FRENCH COMMUNIST PARTY

French Parti Communiste Franais (PCF) French branch of the international communist movement. Its large electorate once gave it considerable influence. Founded in 1920 by the left wing of the French Socialist Party, the PCF did not gain significant votes until 1936, when it affiliated with Lon Blum's leftist Popular Front coalition government. In 1945 the PCF won some 25 percent of the vote in France's first post-World War II election, and in 1946 it took part in the Fourth Republic's first government. After May 1947, when the Communists were dismissed from the Cabinet as a result of hardening political attitudes, the PCF did not participate in any Fourth Republic administration, though it won an average of more than 22 percent of the vote in the six general elections from June 1951 to June 1968 and commanded a large representation in the National Assembly. When General Charles de Gaulle became president of the Fifth Republic in 1958, the PCF lost a good deal of ground in a surge of right-wing and nationalist feeling. In September 1965, the party lent its support to other left-wing parties to form the Federation of the Democratic and Socialist Left (Fdration de la Gauche Dmocrate et Socialiste). The alliance succeeded in keeping de Gaulle from an absolute majority in the first round of the 1965 election. In the first round of the June 1969 presidential election, the PCF candidate came in third, with 21 percent of the vote. By the mid-1970s, however, serious strains developed in the alliance of the left; and in 1978 the PCF temporarily abandoned the alliance. The PCF was again allied with the Socialist Party in the 1981 elections. Though its own representation fell dramatically in the National Assembly, it received four cabinet posts in the new socialist government. In 1984, in a change of ministries, it lost these posts. The PCF was a highly disciplined and centralized party with a largely working-class base. It controlled the largest trade-union organization in France, the General Confederation of Labour (Confdration Gnrale du Travail), and published the daily newspaper L'Humanit. The PCF was generally pro-Soviet, and it reestablished party relations with the Chinese Communist Party in 1982. The party by the late 20th century had lost many of its traditional working-class supporters.