Just as L’Humanité was carrying Thorez’s message to thousands of Communist readers, Duclos was gathering with leading figures from the Italian and East European Communist parties in Sklarska-Poreba. What they heard from the Soviet Politburo member Andreï Zhdanov could leave them in no doubt that Moscow’s line had changed radically. The world, said Zhdanov, was now divided into ‘two camps’ – the ‘imperialist and anti-democratic’ camp aimed at the ‘world domination of American imperialism’, and the ‘anti-imperialist and democratic’ camp, led by the Soviet Union, which sought the ‘undermining of imperialism, the consolidation of democracy and the eradication of the remnants of fascism’. Particularly dangerous in this confrontation was the ‘treacherous policy of right-wing Socialists like Blum in France, Attlee and Bevin in England, Schumacher in Germany’, who, as the imperialists’ ‘faithful accomplices’, were ‘sowing dissension in the ranks of the working class and poisoning its mind’.[389]It followed that alliances with such traitors, as practised until May by the French and Italian parties, were a crass error. The French and Italian comrades now stood accused of legalism, opportunism, and parliamentarianism, as well as a soft line towards the Marshall Plan, and were forced to make a thoroughgoing self-criticism before going home.
The PCF digested the Zhdanov line within a month. Thorez reproduced it at length in his report to the Central Committee on 29 October, regretting the Party’s ‘slowness’ in analysing the new international situation. No longer were the SFIO and MRP placed, as a year earlier, in the ‘democratic’ camp: now all non-Communist forces, from Socialists to Gaullists, belonged to the American party’.[390]The new line was translated into action in France’s workplaces and streets, on the back of rising working-class discontent resulting from falling living standards. Now the PCF proposed to lead industrial action, through its CGT majority, and to add political demands to wage claims. On 12 November the CGT’s Central Committee linked a virulent attack on the Marshall Plan (henceforth an ‘attempt by warmongering American capitalists to enslave Europe’)[391]to calls for strikes in support of a 25 per cent wage rise. The strike wave that gripped France for the next four weeks involved some 2.5 million workers and an exceptional level of violence. Marseilles and other southern towns fell, albeit briefly, into a state of quasi-insurrection; CGT militants derailed the Paris-Lille express with the loss of sixteen lives. The Ramadier government fell on 22 November. But its successor, headed by Robert Schuman, held firm; the Socialist Interior Minister Jules Moch proved ferocious in his use of police and armed forces against strikers, adding further poison to his party’s now execrable relations with the PCF; the moderates in the CGT drifted back to work after three weeks; and the strike formally ended on 10 December. The PCF had made a significant demonstration of force; but it ended the year more isolated than ever, with the CGT now split by the defection of its moderates to form a new union, Force Ouvrière. In conventional political terms, the policy pursued since the Liberation was in tatters. But the autumn U-turn had returned the Party to Moscow’s good graces. A meeting with Stalin in Moscow on 18 November – three years almost to the day since their conversation of 1944 – confirmed Thorez as the leader who would take the PCF into its long crossing of the Fourth Republic desert.[392]
A conventional political party in a democratic system faces continual and difficult choices between ‘policy, office, or votes’.[393]Office is attractive to party leaders for the opportunities it offers to achieve policy goals, as well as for party patronage and personal advantage.[394]But the realisation of policy goals is always subject to constraints, whether political (for example, in relation to coalition partners) or economic and financial. In the long run, to dilute or sacrifice policy goals in the face of constraints simply to remain in office may lose votes, temporarily or permanently; a spell out of office may serve to revitalise a party (through the revision or reaffirmation of policies) and win back electoral support.
The PCF’s record in the Liberation era can be analysed from this perspective, On the one hand, it was inevitable that a party openly committed to the transformation of French society in the interests of the working class would have difficulty keeping working-class support indefinitely when governing at a time of great economic hardship. In that sense, the PCF’s departure from government in May 1947 was decided at Billancourt rather than Washington or Moscow. At the same time, the PCF drew important benefits from its time in office. Building on its Resistance record, it established a status – not held hitherto – as a party of government. It claimed credit for major policy achievements: many of the social transformations of the Liberation era, outlined in this book by Herrick Chapman, owed something to the activities of Communist activists, Deputies, and ministers, and earned the party a durable capital of goodwill among workers. The new nationalised industries became strongholds of CGT and PCF activists; local elections – despite setbacks in October 1947 – gave the party a network of municipalities, especially in the suburbs of major cities; both lasted for decades. The PCF’s roots within French society, even at the dawn of the twenty-first century, owed much to the Liberation era.[395]
But the PCF was not a conventional left-wing party; it was defined by its relationship to Moscow. This had two consequences. First, as is clear from the Soviet archives, it took orders from the Kremlin. These orders did not coincide with the party’s spontaneous preferences; several weeks might be required to assimilate them; but obedience always prevailed. In 1944– 45, the PCF aspired to a strategy of confrontation and even revolution; Stalin, through Thorez, made it behave like a conventional party. In 1947–48 the PCF leadership, at least, had grown rather attached to their mainstream status; Moscow obliged them to undertake ‘mass actions’ (especially political strikes). Secondly, the Soviet link, and the suspicions it provoked among non-Communists, inevitably shaped the PCF’s position in the French political system. Even with the wartime alliance surviving – uneasily – on the world stage, and the tripartite PCF – SFIO– MRP coalition governing France, the Soviet link, more than anything else, disqualified the leader of France’s largest party from the premiership, on three separate occasions. And as the world slipped into Cold War it ensured that the PCF’s exclusion from office, far from being the brief absence hoped for by Thorez, would last thirty-four years.
Наумова Н. Н«Независимые» на пути к власти (1944–1951 гг.)[396]
«Независимые», или традиционные правые – это различные группировки умеренных, возникшие в освобожденной Франции на обломках некогда всесильных, а после Второй мировой войны переживавших упадок и политическое угасание довоенных правоцентристских либеральных объединений Демократический Альянс (ДА) и Республиканская Федерация (РФ). «Независимыми» их стали называть во второй половине 40-х годов, когда в движении умеренных начала выделяться группа «независимых республиканцев», вокруг которой в 1948 г. произошло объединение части традиционных правых в партию Национальный Центр Независимых. В 1951 г. на ее основе возник Национальный Центр независимых и крестьян (СНИП) – крупнейшее правоцентристское объединение Четвертой Республики, включавшее в себя всех представителей лагеря умеренных.
Сразу же по окончании войны слабые, малочисленные традиционные правые, не способные выдвинуть яркие лозунги реформирования и обновления общества, казалось, были обречены на жалкое существование и политическую гибель. Однако уже через шесть лет после Освобождения «независимые», учредив СНИП, стали играть ведущую роль в складывавшейся правоцентристской коалиции (1951–1955 гг.), а их лидеры – А. Пинэ, Ж. Ланьель, Р. Коти – в результате всеобщих выборов 1951 г. получили высокие государственные посты.
В центре настоящего исследования – проблема возвращения к власти традиционных правых («независимых»). Главную свою цель автор видит в выявлении и объяснении тех причин и обстоятельств, которые помогли умеренным группировкам, полностью дискредитированным в глазах французов во время войны, вновь встать во главе Франции и возродить свои идейно-политические ценности.
Хронологические рамки исследования охватывают период с момента освобождения французской территории в 1944 г. до складывания в 1951 г. правоцентристского блока во главе с «независимыми», в том же году пришедшего к власти.
История умеренных, или «независимых» достаточно хорошо изучена во французской историографии[397]. В работах же советских историков о них обычно писали в уничижительном тоне как о «консервативных» и «реакционных» формированиях, сохранивших в неприкосновенности «принципы экономического либерализма» довоенных умеренных[398]. И лишь в последние годы в отечественной науке появился ряд публикаций, в которых предпринята попытка дать более объективную оценку движению «независимых», изучить историю отдельных партий, вошедших в СНИП, проанализировать деятельность его известных лидеров (А. Пине, Ж. Ланьеля)