History of the French Communist Party

In 1958, the PCF was the only major party which was homogeneous in its opposition to Charles de Gaulle's return to power and the foundation of the French Fifth Republic. The PCF regarded de Gaulle as a right-wing autocrat with fascist tendencies, and it had been the sworn enemy of Gaullism since 1946. However, given the widespread support for de Gaulle's return to power and the Fifth Republic, the PCF was more marginalized and isolated than ever. The NO vote in the referendum on the new constitution in September 1958 obtained only 20%. In the 1958 legislative election, the first under the new constitution, the PCF won only 18.9% and 10 seats. It was badly penalized by the new two-round system in single-member constituencies, which makes it hard for parties without any electoral alliances or deals with other parties to win many seats.

During the Algerian War, the PCF refused to support the movements that struggled for Algerian independence or to condemn French aggression against Algeria. It even voted for military budgets and military emergency powers in Algeria.^[17] This position was linked to nationalist sentiments inside the party as well as a desire not to be seen as too "radical" by the French electorate. However, this had the opposite effect as it resulted in a weakening of the PCF. Many students and other militants found themselves alienated from the party and started joining movements outside of it. This formation of a considerable left-wing movement outside the party ranks could be seen as a harbinger of May 68.^[18]

The party also faced internal dissent. Maoism became popular with some members of the party (which became especially problematic with the advent of the Sino-Soviet Split^[17]), leading to their exclusion from the PCF and the foundation of a small Maoist party in 1963. In the early 1960s, the authority of Maurice Thorez was challenged by some members of the Politburo. Laurent Casanova and Marcel Servin pleaded for a critique of Stalinism in the light of the 1956 secret speech by Khrushchev, and they considered the political positions of the Gaullists to be distinct from the atlantist line of the government of the French Fourth Republic. They were expelled from the Politburo.

Electorally, however, the PCF began to escape its political isolation and it was joined in opposition by centre-left and centrist parties. Furthermore, as political debate shifted away from the Algerian War towards socioeconomic issues, the PCF was able to recover lost supporters. In the 1962 legislative elections, the PCF obtained 21.8% of the vote and 41 seats, a substantial recovery aided by mutual withdrawal deals with the SFIO and other left-wing parties in the runoffs (which had not been the case in 1958).

In the mid-1960s the U.S. State Department estimated the party membership to be approximately 260,000 (0.9% of the working age population of France).^[19]

Some months before his death, in 1964, Thorez handed over the leadership of the PCF to Waldeck Rochet. The new secretary-general advocated a left-wing coalition against Charles de Gaulle, a reform of the party doctrine (the thesis of the unique party was abandoned). During this time, Georges Marchais gained prominence within the party, after his election to the Politburo in 1961.

In the 1965 presidential election, on the belief that a PCF candidate would not be able to do well, the PCF supported the left-wing candidacy of François Mitterrand, a former minister of the French Fourth Republic who was opposed to De Gaulle's regime since 1958. Mitterrand had never been a member of the SFIO (he was the leader of the small Convention of Republican Institutions, CIR) and he enjoyed good relations with all left-wing parties including the PCF and the SFIO. The PCF also signed an electoral agreement with the Federation of the Democratic and Socialist Left (FGDS) prior to the 1967 legislative election. Mitterrand obtained 44.8% in the runoff. The PCF won 22.5% and 73 seats.

During these years, the internal rifts over such issues as Maoism, the Algerian War and the Italian Communist Party continued to worsen. Its student movement Union des Etudiants Communistes (UEC) was in fact controlled by a "melange of young Marxist dissidents" between 1963 and 1965.^[17] The party expelled one thousand of them after the UEC's Eighth Congress (1965).^[18]

In May 68 widespread student riots and strikes broke out in France. The PCF initially supported the general strike but opposed the revolutionary student movement, which was dominated by Trotskyists, Maoists and anarchists, and the so-called "new social movements" (including environmentalists, gay movements, prisoners' movement). Georges Marchais, in L'Humanité on May 3, virulently denounced the leaders of the movement in an article entitled "False revolutionaries who must be exposed". He referred to student leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit as the "German anarchist".^[20][21] Although the PCF and the CGT were compelled by their base to join the movement as it expanded to take the form of a general strike, the PCF feared that it would be overwhelmed by events – especially as some on the left, led by Mitterrand were attempting to use Charles de Gaulle's initial vacillations to create a political alternative to the Gaullist regime. It welcomed Prime Minister Georges Pompidou's willingness to dialogue and it supported the Grenelle agreements. When de Gaulle regained the initiative over the situation on 30 May, by announcing the dissolution of the National Assembly and snap elections, the PCF quickly embraced the President's decision.

However, the PCF—and the left as a whole—suffered very heavy losses in the 1968 legislative elections which saw a Gaullist landslide. The PCF won 20% of the vote and lost over half its seat, holding only 34 in the new legislature.

In terms of foreign policy, under Waldeck Rochet's leadership, the PCF slowly and incompletely distanced itself from the Soviet Union. During the Prague Spring, it pleaded for conciliation, then it expressed its surprise and disapproval about the Soviet intervention—but it never firmly condemned it. Nevertheless, the PCF publicly criticized a Soviet action for the first time in its history. This event caused frictions in the Politburo: Jeannette Vermersch, Thorez's widow, resigned.

Following Charles de Gaulle's resignation after he lost a referendum on constitutional reforms, an early presidential election was held in June 1969. Because of Waldeck Rochet's ill health, senator and party elder Jacques Duclos was the party's candidate. The collapse of the FGDS after 1968 and Mitterrand's temporary fall from grace after his actions in May 1968 broke up the PCF's alliance with the left. Indeed, it was impossible for the PCF to support the SFIO's candidate, Marseille mayor Gaston Defferre, an anti-communist who governed his city in coalition with the centrists. As Defferre's candidacy rapidly foundered, Duclos, buoyed by his amiability and personal popularity, rose in the polls. Duclos won 21.3%, placing third but completely eclipsing Defferre (5%), the PSU's Michel Rocard (3.6%) and Trotskyist leader Alain Krivine (1.1%). Eliminated by the first round, the PCF refused to endorse either Gaullist candidate Georges Pompidou and the centrist caretaker President Alain Poher in the runoff, considering that they were two sides of the same coin (blanc bonnet ou bonnet blanc). Pompidou won easily, with 58.2%, but most PCF voters did not vote: abstention increased from 22.4% in the first round to 31.2% in the second round.

In 1970, Roger Garaudy, a member of the Central Committee of the PCF from 1945 on, was expelled from the party for his revisionist tendencies, being criticized for his attempt to reconcile Marxism with Roman Catholicism. From 1982 onwards, Garaudy emerged as a major Holocaust denier and was officially convicted in 1998.

In 1972 Waldeck Rochet was succeeded as secretary-general by Georges Marchais, who had effectively controlled the party since 1970. Marchais began a moderate liberalization of the party's policies and internal life, although dissident members, particularly intellectuals, continued to be expelled. The PCF formed an alliance with Mitterrand's new Socialist Party (PS). They signed a Common Programme before the 1973 legislative election. The Common Programme marked the PCF's acceptance of democratic principles and civil liberties, and included major institutional, economic and social reforms.^[22] The PCF believed, like in 1936, that it would gain the upper hand over the PS and quickly decimate their socialist rivals. On the contrary, however, the PCF was weakened by the alliance with the PS. In the 1973 elections, the PCF increased its support—winning 21.4% and 73 seats—but the distance separating it from the PS was reduced, with Mitterrand's PS winning 19.2%.

Nominally the French communists supported Mitterrand's Common Programme candidacy in 1974 presidential election, but the Soviet ambassador in Paris and the director of L'Humanité did not hide their satisfaction with Mitterrand's narrow defeat at the hands of centre-right candidate Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. According to Jean Lacouture, Raymond Aron and François Mitterrand himself, the Soviet government and the French communist leaders had done everything in order to prevent Mitterrand from being elected: they regarded him as too anti-communist and too skillful in his strategy of re-balancing the Left.

As Giscard became increasingly unpopular, the left swept midterm local elections—the 1976 cantonal elections and the 1977 municipal elections, which allowed the PCF to strengthen its base in local government. But these elections also confirmed the PCF's slow decline: in the 1976 cantonal elections, the PS (26.6%) obtained more votes than the PCF (22.8%) for the first time since 1936.

Internally, the PCF sought to respond to the growing international denunciation of Soviet communism, which followed the Prague uprising (1968) and the publication of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's book The Gulag Archipelago in 1973. In 1976, the PCF dropped references to the dictatorship of the proletariat, affirmed its independence vis-a-vis Moscow and endorsed democratic liberties—although it did not drop revolutionary rhetoric. In L'Humanité in January 1976, for example, the party spoke of a "democratic and revolutionary way [...] to socialism" and "taking into account conditions of our time in favour of the forces of progress, liberty and peace". The PCF's goal was the "transformation of the capitalist society into a socialist society, a fraternal society without exploiters or exploited".^[23] The PCF began to follow a line closer to that of the Italian Communist Party's eurocommunism. However, this was only a relative change of direction, as the PCF remained largely loyal to Moscow, and in 1979, Georges Marchais supported the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Its assessment of the Soviet and Eastern European communist governments was "positive overall".

During Mitterrand's term as PS first secretary, the PS re-emerged as the dominant party of the left. Worried about these trends, Marchais demanded updates to the Common Programme, but the negotiations failed, ending the union of the left. The PS accused Marchais of being responsible for the division of the left and of its defeat at the 1978 legislative election. In the 1978 election, for the first time in a legislative election since 1936, the PCF was surpassed by the PS as the largest party on the left (20.6% for the PCF, 22.6% for the PS). Nonetheless, the PCF won 86 seats.

Marchais was the party's candidate in the 1981 presidential election, facing off against, among others, Giscard and Mitterrand. The PCF envisioned the 1981 election as the opportunity for it to regain its leadership of the left, and it was encouraged by Marchais' rising poll numbers (from 15% to 19%). He ran a populist campaign, which attacked the PS—in particular its alleged shift to the right—as much as the incumbent right-wing President. Marchais' attacks on Mitterrand were often so harsh that many Socialists felt that Marchais was playing into Giscard's hands by attacking Mitterrand. To counter such accusations, Marchais proclaimed himself as the "anti-Giscard candidate" and, late into his campaign, attacked the incumbent as the "president of injustice".^[24]

The election was a massive disaster for the PCF. Marchais won only 15.4% in the first round, in fourth place. Reluctantly, Marchais endorsed Mitterrand in the runoff, facilitating Mitterrand's narrow victory with 51.8% on 10 May 1981.

The snap legislative election in June 1981 was another major setback for the PCF, which marked the end of the PCF's dreams of regaining leadership of the left. A number of PCF supporters had already defected to the PS and Mitterrand by the first round of the presidential election, and the party was unable to stop the bleeding. In the legislative elections, the PCF won only 16.2% of the vote and 44 seats, a far cry from the PS' 285 seats.

After the legislative elections, the PCF obtained cabinet positions in Pierre Mauroy's new government, their first cabinet participation since 1947. The four Communist ministers were Charles Fiterman (transportation), Anicet Le Pors (Public sector), Jack Ralite (health) and Marcel Rigout (professional development). Although some on the right worried about the PCF's participation in government and decried the PS' alliance with the PCF, Mitterrand outmaneuvered the PCF at every turn. As the government's initial leftist Keynesian economic policies proved unsuccessful, with rising unemployment and deindustrialization. Between 1982 and 1983, PS finance minister Jacques Delors changed course in favour of orthodox fiscal and economic policies and austerity measures (rigueur économique).

In the 1982 cantonal elections, the PCF won only 15.9% and lost 45 general councillors. It suffered more losses in the 1983 municipal elections. The party suffered another major defeat in the 1984 European elections, in which Georges Marchais' PCF list won only 11.2%, closely followed by the far-right National Front (FN) which broke through to win 11%. In July 1984, with Laurent Fabius replacing Mauroy as Prime Minister, the PCF resigned from the government. The PCF joined the ranks of the opposition, largely abstaining in the National Assembly.

The PCF fell under another symbolic threshold in the 1986 legislative election, winning only 9.8% and 35 seats. But Marchais refused to budge, and the PCF remained loyal to Moscow until the end.

The PCF leadership imposed André Lajoinie's candidacy in the 1988 presidential election, despite the opposition of the moderate "renewers" led by Pierre Juquin who advocated in favour of eurocommunism and eco-socialism. Juquin ran as a dissident against the PCF's official candidate, receiving support from small far-left (Trotskyist), red green/eco socialist and New Left movements. Lajoinie, a poor candidate, obtained only 6.8% while Juquin took 2.1%. The PCF, however, had a brief respite in the subsequent 1988 legislative election, in which it managed 11.3% but lost more seats, winning only 27. Between 1988 and 1993, the PCF did not participate in PS governments, but offered piecemeal case-by-case parliamentary support to the PS. The 1989 European elections marked another low for the PCF, whose list won only 7.7% and elected 7 MEPs.

The Communists were unable to benefit from President Mitterrand and the PS' unpopularity after 1991–1992. In the 1993 legislative elections, marked by a monumental defeat of the PS, the PCF won only 9.3% and 24 seats.

The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to a crisis in the PCF, but it did not follow the example of some other European communist parties by dissolving itself or changing its name. At the XXVIII^th Congress in 1994, Marchais stepped down as secretary-general in favour of Robert Hue.

Robert Hue sought to transform and renew the party. In his book Communisme : la mutation, he condemned the Soviet Union, in particular its rejection of individualism, human rights and liberal democracy.^[25] Under Hue the party embarked on a process called la mutation. La mutation included the thorough reorganization of party structure and move away from Marxist-Leninist dogma. Democratic centralism was abandoned, the leadership structures revamped and renamed and public criticism of the party line was allowed with the formation of party factions. This move was intended to revitalize the PCF and attract non-affiliated leftists to the party. However, it largely failed to stop the party's decline.

In the 1995 presidential election, Hue managed an acceptable 8.6%, a result superior to Lajoinie's 1988 result but inferior to Lajoinie and Juquin's combined support in 1988.

Under Hue's leadership, the PCF also renewed its alliance with other left-wing forces, primarily the PS, as part of the Plural Left (Gauche plurielle) coalition. In the 1997 legislative election, the PCF enjoyed a brief recovery, winning 9.9% and 35 seats. Under Lionel Jospin's left-wing government between 1997 and 2002, the PCF returned to government with Jean-Claude Gayssot as Minister of Transportation; Marie-George Buffet as Minister of Youth and Sports; Michelle Demessine (later Jacques Brunhes) as secretary of state for tourism; and, after 2000, Michel Duffour as secretary of state for heritage and cultural decentralization.

The PCF's brief recovery proved short lived. The party became riddled with internal conflict, as many sectors – notably the "orthodox" faction – opposed la mutation and the policy of co-governing with the Socialists. In the 1999 European election, the PCF list, despite its attempt to open to social movements and non-communist activists, won only 6.8% and 6 MEPs. 1999 was followed by the 2002 presidential elections, in which Hue won only 3.4% in the first round. For the first time, the PCF candidate obtained fewer votes than the Trotskyist candidates (Arlette Laguiller and Olivier Besancenot), and by virtue of falling under 5% its campaign expenses were not reimbursed by the state.

In the 2002 legislative elections, the PCF won only 4.8% of the vote and 21 seats. Hue himself lost his seat in Argenteuil.

Hue had already resigned the party's leadership in October 2001 to Marie-George Buffet and was completely sidelined from the party after the 2002 rout.

Under Buffet's leadership after 2003, the PCF shifted away from the PS and Hue's mutation. Instead, it attempted to actively reach out to and embrace social movements, trade unions and non-communist activists as a strategy to counter the PCF's decline. The party sought to create a broader alliance including 'anti-liberal' and anti-capitalist actors from civil society or trade unions.

One of the shifts in the PCF's strategy after 2003 came in the form of a more militant Euroscepticism (in 2001, the PCF had only abstained rather than voted against the Treaty of Nice while they were in government). As such, in 2005, the PCF played a leading role in the left-wing NO campaign in the referendum on the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (TCE). The victory of the NO vote, along with a campaign against the Bolkestein directive, earned the party some positive publicity.

In 2005, a labour conflict at the SNCM in Marseille, followed by a 4 October 2005 demonstration against the New Employment Contract (CNE) marked the opposition to Dominique de Villepin's right-wing government; Villepin shared his authority with Nicolas Sarkozy, who, as Minister of the Interior and leader of the right-wing Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) was a favourite for the upcoming presidential election. Marie-George Buffet also criticized the government's response to the fall 2005 riots, speaking of a deliberate "strategy of tension" employed by Sarkozy, who had called the youth from the housing projects "scum" (racaille) which needed to be cleaned up with a Kärcher high pressure hose. While most of the Socialist deputies voted for the declaration of a state of emergency during the riots, which lasted until January 2006, the PCF, along with the Greens, opposed it.

In 2006, the PCF and other left-wing groups supported protests against the First Employment Contract, which finally forced president Chirac to scrap plans for the bill, aimed at creating a more flexible labour law.

Nevertheless, the PCF's new strategy did not bring about a major electoral recovery. In the 2004 regional elections, the PCF ran some independent lists in the first round – some of them expanded to civil society actors, like Marie-George Buffet's list in Île-de-France. The results were rather positive for the party, which won nearly 11% in Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Picardy, 9% in Auvergne and 7.2% in Île-de-France. In the 2004 cantonal elections, the PCF won 7.8% nationally and 108 seats; a decent performance, although it was below the party's result in previous cantonal elections in 2001 (9.8%) and 1998 (10%). The PCF did poorly in the 2004 European elections, winning only 5.88% and only 2 out of 78 seats.

The new strategy, likewise, also faced internal resistance on two fronts: on the one hand from the party's traditionalist and Marxist-Leninist "orthodox" faction and from the refondateurs/rénovateurs ("refounders" or "rebuilders") who wanted to create a united front with parties and movements on the left of the PS.

Buoyed by the success of the left-wing NO campaign in 2005, the PCF and other left-wing nonistes from 2005 attempted to create "anti-liberal collectives" which could run a common 'anti-liberal left' candidate in the 2007 presidential election. Buffet, backed by the PCF (except for the réfondateurs), proposed her candidacy and emerged as the winner in most preparatory votes organized by these collective structures. However, the entire effort soon fell into disarray before collapsing completely. The far-left – represented by Oliver Besancenot (Revolutionary Communist League) and Arlette Laguiller (Workers' Struggle) was unwilling to participate in the efforts to begin with, preferring their own independent candidacies. José Bové, initially a supporter of the anti-liberal collectives, later withdrew from the process and announced his independent candidacy. The PCF's leadership and members voted in favour of maintaining Buffet's candidacy, despite the failure of the anti-liberal collectives and called on other left-wing forces to support her candidacy. This support was not forthcoming, and after a low-key campaign she won only 1.93%, even lower than Robert Hue's 3.4% in the previous presidential election. Once again, the low result meant that the PCF did not meet the 5% threshold for reimbursement of its campaign expenses.

The presidential rout was followed by an equally poor performance in the subsequent legislative elections, in which it won only 4.3% of the vote and 15 seats. Having fallen the 20-seat threshold to form its own group in the National Assembly, the PCF was compelled to ally itself with The Greens and other left-wing MPs to form a parliamentary group, called Democratic and Republican Left group (GDR). The PCF's poor showing in 2007 weighed a lot on its budget.^[26]

In the 2008 municipal elections, the PCF fared better than expected but nevertheless had contrasted results overall. It gained Dieppe, Saint Claude, Firminy and Vierzon as well as other smaller towns and kept most of its large towns, such as Arles, Bagneux, Bobigny, Champigny-sur-Marne, Echirolles, Fontenay-sous-Bois, Gardanne, Gennevilliers, Givors, Malakoff, Martigues, Nanterre, Stains and Vénissieux. However, the PCF lost some key communes in the second round, such as Montreuil, Aubervilliers and particularly Calais, where an UMP candidate ousted the PCF after 37 years. In the cantonal elections on the same day, the PCF won 8.8% and 117 seats, a small increase on the 2004 results.

The PCF, to counter its slow decline, sought to build a broader electoral coalition with other (smaller) left-wing or far-left parties. In October 2008, and again at the PCF's XXXIV Congress in December 2008, the PCF issued a call for the creation of a "civic and progressive front".^[27][28] The Left Party (PG), led by PS dissident Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and other small parties including the Unitary Left responded positively to the call, forming the Left Front (Front de gauche, FG), at first for the 2009 European Parliament election. The FG has since turned into a permanent electoral coalition, extended for the 2010 regional elections, 2011 cantonal elections, 2012 presidential election 2012 legislative election and the 2014 European Parliament election.

The FG allowed the PCF to halt its decline, but perhaps with a price. The FG won 6.5% in the 2009 European elections, 5.8% in the 2010 regional elections and 8.9% in the 2011 cantonal elections. However, paying the price of its greater electoral and political independence vis-a-vis the PS, it fell from 185 to 95 regional councillors after the 2010 elections.

Nevertheless, the FG strategy caused further tension and even dissent within PCF ranks. Up to the higher echelons of the PCF leadership, some were uneasy with Mélenchon's potential candidacy in the 2012 presidential election and the PCF disagreed with Mélenchon's PG on issues such as participation in PS-led regional executives.^[29] In 2010, a number of leading réfondateurs within the PCF (Patrick Braouezec, Jacqueline Fraysse, François Asensi, Roger Martelli...) left the party to join the small Federation for a Social and Ecological Alternative (FASE).

At the PCF's XXXV Congress in 2010, Buffet stepped down in favour of Pierre Laurent, a former journalist.

In 2010, the PCF played a leading role in the protests against Éric Woerth's pension reform, which raised the retirement age by two years.

On 5 June 2011, the PCF's national delegates approved, with 63.6% against, a resolution which included an endorsement of Mélenchon's candidacy as the FG's candidate in the 2012 presidential election. A few days later, on 16–18 June, an internal primary open to all PCF members was held, ratifying Mélenchon's candidacy. Mélenchon's candidacy for the FG, the position endorsed by the PCF leadership, won 59%. PCF deputy André Chassaigne took 36.8% and Emmanuel Dang Tran, an "orthodox" Communist, won only 4.1%.^[30][31] Mélenchon won 11.1% in the first round of the presidential election on 22 April 2012.

The 2012 legislative election in June saw the FG win 6.9%, a result below Mélenchon's first round result but significantly higher than the PCF's result in 2007. Nevertheless, the PCF – which made up the bulk of FG incumbents and candidates – faced a strong challenge from the PS in its strongholds in the first round, and, unexpectedly, found a number of its incumbents place behind the PS candidate in the first round. Applying the traditional rule of "mutual withdrawal", FG/PCF candidates who won fewer votes than another left-wing candidates withdrew from the runoff. As a result, the FG was left with only 10 seats – 7 of those for the PCF. It was the PCF's worst seat count in its entire history.

Despite this defeat, the PCF leadership remains supportive of the FG strategy. Pierre Laurent was reelected unopposed at the XXXVI Congress in February 2013.^[32] On the same occasion, the hammer and sickle were removed from party membership cards. Pierre Laurent stated that "It is an established and revered symbol that continues to be used in all of our demonstrations, but it doesn't illustrate the reality of who we are today. It isn't so relevant to a new generation of communists."^[33]

In 2014 European Parliament election, the Left Front managed to retain same number of votes and to lose two seats. Both of them were held by the PCF candidates.

In 2015 regional election, the Left Front and the PCF combined won just over 4 per cent of the vote, what was the low point of coalition.

In 2016, just year ahead of 2017 presidential election, the Left Front's (and the Left Party's) member Jean-Luc Mélenchon announced creation of the new party, the La France Insoumise. This left to the rift between the parties and de facto coalition disintegrated.

Since 2017, the party decided to run independent campaigns on national level. It came with abysmal results. For example, in 2019 European Parliament election the PCF won just over half of million votes (by itself this result was the worst since 1920s). On regional level the party again run joint lists with the Socialist Party, which became weaker after 2017 presidential election.

In the 2022 French presidential election, the PCF's presidential candidate Fabien Roussel won just 2.28% of the vote, narrowly beating the French Socialist Party's candidate Anne Hidalgo. In the run up to the 2022 French legislative election, the party joined the NUPES electoral alliance alongside other left-leaning parties. The party won 12 seats, up two compared to the previous election.

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• Hazareesingh, Sudhir. Intellectuals and the French Communist Party: disillusion and decline (Oxford University Press, 1991)
• Hughes, Hannah Cole. "Contemporary Perspectives on the French Communist Party: A Dying Ideology?" Thesis. Kent State University, 2013. online Archived 2014-05-06 at the Wayback Machine
• Joly, Danièle. The French Communist Party and the Algerian War (1991)
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• Sacker, Richard. A Radiant Future. The French Communist Party and Eastern Europe, 1944–1956 (Peter Lang, 1999)