Maurice Thorez - Biography

Biography

Thorez, born in Noyelles-Godault, Pas-de-Calais, became a coal miner at the age of 12. He joined the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) in 1919 (which was to become the French Communist Party, PCF) and was imprisoned several times for his political activism. In 1923 he became party secretary and, in 1930, secretary general of the party, a position he held until his death. Thorez was supported by the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, for PCF leadership following splits in many non-Soviet Communist parties in wake of his struggle with Leon Trotsky. As the official leader, Thorez was secretly controlled by the Comintern and the secretive Eugene Fried.

In 1932, Thorez became the companion of Jeannette Vermeersch; they had three sons before marrying in 1947, and they remained married until his death.

Thorez was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1932 and was reelected in 1936. In 1934, following the Comintern directive, he helped form the Popular Front, an alliance between Communists, Socialists, and radical Socialists. The front, because of strong popular support as France was reeling from the impact of the Great Depression, won the elections of 1936. With the support of the Communists under Thorez, Léon Blum became prime minister of a Popular Front government and managed to enact long-needed social legislation. Meanwhile, Thorez presided over the massive growth of the Communist Party beginning with the elections of 1936.

Following the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1939 and the subsequent Soviet participation in the invasion of Poland, the Communist Party was against the French war against Nazis, so was outlawed, its newspapers were banned and many Party members were interned. Thorez himself had his nationality revoked. Shortly thereafter, Thorez was mobilized, but he deserted from the army to flee to the Soviet Union. Thorez was tried in absentia for desertion and sentenced to death.

Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, The French Communist Party joined the anti-German resistance. During this time, articles written by and ghostwritten for Thorez appeared frequently in the party's underground newspaper, Humanité Clandestine. Each of these letters was signed 'Maurice Thorez, Somewhere in France.' It was not until several years after the war that the party admitted that Thorez had been in Moscow for the entire war. In his absence, the affairs of the Party and of the Party resistance movement (FTP) in France were organised by his second in command, Jacques Duclos.

When General Charles de Gaulle's Free French Forces liberated France in 1944, Thorez received a pardon. After the Liberation, Thorez led the PCF immediately after the Second World War to a non-revolutionary road to power, instructing the reluctant wartime Communist partisans to surrender their weapons, while the party became a powerful force in the postwar governments since he thought that he would soon win legally.

In November 1944, he returned to France from the Soviet Union, and in 1945 his citizenship was restored. The PCF emerged from the Second World War as the largest political party in France based on its role in the anti-Nazi resistance movement during the occupation of France, at least after 1941. He tried to make a revolution, after strikes that he organised, in 1948 that failed only because the army was very anti-Communist. Thorez was again elected to the Chamber of Deputies and reelected throughout the Fourth Republic (1946–1958).