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Maurice Thorez | |
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| Born | 28 April 1900 Noyelles-Godault, Pas-de-Calais, France |
| Died | 11 July 1964 (aged 64) Black Sea, People's Republic of Bulgaria |
| Political orientation | Communism Revisionism |
| Political party | PCF |
Maurice Thorez was a French revisionist politician who served as general-secretary of the French Communist Party (PCF) from 1930 to 1964. Following the PCF's electoral success after the end of the Second World War, Thorez also briefly served as Deputy Prime Minister of France from 1946 to 1947.
Early life
On April 28, 1900, Maurice Thorez was born in Noyelles-Go-dault, in the Pas-de-Calais Department of France. He was the son of a miner and Thorez subsequently worked as a farm laborer and a miner until 1920. Thorez became part of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) in 1919 and took an active part in a struggle for the party to join the Comintern.[1]
Political career
When the French Communist Party was formed from a split in the SFIO in December 1920, Thorez quickly became one of its most prominent figures. He was elected to the Central Committee of the FCP in 1924 and became a member of the Politburo and secretary of the Central Committee in 1925 before becoming general-secretary of the FCP in 1930.[1]
Under Thorez the PCF remained closely allied to the Soviet Union for the entirety of his tenure, even under the revisionism of Nikita Khrushchev and followed his lead of peace coexistence with the capitalist states. With the PCF seeing some electoral success in the years after World War Two, Thorez decided to focus primarily on bourgeois elections and forming alliances with socialist groups even as the support levels of the PCF continued to fall over time.[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 R. S. Varfolomeeva (1979). The Great Soviet Encyclopedia: 'Thorez, Maurice'.