A Canny Lurch to the Left
KESSELMAN, MARK
A Canny Lurch to the Left The Black and The Red: Francois Mitterrand, the Story of an Ambition By Catherine Nay Translated by Alan Sheridan Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 411 pp....
...After a decade of effort, the Socialist Party, and Mitterrand personally, were rewarded with control of the Fifth Republic...
...He thereby distanced himself from the three great parties that emerged from the Resistance: the Communists, Socialists and Christian Democrats...
...Nay rightly points out that Mitterrand was quite irrelevant to the May movement: Students and workers did not look to any professional politicians for leadership, and Mitterrand's announcing his candidacy for president in an attempt to ease de Gaulle from office was a dismal failure...
...He "captured" the party in 1971, and then staked his political future on a coalition with the Communists (whose leaders and policies he despised...
...This is doubly unfortunate: Not only is the Mitterrand presidency itself scanted...
...Perhaps misguided by her seeming dislike for Mitterrand, Nay dismisses his strictures as merely reflecting personal ambition, never pausing to examine their essential validity...
...Nay describes two scandals that would plague him: the leaking of sensitive security material, of which he was unjustly accused...
...The tenacity of Mitterrand's quest for power cannot be denied, but the reasons behind his maneuvers in the early '70s must be sought at least partly in his understanding of France's changing political economy and culture...
...This fascinating twist in Mitterrand's career has had important consequences for French history, but the reader of Nay's volume will search in vain for an analysis of it...
...only 26 pages concern events since 1981...
...Yet he was also a controversial one, and there were unresolved questions about his integrity and character...
...19.95...
...In any case, certainly there was no indication that Mitterrand would eventually become one of the most influential Socialist leaders in French history, ranking with Jean Jaurès and Léon Blum...
...To learn of his life and policies in the Elysée, the reader will have to turn elsewhere...
...He demonstrated extraordinary skill and persistence in pursuing his goal...
...Mitterrand's "conversion" to socialism doubtless occurred at this time, as did his singular recognition that obtaining power required making a coalition with the Communist Party...
...to stay in power, he sponsored an austerity program in sharp contrast with his previous radicalism...
...The War years had a strong impact on Mitterrand and helped detach him from the Right-wing Catholic milieu...
...Nay argues, correctly I think, that the catalyst was de Gaulle's return to power in 1958...
...The crucial development in Mitterrand's political life prior to his assuming the office of President was his shift from conservatism to socialism—from "black" to "red"—at the beginning of the '70s...
...But here, too, the author proves to be shortsighted...
...One thing Nay does make quite clear: Mitterrand's championing of the Socialist cause was not a logical outgrowth of his background...
...The complex parliamentary arithmetic of the Fourth Republic placed a premium on large parties gaining the support of small groups such as Mitterrand's...
...Following his graduation from high school, he went to Paris to study law and political science...
...It is unclear which of these vicissitudes is of greatest significance...
...Why did he change...
...Mobilized in 1939, he was captured by theGermans, but succeeded in escaping from a prisoner of war camp after two failed attempts...
...After the War Mitterrand joined a small Center-Right party at the edge of political respectability (the pre-War conservative parties were discredited by their support for Vichy...
...If so, she does a disservice to a complex, cultivated, intelligent, and sensitive leader...
...This explanation fails to recognize the changing character of his opposition to the General within the Fifth Republic...
...The most fascinating phase of this man'scareer begins where Nay'saccount more or less leaves of f. In his first years as President, Mitterrand took France in a Leftward direction...
...She has provided a richly detailed, albeit skewed, account of Mitterrand's pre-presidential days...
...Mitterrand clashed with Charles de Gaulle on both a personal and political level during the War, as Nay stresses, and opposed the General's efforts to unify Resistance organizations and activities under his personal control...
...To cement the alliance, he committed himself to enacting a nationalization program more extensive than hitherto seen in any capitalist democracy...
...In order to harness the energy and discontent that the student-worker uprising revealed, however, he would have to forge an imaginative political program and an adequate organizational vehicle...
...Born into a fairly wealthy and solidly Catholic family, he attended Church schools and as a youth espoused impeccably conservative political beliefs, even flirting with the Rightwing group La Croix-de-Feu...
...As a university student in the mid-1930s, he lived in a Catholic hostelry...
...and a staged attempt to assassinate him, which he admitted knowing about beforehand...
...the influence of his background on the path he has taken is left obscure...
...Initially, Mitterrand's vitriolic criticisms were directed at the illegitimacy of de Gaulle's usurpation of power, his contempt for republican values, and his violation of the procedures codified by a constitution he had himself sponsored...
...Where she goes wrong is in suggesting that Mitterrand was motivated exclusively by a fear that de Gaulle would block his political career on account of their past rivalry...
...His position on the matter was steadfast, and Nay notes this...
...Although he was an admirer of Marshal Philippe Pétain and was decorated by the regime, Mitterrand's primary loyalties were clearly to the Resistance...
...To gain the Fifth Republic's highest post, François Mitterrand singlehandedly set his party on one of the most Leftward courses of any European Socialist party...
...In fact, the author devotes almost all her attention to Mitterrand's pre-Elysée career...
...Along with Pierre Mendès-France, Mitterrand was one of the few major non-Communist politicians to decry the General's subversion of the Fourth Republic...
...The grounds of Mitterrand's opposition to de Gaulle shifted from constitutional to socioeconomic as a result of the May 1968 uprising...
...Reviewed by Mark Kesselman Professor of political science, Columbia University Catherine Nay's biography tells you more than you ever wanted to know about France's enigmatic Socialist President—except when it comes to essentials like his motivation, the specific policies he advocated before becoming head of state, and the course he has charted since his 1981 election...
...Making his way to unoccupied France, he became a functionary in the Vichy government...
...Disappointingly, Nay fails to tell us what led Mitterrand to undertake the most fundamental reorganization of the French Left since 1920, when the Communist Party emerged from a Socialist scission...
...now, in the last years of his term, "cohabitation" with a victorious alliance led by Gaullist Prime Minister Jacques Chirac has greatly reduced his control of the government...
...Indeed, the question is scarcely posed...
...She neglects to consider how the May events made Mitterrand appreciate the possibility of toppling de Gaulle and his entire coalition through electoral means...
...Nevertheless, the de Gaulle-headed National Council of the Resistance named Mitterrand—at the ripe age of 27—secretary-general of the prisoner of war movement (later transformed into the post-Liberation government's official ministry for POWs...
...At considerable personal risk he used his position to manufacture vast numbers of false identity papers for Resistance members, and eventually rose to the rank of second-tier leader in the underground...
...Nay says little about any of them...
...Shemay be hinting at an explanation by emphasizing Mitterrand's overweening political ambition: "It is well known that in politics (in François Mitterrand's, especially) ideology is fine providing it does not impede the march to power...
...When the Fourth Republic came to an end in 1958, Mitterrand was a prominent and successful politician...
...As a result, at age 30 he was appointed Minister for War Veterans, and he occupied other leading ministerial positions in many governments throughout the Fourth Republic, Socialist as well as conservative...
...then he trimmed toward conservatism...
Vol. 70 • May 1987 • No. 7
