Annie Kriegel

Annie Kriegel ( Annie Becker; 9 September 1926 – 26 August 1995) was a French historian, a leading expert on communist studies and the history of Communism, a cofounder of the academic journal Communisme (with Stéphane Courtois), and a columnist for Le Figaro.

Career Kriegel joined the French Communist Party (PCF) as a student in 1945 and remained a member until 1957. From October 1951 to December 1953 she was a member of the federal bureau of PCF and from 1952 headed the section of education and ideological combat. She lost her position after siding with Pablo Picasso whose portrait of Joseph Stalin was criticised inside the party. She changed her political views following Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalinism in On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences (1956) The journal Communisme, founded with Stéphane Courtois in 1982, was an extension of her seminar on the subject at Nanterre.

Family Her brother was the historian Jean-Jacques Becker, and she was married to Arthur Kriegel, a brother of Maurice Kriegel-Valrimont.

Commemoration The Association Annie Kriegel, of which Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie was the first president and Stéphane Courtois the secretary-general, is named in her honour.

The Association for the Memory of Past and Present Crimes of Communism (Association pour la mémoire des crimes historiques et actuels du communisme) was founded in 2012 in Villedieu-sur-Indre with the aim of continuing the work of Annie Kriegel and Stéphane Courtois by “publicising the reality of different Communist regimes since 1917”, including “the present dictatorships of China, Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba”.

Principal works 1920. Le Congrès de Tours. Naissance du PCF, Paris: Julliard, 1964. (with Michelle Perrot) Le socialisme français et le pouvoir, Paris: Études et documentation internationale, 1966. Les Communistes français : essai d’ethnographie politique, Paris: Seuil, 1968 (2nd edition, with Guillaume Bourgeois, 1985). Le Pain et les roses : jalons pours une histoire des socialismes, Paris: PUF, 1968. Les Grands Procès dans les systèmes communistes, Paris: Gallimard, 1972. Communismes au miroir français, Paris: Gallimard, 1974. Les internationales ouvrières (1864-1943), 4th edition, Paris: PUF, 1975. (with Donald Blackmer) The International Role of the Communist Parties of Italy and France, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Center for International Affairs, 1975. 'The French Communist Party and the Fifth Republic', in Communism in Italy and France, ed. Donald Blackmer and Sidney Tarrow, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975, pp. 69–86. Un autre communisme?, Paris: Hachette, 1977. Les Juifs et le monde moderne. Essai sur les logiques d’émancipation, Paris, Seuil, 1977. Le communisme au jour le jour : chroniques du Figaro (1976-1979), Paris: Hachette, 1979. 'Public Opinion, Intellectuals and Terrorism in Western Europe', in International Terrorism: Challenge and Response: Proceedings of the Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism (1979), ed. Benjamin Netanyahu, New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1981, pp. 172–179. Ce que j’ai cru comprendre (memoir), Paris: Robert Laffont, 1991.