A significant factional struggle appears to be going on inside France's Communist Party. On one side stand the so-called traditionalists, among them durable Party Chief Georges Marchais, 64, who favor close ties to Moscow and oppose party reforms. On the other are the so-called modernists, including Marcel Rigout, 56, one of four Communist ministers in President François Mitterrand's Cabinet, who want to loosen ties with the Kremlin and open the party to greater internal democracy.
The party's disagreements were made public last week when the French newspaper Le Monde quoted Rigout as calling Marchais a "man of failure." During off-the-record conversations...
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