was why the armed units needed to be transformed into a more political organisation; as for the weapons, they should be hidden.’[354]

Stalin added that he had mentioned this point because he felt the PCF had not understood how the situation in France had changed, and accused them of pursuing their old policies, notably in attacking the Socialists and trying to hold on to their weapons, oblivious of the new context in which de Gaulle headed a government recognised by Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States, and other powers. Because the PCF was not strong enough to ‘strike at the head’ of this government, it would need to change strategy, gather its forces, and seek allies so as to be able to claim, in the event of an offensive from reactionary forces, that it was not just the Communists who were under attack, but the whole people. Such allies would also be of use if the situation allowed the Communists to go onto the offensive. To attract them, the PCF needed a broad platform including industrial reconstruction, jobs for the unemployed, the defence of democracy, and punishment for the Vichyites who had acted to suppress it.

Stalin returned again and again to the need for the PCF to be both strong in itself and, crucially, to be surrounded by allies, to thwart its enemies’ attempts to isolate it. He was equally cautious on foreign policy issues, and advised against the French Communists’ adopting the dismemberment of Germany as a slogan, at least unless public opinion and the French intelligentsia clearly favoured it. Outwardly at least, Stalin justified his caution in relation to domestic politics: advocating such a policy without a broad supportive consensus could place the PCF ‘in the same camp as the worst reactionaries’, and in danger of condemnation by association. Hence the need to take careful soundings before moving in this direction. It might be added in passing that the Soviets themselves, while wanting the Oder-Neisse line, had no wish for a divided Germany, and gave rather little support to the GPRF’s positions on this point.

The relationship between the two men was clearly indicated by the close of their conversation. Asked if he had any further questions, Thorez replied in the negative but assured Stalin that he ‘would always need his advice’. Returning to Paris, Thorez immediately called on the French to unite their forces for victory and to ‘struggle for a free, democratic and independent France’. By the end of January 1945, he had become the clear and effective advocate of the disbanding of the militias in accordance with the GPRF decree, and of the subordination of the CDLs to the GPRF.[355]

Thorez had received a brief mention during de Gaulle’s visit to Moscow, when Stalin recommended him to the General as ‘a good Frenchman’, adding ‘In your place, I would not put him in prison… at least, not right away!’[356]But Thorez’s return to Paris on 27 November, and the orders Stalin had given him, proved in many ways more significant than the Franco-Soviet alliance. Stalin had ensured that the PCF would be led by his own hand-picked chief; and for the moment at least, France’s Communists would work within the ‘bourgeois’ political system. The importance of this was not lost on de Gaulle, On Thorez’s death in 1964, he wrote to the Communist leader’s son that ‘whatever he may have done before and after, Maurice Thorez answered my call and, as a member of my government, contributed to the maintenance of national unity’.[357]

Communists in government, 1944–1946

Throughout the existence of the GPRF, France’s Communists did their utmost to implement Stalin’s directives of November 1944. They remained within government in order, as they said, to ‘bring the war to a victorious conclusion’ and to ensure ‘the co-operation of all the patriotic forces towards France’s democratic renaissance’. On one level, they were extremely successful. The PCI established itself as France’s premier political party, heading the poll at two out of the three national elections (of October 1945 and June and November 1946) with over a quarter of the vote – ahead of their Socialist rivals and over 10 points above their own best pre-war result of March 1936. Progress at the ballot-box was paralleled by an explosion in membership. Out of a pre-war total of some 300,000, the PCF had counted barely 5,000 members in the winter of 1939-40. Their numbers had risen to 60,000 by August 1944, to over 200,000 the following month, and to nearly 544,000 by April 1945; they would exceed 785,000 by the year’s end.[358]This was, to a degree, part of a wider international movement. The prestige of the USSR, as the country which had made the greatest sacrifices to defeat Nazi Germany, was at its peak.[359]Communist ideas had won widespread popularity, not least because state control and egalitarianism were readily associated with the wartime mobilisation which had secured victory. In nine countries of Western Europe, including Italy, Belgium, Finland and France, as well as in four Latin American countries, Communists were in government. And in central, eastern, and south– eastern Europe the Communists had won power on the heels of the Red Army. Within France, meanwhile, the influence of the Resistance and of the democratic and antifascist forces linked to it were at their height; the PCF, as one of the principal forces of the Resistance, could not but reap the benefits. Its leading role within the main trade union, the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), itself experiencing a membership boom (with close to four million members), also helped the party put down deep roots in French society.

But France’s Communists were less successful in implementing the central thrust of Stalin’s directives – the construction, under their leadership, of a broad-based left-wing alliance. Parallel to the string of electoral victories ran a series of battles over the new constitution and over the formation of governments; in these, the