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

In party terms, the leadership counted primarily on the Socialists to avoid the isolation that Stalin had warned against. At the Tenth Congress, Thorez underlined ‘the urgent need to create a strong French Labour party which would bring together Socialists and Communists and constitute the basis of a union between all republicans and all true Frenchmen’.[365]Shortly afterwards, a PCF delegation made merger proposals to the SFIO leadership. But the Socialists were in no hurry. Many feared that their party would be weakened or (as in some East European countries) simply swallowed up by the Communists in a united structure. Léon Blum, the former prime minister, whom Stalin had called a ‘charlatan’ even in 1936, during the Popular Front era, and who now returned the compliment by referring to the PCF as a ‘foreign nationalist party’, reinforced these concerns after returning from deportation in Germany at the end of hostilities.[366]His growing influence within the SFIO leadership helped tip the balance at the SFIO’s Congress of August 1945: favourable to ‘unity of action’ with the PCF, the Socialists voted against a merger. Such a union might not have produced comparable results to those obtained in Eastern Europe. But the decision was a setback for the PCF’s strategy as set out by Stalin; and from that summer, relations between the two parties began to deteriorate.

Partial isolation: the referendum of 21 October 1945

The same balance of electoral success with political setbacks was discernible at the referendum and elections of 21 October 1945, the first vote at national level since the war. With 26.2 per cent of the vote (against the MRP’s 24.9 and the SFIO’s 23.8), and the largest parliamentary group, the PCF was France’s leading party. Pravda again noted the result with satisfaction, explaining that ‘the French people know very well the role played by the Communist party in the Resistance organisations, in the struggle against the Hitlerite occupation, and in the restoration of democratic principles’.[367]

The double referendum held concurrently with the elections, by contrast, produced a less welcome result for the PCF. The referendum (itself a break with tradition, since no referendum had been held in France since the fall of the Second Empire in 1870) concerned the powers of the new legislature, and specifically its right to draft a new constitution and the limitations, if any, to be placed on its mandate. Only the Radicals opposed any attribution of constituent powers: they preferred a straight return to the Third Republic, under which they had held a pivotal position. The PCF and the CGT took the opposite position, seeking open-ended and constituent powers for the new assembly. De Gaulle, however, proposed, in the name of the GPRF, that those powers be limited. The new assembly would have normal powers of a parliament; it would draft a new constitution; but its mandate would last just seven months and its constitutional draft would be submitted to a new referendum.[368]‘De Gaulle has openly thrown his gauntlet into the balance’, noted Pravda, apparently quoting from the French press.[369]Supported by the SFIO, the MRP, and other ‘bourgeois’ groups from the Resistance, this project was opposed, unsuccessfully, by the Communists and the Radicals, as well as the CGT. At the referendum, 95 per cent of the voters backed constituent powers for the new assembly, revealing the Radicals’ extreme weakness; but two-thirds also approved de Gaulle’s proposal to limit its powers, showing – in line with Stalin’s warnings – the relative weakness of the PCF when isolated.

A sense of isolation was aggravated by the behaviour of the SFIO during the campaign. Pravda noted gloomily that ‘The Socialist Party’s campaign was almost entirely directed against the PCF. The Socialist Party rejected… the hand held out to it, and preferred an unnatural alliance with the MRP. The outcome was more than unfavourable for the Socialists.’[370]Three days later, the main culprit was identified by name: ‘Léon Blum has repeatedly spoken in favour of working-class unity and co-operation with the Communists, but every act of the election campaign was directed against the PCF. At the same time, the organisations within the Socialist Party that really pursued working-class unity and co-operation with the Communists were punished by the Socialist leadership.’[371]

The strains of tripartisme, 1945–1946