favour of working-class unity and co-operation with the Communists, but every act of the election campaign was directed against the PCF. At the same time, the organisations within the Socialist Party that really pursued working-class unity and co-operation with the Communists were punished by the Socialist leadership.’[371]

The strains of tripartisme, 1945–1946

A further occasion for frustration with the SFIO came with the formation of a new government. The 1945 elections had given the PCF and the SFIO together an absolute majority in the Constituent Assembly. Following parliamentary tradition, under which the majority parties form a government headed by a leader of the strongest party, the PCF’s Bureau politique proposed a PCF-SFIO coalition government with Thorez as Prime Minister, or even – as a fall-back position – with a Socialist at its head. The Socialist leadership refused on both counts, insisting that they would only take part in a tripartite (PCF – SFIO – MRP) government headed by de Gaulle.

Mindful of the Kremlin’s advice not to fight the Socialists openly, the PCF withdrew its proposal; the Constituent Assembly duly (and unanimously) invited de Gaulle to form a government. The General proposed to include representatives of the three biggest parties, but refused to appoint PCF ministers to the three most sensitive posts – Foreign Affairs, Defence, and the Interior – provoking a serious conflict. In the ensuing com– promise, the Communists made major concessions, settling for the ministries of Arms Production, Labour, National Economy and Industrial Production, and sat in government alongside the SFIO and the MRP as well as de Gaulle’s nonparty supporters. Thorez had no portfolio but the rank of Ministre d’État, second in the government’s order of protocol. This tripartite coalition would be the model for almost all French governments until May 1947.

Within weeks, however, a new conflict had erupted – between the Left and de Gaulle in the first instance, but then between the PCF and its partners. The Socialist – Communist majority demanded cuts in military spending; de Gaulle, resenting any interference by the Assembly in the government’s dayto-day business, resigned on 20 January, condemning himself to a twelve-year crossing of the desert, and the regime to a new crisis. Again the PCF proposed Thorez as Prime Minister at the head of a Socialist-Communist government, Pravda observing that if the Socialists stood by their pact with the PCF, the conflict would be quickly resolved.[372]Again the Socialists refused the Thorez candidacy, which was also rejected categorically by the MRP. And again the Communists conceded, agreeing to participate in a tripartite government under the Socialist Félix Gouin.

In principle, Socialist – Communist unity fared better when it came to drafting the new constitution. Their agreed project proposed a parliamentary system with wide-ranging powers for a unicameral National Assembly, largely formal functions for the president, and guarantees of political and social rights as well as a secular state. Approved by the Socialist-Communist majority over the MRP’s opposition, the draft was put to referendum on 5 May 1946. Opposed in the country by the MRP as well as the Radicals and conservative groupings, it went down to defeat by 53 per cent of the voters to 47. This was a set-back for the PCF, which had also still failed to create the united left-wing bloc Stalin desired. For the Communist press in Moscow and Paris, the blame, again, lay with the Socialists. Pravda reported that the PCF had ‘carried practically the whole burden of the campaign’, with Socialist support for the new constitution remaining ‘soft’; it noted that the PCF daily L’Humanité had attributed the result to ‘the Socialists’ refusal to accept Communist proposals for union and unity of action between the two parties.’[373]

Similar complaints marked the campaign for elections to the second Constituent Assembly, held on 2 June 1946. The PCF’s political isolation was now noted openly by Pravda and illustrated with a claim that when the Interior Minister had ordered the removal of election posters from unauthorised sites, only the PCF’s posters had been taken down, leaving those of other parties, including the fiercely anti-communist Parti Républicain de la Liberté (PRL), intact.[374]Such practices were cited to explain the PCF’s descent into second place at the elections, with 25.9 per cent of the vote to the MRP’s 28.2. But Pravda also dwelt on losses by the Socialists (who fell back to 21.1 per cent), seen as resulting from ‘the anti-communism of the Socialist leadership’, which had ‘sown confusion among the party’s leaders and local organisations’. L’Humanité, it added, had underlined the ‘need for the union of workers and democratic forces in France against the reactionaries, who have not disarmed’.[375]

That summer’s events in France worried the Soviet press. The MRP used its electoral success to propose its leader Georges Bidault for the premiership. Izvestia saw the hand of Blum in the post-election manoeuvring, oddly claiming that he sought a single-party MRP government, able to ‘back the anti-communist campaign that certain political parties are currently leading’.[376]Commenting on the signs of anti-communism appearing within French society against the background of the developing Cold War, Pravda observed that on the day before the vote on the premiership, ‘a group of young Fascist sympathisers attacked the offices of the PCF Central Committee in Paris, looting the bookshop in the same building and burning its stock’, and added that ‘the police showed complete negligence’ in the matter.[377]

The Constituent Assembly voted Bidault into the premiership on 19 June 1946 by 384 votes. The 161 Communist Deputies abstained, neither welcoming Bidault as premier nor wishing to move into opposition. It was ‘a pity’, Duclos observed (and Pravda agreed), that France had foresworn the opportunity of ending the provisional regime by rejecting the first draft constitution, but the Communists, as good republicans, respected the people’s will. The new government could only be provisional. On the constitution, the PCF was open to concessions, except on two issues: the secular character