Jacques Duclos
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Jacques Duclos (October 2, 1896, Louey in the Hautes-Pyrénées-April 25, 1975, Montreuil) was a French communist politician. He had an outstanding career ever since 1926, when he entered the French National Assembly after defeating Paul Reynaud, and until 1969, when he carried out a brilliant score with the presidential elections.
During World War I, Duclos fought in the Battle of Verdun and got wounded, then saw action at Chemin des Dames and was taken prisoner for the rest of the war.
He joined the Communists as soon as they formed a faction, in 1920. He rose to the Central Committee in 1926, and defeated Léon Blum in the elections for deputy in the XXe arrondissement. He was given charge of the propaganda section of the Party in 1936, and was Vice-president of the French National Assembly.
A Stalinist, he was the person charged with covering the forefront of the French Communist Party, remaining, for more than thirty-five years, the mind behind the political choices made by Maurice Thorez and Benoît Frachon, and very implicated in the International Communist movement, in the Comintern as well as in the Cominform. He was charged with imposing "discipline" on Communist movements in Spain (1930, 1935) and Belgium (1934-1935).
On Joseph Stalin's orders, he advised the Communist Party of Spain to participate in the Popular Front at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.
Jacques Duclos was supervisor of the clandestine French Communist Party throughout the Nazi German Occupation (1940-1944).
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