Jacques Duclos

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Jacques Duclos, 1969.

Jacques Duclos (October 2, 1896 in Louey, Hautes-Pyrénées-April 25, 1975 in Montreuil) was a French Communist politician who played a key role in French politics from 1926, when he entered the French National Assembly after defeating Paul Reynaud, until 1969, when he achieved a substantial proportion of the vote in the Presidential Elections.

During World War I, Duclos fought in the Battle of Verdun, where he was wounded. He was captured at Chemin des Dames, and remained a POW for the remainder of the war. In 1920, he joined the newly formed French Communist Party. He rose to the Central Committee in 1926, and defeated Léon Blum in the elections for deputy in the XXe arrondissement. He was named head of the propaganda section of the Party in 1936, and was elected to Vice-President of the French National Assembly.

A Stalinist, Duclos was for more than 35 years the brain behind political choices made by Maurice Thorez and Benoît Frachon. He was involved in the International Communist Movement, in the Comintern, and in the Cominform. In the 1930s, he was assigned the task of exerting "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.

Duclos was the supervisor of the clandestine French Communist Party throughout the Nazi German Occupation (1940-1944), and, with Pierre Villon, took the initiative in creating the Front National resistant movement, which was the political front for the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans (FTP) guerrillas.

After 1950, Maurice Thorez's health faltered, but Duclos remained one of the most influential members of the Party. He was instrumental in eliminating his rival André Marty from the Party's leadership. Waldeck Rochet's failing health prompted Duclos to run as the Party's presidential candidate in the the 1969 election, scoring 21.27% of the vote, the highest ever for a Communist presidential candidate in France.