"Moscou veut la guerre": Sartre and the Communist Party
"Les communistes et la paix". Autograph manuscript (fragment).
4to. French manuscript on paper. (2) pp. on 2 ff.
€ 4,500.00
Interesting early manuscript of chapter I/2 of his series of articles entitled "Les communistes et la paix" that was first published in Sartre's journal "Les Temps modernes" (July 1952 - April 1954) and later in its entirety and thoroughly revised as part of the collection Situations VI (1964). The original title of the chapter, "Moscou veut la guerre", sets the cynical tone of the text that was first conceived in reaction to the deadly suppression of the Paris protests against General Ridgway on 28 May 1952 and the subsequent wrongful arrest of the French communist leader Jacques Duclos. Sartre accuses Western, particularly U.S. politicians of hypocrisy as, in the name of peace, they employ the violent and belligerent means that theye ascribe to the Soviet Union, polemically asking, in a deleted section: "Do you not also pretend to desire peace? I look for your olive twigs and I see atomic bombs, I look for your doves and I see rocket planes. You say that you show your force so as not to have to make use of it. But to show force is already violence: let your tanks defile, cover the African sky with your bombers [...]".
With "Les communistes et la paix" Sartre publicly affirmed his support of the French Communist Party, despite its loyalty to Stalin, which would cause his rupture with Maurice Merleau-Ponty. In 1956, appalled by the Soviet invasion of Hungary, Sartre definitely broke with the party. Unsurprisingly, the corresponding pages in the 1964 publication Situations VI (96-97) are very different from the manuscript and the article.
Some browning and bent corners.
