Czechoslovakia-A Special Section The French CP Fix
HERALD, GEORGE W.
The French CP Fix By George W. Herald leverage on the direction of events. The Czech problem was first discussed by the French Communists at a party meeting last April 19. They agreed to adopt a...
...What shocks them even more is that the Soviets seem ready to preserve this system by force...
...But at least for the time being the questions of their sincerity seems irrelevant...
...Actually, French public opinion is divided on the matter...
...Rochet was visiting his native village, Sainte-Croix-en-Bresse...
...Socialist leader Guy Mollet greeted the party's statements as a positive step that encourages him to continue his dialogue with the Communists...
...All of them rushed back-to Paris for the extraordinary sessions that issued the rebuke to Moscow...
...The news of the invasion took them completely by surprise...
...On August 26, an editorial in the Paris party organ L'Humanite called the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia "a terrible mistake...
...How can they now ask for the evacuation of territories by Is-real...
...The first skirmishes between the Paris and Moscow secretariats were fought in 1963, over questions of art and literature...
...The Russians were furious...
...Anyone who has witnessed Soviet duplicity in the Czech crisis certainly has cause to doubt that the French Communist leaders are any more trustworthy...
...They hinted that they would leave Francois Mitterand's Federation of the Left if it pursued its quest for a new Popular Front...
...This is a veritable act of aggression," he declared...
...The left-of-center Combat said that the move could have "incalculable consequences" for France "by lifting a mortgage on our public life that has always made any real Left-wing policy impossible...
...Their viewpoint was shared by such prominent liberals as Maurice Faure and ex-Premier Felix Gaillard, who said that any further meetings with the Communists had become futile after Prague...
...A volume dedicated to Franz Kafka and Pablo Picasso, with a preface by French Communist poet Louis Aragon, was also banned in Russia...
...On that day, Stalin signed his ominous pact with Hitler...
...The French Communists did not budge...
...They of all people should have known that most Europeans have not yet forgotten the traumatic experience of Nazi occupation and shrink in horror from anyone who casts himself in the role of an occupier...
...Shortly afterward, the talks in Cierna and Bratislava seemed to put an end to the long feud...
...How could they be so insensitive...
...How could the Russians make such fools of themselves...
...Thus the French party leaders were remaining consistent when they lodged their public dissent of August 22, 1968...
...In contrast, the Right-wing L'Aurore and Paris-Presse as well as the official television network dismissed the whole thing as a "tactical maneuver...
...Rochet found the Soviet leaders ill informed about the Czech situation and emotionally upset by the threat of losing face in Central Europe...
...Until now, they have never refused their "unconditional support" to the "fatherland of Socialism," to employ their own terminology...
...exclaimed Ballanger...
...By joining that chorus of protests, the French Communist leaders have taken a truly epoch-making step...
...And if they broke with Moscow altogether, they would fall out of orbit and be left dangling in the air...
...During an on-the-spot survey last spring, they had been flabbergasted by the exent to which Moscow was not only exploiting Czechoslovakia but preventing its re-emergence as a major industrial state in Europe...
...An exhibit of the works of Fernand Leger in Leningrad was forbidden at the last moment because the paintings were judged as being too far removed from the official "Socialist-realist" school...
...But what seems to irk the Paris comrades most of all is that Moscow's blunder threatens to destroy the image of sweet reasonableness the French Communist party has patiently tried to build up since 1964...
...The French Communists realize that it may take some time to get that message across to the Kremlin, but they also know that they have solid allies in Italy, Rumania and Yugoslavia...
...This convinced the French Communists that Russia, under the pretext of Socialist cooperation, is practicing neo-colonialism...
...Part of their membership would wander off to the Socialists, while another part would be inclined to join the various pro-Mao or pro-Castro groups that did so much harm to the party during the May revolt...
...They will not cut the branch they sit on by condoning any Czech attempts to restore capitalism, but they will stick to the view that each Socialist country must be permitted to seek its own form of Socialism...
...A few days later, when the French Central Committee sent Moscow a cable of congratulations, artists and writers such as Pablo Piscasso, Roger Vaillant and Simone Signoret criticized the party's docility...
...It is what one calls in international law a war crime...
...they do not have much of a choice...
...Perhaps the most scathing denounciation, though, came from philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, who considers himself an expert in the field since he sat as a judge on Bertrand Russell's self-styled Vietnam war-crimes tribunal...
...Robert Balanger, leader of the Communist group in the National Assembly, had gone fishing in Corsica...
...For the first time in the history of their movement, they have openly dared to defy Big Brother...
...Their colleagues Etienne Fajon, Roger Ga-raudy and Jeannette Vermeersch (the widow of Maurice Thorez) were disporting themselves on the Black Sea beaches...
...For full details of that exploitation, see Jan J. R. Lorenc's "Prague's Economic Bondage," NL, August 26...
...The second big test for them came during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956...
...He did not hide his pessimism on returning to Paris, and at his behest, the party's political bureau sent a letter to the Kremlin on July 20...
...They agreed to adopt a wait-and-see attitude, hoping they could avoid talcing a stand...
...They feel that Moscow has wiped out with one single stroke years of efforts by its diplomats to represent Russia as a civilized nation...
...When war broke out a week later, Maurice Thorez went to Moscow...
...During a three-day visit...
...A determining factor in their decision was Czechoslovakia's economic plight...
...The author Vercors (The Silence of the Sea), who played a major role in the Communist resistance during World War II, told us: "The Russians must have gone out of their minds...
...Again, they coldly supported the Kremlin...
...When a French delegation visited Moscow in October of that year to obtain explanations about the methods "by which the Soviet Central Committee had removed comrade Khrushchev from his post," it was told to go home and mind its own business...
...The fatal date then was August 22, as it was this summer...
...Then, in May 1964, after Maurice Thorez named Waldeck Rochet his successor, the annual party congress solemnly abandoned the one-party principle in favor of a multiparty construction of Socialism, "in keeping with France's democratic traditions...
...In both cases, the Paris comrades remonstrated to no avail...
...The message has so far been kept secret, but I can now reveal its contents: The bureau members unanimously condemned in advance any military intervention in Czechoslovakia...
...By shouting at the Soviet soldiers 'SS go home!' and by painting swastikas on their tanks, the Czechs simply expressed a sentiment that is being shared by millions of people on our Continent...
...The conservative Figaro took the party's disavowal of Moscow's action at face value, welcoming it as "the beginning of a big schism...
...Satisfied that their advice had been heeded, the French party heads went on their summer vacations...
...Roland Leroy...
...Paris stage director Jean-Louis Barrault said that the Russian invasion, as he watched it on television, looked to him like a real-life performance of Eugene Ionesco's famous play The Rhinoceros...
...champion of the party's progressive wing, had carried his optimism so far as to go mountain-climbing in Bohemia...
...The Paris Politburo issued a statement which said: "The workers of France are wholeheardtedly on the side of the Soviet soldiers who are fighting to keep fascism from being restored in that country and to consolidate Socialist power...
...I deem it all the more my duty to condemn this invasion without any reservation...
...As you know, I cannot be suspected of being anti-Communist...
...French party stalwarts are now expected to try to help their Russian comrades correct that mistake...
...When the conflict continued to drag on three months later, party chief Waldeck Rochet was dispatched to Moscow to urge moderation on Soviet Party Secretary Leonid Brezhnev...
...Their attitude on the eve of World War II has not been forgotten...
...What are they now going to say about Vietnam...
...If they returned to the Moscow fold, they would lose most of their 4.5 million voters, since French working-class sentiment is clearly on the side of the Czechs...
...But many more years had to pass before its leaders embarked on the course that led to their present attitude...
...The Communists were only able to five down this betrayal because of their sacrifices in the Resistance...
...With this support, the Paris comrades hope to succeed in a task neither Marx nor Lenin foresaw in their writings: to insure peaceful coexistence between Communist countries...
Vol. 51 • September 1968 • No. 17
