French Letters
the French Letters are a literary publication created in France, in 1941, during the Occupation by Jacques Decour and Jean Paulhan. It is one of the many publications of the resistance movement National front. It is then about a clandestine publication which profits amongst other things from the collaboration of Louis Aragon, François Mauriac, Claude Morgan, Edith Thomas, Georges Limbour, Raymond Queneau and Jean Lescure.
After the Release and until 1972, the French Letters , directed by Louis Aragon, profit from the financial support of the PCF.
The Kravchenko business
In 1949, a polemic then a resounding lawsuit opposes the newspaper to the Soviet dissident Victor Kravtchenko. After the publication of his book I chose freedom , speaking about the Soviet prison camps and of their exploitation, the French Letters show it misinformation and to be an agent of the United States starting from false documents writes by the journalist André Ullmann who worked for the intelligence services Soviet; the truth on the origin of those will be known only at the end of the years 1970.
Kravtchenko carries action for libel against the newspaper which is defended by the lawyer Joe Nordmann.
The lawsuit, called " the lawsuit of the siècle" , place in 1949 has and gathers a hundred witnesses. The Soviet Union introduces the former colleagues of Kravtchenko and his former wife to denounce it. The defenders of Kravtchenko bring to the bar of the survivors of Soviet prison camps. Among them Margarete Buber-Neumann, the widow of the repented German communist leader, Heinz Neumann; itself sent to the Gulag. To the time of the pact germano-Soviet, it turned over to Germany and was imprisoned there. Its experiment helps the anticommunists to plead the narrow similarity between the Soviet mode and the Nazi regime. The lawsuit is gained by Kravtchenko in April 1949 and it receives a sum symbolic system for slandering.
Stop and republication
When the support of PCF is lacking, the review, chronically overdrawn, cease its publication.
Since the Years 1990, this review, of a literary high-quality, is again published regularly, all first Saturdays of the month, by the daily newspaper Humanity .
Directors: Louis Aragon, of 1953 to 1972, then Jean Ristat today.
Chronicles: Letters, Arts, Cinema, Theater, Music.
Publish news of writers or poets.
Sources
Pierre Daix, French Letters, stakes for the history of a newspaper, 1941-1972 , Tallandier, 2004.
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