Abstract EN:

This comparative study of development of the French communist party in four socially diversified sites (the Bourbon farmland in the Allier, the Lorraine plateau in Meurthe-et-Moselle, the Saint-Nazaire labour pool in the Loire-Atlantique, Grenoble and its suburbs in the Isère) aims at understanding how the emergence and the crisis of the communist partisan model came about. The socio-historical analysis of communist presence in those areas from 1920 to 1980 reveals three types of partisan cohesion principles: organizational (institutional rules securing central control over the periphery), symbolical (management of common memory and cultural landmarks, and anthropological (development by the community of weakened social groups). The analysis of the decline of the French communist party after 1980 shows how the various elements of the communist partisan model (unionists, representatives, local officials) have fallen apart, and how ineffective the unifying role of the party has become.