A committed historian of revolutionary movements
He read Spain’s revolution not as a side episode of the war, but as a defeated social revolution.
Pierre Broué was a French Trotskyist historian and teachers’ activist who studied communism and twentieth-century revolutionary movements. His 1961 history of the Spanish Revolution and Civil War, written with Émile Témime, interpreted the defeat of the revolutionary process through the clash of class forces inside the Republic and Stalinist policy. He combined political commitment with archival and editorial work on Trotsky and the Trotskyist movement.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1944Joined the Parti communiste internationaliste and entered the Trotskyist movement
- 1953Completed an early historical study of a historian of the French Revolution
- 1960–1965Taught history and geography in secondary schools
- 1961Published La Révolution et la guerre d’Espagne with Émile Témime
- 1965–1975Taught contemporary history at Grenoble’s institute of political studies and organized in the OCI
- 1972Published Révolution en Allemagne, 1917–1923
- 1977Founded the Institut Léon Trotsky
- 1997Published Histoire de l’Internationale communiste, 1919–1943
Related historical events
- 1918.10–1919.08The German Revolution of 1918–1919The German Revolution 1917–1923Told the revolution as the defeat of a European revolution.
- 1919–1921The founding of the CominternHistorian of the CominternIn 1997 he published a book on the history of the Communist International.
- 1936–1939The Spanish Civil Warhistorian of the radical schoolIn a 1961 co-authored history, he argued the Spanish revolution was suppressed by Stalinism.
Recovering Trotsky’s writings and researching revolutionary history
Broué extended his work on revolutionary history beyond writing books to recovering and publishing primary materials. In 1977 he founded the Institut Léon Trotsky, directed the publication of Trotsky’s works in French, which reached 27 volumes, and founded and edited the journal Cahiers Léon Trotsky on the history of Trotskyism. When a previously closed section of Trotsky’s archive at Harvard opened in 1980, Broué was among the first researchers to work with the material. One major result was his 1988 biography, Trotsky.
He later used records that became newly accessible amid political changes in the Soviet Union. In the 1990s and early 2000s he published studies on Stalin and the Spanish Revolution, Rakovsky, the history of the Communist International, and communists persecuted under Stalin. This work both preserved documentary materials of the Trotskyist movement and pursued a history of revolutionary movements grounded in contemporary documents and records.