The son of miners from the Pas-de-Calais, he took the leadership of the French Communist Party at thirty and kept it until his last day. He approved in 1956 the entry of Soviet tanks into Budapest, and died on 11 July 1964 aboard a Soviet ship, on his way to a holiday in the USSR.
The story
Maurice Thorez was born in 1900 at Noyelles-Godault, in the Pas-de-Calais, into a family of miners. He went down the pit himself before joining the Communist Party, of which he became general secretary in 1930 — at thirty.
Elected deputy for Ivry-sur-Seine in 1932, he ran the Popular Front strategy and published “Son of the People” in 1937, an official autobiography that fixed the image of the working-class leader.
From 1945 to 1947 he was minister of state and then deputy prime minister under de Gaulle, Gouin, Bidault and Ramadier: the Communist Party was in government, and its general secretary sat in it.
His loyalty to Moscow never wavered. In 1956 he approved the Soviet tanks going into Budapest, and his leadership remained to the end the leadership of French Stalinism.
He died on 11 July 1964 aboard the Litva, on the Black Sea, on his way to the USSR — two months earlier he had handed the general secretaryship to Waldeck Rochet and taken a party presidency created to fit him. He lies in Division 97 with Jeannette Vermeersch, who died in 2001.
On site, do not miss
A stele that keeps only one title — “general secretary of the French Communist Party” — and the thirty-seven-year gap between the two dates of death.
Visitors' questions
Where is Maurice Thorez's grave?
In Division 97, avenue Circulaire, first row — the same path as Henri Barbusse's stele, Paul Éluard's grave and Marcel Cachin's, at the far end of the cemetery, in the sector of the Communards' Wall.
Marcel CachinWhere did Maurice Thorez die?
On the Black Sea, on 11 July 1964, aboard the Soviet ship Litva: he was on his way to a holiday in the USSR. He had kept the leadership of the French Communist Party until that very day — thirty-four years in all.
Henri BarbusseWho was Maurice Thorez?
A miner's son from the Pas-de-Calais who became General Secretary of the French Communist Party in 1930, at thirty, deputy for Ivry-sur-Seine in 1932, then Minister of State and deputy prime minister from 1945 to 1947.
Paul Lafargue and Laura MarxWhat is carved on his grave?
His name, his dates and his office — “secrétaire général du Parti communiste français”, General Secretary of the French Communist Party — then, below, his wife's name, “Jeannette Thorez-Vermeersch, 1910-2001”, who outlived him by thirty-seven years.
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