Roots
Although founded in 1939, the UEC is the heir of numerous students' associations, some of them created at the end of the 19th century at the beginning of the Third Republic. However, the Communist student movement was created following the 1920 Tours Congress of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO), in parallel with the creation of the Communist Youth and of the PCF (named at first SFIC - French Section of the Communist International).
During the July 12, 1920 Congress of the Etudiants socialistes révolutionnaires group (Revolutionary Socialist Students), mostly composed of anarchists (and not exclusively students), the Revolutionary Socialist Students decided to associate them with the Third International — four months before the creation of the Communist Youth and five months before the creation of the SFIC (future PCF). A lot of the Revolutionary Socialist Students were themselves former members of the mostly anarchist association Étudiants socialistes révolutionnaires internationalistes (Internationalist Revolutionary Socialist Students). After this decision, the Revolutionary Socialist Students took the name of Étudiants collectivistes révolutionnaires (Revolutionary Collectivist Students), among which were Nguyễn Sinh Cung, later known under the name of Hô Chi Minh.
After the creation of the Communist Youth (JC) and then of the Communist Youth International, the CYI absorbed the Internationale des Etudiants Socialistes and called forth to the communist students to join it. However, students' were not the priority of the JC — in 1920, France counted only 50,000 students, whom a vast majority came from the bourgeoisie. University circles were adamantly opposed to Communists, and mostly to the right — a lot of them were members of the monarchist Action française (AF). Until the 1930s, Communist presence in estudiantine sectors remained small, and the function of responsible of students quickly disappeared in the JC.
The majority of communist students gathered in the 1920s in the Union fédérale des étudiants (UFE, Federal Union of Students). Danielle and Laurent Casanova were both leaders in this union. The UFE, which boasted several thousand members, counted however many non-Communist members. Furthermore, it was confronted with problems regarding its political orientation, because of its mixed nature between a political association and a students' union. In 1935, after the February 6, 1934 riots organized by far-right leagues, the Etudiants socialistes (Socialist Students) merged with it. Despite this association, or the Clarté universitaire group of Georges Cogniot, related to Paul Vaillant-Couturier and Henri Barbusse's Clarté movement, there was no stable Communist youth organisation before 1938.
In December 1934, the Students' World Congress Against War and Fascism was organized in Brussels, a year after the World Youth Congress in Paris. Furthermore, the JC set up again, in 1935, a function of students' responsible, given to Aimé Albert. The office was renamed "Secretary for Students" at the JC Congress in Marseille of 1936. In 1937, during the Popular Front, the different communist students' groups organized themselves through the creation of a "national secretary of communist students of France," and published their first newspaper, Relève.
Read more about this topic: Union Of Communist Students
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