The Communist Party Divided

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 Franc,ois 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 with journalists, Rigout charged that under Marchais's leadership the Communists have ncreasingly come to be seen by French voters, especially young people, as "the party of the Gulag." Rigout was reacting to the results of last month's elections for the European Parliament, in which the Communist share of the national vote plummeted to 11%, from 16% in 1981 and 20% in 1979. Rigout vigorously denied his remarks once they were published, but the journalists who had been present confirmed his surprising outburst.