Waldeck Rochet

Waldeck Rochet (5 April 1905 in Sainte-Croix in Saône-et-Loire – 17 February 1983 in Nanterre) was a French communist politician. He was General Secretary of the French Communist Party (PCF) from 1964 to 1972.

The son of a cobbler, Rochet was named in honor of politician Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau. After completing his service in the army, he worked in market gardening. In 1923, he joined the youth wing of the French Communist Party (PCF), and the following year the Party itself. He was sent over to the Soviet Union, in order to receive political training at Moscow's International Lenin School. Rochet was local Party secretary in Lyon, then joined the central leadership in Paris; from 1936 to 1940, he was a communist representative in the lower chamber (the Third Republic equivalent of today's French National Assembly), elected in Colombes-Nanterre. During those years, Waldeck Rochet founded and edited the periodical La Terre.

Charged by Party leader Maurice Thorez with agricultural matters and reporting to the Politburo, he took steps to ensure that divisions between peasants and urban dwellers were not to be encouraged within the Party structure. In 1939, he refused to condemn the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (as did the entire Party leadership), placing himself outside French law. He was detained in the French colony of Algeria, passing into the custody of Vichy France after the German invasion of France (1940), being set free by the Allies on the wake of the North African Campaign.

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