"Thorez to power!" yelled the Communists a month ago. But by 3 a.m. election night, Red Leader Jacques Duclos, clearly on the defensive, said: "The results show that, on the whole, we are holding our own."
They were not—quite. The Communists were no longer the first party of France. Checked in the May constitutional referendum, the Soviet offensive in the West had been decisively halted, though by no means broken, in last Sunday's election of a new Constituent Assembly to draft a Constitution for the Fourth Republic. It was, perhaps, the Second Battle of...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
