The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact - ELTE BTK Történelem Szakos Portál

Party), the enemy of the inside. Of course the remarks violence varies
according to the political edge but overall the anti-communist campaign is
unanimous and virulent. On the right and the extreme right, nothing is
surprising, antagonism is already old but occasion is blessed to destroy French
Communist Party. On the left, the report is not hardy better because attitude
answers same logics and if arguments differ about tone and nature, the required
result is the same one: to make disappear the French Communist Party. To the
left, the report is hardly better because the attitude answers the same logics and
if the arguments differ from tone and from nature, the popular profit is the
same : remove the PCF. In the SFIO, divergent opinions were: Blum debate
with Cachin but he disapproves of the suspension of L'Humanité and expresses
his embarrassment, shaken by the contradictions between his spokesman's post
of the party and his personal convictions. But in spite his person, the Blum’s
moderation does not make unanimity and within the SFIO the tone is the
condemnation without reserve of which Paul Faure is made the example:
„Douze balles dans la peau des complices de Hitler! D'accord.” 27 The question
of the pact meets itself even in the internal debates of the parties when are in
confrontation the various currents. At the radicals no more that somewhere else
we know the reflex of union in front of capsizing of Moscou. 28 Jeanneney,
president of the Senate, advises Daladier, figure of the party and the president
of Council, to part from Georges Bonnet, radical and Foreign Secretary. For
Jeanneney, it is a question of getting rid of a disruptive element, often free
electron, which persists in opposing to the policy of firmness of the
government after the signature of the pact. At also raises in house problem
because its pacifist vision of the international situation supported by the right
wing of the party arises in contradiction with the majority ideology of firmness
developed by the left current of the radicals which knew since March 1939 that
it was necessary „indéniablement se préparer à la guerre” 29 - although we can
strongly qualify such an assertion.
Finally, the French Communist Party remains a specific case because its
attitude seems „constituer, politiquement, un suicide” 30 when, at the moment
when all the French political life projectors are directed on it, align on the
Stalin’s policy and deploys an argument arsenal which dismays all the political
world. In spite of the pact signature, which however catches on the wrong-foot
all communist engagements, the French Communist Party does not vary and
align, locked in an ideological rationality which must prevent all divergent
27
Quoted by BERSTEIN, Serge. Léon Blum. Paris, 2006.
28
BERSTEIN, Serge: Histoire du Parti radical. Presses de la Fondation nationale des
sciences politiques, Paris, 1982.
29
ZAY, Jean: Carnets secrets. 1942.
30
Remarks made by SADOUL, Jacques, an important figure ot the PCF, in a letter addressed
on August 26 th to the senator of the Seine, Marcel Cachin, quoted by CRÉMIEUX-BRILHAC,
Jean-Louis: Les Français de l'An 40, Tome 1: La guerre oui ou non?. Gallimard, Paris, 1990.
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