Очерки истории Франции XX–XXI веков. Статьи Н. Н. Наумовой и ее учеников

Pravda reported the meetings on 11 December in largely conventional terms, referring to ‘the many manifestations of sympathy, reinforced by the shared hardships of war, between the peoples of France and the Soviet Union’, and the talks between the French delegation, Stalin, and Molotov, on ‘the full range of problems relating to the continuation of the war and the organisation of the world’.[343]Of more interest are de Gaulle’s and Bidault’s official letters to Stalin, reproduced on 15 December. De Gaulle observed that the alliance would serve ‘to co-ordinate the military efforts of Russia and France with those of the United Nations with a view to safeguarding our two peoples from a similar catastrophe in the future’, while Bidault underlined the ‘close and permanent community of interests between our two countries’ which would ‘reinforce our will to win and guarantee peace in the future’.[344]In general, however, Pravda’s reports were relatively lowkey: while the outward events of the French visit were covered, there was no analysis of the treaty’s content, and little interruption to the paper’s staple diet of (victorious) war news, considered more important. Privately, Stalin told Averell Harriman, the American ambassador to Moscow, that he had found de Gaulle ‘awkward and stubborn’, as well as unrealistic in his aims for Germany.[345]French coverage, by contrast, was altogether more fulsome. The treaty dominated the first-ever issue of Le Monde, whose editorialist observed that ‘barely a few months after her liberation, France’s co-operation has been sought out by one of the clearest victors of the war’, that the alliance was ‘a further proof of the skill and far– sightedness of the head of the Provisional Government’, and that it would no doubt pave the way for a tripartite pact with Britain.[346]What neither side mentioned, finally, was the stake of the alliance for French internal politics. For the Soviets, it would enhance the status of the PCF; for de Gaulle, it would help keep the same party in check.

The Stalin-Thorez conversations

De Gaulle’s BBC broadcast of 6 June 1944, inviting the French to ‘fight the enemy with all the means at their disposal’ in the wake of the D-day landings, was echoed by a call to ‘national insurrection’ from the PCF’s Central Committee. In a few days the overall number of partisan units, grouped under the umbrella of the Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur (FFI), multiplied several times over, reaching nearly half a million men, very many of them Communists. Militarily, the results of the insurrection varied from the tragic (premature risings, provoking ferocious reprisals, in Tulle and other provincial towns) to the dashing and successful (in Lille, Marseilles, Limoges, Thiers and above all Paris). It remained to be seen which authority the FFI would recognise. Officially, the answer was clear: since April 1944, two Communists had sat on the CFLN and then the GPRF, as part of a unified Resistance movement headed by de Gaulle (who gave a ministry to Charles Tillon, commander of the main Communist Francs-Tireurs et Partisans, on 9 September). Officially again, from 9 June the FFI were under the command of the French army, and de Gaulle ordered the dissolution of their senior command structure on 28 August. On the ground, things were less simple. The FFI sought to maintain their autonomy from the regular army, while the comités de libération, often drawn from their ranks, disputed control over localities with the prefects and special commissioners appointed by the GPRF: hence de Gaulle’s extensive provincial tours in autumn 1944, aimed at reinforcing the GPRF’s authority across France.[347]