Abstract
Suzanne Labin (1913–2001) may be largely forgotten today, but she deserves to take her place in the front rank of anti-communist “professionals”.1 If referred to at all she is often summarily considered as a member of the extreme right, a label that is simplistic, largely false, and one that does not permit an understanding of the career and intentions of a woman who was originally from the socialist left, and was fiercely anti-Stalinist in the 1930s.2 Details are limited, with the main source on her career being a work of hagiography published by Suzanne Labin herself.3 That aside, apart from some notes from specialists in literary history who recall her links with André Breton or Louis Guilloux,4 her role in the networks of transnational anti-communism has largely been ignored.
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Notes
Pierre Grémion, Intelligence de l’anti-communisme. Le congrès pour la liberté de la culture à Paris 1950–1975 (Paris: Fayard, 1995). She is cited on eight occasions.
On the journal and its editors, see Christian Jelen, Hitler ou Staline. Le prix de la paix (Paris: Flammarion, 1988), pp. 28–33.
Suzanne Labin, “Le culte du chef d’après les documents tirés de la presse soviétique”, Feuilles libres de la Quinzaine 85 (10 September 1939), pp. 209–12; 86 (10 October 1939), pp. 218–20; 87 (15 October 1939), pp. 226–8. For an overview of this “cult” in the French communist press at the end of the 1930s,
see Jean-Marie Goulemot, “Du culte de Staline et de quelques autres chez les communistes français”, in Natacha Dioujeva and François George (eds), Staline à Paris (Paris: Ramsay, 1982), pp. 21–32.
Jean-Louis Panné, Boris Souvarine. Le premier désenchanté du communisme (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1993), pp. 208–9.
Suzanne Labin, “La peine de mort en URSS et les lois excessives”, Mercure de France 598 (1 June 1940), pp. 546–54 (552, 554).
Diana Quattrochi-Woisson, “La Revue Argentine, Paris-Buenos Aires, 1934–1945. ‘Hommage à nos prédécesseurs’ ”, La Nouvelle Revue Argentine 1 (September 2008), pp. 8–27.
This circular letter is reproduced in Carole Reynaud-Paligot, Parcours politiques des surréalistes, 1918–1969 (Paris: CNRS Editions, 2010), pp. 208–9. Above all, see Gérard Roche, “Entre collaboration et intervention: les surréalistes à Combat et Arts (1950–1952)”, Cahiers du Centre de Recherche sur le surréalisme, Mélusine 25 (2005). Suzanne Labin is cited on p. 91.
Suzanne Labin, Les entretiens de Saint-Germain. Liberté aux liberticides? (Paris: Éditions Spartacus, 1957), p. 77.
Suzanne Labin, Il est moins cinq (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1960), p. 9.
Suzanne Labin, De Gaulle ou la France enchaînée (Paris: Editions de la Ligue de la Liberté, 1965), p. 38. Significantly, Labin sings the praises of the socialist Paul Ramadier and denounces the nature (p. 39) of General de Gaulle’s anti-communism as expressed by the Rassemblement du Peuple Français.
Suzanne Labin, La condition humaine en Chine communiste (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1959).
Suzanne Labin, La liberté se joue à Saïgon (Paris: Editions de la Ligue de la Liberté, 1965).
Suzanne Labin, Vietnam, révélations d’un témoin (Paris: Nouvelles Editions latines, 1964).
Suzanne Labin, Goliath et David. Justice pour la Chine libre (Paris: Editions de la Ligue de la Liberté, 1967).
See Suzanne Labin, Ambassades pour subversions (Paris: Editions de la Ligue de la Liberté, 1965); Les colonialistes chinois en Afrique (Paris: Editions de la Ligue de la Liberté, 1965); Menaces chinoises sur l’Asie (Paris: La Table ronde, 1966).
Suzanne Labin, Le petit livre rouge arme de guerre (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1969).
Suzanne Labin, Hippies, drogue et sexe (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1970) and Le monde des drogués (Paris: France Empire, 1975).
Suzanne Labin, Israël, le crime de résister (Paris: Nouvelles éditions Debresse, 1980); La violence politique (Paris: France Empire, 1979); Israël, le crime de vivre (Paris: Nouvelles éditions Debresse, 1981).
Suzanne Labin, Les requins rouges et leurs Poissons-Pilotes. La politique Nord– Sud au service de l’expansionnisme soviétique (Paris: self-published, 1986), see pp. 113ff.; Le monde libre va-t-il tomber dans les pièges de Gorbatchev? Son cheval de Troie: la maison commune (Paris: self-published, 1990).
Suzanne Labin, Socialisme. La Démagogie du Changement (Paris: Nouvelles Editions Debresse, 1983).
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© 2014 Olivier Dard
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Dard, O. (2014). Suzanne Labin: Fifty Years of Anti-Communist Agitation. In: van Dongen, L., Roulin, S., Scott-Smith, G. (eds) Transnational Anti-Communism and the Cold War. The Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137388803_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137388803_13
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