Divided French Communists Open Party Talks

SAINT-OUEN, France â€”  The French Communist Party, weaker and torn by more internal dissent than at any time since its founding 65 years ago, opened a closely watched party congress Wednesday in a defiant, if defensive, mood.

Reading aloud a 198-page report for five hours, Secretary General Georges Marchais refused to acknowledge any major responsibility for the sorry state of the party’s electoral fortunes. Instead, he scathingly blamed the troubles on a series of betrayals by his former allies, President Francois Mitterrand and his Socialist Party, though he did not rule out joining the Socialists in another “union of the left� some time in the future.

Marchais also slapped aside those critics who believe the French Communists have no future unless they break their ties with the Soviet Union.

“The Communist Party of the Soviet Union,� he said, “must have a preponderant role, a role of guiding the party within what we call the international Communist movement.�

In Full Control

Judging by the sustained, rhythmic clapping the 1,722 delegates gave him, the 64-year-old Marchais is in full control of the congress and will easily win reelection to lead the party, as he has since 1972. Speaking to the delegates in a sports arena in this Paris suburb, he was backed by a huge banner that proclaimed “Hope and Combat With the Communists.�

The congress is the first held by the Communists since 1981, the year they joined the Socialists in supporting Mitterrand for president in the final round of the election. Mitterrand named four Communist ministers to his Cabinet but, chafing under his economic austerity programs, the Communists withdrew from the government last July.

Never before had there been so much open bickering within the party as in the weeks leading up to the congress. Unable to ignore it, Marchais replied directly to one of the chief critics, Politburo member Pierre Juquin, who was sitting on the platform.

The discontent within the party stems from its shock last June, when it received only 11% of the vote in the European parliamentary elections. That was the party’s lowest percentage in any election since 1928 and was a far cry from the days after World War II when the Communists were the largest party in France and usually polled more than 20% of the vote.

Drop in Membership

In addition to the declining vote, the party is facing a drop in membership and in readership of party newspapers.

Marchais and the other dominant leaders asserted that the party’s troubles were not of their making and that provoked an unusual number of open attacks. Marcel Rigout, one of the four former Cabinet members, said that Marchais was “a man of failure.� Juquin, whose official job is party spokesman, published an attack on the party program in L’Humanite, the official party newspaper.

With such public criticism, Marchais had a relatively difficult time winning approval for the Politburo’s proposed party program in the weeks before the congress. Six members of the Central Committee abstained in the vote and three of the party’s 97 regional federations rejected the program. In all, 10% of the party voted against it in regional meetings, and there were estimates that only emotional appeals to party loyalty kept another 15% from joining the dissenters.

From a Communist point of view, these figures are startling. That amount of open opposition to the party leadership, small as it may seem to outsiders, is unprecedented in France.

However, there are believed to be fewer dissenters among the delegates here than among the party as a whole and, before it ends Sunday, the congress is expected to give final approval to the program by an overwhelming majority.