THE DILEMMA OF THE FRENCH COMMUNIST PARTY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79R00967A000800020008-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 11
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 2, 2006
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: July 25, 1968
• Content Type: MEMO

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SPECIAL
MEMORANDUM
.BOARD OF
NATIONAL ESTIMATES
Secret
The Dilemma of the French Communist Party
Secret
25 July 1968
No. 17-68
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IWPF vow
S-E-C-R-E-T
25 July 1968
SPECIAL MEMORANDUM NO. 17-68
SUBJECT: The Dilemma of the French Communist Party*
1. Assailed from both left and right for diametrically
opposite reasons, the French Communist Party has experienced
two of the most painful months of its history. Ever since the
May-June riots and strikes, the student activists,many younger
workers, and intellectuals inside and outside the Party have
continued to accuse it of sabotaging the revolution, underes-
timating both the power of the student movement and the nature
of labor unrest and, in effect, of "saving" the Gaullist re-
gime. Attacking from a different direction, the more liberal
Communists and many members of the non-Communist left have
criticized the Party leadership for inopportunely advocating a
"popular government," objecting to Mends-France as a potential
interim prime minister, and insinuating that the Party would
demand key ministries in any leftist government. Their argu-
ment is that these tactical errors gave the Gaullists
# This memorandum was produced solely by CIA. It was prepared
by the Office of National Estimates and coordinated with the
Office of Current Intelligence.
GROUP 1
Excluded from automatic
downgrading and
S-E-C-R-E-T declassification
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"evidence" they needed during the elections to claim that the
Party was fomenting insurrection and plotting another Prague
coup. The Gaullists' accusation was highly exaggerated: the
Party did in fact flirt momentarily with a revolutionary line,
but it quickly and openly disassociated itself from those advo-
cating violence and disorder.
2. In any case, the Party's vacillation satisfied no one
and contributed to its losses at the polls. The elections were
a severe setback. Not only did the Party's percentage of the
total vote decrease (20.03 percent, down from 22.51 percent in
1967), but it polled over half a million fewer votes than in
1967. As a result, the Party lost all six of its seats in
Paris, eight of its seats in the Paris suburbs, and even 12
seats in traditionally leftist districts in the south. Nation-
wide, its parliamentary representation was cut from 73 to 314.
Even more significantly, about 600,000 voters who voted for
leftist (including Communist) candidates on the first ballot
did not do so on the decisive runoff ballot a week later. When
faced with a clear choice between a Gaullist and a Communist,
thousands of Communist voters as well as non-Communist leftists
chose the Gaullist. Clearly, the Party's "unity of the left"
strategy had been ineffective with many normally leftist voters.
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3. In his report to the Central Committee on 9 July, Party
Secretary Waldeck Rochet not unsurprisingly defended the Party's
(and his) past tactics and its continued alliance with the Fed-
eration of the Left. He insisted that no revolutionary situa-
tion had existed in May, despite the claims of "leftist groups
led by irresponsible and confused elements;" he reiterated the
need for a "government of democratic unity within the framework
of legality;" and he declared that "Gaullist power must be re-
placed by a government of democratic union born not of subver-
sion (sic), but of the . . . democratically expressed will of
the people." Waldeck Rochet concluded that the most pressing
danger for the Party was "leftism." Underlying this conclusion
was the fear that a more revolutionary line would carry with it
the risk of the Party's destruction -- the Indonesian example
was cited specifically -- or its rejection into political iso-
lation.
4. Rochet's analysis is probably correct, but it is of
small comfort to either Party conservatives or liberals. Events
since May have demonstrated that the alienation of the extreme
left has not been compensated by gains on the moderate left. To
the extreme left inside and outside the Party, the Party is fast
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becoming bourgeois and irrelevant; to the moderate left the
Party is still Stalinist and subservient to the USSR. Actually,
the Party has nowhere to go, as Rochet's report implicitly ad-
mits. It is therefore likely to stay on dead center as long as
possible.
5. Under present Party leadership the PCF is unlikely to
espouse the programs or embrace the leaders of the Unified So-
cialist Party (PSU) and the assorted Trotskyites, Castroites,
Maoists, utopians, and nihilists who compose the various ex-
tremist leftist groups. The Party nevertheless is highly sen-
sitive to being outflanked on the left and will make every
effort to recuperate its losses among students and younger
workers through heightened propaganda and intensified recruit-
ment drives. Doing this and preserving its fragile links with
the Federation of the Left are likely to prove an increasingly
difficult tightrope act even for the practiced gymnasts of the
French Communist Party.
6. The Federation as presently constituted may solve the
Communists' problem by conveniently falling apart or letting
its frayed links with the Communists quietly disintegrate. It
too is beset by internal strife and its survival In its present
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form is by no means assured. Many of the non-Communist leftists
who lost blame their electoral defeat on the Federation's alli-
ance with the Communists. Even those who won only because of
Communist support have been distressingly ungrateful to the
Party. The authority and prestige of Francois Mitterrand,
president of the Federation and principal architect of the al-
liance with the Communists, have been severely impaired by the
election results. He stands a good chance of being removed as
president in the months to come; if he goes, the alliance with
the Communists will be threatened even more than it is now.
Since Party strategy is based on unity of the left, this devel-
opment could jeopardize Waldeck Rochet's position as Party sec-
retary.
7. In the meantime, events in Prague have given the Party
leadership another cross to bear. The struggle between lib-
erals and conservatives there could force the French Communist
Party to cross the Rubicon in broad daylight, i.e., openly to
oppose one side or the other and thereby take a stand for or
against the Soviet Union. A clear anti-Soviet stand undoubt-
edly would help the Party with both extreme (but anti-Soviet)
and moderate leftists in France. Moreover, some Party members
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were "liberals" even before Dubcek and company emerged; others
are smarting under Soviet criticism of the Party showing in the
elections and resent the Soviet Union's ambiguous attitude
toward de Gaulle's regime. These men probably would favor open
support of Dubcek even if it meant open repudiation of the
Soviet Union's position. Their weight in the Party would be
strengthened if Dubcek succeeds in maintaining his program.
8. There is as yet no firm evidence that the present lead-
ership of the Party would support the Dubcek regime if it came
to a showdown with Moscow. It would be out of character for
Rochet and the leadership of the French Party directly to op-
pose the Soviet Union on so vital an issue -- although there
is of course always a first time and this could be the occasion.
Rochet has visited Moscow and Prague, probably to counsel mod-
eration and compromise in both capitals.
I-RO-Chet's unsuccess-
ful call for a conference of European Communist parties to dis-
cuss Czech developments most likely was designed to gain time,
lower everyone's temperature, and placate the Soviets suffi-
ciently to persuade them not to intervene. Unless the Soviet
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Union intervenes militarily in Czechoslovakia or blatantly pro-
vokes internal subversion, however, it appears unlikely that
the French Party would do anything more than make anodyne state-
ments about "separate roads to socialism" and the "independence
of national Parties."
9. In any event, the fundamental problem confronting the
Party would remain: can revolutionary or at least class rhet-
oric coexist with a reformist program and a desire to reassure
the middle class? Can such tactics succeed in giving the
Party at least a share of political power in a modern, indus-
trialized country? The present Party leadership professes to
believe that the negative answer of the June elections was due
to special circumstances -- de Gaulle, anarchists, and violence
and that under "normal" conditions the answer would be "yes."
They may be right, but right or wrong they have no alternative
to their present policy -- especially since changing it means
condemning themselves. If the moment of decision forces itself
upon the Party, the choice would be painful. Retention of the
rhetoric virtually insures political irrelevance, but its aban-
donment would transform the Party into something like a Social
Democratic Party. The historic significance of this decision
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and the internal turmoil it would entail make it almost certain
that the Party will contrive to avoid making it until forced to
do so. Among Rochet's prayers these days must be at least these
two: that the Gaullists remain as inflexible toward their oppo-
sition as they were before May, and that Dubcek proves to be
more flexible toward his than he so far appears to be.
FOR THE BOARD OF NATIONAL ESTIMATES:
ABBOT SMITH
Chairman
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Q
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