Pierre Frank (1905-1984)
Pierre Frank was born in Paris in 1905. Pierre Frank, with Raymond Molinier,
United Secretariat of the Fourth International parents, of Russian origin, employed as tailors. In the course of his studies as a chemical engineer, he participated in 1924-25 in the foundation of the General Union of Technical Students in Industry, Commerce and Agriculture (UGETICA), under the sponsorship of the Union of Technicians in
Commerce and Agriculture (USTICA), the first union organisation of technicians created in France after the
The political involvement of Pierre Frank, which started when he was 15 led him to join the Communist Party 5 years later, in 1925. As a trade unionist he was active in USTICA and, for several years, in the Chemical Federation belonging to the Communist-led United General Confederation of Labour (CGTU).
In 1927, he saw the platform of the United Opposition in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), led
Trotsky and Zinoviev, as the answer to the disastrous course being followed by the Stalin-Bukharin leadership. supported the Opposition's theses, and was central in the creation of the first French Trotskyist publication La Verite (The Truth), of which he became managing editor. His political position led to expulsion from the section of the CP in the industrial Paris suburb of Aulnay-
A participant in the creation of the first Trotskyist organisation in France,
Communiste (Communist League) in 1930, Frank remained a member of its leadership until 1934. 1931 he became a member of the Intercreated a new journal, which stood for broad regroupment outside the SFIO. This was in contradiction with the line of the revolutionaries organised in the Jeunesses Socialistes Revo-
(Revolutionary Youth) and supported by Trotsky. These differences led to the creation of the Parti Communiste Internationaliste (PCI, Internationalist Communist alongside the GB-L in March 1936. After a fleeting reunification which led to the formation of the Parti Ouvrier Internationaliste (POI, Internationalist Workers Party), the PCI recommenced its own
This division of Trotskyist organisations in France lasted into the middle of the Second World War.
A warrant for Pierre Frank's arrest was issued in 1939. Sentenced in absentia to several years in prison, he went into
Arrested in Britain in 1940, he was interned on the Isle of Man until
After the war ended he had to wait another year before being able to become freely active in France once more, but in 1946 he participated in the International conference that sealed the reunification of the Trotskyist forces. From that point on he was continuously in the top leadership of the International and its French section. he alone represented the continuity with the pre-war generation of activists. He played a leading role in training the cadres of the movement internationally.
At the same time, Pierre Frank continued his activity in the French section, particularly during the fight against the Indochinese and Algerian wars. once again arrested and sentenced for his work in solidarity with the Algerian National Liberation Front.
The small nucleus that had carried on the tradition of militancy was given a new lease on life by the formation of the Jeunesse Communiste Revolutionnaire (Revolutionary Communist Youth) by those expelled from the Union des Etudiants Communistes and the Communist Party in 1966. At the end of June 1968, after the PCI and the JCR had dissolved by the Gaullist government, Pierre Frank was yet again held in custody for ten days, for plotting against the security of the state.
After the fusion of the PCI and the JCR and the creation of the Ligue Communiste in April 1969, Pierre Frank continued his work as a leader for many giving up all leadership responsibilities at the end of the 1970s. At the Eleventh World Congress of the
International in 1979, he was elected a consultative member of the International Executive Committee, as a recognition of his long and continuing contribution to the international leader-
Responsible for the publication of many of Trotsky's works, and having made the first sign of the anti-bureaucratic opposition in Poland (the Open Letter to the PUWP by Kuron and Modzelevski known in France, he himself wrote several political works, particularly Histoire de l'Internationale Communiste (not yet published in English), to which he devoted the last years of his life.