Trouble for Old Heroes

"He came into the door [with] his bushy eyebrows, his watery gray eyes, his chin and the double chin under it ... one of France's great modern revolutionary figures . . . His gray face had a look of decay. [It] looked as though it were modelled from the waste material you find under the claws of a very old lion . . . 'He may be a glory and all,' said a corporal . . . 'But he is crazy as a bedbug. He has a mania for shooting people.' "

Thus, in For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway described Andre Marty, French Communist leader who during the Spanish Civil War was inspector general (i.e., a sort of roving henchman) in the International Brigade. Behind Marty was another French Communist, Charles Tillon, recruiting volunteers. In World War II, Tillon organized the Communist underground in France. Among French Communists, Marty and Tillon were known as des durs (tough guys). Last week the tough guys, who in their day had purged hundreds of comrades, were themselves the victims of a party purge.

What They Did. Their chief crime was that they ran afoul of Maurice Thorez, boss of the French Reds, who went to Russia in 1950 to recuperate from a stroke. Thorez felt at home in Russia: a deserter from the French army, he had spent the war years there while his underground comrades in France risked their lives fighting the Nazis (and laying the groundwork for the Reds' postwar power). Marty and Tillon resented Comrade Thorez's absentee leadership. Marty called Thorez and his wife, Jeannette Vermeersch, "resisters from Moscow." At a meeting of the French politburo, Tillon spoke bitterly of comrades who did not fight in the Resistance, but operated by remote control from abroad.

Thorez continued to give the orders from Moscow, and Tillon, 55, was given a distasteful job: working for Stalin's phony "peace crusade." Marty and Tillon called it ridiculous and absurd. What they wanted was riots, strikes, rebellion. Last May, when General Ridgway arrived in Paris, Marty organized Red riots which failed miserably and ended with the arrest of Jacques Duclos, No. 2 man of French Communism and in charge of the party while Thorez is away. To make matters worse, Marty used Duclos' month in jail to carry out a quick, private purge of the French Communist paper L'Humanite; among other staffers, he fired Duclos' girl friend.

Last week the party moved to punish the culprits. A communique itemized their sins; they added up to "fractionalism." Marty was fired from the party secretariat, but kept his job in the politburo. Tillon was fired from the politburo, but remained on the central committee. Both were given a month to recant and confess in approved Communist style. Only the fact that Old Heroes Marty and Tillon still have many followers inside the party saved them from immediate disgrace and expulsion. Said the party communique: the central committee is determined "to do everything to help comrades in error to correct their mistakes."

What Next? The Marty and Tillon purge is evidence of deep unrest in the French Communist Party. Its discipline and security system seemed seriously weakened. One piece of evidence: news of the purge leaked out to non-Communist papers before it was announced--a serious and unusual breach of party security. By eliminating the two old firebrands, Maurice Thorez--who is expected to come home from Russia next month--may be preparing a shift in the French party line. Probable new directions: 1) playing down of strikes and riots, which lost the party thousands of followers; 2) playing up of "democratic" solidarity with all left-wing parties, i.e., a new "popular front."

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