Yves Farge

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An order for the release of political prisoners: signed by Yves Farge on August 25, 1944

Yves Farge (born August 19, 1899 in Salon-de-Provence , Département Bouches-du-Rhône , † March 31, 1953 in Tbilisi , Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic ) was a French journalist and politician.

Live and act

Yves Farge came from a family of academics, but dropped out of school himself at the age of 15, became a draftsman and joined the socialist youth association.

During the First World War he was a nursing assistant and then worked as a journalist in Morocco . In 1931 he returned to France and took a position at the newspaper La Dépêche dauphinoise , of which he became editor-in-chief in 1932. After the Munich Agreement in 1938, he resigned from the socialist party SFIO . At the beginning of the Second World War in 1939, he headed the foreign policy department of the newspaper Le Progrès de Lyon .

After the Armistice of Compiègne (1940) he initially resumed his journalistic activities and, like many other journalists from the Progrès de Lyon, opposed the censorship policy of the Vichy regime . Together with his work colleague Georges Altman he became active in the Resistance , from 1941 worked for the first newspapers of the resistance and was involved in the founding of the Franc-Tireur resistance movement .

In the further course of the war he played a key role in organizing the armed resistance in the Vercors massif and was a member of the general staff of the Armée secrète group, founded by Jean Moulin and led by Charles Delestraint , as well as the committee (comité directeur) of the communist-dominated resistance organization Front national .

After both Delestraint and Moulin were arrested, Farge, wanted by the Gestapo , moved to Paris , where he headed the Comité d'Action contre la Déportation ( German Action Committee against Deportation ) on behalf of the Conseil national de la Résistance .  

General Charles de Gaulle appointed Farge in April 1944 as Commissaire de la République for the departments in the Rhône-Alpes region . In response to the Saint-Genis-Laval massacre carried out by the Gestapo on August 20, 1944, Farge had 84 German Resistance prisoners executed and, by threatening further executions, obtained the surrender of the Montluc prison in Lyon, saving 800 prisoners there before the murder were saved.

After the liberation on September 3, 1944, he remained Commissaire de la République for another year and then initially resumed his previous work as a writer and journalist. By decree of November 17, 1945, he was appointed Compagnon de la Liberation .

Politically, Farge was close to the Communist Party . In 1946 he was appointed to the Provisional Government of the French Republic as Minister for Supply (Ministre du ravitaillement) in the three-party cabinet made up of communists, SFIO and the Christian Democratic MRP of Georges Bidault .

As a minister, he fought corruption and black market trafficking, in which official officials were also involved. In particular, he made machinations around Algerian wine public (" Scandale du vin ", " Wine scandal") and triggered a government crisis by accusing the Vice Prime Minister Félix Gouin (SFIO) of being involved in criminal activities. Farge's allegations against Gouin were later refuted by a parliamentary commission of inquiry, and Farge was ultimately convicted of defamation in early March 1953 on Gouin's complaint. However, Gouin's career was permanently impaired.

In 1948 Farge founded the movement close to Moscow, Les combattants de la liberté , from which the Mouvement pour la paix emerged in 1951 .

In 1952 Yves Farge was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize. Farge traveled to Moscow for the award ceremony on March 25, 1953. A few days later he was killed in a car accident in Tbilisi in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic .

Works

  • Toulon, Editions de Minuit, Paris 1943
  • Sauvons nos gosses. À Megève, premier village d'enfants, Lyon, 1945
  • Vent des fous, Paris 1946
  • Rebelles, soldiers et citoyens. Souvenirs d'un Commissaire de la République, Paris 1946
  • Lettre au Président Truman, Paris 1949
  • La République est en danger, Paris 1950
  • La Guerre d'Hitler continue, Paris 1950
  • Le sang de la corruption, Paris 1951
  • Témoignage sur la Chine et la Corée, Paris 1952
  • Un simple mot, Paris 1953
  • Histoire vécue de la Resistance. Rebelle soldat et citoyen, carnet d'un Commissaire de la République, Genève 1971

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Yves Farge. Ordre de la Liberation , accessed on July 14, 2017 (French).
  2. ↑ Florent Deligia: Il ya 70 ans: la prison de Montluc libérée avant Lyon. In: lyoncapitale.fr. August 24, 2014, accessed July 15, 2017 (French).
  3. ↑ On the trail of the resistance in Lyon. In: cheminsdememoire.gouv.fr. Retrieved July 15, 2017 .
  4. ↑ Joël Drogland: Fabrice Grenard: Les du scandales ravitaillement. Détournements, corruption, affaires étouffées en France, de l'Occupation à la guerre froide. Payot, 2012, 294 pages, 23 €. In: La Cliothèque. April 2, 2012, accessed July 15, 2017 (book review).
  5. ^ Félix, Jean Gouin. In: Base de données des députés français depuis 1789. French National Assembly , accessed on July 15, 2017 (French, biographical information on Félix Gouin from Jean Jolly: Dictionnaire des Parlementaires français . 1960–1977).
  6. ↑ Thierry Wolton: La France sous influence . Grasset, 1997, ISBN 2-246-48481-2 (French, limited preview in Google Book Search).
  7. ^ Yves Farge, Prix Staline de la Paix. In: Ciné-Archives - Cinémathèque du parti communiste français - Mouvement ouvrier et démocratique. Retrieved on July 15, 2017 (French, film sequence in French from the award ceremony on March 25, 1953 in Moscow from a weekly newsreel, presumably a Soviet production, with part of Farge's speech).
personal data
SURNAME Farge, Yves
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French journalist and politician
DATE OF BIRTH August 19, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Salon-de-Provence , Bouches-du-Rhône
DATE OF DEATH March 31, 1953
Place of death Tbilisi