It was fifty years ago.
On December 17, 1972, Georges Marchais became secretary general of the PCF during the 20th congress of a party that was still very dependent on its big Soviet brother, the CPSU.
Alain Duhamel then evokes in the press "
a big fellow with the silhouette of a grenadier of the imperial guard
".
The specific phrasing of this son of rural Calvados, slow and cheeky, his very lively mind and his sense of the television image, will make a lasting impression.
Communist candidate for the last presidential election, Fabien Roussel willingly assumed his share of filiation.
“
He will use his spare time to devour detective novels
”
Historian Philippe Robrieux, in his history of the PCF published by Fayard in 1981, describes Georges Marchais at the time of his coming to power: "
He looks satisfied and the heavily swaying gait of those entering their fifties and savor their accession to honors (...) Big eater and unrepentant smoker, his way of stamping his foot on the ground when he waits, seated on the podium, the moment to speak, translates the anxious and the impatient.
Inducted by the Russians before being appointed by the PCF congress, he is little known among his people.
Waldeck Rochet's disease, his predecessor, brings him out of the shadows.
Of simple extraction by his peasant mother and his worker father, Robrieux says of him that he is "
the first of the general secretaries of the PCF not to be able to acquire the baggage which makes a militant of popular origin an intellectual of a new type: instead of devoting all his free time to culture and on reflection, he will use his spare time to devour detective novels
”.
Georges Marchais claims it, as against Minister Jean-Pierre Fourcade in 1977. “
You should be polite and respectful.
I don't come out of the ENA (...) I'm a worker, I work, I don't come empty-handed.
»
Precursor of televised clashes
From a distance, this simplicity of the outspoken popular politician, precursor of clashes on television sets, far from the human and political gray areas that have marked his career since the Second World War, has forged a golden legend in the way of Jacques Chirac.
Until nourishing this particular attraction of what relates to the Soviet Union, also called Ostalgia (neologism formed from Ost, East in German, and nostalgia).
An unpublished documentary by Gérard Miller, broadcast these days on LCP, tries to understand his outbursts and his legacy.
Some television sequences are still cult.
So when he says on the set of Antenne 2, on January 21, 1980: "
I said to my wife:" François Mitterrand has decided to abandon the common program of the left, pack our bags, we are going back to Paris !"
Effective summary of the failure of the alliance between the PS and the PCF.
His debate with Jacques Chirac on the program Equal Arms also remains legendary.
Georges Marchais draws a big carnivorous smile: “
– You are presented as a young wolf but you are really late Mr. Chirac, you reason like 40 years ago!
(...) The man with the knife between the teeth!
»
Beyond his political camp, Georges Marchais is also regularly taken up by some, like Eric Zemmour, who highlight his freedom of expression on sensitive issues such as immigration.
For the communist leader, this fact of society, the fruit of colonialism and liberalism, first puts workers out of work and disrupts the lives of the French.
This will be one of his campaign themes in 1981. Little focused on feminism at a time when this fight was coming to light, Georges Marchais will remain globally anchored in very traditional values.
A legacy more complicated to assume for the left.
