Pierre Frank
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Pierre Frank (born 24 October 1905, Paris – died 18 April 1984, Paris) was a French Trotskyist leader.
Frank was a member of the Communist League, the French Trotskyist organisation, in the 1930s. He was a part of the faction within the movement led by Raymond Molinier that remained inside the SFIO after the majority followed Trotsky's advice to leave. Frank and his co-thinkers were expelled from the Movement for the Fourth International as a result. Frank was a founder-member of the "La Commune" group formed by Molinier.
When the Second World War broke out, Frank was sent to Great Britain in order to continue legally publishing the movement's documents. He issued a publication called International Correspondence (Inprecor) but, as an illegal resident, was briefly imprisoned. Apart from the help of Betty Hamilton, the British Trotskyists were not in sympathy with his views.
At the end of the Second World War he returned to France and joined the leadership of the Parti Communiste Internationaliste (PCI). Generally he was supportive of the positions put forward by the international leadership around Ernest Mandel and Michel Pablo supported by the Socialist Workers Party (US).
He was important in maintaining the PCI in the 1950s and into the 1960s. He was elected to the United Secretariat of the Fourth International in 1963 and served as an editor of Intercontinental Press. When the PCI was dissolved into the new Communist League in 1968, he was a part of the leadership and continued in it until his death.
He was the author of a history of Trotskyism entitled The Long March of the Trotskyists.
His ashes are in the Cimetière du Père Lachaise.
[edit] External links
- Frank's writings from the Marxist Internet Archive
- The Lubitz TrotskyanaNet provides a bio-bibliographical sketch of Pierre Frank
