Paul Vaillant-Couturier (French pronunciation:[pɔlvajɑ̃kutyʁje]; 8 January 1892 – 10 October 1937) was a French writer and
communist. He participated in the founding of the
French Communist Party (PCF) in 1920.[1]
Biography
Born into a family of actors, Vaillant-Couturier studied law at the
University of Paris. From 1914 until 1918 he fought in
World War I. He joined the
French Section of the Workers' International in 1916, and was a member of the party's internationalist left wing. In 1917, together with
Henri Barbusse and
Raymond Lefebvre, Vaillant-Couturier participated in the founding of the Association républicaine des anciens combattants ('Republican Association of Former Frontline Soldiers'), a radical veterans' organization.
He wrote of his experiences during the war in several of his works, such as La Guerre des soldats and Une permission de détente from 1919 and in the poetry collection Trains rouges from 1923.
In 1920, Vaillant-Couturier was a founding member of the French Communist Party (PCF). In 1921, he was elected to the
Central Committee, and later to the
Politburo of the Central Committee of the PCF. He was also a delegate of the party to the
Third Congress of the
Comintern, held in
Moscow in 1921. Vaillant-Couturier was re-elected a deputy for Paris in 1924 and served as editor in chief of L'Humanité, the central organ of the PCF, between 1926 and 1929 and again from 1935 until his death in 1937. In 1932, he participated in the founding of
Association des Écrivains et Artistes Révolutionnaires, an association of revolutionary writers and artists.
Vaillant-Couturier spent much time in the
Soviet Union, and worked at the Comintern headquarters in Moscow in 1931–1932. In 1933 he visited the
Far East and met with
Ho Chi Minh and other members of the Comintern's Far Eastern apparatus in
Shanghai.
He lost the 1928 and 1932 parliamentary elections, but was elected a deputy again at the time of the
Popular Front in 1936. As a journalist, Vaillant-Couturier made trips to
China and
Spain before his sudden death in 1937; his funeral was attended by thousands of people.