From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pierre Broué (8 May 1926 – 26 July 2005)[1] was a French historian and Trotskyist revolutionary militant whose work covers the history of the Bolshevik Party, the Spanish Revolution and biographies of Leon Trotsky.[2][3][4][5]
Pierre Broué | |
|---|---|
.JPG) Broué (on left, wearing glasses) seen circa 1970 | |
| Born | 8 May 1926 |
| Died | 26 July 2005 (aged 79) Grenoble, France |
| Nationality | French |
| Years active | 1936–2005 |
| Known for | Historian of Leon Trotsky, militant Trotskyist revolutionary |
| Notable work | La Révolution Et La Guerre D'Espagne (1961), Trotsky (1988), Cahiers Leon Trotsky |
| Movement | Fourth International |
| Spouse | three spouses including Andrée (third) |
| Children | five including Michel Broué |
Broué was born in Privas, Ardèche, around 1926.[5]
His father was a civil servant and mother a school teacher: they had "strong republican views".[2]
In 1936, Broué supported a French general strike as well as the Spanish Republic.[2]
By 1940, with Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in a non-aggression pact, he helped organize a Communist Party cell at the Lycée Henri IV in Paris. The French Communist Party expelled the organizers and said that Broué suffered from Trotskyism. The accusation piqued his interest, and he began reading about Trotsky from the private library of the teacher Élie Reynier.[2][5]
With the party, he fought in the French Resistance against the German occupiers during the Second World War.[3][5]
When Joseph Stalin disbanded the Comintern in 1943, Broué became strongly critical of Stalinism and resigned from the party as a result. By 1944, he became a Trotskyist and joined the Fourth International, and he remained a Trotskyist for the rest of his life.[2][4][5]
In 1952, he followed Pierre Lambert during a split in the movement and continued as a "Lambertist" for many years.[5]
He was active in the Internationalist Communist Party and then the Internationalist Communist Organisation before he was expelled in 1989.[2][3][5]
He became a secondary school teacher until 1965, when he became lecturer in history at the University of Grenoble and then professor.[2][4][5]
In 1977, he set up the Trotsky Institute to publish in French all of Trotsky's writings (27 volumes have been published). He also founded and edited the Cahiers Léon Trotsky, devoted to the history of Trotskyism.[2][5]
Between 2003 and his death, he was a close collaborator and supporter of the International Marxist Tendency.[3]
Broué married three times. His third wife, Andrée, died in 1989 from cancer.[2]
The former student Jean-Pierre Juy was a long-time friend. Alan Woods was a friend and admirer late in his life.[3][4]
Broué died in Grenoble, France, in his sleep in the early hours of July 26, 2005, at the age of 79 from prostate cancer. Five children survived him: two sons and three daughters.[2]
His son Michel Broué is a notable mathematician.[2]
The basic inspiration for Broué's books was his desire to explain Stalinism.[2]
His book Trotsky (1988) counters the work of Isaac Deutscher. He worked for three years at Harvard, to which Trotsky had sold his papers in 1940. Broué and assistants were the first researchers to use them since the archive opened in 1980.[2] Alan Woods has called it "a very healthy antidote to the superficial and pretentious philistinism of Isaac Deutscher".[3][5]
The recent republication of Trotsky's autobiography, My Life, has a foreword written by Broué.[citation needed]
The U.S. Library of Congress lists the following books.
The U.S. Library of Congress lists the following books.
Marxists' Internet Archives lists the following articles by Broué that appeared in Revolutionary History:
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.