 34 years
- 1936Architect of the Popular Front; supports Blum's social reforms
- 1939–1944Deserts the French army, exiled in Moscow; PCF runs the Resistance
- 1945–1947Minister of state under de Gaulle; deputy prime minister (1946–1947)
- 1950–1953Stroke; medical treatment in the USSR; Jacques Duclos runs the party
- 1964Resigns as secretary-general; dies on a Black Sea cruise ship
Related historical events
- 1934.01–07The Fascist Riot of 6 February 1934General secretary of the PCFStill refusing cooperation with the Socialists in February, within five months he signed the pact of unity of action, and at Nantes in October he first proposed the name "popular front".
- 1934–1938The French Popular Front and the Strikes of 1936PCF secretary-general who coined the name 'Popular Front'At Nantes in 1934 he proposed extending the alliance to the Radicals and named it; in June 1936 he led the return to work with 'one must know how to end a strike'.
- 1947–1948The Marshall Plan and the Cold WarPCF opposition to the Marshall Plan and May 1947 expulsion from coalitionThorez's PCF cast the Marshall Plan as the subordination of Europe to American capital and opposed it; the US made the removal of Communist ministers a condition for aid. In May 1947 Prime Minister Ramadier expelled Thorez and all PCF ministers from the government.
The French Road to Socialism
Thorez's most original political contribution was the concept of a 'French road to socialism.' In an interview with The Times published on 17 November 1946, he declared for the first time that the French Communist Party could reach socialism by a path different from that of the Russian Bolsheviks: peacefully, through parliamentary democracy and a broad alliance of the working and middle classes. This was a pioneering formulation of the 'national road' that Western European communist parties sought after the dissolution of the Comintern (1943), and it gave the postwar PCF a strategic basis for converting its armed Resistance networks into regular politics and building a mass party commanding 25 percent of the vote. In December 1946 Thorez stood as a candidate for prime minister, winning 261 of 579 votes, just 29 short, the first time a Western communist leader came so close to the head of government through legal procedure. Even after his expulsion from the coalition in May 1947 and the onset of the Cold War, Thorez reaffirmed at the 14th Party Congress (1956) that 'the Popular Front is an application of the principles of Marx and Lenin,' and this line, later seen as a forerunner of Eurocommunism, defined the PCF's independent identity. His simultaneous support for the Soviet intervention in Hungary (1956) and resistance to de-Stalinisation show, however, that his national path was never fully autonomous from the Soviet line.