DEPARTMENT OF STATE
GIST: FRANCE: Humanite Reporter Comments With Seeming Candor on Dilemmas of French Communists
INR BRIEFING NOTE
TO: The Director, INR
DATE: 6-6-68
TIME: Reg Morning
COMMENTS CONTAINED IN INR BRIEFING NOTES ARE INITIAL AND TENTATIVE.
SOURCE(S)
CLASS./CONTROL(S)
Paris 15628 6-6-68 Confidential/LIMDIS
LIMDIS - BACKGROUND USE ONLY
Reporter Marcel Roques commented on the negative aspects of May events upon the PCF. The main optimistic note was PCF might succeed in greatly outpolling the Federation and this become the unequivocal first party of the left. But personally he thought Gaullists would win. He spoke disparagingly of the super-cautious, sclerotic PCF bureaucracy during the crisis. He talked at length about dissension within the party and prospect for serious trouble if PCF lost election.
Embassy notes that Humanite article on "The Party's Relations With the Intellectuals" on June 5 is frankest acknowledgment in years of dissension within party and goes beyond what even Roques had to say about developing serious differences within party.
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NR OFFICE
BRIEFER
EXTENSION
REU
VPDeary
5474
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Confidential/LIMDIS
*(Classification)*
FORM DS-1118
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NW 31097 DocId:33061196 Page 127