Institut Maurice Thorez

Last updated

Institut Maurice Thorez ('Maurice Thorez Institute') was a French research institution linked to the French Communist Party. [1] The Institute was set up in the mid-1960s (alongside the Marxist Studies and Research Centre), as part of a process of ideological reorientation of the Communist Party. These two new institutes encouraged more creative forms of applications of Marxism to theoretical and political problems. [2] At the Institut Maurice Thorez communist historians were able to research without strict party control. [3] The Institute published Cahiers de l'Institut Maurice Thorez . [4]

Georges Cogniot was the founding director of the Institute, a position he held for various years. [5] [6] As of 1978, Jean Burles served as director of the Institute. [7]

In 1980 the Institute was merged with the Marxist Studies and Research Centre, forming the Marxist Research Institute. [8]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Communist International</span> Political organization (1919–1943)

The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was an international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism, and which was led and controlled by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress in 1920 to "struggle by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the state". The Comintern was preceded by the dissolution of the Second International in 1916.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Council communism</span> Form of Left-wing communism developed in the Netherlands and Germany

Council communism is a current of communist thought that emerged in the 1920s. Inspired by the November Revolution, council communism was opposed to state socialism and advocated workers' councils and council democracy. It is regarded as being strongest in Germany and the Netherlands during the 1920s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">French Communist Party</span> French political party

The French Communist Party is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism. The PCF is a member of the Party of the European Left, and its MEPs sit with The Left in the European Parliament – GUE/NGL group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maurice Thorez</span> Former leader of the French Communist Party (1900–1964)

Maurice Thorez was a French politician and longtime leader of the French Communist Party (PCF) from 1930 until his death. He also served as Deputy Prime Minister of France from 1946 to 1947.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacques Duclos</span> French politician (1896–1975)

Jacques Duclos was a French Communist politician and member of Communist International (Comintern) who played a key role in French politics from 1926, when he entered the French National Assembly after defeating Paul Reynaud, until 1969, when he won a substantial portion of the vote in the presidential elections.

Tripartisme was the mode of government in France from 1944 to 1947, when the country was ruled by a three-party alliance of communists, socialists and Christian democrats, represented by the French Communist Party (PCF), the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) and the Popular Republican Movement (MRP), respectively. The official charter of tripartisme was signed on 23 January 1946, following the resignation of Charles de Gaulle, who opposed the draft of the constitution. The draft envisioned a parliamentary system, whereas de Gaulle favored a presidential system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Boris Souvarine</span>

Boris Souvarine, also known as Varine, was a French Marxist, communist activist, essayist and journalist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean Suret-Canale</span>

Jean Suret-Canale was a French historian of Africa, Marxist theoretician, political activist, and World War II French Resistance fighter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brian Pearce</span> British historian (1915–2008)

Brian Leonard Pearce was a British Marxist political activist, historian, and translator. Adept and prolific in Russian-to-English translation, Pearce was regarded at the time of his death as "one of the most acute scholars of Russian history and British communism never to have held an academic post."

In the May 1947 crises, also referred to as the exclusion crises, the Communists were excluded from government in Italy and France. The crises contributed to the start of the Cold War in Western Europe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2nd World Congress of the Communist International</span>

The 2nd World Congress of the Communist International was a gathering of approximately 220 voting and non-voting representatives of communist and revolutionary socialist political parties from around the world, held in Petrograd and Moscow from July 19 to August 7, 1920. The 2nd Congress is best remembered for formulating and implementing the 21 Conditions for membership in the Communist International.

Marcel Rigout was a French politician. He served as Minister of Vocational Training from 1981 to 1984, under former President François Mitterrand. From an early age, he was a member of the French Communist Party. To improve vocational skills, while serving as a government minister, Rigout helped to set up some 800 centres called either PAIO or missions locales between 1982 and 1984 where youngsters were provided with vocational guidance.

Louise Saumoneau was a French feminist who later renounced feminism as being irrelevant to the class struggle. She became a union leader and a prominent socialist. During World War I she was active in the internationalist pacifist movement. In a change of stance, after the war she remained with the right of the socialist party after the majority split off to form the French Communist Party.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Executive Committee of the Communist International</span>

The Executive Committee of the Communist International, commonly known by its acronym, ECCI (Russian acronym ИККИ - for Исполнительный комитет Коммунистического интернационала), was the governing authority of the Comintern between the World Congresses of that body. The ECCI, established by the Founding Congress of the Comintern in 1919, was dissolved with the rest of the Comintern in May 1943.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eugen Fried</span>

Eugen Fried was a Czechoslovak communist who played a leading role in the French Communist Party in the 1930s and early 1940s as the representative of the Communist International. He ensured that the party leaders were loyal to Joseph Stalin and followed the instructions of Moscow. He was ruthless but discreet, and stayed out of the public eye.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean Catelas</span> French politician

Jean Joseph Catelas was a French communist politician who was a deputy for the Somme from 1936 to 1940. He was arrested by the Vichy government during World War II (1939–1945), sentenced to death for his underground activities and executed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William McLaine</span>

William McLaine (1891–1960) was an engineer, Marxist and trade union activist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Far-left politics in the United Kingdom</span>

Far-left politics in the United Kingdom have existed since at least the 1840s, with the formation of various organisations following ideologies such as Marxism, revolutionary socialism, communism, anarchism and syndicalism.

Mieczysław Broński was a Russian-Polish communist, Soviet diplomat, economist and academic, and a victim of the Great Purge.

Germaine Schneider was a Belgian communist and Communist International (Comintern) agent. During the latter half of the 1920s, Schneider worked predominantly for the Communist Party of Belgium. During the interwar period and early World War II, Schneider was a core member of a Soviet espionage group. She worked as a principal courier for the groups that were associated with the Comintern agent, Henry Robinson in the late 1930s in France and later the Soviet GRU officer, Konstantin Jeffremov in Belgium and the Low Countries, in the early 1940s. These groups were later identified by the Abwehr under the moniker the Red Orchestra. Schneider used the aliases Clais, Pauline, Odette, Papillon and Butterfly (Schmetterling) to disguise her identity.

References

  1. Bell, David Scott. Contemporary French Political Parties . New York: St. Martin's Press, 1982. p.
  2. Adereth, M. The French Communist Party: A Critical History (1920-1984), from Comintern to "the Colours of France" . Manchester [Greater Manchester]: Manchester University Press, 1984. p. 180
  3. Guiat, Cyrille. The French and Italian Communist Parties: Comrades and Culture . London: Frank Cass, 2003. p. 4
  4. Adereth, M. The French Communist Party: A Critical History (1920-1984), from Comintern to "the Colours of France" . Manchester [Greater Manchester]: Manchester University Press, 1984. p. 293
  5. Lazić, Branko M., and Milorad M. Drachkovitch. Biographical Dictionary of the Comintern . Stanford, Calif: Hoover Institution Press, 1986. p. 78
  6. Mehnert, Klaus. Moscow and the New Left . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975. p. 293
  7. Bucharin, N. I. Selected Writings on the State and the Transition to Socialism . Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1982. p. xxi
  8. Adereth, M. The French Communist Party: A Critical History (1920-1984), from Comintern to "the Colours of France" . Manchester [Greater Manchester]: Manchester University Press, 1984. p. xv