Ludovic-Oscar Frossard

Ludovic-Oscar Frossard, born March 5, 1889 in Foussemagne (Territoire de Belfort), is a French politician who was secretary general of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) from 1918 to 1920, then one of the supporters to the Bolshevik revolution and at the origin of the split of a majority of the Socialists at the Congress of Tours in December 1920 to create the French Section of the Communist International which he will be the first General Secretary from 1921 to 1923.
An activist who is a socialist from his youth, and worried in his profession of professor, he will be fired for militancy in 1913 after his military service.
First socialist leader of the Territoire de Belfort, main editor of the local newspaper Germinal de Belfort and socialist candidate for the legislative election of 1914 in the first constituency of Belfort, he can not be elected.
During the war, he participated with Jean Longuet and Paul Faure in the struggles of the socialist minority, of "pacifist" but "patriotic" tendency 5. He became permanent delegate for propaganda, then secretary of the SFIO in October 1918. In 1919 , he is a candidate on the socialist list led by Longuet in the legislative elections in the Seine department, but is not elected.
Supporter of the "reconstruction" of a Socialist International, he converted to membership of the Communist International (IC/Comintern) following a trip to Russia accompanied by Marcel Cachin in 1920, he defends this thesis at the Congress of Tours.
He then becomes first secretary of the Socialist Party-French Section of the Communist International (Parti socialiste-Section française de l'International communiste/PS-SCFIC) then PC-SFIC, but due to the youth of the party and its initial disorganization, the internal discipline is not applied. Frossard violates many closed conditions of the Comintern. He remains a freemason while others have abandoned like Marcel Cachin and the majority of the old socialists, and participation with newspapers "bourgeois" in the ranks communists. He was outvoted at the Second Congress of the PC-SFIC and disavowed by the Comintern, and resigned on January 1, 1923, accompanied by his supporters.
Ludovic-Oscar Frossard then created the Unitary Communist Party, he ended up returning to the SFIO and created in 1924 the Socialist Communist Union but only managed to remain a small group within the left of the SFIO.
Category:French figures