page_title: Jacques Sadoul (politician)
section_title: French Communist Group
hierarchical_section_title: Jacques Sadoul (politician) / Biography / French Communist Group
caption_attribution_description: Català: D'esquerra a dreta: Robert Petit, Pierre Pascal, Jacques Sadoul i Marcel Body (Rússia, 1922)
context_page_description: Jacques Numa Sadoul, commonly known as Captain Sadoul, was a French lawyer, communist politician, and writer, one of the founders of the Communist International. He began his career in the French Section of the Workers' International in Vienne, and, by the time of World War I, was serving under Albert Thomas, the Minister of Armaments. A French Army Captain, he was Thomas' envoy to the Russian Republic, keeping contact with the socialist circles and steering them toward the Entente Powers. After the October Revolution, he maintained close contacts with the Bolsheviks, pledging them his support against the Central Powers during the crisis of 1917–1918. He was unable to prevent Bolshevist Russia from signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which took her out of the war, but, having established close contacts with Leon Trotsky and other communist leaders, became a communist himself.
  Opting not to return to France during the Russian Civil War, Sadoul co-founded the French Communist Group in Russia, fighting for control of it against Pierre Pascal and Henri Guilbeaux.
context_section_description: Like the American Oliver M. Sayler, Sadoul was one of the first foreign observers to compare the Bolshevik and French Revolutions, justifying the decimation of Whites, Socialist Revolutionaries, and other "puppets of the Entente", as a political expediency against counterrevolution. He also suggested that Bolshevik "despotism" was preferable to either anarchism or liberal democracy. In his letter to Rolland, he referred to the Bolshevik insurgency as "the eldest daughter" of France's 1789 uprising. Such theorizing did not quell the Bolsheviks' suspicion: Lenin "didn't think much" of Sadoul, and merely referred to him as an agent of "French imperialism". Vaucher claims that Trotsky and other high-ranking Bolsheviks "speak of Sadoul with an ironic smile" but "put him to good use." Sadoul's "weakness in front of discerning politicians such as Trotsky" is also noted by Lejeune.
  Over the following years, Sadoul remained a major admirer of Trotsky, celebrating his great capacity for work and intellectual achievements. In his view, Trotsky represented the Revolution's "soul of steel". The former French captain also met other Bolsheviks of note, including Yakov Sverdlov and Alexandra Kollontai. He describes Kollontai as "seductive", and, Ulam recounts, left "solicitous" records of her affair with the "ferocious" Bolshevik Pavel Dybenko. Sadoul was interested in Kollontai's free love movement, recording the spread of sex communes, but was reassured by Trotsky that these "were not to be taken seriously." His other letters comprise ample praises of Bolshevik policies in culture, art, and science. His other enthusiastic reflections on such topics were published in 1918 as Vive la République des Soviets! ("Long Live the Soviet Republic!").
  During those months, Sadoul refused to return and complete his service in the French Army, although he later claimed that he had never received his orders. The People's Commissars dissolved the French mission, but Sadoul remained in Moscow, sharing a villa with Pascal (their landlord was a prestigious architect). Together with other exiles, they founded the politically unstable French Communist Group. Nominally led by Pascal, it had Sadoul for its main animator.
  In late 1918, Sadoul and Pascal, alongside Inessa Armand and Marcel Body, began putting out the political weekly Troisième Internationale. Due to shortages, it originally had only two pages per issue, and was printed on wrapping paper. Although introduced as the "organ of the French communists in Moscow", it was not fully Bolshevik in tone. The revolutionary Victor Serge, who spent time attending the Communist Group's sessions, Pascal was more inclined to support the anarchists and Kollontai's "Workers' Opposition". According to Body, his typographers included Menshevik opponents of the Commissars' government. The editorial staff also refused to publish official Bolshevik statistics after Pascal discovered that these had been faked. These hesitations caused a rift within the Group: Sadoul, who fought for leadership against Pascal, denounced the latter to the Cheka as a Menshevik and a Catholic dissident.
caption: Sadoul (second from right), flanked by Pierre Pascal and Marcel Body (1922 photograph)
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