Communust France: What would it look like?

One POD involving the Centrals winning WW1 usually involves the French Republiccollapsing; a provisional Republic is often declared, but not always much a la Kerensky's own in Russia, but it too collapses and in the vacuum is filled by a Socialist or Communist Trope.

Another common trope might be the provisional government teetering on before succumbing to an ambitious personality who creates some sort of Vichy-Lite France, rarely, this scenario might involve the restoration of the monarchty. Eeither the Orléanists or Bonapartes; if it's before 1936 and they're really reaching, they may offer the crown to the Duke of San Jaime he is an old man and fringe Legitimists known as Blancs d'Espagne saw him as rightful king, believing his ancestor, the Duke of Anjou, nor any ponce could renounce their right to the crown. The big issue is he has no new kids, so ambitious personality merely uses him to rally support amongst conservatives, or we end up with another OTL HUngary where said man declares himself Regent until s suitable (read: pliable) successor is found (read: never).

But I'm more concerned with a Communist France. Let's assume the mutiny in 1917 is way worse and rocks Clemeneau's government; the High Trials are much harsher and neither Poincaré or Pétain are enclined to make any amends, ending with the high courts passing down more court martials, death penalties, hard labor, ect. This hardens the soldiers against the military establishment. For a little extra fun, the Russian Expeditionary Force in France (which had one mutiny on it's hands at the same time) also sees the mutiny spread throughout it's ranks.

As Pétain remains hardlined against the mutineers, his recommendations never occur, causing it the disobdience to spread further amongst the Western France. As the state of troop morale becomes public knowledge, there is, naturally, outrage. If possible, have Clemeneau's government collapse. Germany can score some victories in the west, but it's not necessary to win the far. I'd like this to be interesting, so let's have them lose: by time of the mutiny, American support was on the way.

What happens next? If Clemeneau's government collapses, I would assume someone else would form a government within the frame work of the Third Republic. Are the Trade Unions and the Socialist beginning to abandon their political support of the war? Who would replace Clemeneau? Let's say he lasts long enough until the Americans arrive, but Paris is swarming with brigades of mutinous troops demanding pay raises, leave from the front, and perhaps radicalized, the right to work and other such ideals.

Let's have WW1 wrap up in 1919, perhaps a few months later than OTL. Tsarist Russia still collapses, as does Austria-Hungary, and Germany is a mess as it was not long after the war too. In the last months of 1918, an amendment to the constitution is put forward to the Senate, which has moved out of rebellious Paris to Bordeaux for a new Constitution, with perhaps a few changes, but really no different than the post-WW2 4th Republic. Soldiers seize important buildings in Paris and proclaim a second commune.

What now? Would there be a civil war, or would the government just push out to Algiers and proclaim they are the legitimate France from France's colonial power? Would communism be quashed in it's cradle in France, or would the powers such as Italy, Britain, and America carry out some limited intervention but eventually go home. How does this effect Germany's peace terms, with a hostile Communist state on it's border?

On what lines does France form a communist state? Unlike Russia, it's highly industrialized, yet also has a history of centralization. Does it form a Federation of Regions/Cities, or one central government ran from Paris only? What influence do other radicals like anarchists play?

There is also the legacy of the French Revolution and how it created a new society, do the new radicals take advantage of that history, viewing themselves as the new Sans-Coulettes, who instead of taking back the land and throwing out the aristocracy, instead find themselves taking over the factories and tossing our the bourgeoisie?

I find such a revolution, if plausible, could create a unique brand of Communist (ala Maoism, Stalinism) ect, depending the route it takes, such as letting unions, labor councils and collectives manage and trade amount themselves, finished products being sold to the state.

Any other ideas? How would the west react? Wearied by WW1, what would their intervention amount too? Britain in and around Calais; America in Brittany; German Freikorps refusing to vacate Alsace-Lorraine?

Economically times would be hard, but not impossible. Hard currency resrves would be a problem. If the new government promises to respect the debt and loans taken out it may soften relations, but it also asks the question if France could pay. Like the Soviets, A Communist France may find it easier to repudiate any and all war debt, although again, it would make the accumulation of hard currency quite hard. French industry will be in shambles much as it was after WW1, and depending how long conflict last before the conflict stabilizes, they're going to be in a sticky situation. But they do have a reputation for luxury products and could probably market them. The American and British government might be pissy, but it doess't stop citizens from buying their productions unless their are sanctions. Even so, buyers would exist.

Another issue is what would happen to Weimar Germany? More unstable having France on the poor which is red? More stable because the allies state Germany only has to pay reparations to the legitimate France based out of Algiers, and payments are suspended until such a time that the legitimate government returns to France, or the paymets are much smaller.

Thoughts?
 
I don't really see any actual communist revolution happening in France. More likely it would just be socialist, maybe just a little bit further to the left than it is today. You don't even need a revolution for that. Just have the French people get tired of war, elect a Socialist Party into power, and when they end WWI, no Russian Revolution, and with France out of the equation, either the Allies lose or the war just ends in a draw.
 
I don't really see any actual communist revolution happening in France. More likely it would just be socialist, maybe just a little bit further to the left than it is today. You don't even need a revolution for that. Just have the French people get tired of war, elect a Socialist Party into power, and when they end WWI, no Russian Revolution, and with France out of the equation, either the Allies lose or the war just ends in a draw.


Well, the socialist party had seats in the French Legislature in 1914. So did other leftist and liberal parties. In fact in 1914, the Socialist Parties in all the major nations held seats in the legislatures, be they weak ones or not, a few seats or many. The German Socialists voted credits for the War Budget and the French Socialists and indeed the French left agreed to support the war. So if the mutiny gets worse, you would definitely get a spliter amongst the French Left, which while not bring about a true communist state, would till be different. The proble with France is it wasn't a one party democracy: several parties often worked together in Parliament to get what they wanted. If the mutiny goes worse, it will definitely discredit the "bourgeois" liberal parties, especially if they seem apathetic to the soldiers.

The President was just a figure head and the Prime Minister called the shots. So to get what you're describing, you'd need the Parliament dominated wholly by the French Left (that is the Socialists and Radicals) with the right and center discredited, which seems impossible. Even a Socialist dominated government is going to have come from sort of national trauma and the earliest that could possible happen is the 1917 mutiny, or I suppose sometime during the Christmas truce. But either way the writing is on the wall that in Russia the Autocracy is on the way out, and things won't return to as they were pre-1914.

There's also the interesting question what a far more leftist government in France would do with her colonies. The USSR had no colonies in the formal sense, but the occupied territories and Central Asia was practically so, receiving generous subsidies and in the case of Central Asia, basically being forced to declare independence because not even Russia following the collapse of their union and their declaration of independence of the USSR, practically forcing the Central Asian SSRs to do the same.

These are the election results from 1914. The PRS and SFIO could certainly work together, but they don't have the votes alone for a majority.Even the Center-Left Radical Party was basically social liberal. The Third Party was chock full of parties and unlike the two party system. The only time I can think of when a Leftist party won the most votes were the Communists in 1945, but it was part of a three party coalition.
 
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I hate to bump, but any ideas for an interwar Communist France? Even Socialist and Heavily Leftist acceptable, the only requirements is that I still wish to see the Central Powers lose and the POD stem from the 1917 mutiny.

I know Superboy says that it seems unlikely, but I politely disagree, given how French soldiers were treated during the war and the fact that more modern assessments state that at least forty-nine French regiments were destabilized and experienced mutiny on different levels --something that could easily spread especially if the High Command is heavy handed.

It's also interesting to see a revolt and overthrow of the government in a nation such as France and how it's socialism/communism would differ from Lenin's Russia. Of course some industrial states such as Czechoslovakia and Eastern Germany fell into Soviet orbit, but these were forced and they were forced to kowtow to the Stalinist line and later those of Soviet leaders in the USSR. So it'd be neat to see how an independent government might evolve in the West, it's economic policy, not to mention how it would impsct Versailles and how harshly the Weimar Republic would be punished. It seems quite sensible they might be allowed to rearm more than OTL.

Of course, it all depends on relations with Britain and America. The Soviets soured relations by repudiating Tsarist debt and refusing to keep fihting. The French will certainly back out if they champion themselves as a slogan of a peace, but unlike the Soviets they may honor their war debt, seeing their new government as a the 4th or 5th Republic, depending if the fall of the third involves a provisional government ala the Russian Republic of Kerensky or not.
 
It's a fairly difficult premise to justify, because French culture for the time is still very conservative by our standards, and they have already seen/enjoyed the practice of capitalist industrialisation. This puts the petit borgenese in a strong position to argue their bit in 'the revolution'. But even then it's fairly difficult to even get 'the revolution' because while France might have been as broken as Imperial Germany was at the end of the Great War, it won and so ended with public confidence in government.


Having the mutinies as being a pod is fairly problematic because by their very nature they were chaotic, and more directed to the situation in the trenches, during an unusual situation that was war, rather than being a fundamental social malaise. In that sense it's not quite the right impetus for revolutionary reform.


But what about a more left-wing populous movement? Fairly plausible, if the Russian Civil war drags less, the Germans don't put down their socialists quite so fast, and a few more promenent thinkers choose to speak out or stay silent. Then you could effect a socialist leaning government into french politics.


The butterflies?
Not as many as you might think. While French-Russian relations may stay warmer, once Stalin steps in, everything is going to the bottom of the heap, and most everything else ticks along as it did, except for perhaps in Germany, where the reds beat the nationalists in the medium run, leading to either a Conservative (capital C), or left-radical government in Germany in the 1930s butterflying away Hitlers rise to power.

In general, however Europe stays conservative (small c now).

Stalin will eventually try his hand for something like the Baltic States or finland, incur the wrathe of the rest of Europe and so deepen tensions against the Soviets, this in turn will harm Communist movements in these nations, which in the long run will likely see public support for overtly socalist movements discredited.

On the other-hand, due to a 'lefter political heritage' Europe as a whole might decide to keep far more industries nationalised throughout the cold war, rather than move to American capitalist private based economies.

A stranger weaker EU will likely form, exposing a 'centralist' approach and ideology in the longer term, but this will conflict with Italian and possibly Spanish Falange facism, yet both may share a very common economic core of thought. With fascism existed as a credible ideology going into the cold war area, we may see a lot more bellicose attitudes in Europe to both American actions, as well as Soviet, but overall, they may be considered more acceptable by the general public.

This creates a messy situation for French, Italian, Dutch and Portuguese ex-colonies.


Yet I speculate too much.
 
I don't really see any actual communist revolution happening in France. More likely it would just be socialist, maybe just a little bit further to the left than it is today. You don't even need a revolution for that. Just have the French people get tired of war, elect a Socialist Party into power, and when they end WWI, no Russian Revolution, and with France out of the equation, either the Allies lose or the war just ends in a draw.

In others, France would be Europe's equivalent to Mexico in TTL? That I want to see.
 
I unfortunately don't know enough about the left and ultra-left of France prior to the bolshevisation of the left of the international Social Democratic movement. But that's where you'd find the right (ha, left) people to look at.

Also, you'd need to look at the spontaneous strike committees in France around the period and how they self-governed.

"Bolshevik" "tropes" are more or less irrelevant if France happens first.

yours,
Sam.
 
In others, France would be Europe's equivalent to Mexico in TTL? That I want to see.

This is quite possible. There really wasn't an organized Communist movement, but merely the SFIO which was the French Section of the Workers International, which in 1914 polled about 16% of the vote. There was Republican-Socialist party. The SFIO was Marxist, but more was more democratic socialist while the Republic-Socialist party was "reformist socialist." There were many parties in the Center Left and Center as well on the right, so there is a great array of opinion, but I tend to agree that if France falls to revolution first, it's not going to be anything more like Russia. In fact, it may play out more like a coup or a change of government, albeit more extreme than typical of the Third Republic. A Constitutent Assembly would probably then simply draw up a nw constitution once the war was over. Looking over things, I agree it is unlikely to be "Communist" but more radically left.

Unfortunately I have little information on strikes; I know that the Confédération Générale du Travail, a trade union, had been formed in 1895 and they espoused revolutionary syndicalism as a form of economic governance and up until 1919 had Anarchist as well as Syndacalist tendencies. No idea on labor numbers, although their 1906 reaffirmed the seperate between the union movement and political parties.

Communist was sort of the wrong question to ask I suppose. :( More appropriate with a different post 1945, with de Gaulle dead and Thorez' Communist party dominating the post-war construction of France, probably as a second kind of Yugoslavia. Looking at an earlier revolution c. 1919, you'd probably end up with a decidedly Social Democratic state with policies adopted from the CGT.
 
On a related note, would this spark an earlier Spanish Civil War, this time with the Communists coming out on top? What are the odds we might see Iberia incorperated into a Communist France - a European Svoiet or sorts, forming a miniature Mare Nostrum in the Western Mediteranian?
 
With communist Russia to the East as per OTL and communist France to the West in this ATL, what are the odds Germany goes communist as well? France did kind of have its boot on Germany's neck for the period immediately following WWI. Could France under communist leadership react in different ways to German recovery and push them towards a grand communist alliance with the USSR? France and Russia are natural allies in this scenario, and may be eager to make Germany a leftist ally/puppet. If a France/Germany/Russia ideological alliance persists for any length of time, it will be extremely formidable on the world stage.
 
I'm creating a Communist France timeline at the moment that hinges on Jaures' assassination failing. I haven't updated in awhile due to being busy, but needlessly to say I think true leftism emerging in France in possible. It's one of the countries Marx was implying would go his way in the 'lateral arc of history' if you believe in it.
 
With communist Russia to the East as per OTL and communist France to the West in this ATL, what are the odds Germany goes communist as well? France did kind of have its boot on Germany's neck for the period immediately following WWI. Could France under communist leadership react in different ways to German recovery and push them towards a grand communist alliance with the USSR? France and Russia are natural allies in this scenario, and may be eager to make Germany a leftist ally/puppet. If a France/Germany/Russia ideological alliance persists for any length of time, it will be extremely formidable on the world stage.

That happens, what are the odds we get a pan-European Soviet?
 
I would think fairly good, depending in the events. If French, Spanish, and German thought prevail over, well, Lenin and Stalin, I would think internationalism would be the dominate attitude -- especially the face of such nationalistic attitudes that would be, in part, the new order's opposition.
 
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