A Radiant Future. The French Communist Party and Eastern Europe, 1944-1956

Sacker, Richard , Kelly, Michael (ed.) (1999) A Radiant Future. The French Communist Party and Eastern Europe, 1944-1956 , Bern, Switzerland; Berlin, Germany; Brussels, Belgium; Frankfurt, Germany; New York, USA; Oxford, UK; Wien, Austria. Peter Lang, 344pp.

Record type: Book

Abstract

The French Communist Party (PCF) was one of the strongest in the world communist movement after the Second World War. Politically powerful in France, it also had a voice in East-West politics internationally. Its positions on political and social developments in Eastern Europe were influential, but have been little studied. This book remedies the lack by tracing PCF reactions to the Popular Democracies from their birth in 1944-45, through social and political crises, to the dramatic events of 1956 in Moscow, Poznan and Budapest. Drawing on original sources and archive material, Richard Sacker shows how the PCF's approach was shaped not only by Cold War antagonisms and a slavish adherence to the Moscow line, but also by the domestic context of the French labour movement and political conflicts in France. This is a study which opens up new perspectives on a period which is beginning to emerge from memory into history. Contents: French Communist Party - Eastern Europe - 1944-56 France - Yugoslavia - Czechoslovakia - Poland - Hungary - East Germany - Communism - Popular Democracies.

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More information

Published date: 1999

Additional Information: Preface and editing by Professor Michael Kelly. Richard Sacker took a First class Honours degree at the University of Southampton, and taught as a lecteur at the University of Bordeaux. He undertook doctoral research in Southampton and Paris, and was appointed to a lectureship at the University of Leeds in 1994. He died in June 1996 at the age of 29, shortly after successfully completing his doctorate.