France: Communist Shrinking Pains

Flight 007 is costing the rigidly orthodox party popular support

The weather was cold and wet, and the faithful struggled to keep their wares as unsullied as their ideology. Neither was easy for France's Communist Party (P.C.F.) last week as hundreds of thousands of members and sympathizers gathered for their annual fund-raising fair, the fĂȘte de l'humanitĂ©, in a 37-acre park in the working-class Paris suburb of La Courneuve. While construction workers, secretaries and concierges wrestled with their crepes, foie gras and muscadet in the pounding rain, party leaders were striving to...

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