Committee of vigilance of the intellectuals antifascists

The Committee of vigilance of the intellectuals antifascists , or Committee of vigilance , still known under its initials CVIA , was a French political organization before the Second world war, founded in 1934.

As its name indicates it, the Committee of vigilance of the intellectuals antifascists (CVIA) gathered French intellectuals of left decided to be opposed to the rise Fascisme in France as in Europe.

History of the CVIA

The CVIA was founded in March 1934 in reaction to unparliamentary violences of the February 6th, 1934. the initiative in cost with Pierre Gérôme (pseudonym of François Walter, listener at the Court of Auditors) which had initially contacted the CGT (André Delmas and Georges Lapierre, leaders of the National union of the teachers (SNI)).

The CVIA will be created under the patronage of three emblematic personalities of the diversity of the left:

  • the ethnologist Paul Rivet, Socialist;
  • the philosopher writer Alain, radical;
  • the physicist Paul Langevin, near to Communism.

The text founder of the CVIA is the proclamation “With the workers” (March 5th, 1934). Its success will be remarkable, collecting in a few weeks 2.300 adhesions and, at the end of 1934, more than 6000 signatories (professors and teachers, writers, journalists).

Gathering in March 1934 the three big families of the left, the CVIA seems a precursor of the Popular front.

The CVIA will tear since 1936, proving the difficulty of combining on the left the Antifascisme and the Pacifisme. The partisans of firmness vis-a-vis Hitler, even at the price of a war, leave the CVIA in two times:

  • With the congress of June 1936 a minority carried out by Paul Langevin leaves the direction of the CVIA.
  • After the crisis of Munich (November 1938), the realistic pacifist tendency (Paul Rivet and Pierre Gérôme) leaves in its turn the CVIA.
Thus remain nothing any more but the pacifist extremes (Alexandre, Leon Emery). To the extreme, certain former members of the CVIA will find in “republican” collaboration with Germany (to collaborate to obtain in exchange the peace and the re-establishment of the Republic) within the Ligue of the French thought.

In spite of these mistakes, the CVIA will remain one great moment of the history of the left and the antifascism:

  • it contributed to gather the points of view of the parties composing the Popular front.
  • it incarnated the spirit of the antifascism and in made a political tradition which influenced the French interior Résistance. Paul Rivet belonged to the Groupe of the museum of the Man, André Philip or Jacques Soustelle was figures of the free France.

The CVIA published the bulletin Vigilance .

Personalities members of the CVIA

Group leader founder

  • Pierre Gérôme (pseudonym of François Walter, listener at the Court of Auditors)
  • Paul Rivet (socialist ethnologist)
  • Alain (philosopher and writer, radical)
  • Paul Langevin (physicist, Communist)
  • Andre Delmas (SNI, CGT)
  • Georges Lapierre (SNI, CGT)

Other members

Sources Internet

  • http://biosoc.univ-paris1.fr/histoire/textimage/texte22.htm

Printed sources

  • Nicole Root-Furlaud, “Pacifist and antifascists. The Committee of vigilance of the intellectuals antifascists”, in Of the Thirties. Groups and ruptures , texts joined together by Anne Roche and Christian Tarting, Paris, Editions of CNRS, 1985.
  • Nicole Root, “the Committee of vigilance of the intellectuals antifascists” in historical Dictionary of the French political life , under the direction of Jean-François Sirinelli, PUF, 1995.

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