Laurent Casanova (politician)

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Laurent Casanova (born October 9, 1906 in Souq Ahras , Algeria , † March 20, 1972 in Paris ) was a Resistance fighter and minister of France.

Life

Casanova came from a Corsican family. He studied law in Paris and became secretary of a group of the Parti communiste français (PCF). From 1928 he supported the PCF underground apparatus. In 1933 he married the Corsican Vincentella Perini , who in 1936 founded the Union of Young French Women (Union des Jeunes Filles de France), a girls' organization of the PCF. He himself became assistant to the PCF General Secretary Maurice Thorez in 1936 .

Shortly after he was drafted into the French army in 1939, he was arrested by the Daladier regime. He managed to flee and regain contact with the communist underground organization. After the occupation of France, he participated in the resistance together with Pierre Villon . For a while he also had contact with Pablo Picasso and Louis Aragon .

The head of the Francs-tireurs et partisans (FTP) Charles Tillon appointed Casanova in 1944 as FTP representative in the Assemblée consultative provisoire in Algiers. In August 1944 he was elected as a member of the Seine-et-Marne department in the constituent national assembly, of which he remained throughout the fourth republic from 1946 to 1958.

From July 1945 Casanova was a member of the Central Committee of the PCF. At the beginning of 1946 he was appointed Ministre des Anciens combattants et des Victimes de la guerre in Félix Gouin's cabinet and remained so in Georges Bidault's 1st cabinet . In the 1950s he was a representative of the PCF in the council of the Mouvement de la Paix , the French section of the Mouvement mondial des partisans de la paix . In 1960 he received the International Lenin Peace Prize . In May 1961 there were disputes within the leadership of the PCF over the evaluation of the new course supported by Casanova in the Soviet Union, which led to his being excluded from the party leadership together with Marcel Servin and Maurice Kriegel-Valrimont .

Works

  • Le Parti communiste, les intellectuels et la Nation.

literature

  • Philippe Robrieux: L'histoire intérieure du parti communiste français. Volume 2, pp. 499-503 & Volume 4, pp. 126-127
  • Pierre Durand: Danielle Casanova, l'indomptable, éditions Messidor. Paris 1990
personal data
SURNAME Casanova, Laurent
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French politician, member of the National Assembly and member of the Resistance
DATE OF BIRTH October 9, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Souq Ahras , Algeria
DATE OF DEATH March 20, 1972
Place of death Paris