Jacques Sadoul


Sadoul, Jacques

 

Born 1881; died Nov. 21, 1956, in Paris. Figure in the French workers’ movement. Internationalist. Participant in the Civil War of 1918–20 in Russia.

In 1903, Sadoul joined the French Socialist Party. In September 1917, while working in the War Department, he was appointed attaché to the French military mission in Petrograd. Influenced by conversations with V. I. Lenin and by the October Revolution of 1917, he refused to serve the French imperialist government. In the letters he sent to France, he gave an objective account of events in Russia and denounced the interventionists. Sadoul was active in the group of French communists founded in Russia in 1918 and known as the French Section of the RCP(B). He was the group’s representative at the First Congress of the Comintern, where he presented a report (1919). In 1918 he wrote such pamphlets and leaflets as Long Live the Proletarian Revolution! and To the French Soldiers! for distribution among the soldiers and sailors of the French interventionist forces. At the end of November 1919, he joined the Red Army, for which he was sentenced to death in absentia in France.

After his return to France in 1924, Sadoul became active in the French Communist Party. In 1927 the Soviet government awarded him the Order of the Red Banner for participating in the defense of the gains of the October Revolution. During World War II, Sadoul was a member of the Resistance Movement.

E. I. PATLAZHAN