Duclos, Jacques

(1896-1975)

   political figure

   An influential leader of the french communist party (SFIC), Jacques Duclos was born in Louey, Hautes-Pyrénées. As a youth, he worked in the pastry trade until entering the French army in World War I. After the war, in which he was wounded, he founded with others the Association républicaine des anciens combatants (ARAC). Already a member of the Communist Party, he joined its Central Committee (1926), then its Political Bureau (1931), and finally rose to the Executive Committee of the Communist Third International (1935). A deputy in the National Assembly from 1926 to 1932, and from 1936 to 1939, he was then a member of the clandestine secretariat that directed the actions of the French Communist Party during the German Occupation (1941-44). With the approval of General charles de gaulle, he planned an uprising in paris in August 1944. Reelected and serving as a deputy after the Liberation (1945-58), he went to Poland in 1947 to help establish the Cominform, the central information office of the Communist Party. Duclos's influence in world Communist circles increased greatly, and he served as president of the Communists in the National Assembly (1946-48), vice president of the National Assembly (1946-48), senator (1959), and was a candidate for the presidency of the Fifth Republic (1969).