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Maurice Thorez: Vie Secrète et Vie Publique
Maurice Thorez: Vie Secrète et Vie Publique
By Philippe Robrieux
Fayard, 1975, 660 pp.

A biography of the longtime Secretary-General of the French Communist Party, told in immense, almost pedantic, detail. The author, a former head of the communist students league, sees Thorez as a "contradictory and complex" figure, who, if he had the chance to do it all over again, might well have preferred the life of a simple worker to that of a leading Stalinist.

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