André Marty

André Marty (6 November 1886 – 23 November 1956) was a leading figure in the French Communist Party (PCF) for nearly thirty years. He was also a member of the National Assembly, with some interruptions, from 1924 to 1955; Secretary of Comintern from 1935 to 1944; and Political Commissar of the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1938.

Marty was born in Perpignan, France, into a left-leaning but comfortable family; his father was a wine merchant. As a youngster, Marty tried to win a place in open competition for the prestigious École Navale, the French naval academy, but failed and instead became apprenticed to a boiler maker. He later joined the French navy, becoming a mechanical engineering officer aboard the battleship Jean Bart. In April 1919, the Jean Bart and another dreadnought, the France, were sent to the Black Sea to assist the White Russians in the Russian Civil War.

On 19 April 1919, the crews of the battleships Jean Bart (commander, capitaine de vaisseau du Couedic de Kerérant) and France (commander, vice-amiral Amet) mutinied. Although their sympathies lay with the Reds and not with the Whites, the crews' primary grievances were: (i) the slow rate of their demobilisation (following the end of World War I) and (ii) the small quantity and atrocious quality of the rations. The French government acceded to the mutineers demands but pursued the ringleaders. (Amongst these was Charles Tillon, with whom Marty was to have a life-long association.) With the passage of time, Marty's precise role is unclear. He was nevertheless duly arrested, tried, and sentenced to twenty years imprisonment at hard labour. He became an international hero overnight and was symbolically elected to the Soviet of Moscow by the workers of the Dynamo factory.

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