François Mitterrand died thirty years in the past, on January 8, 1996. The primary left-wing president underneath the 5th Republic (from 1981 to 1995), he remained omnipresent within the French creativeness, as evidenced via the a large number of motion pictures and books frequently devoted to him. Regardless of necessary reforms (abolition of the demise penalty, retirement at 60, RMI, and many others.), his political legacy is advanced to simply accept at the left, the person’s trail is marred via darkish spaces (Vichy, colonialism) and an enduring suspicion of insincerity or betrayal of the beliefs that introduced him to energy (wreck with capitalism). What are the hot analysis contributions in this matter?
In 2016, the centenary of Francois Mitterrand’s start and the two decades since his demise brought about a large number of commemorations and publications. Ten years later, new analysis has revisited the Mitterranian historical past, depending specifically on up to now unpublished assets, akin to Letters to Anne and Magazine for Anne (2016), or deposited in archives. Along with a rising position in clinical literature, François Mitterrand has additionally established himself within the French fictional panorama, in Le Promeneur du Champ-de-Mars (2005), Les Saveurs du Palais (2012), l’Inconnu de l. a. Grande Arche (2025), within the Bardot sequence (2023, recently, 20, confidential or Tapie) and Tapie. broadcast on France 2. Via those tales, to that are added testimonies such because the documentary of his daughter Mazarin, François Mitterrand, some other conceivable existence (2025), this determine of French politics of the second one 20th century nonetheless strongly fills the creativeness of our contemporaries. If his biography is referred to now, his legacy, which is continuously being puzzled, stays marked via a robust polemical and emotional price that makes partisan heroism unattainable.
Certainly, the pantheon of the socialist left comprises Jean Jaures (1859-1914), Leon Bloom (1872-1950) and, much less clearly, François Mitterrand. Jean Jaures is well known as a really perfect internationalist pacifist, republican socialist, defender of the Carmois staff. Leon Blum is the selection of exercising energy in democracy, the Common Entrance and its conquests, the combat in opposition to anti-Semitism and in opposition to Vichy. François Mitterrand is the socialist with the longest tenure in energy in France: fourteen years at the Elysée. However the complexity of his adventure prevents him from embodying the “ideal” left-wing hero. Even if he labored for a very long time to keep watch over the tale of his adventure, the top of his closing seven-year time period and his existence have been marked via each the personal (his sickness, his hidden daughter) and the political – particularly the e-newsletter of Pierre Pein’s Early life of France in 1994, which printed to many his previous right through the 2nd Global Conflict.
3 primary problems – the 2nd Global Conflict, the (neo)colonial coverage of France in Africa and the connection with capitalism – are, in our opinion, a drawback to a relaxed courting between the left and François Mitterrand.
Mitterrand and the 2nd Global Conflict
The primary problematic matter issues the jobs performed via François Mitterrand right through the Vichy duration: the picture enthusiastic about Pétain on October 15, 1942, his awarding of Francisca in April 1943, particularly his courting with René Busquet nonetheless frequently disturb the editorial and media sphere, even if many of the info have lengthy been identified.
Individuals of the Basic Fee for the Reclassification of Prisoners of Conflict Francois Mitterrand (appropriate) and Marcel Barot (within the center) are gained in an target market via Marshal Pétain on October 15, 1942.
Born into the Charente bourgeoisie in 1916, François Mitterrand become all in favour of politics as a pupil of the ultra-conservative right-wing Croix-de-Feu League of Colonel de Los angeles Roque. Mobilized in 1940, captured, escaped from Germany, were given a role via his circle of relatives networks within the Vichy management, joined the Nationwide Revolution with out being anti-Semitic. Then, from anti-German patriotism, he regularly entered the resistance in 1943 and fully switched to the Resistance in November 1943. On the Liberation, he regularly and definitively anchored himself to the left.
Many of those parts have been identified to his contemporaries. Historian Noéline Castagnes has proven that because the Nineteen Fifties the right-wing benches of the Nationwide Meeting had been humming with “Francis Mitterrand” insults and that right through the 1965 presidential marketing campaign de Gaulle himself made up our minds to not use this component so as to not weaken France or the parable of the Republic. Along with the rewriting or “recomposition” of Mitterrand himself, the historical past of the omissions and (re)discoveries of his passage via Vichy is due to this fact additionally the historical past of the arbitrations of his allies and combatants.
The surprise of the 1994 e-newsletter of Une jeunesse francaise, via the journalist Pierre Pein, can be particularly robust for younger socialists, who understand their celebration as a homogeneous bulwark in opposition to the intense appropriate because the Thirties, raised within the fable of resistance to the time period of Henri Rousseau, and as “public opinion fights, gradually revealing its existence, steadfast”.
This Mitterranian previous is at all times surrounded via a sulphurous halo, as a result of some see it because the “original sin” of a person whose activist profession is perceived as insincere, structured most effective via his ambition.
Mitterrand and colonialism
François Mitterrand’s function in French colonial after which neo-colonial politics is the second one main memorial impediment to the whole reclamation of his legacy at the left. This side of his political existence was once, actually, the topic of a historiographical and editorial step forward within the years 2024-2025 (with the paintings of Anne-Laure Ollivier and Frederic Turpin, Thomas Deltombe, Pascal Blanchard and Nicolas Bancel). If on the finish of this paintings actual new occasions have been printed, such because the travelogue in sub-Saharan Africa that Mitterrand stored between January and February 1950, and which we printed, they have been necessarily identified to these within the topic.
François Mitterrand was once significantly Minister of Out of the country France in 1950 and Minister of the Inside in 1954, it was once in that capability that he declared “Algeria France”, a method that was once then somewhat consensual amongst executive forces (and now not the slogan of the ultras of French Algeria), then Keeper of the Seal in 1957. His solidity on this place was once specifically highlighted via Benjamin Stora and Francois Maie in 2010.
Mitterrand’s editorial information in this matter will also be defined via the vibrancy of the query of post-colonial reminiscence and the historic development within the function of France in Africa, and specifically the submission of the Duclert Fee file in 2021 on “France, Rwanda and the Genocide of the Tutsi (1990-1994)”. Minister of colonies in 1950, chief of the anti-colonial celebration in 1971, president of the 3rd global discourse referred to as Cancun in 1981 and accountable head of state right through the genocide in opposition to the Tutsi in 1994: François Mitterrand’s profession will also be diminished to a upset right-wing activist who went from fundamentalist to columnist. neocolonial.
Historians, for his or her phase, attempt to contextualize each and every of those sequences and underline their continuity in a extra detailed method: in 1950, in a political global the place decolonization was once an excessively marginal choice, even at the left, Mitterrand was once a reformist and innovative colonialist. As we confirmed in 1971, he slightly supported the PS’s 3rd Global schedule, carried via professionals at the Christian left who by no means absolutely captured his consideration. Her studying frames and alliances solid within the colonial generation are then discreetly persisted with out being a topic for many of the left-wing voters: the candidate’s courting to France’s colonial previous was once now not a topic within the 1981 presidential marketing campaign.
Mitterrand and capitalism
The 3rd factor negatively feeds its steadiness sheet and activates its trial of treason at the left: it’s the factor of the absence of a wreck with capitalism. Actually, on that robust thought, central to the socialist doctrine, he gained over the top of the PS, proclaiming from the platform of the Epine Congress in 1971: “Whoever does not accept the break (…) with capitalist society, that, I say, cannot be a member of the Socialist Party.”
Alternatively, this promise, which contributed to the unification of the left (1972-1977) and taken the hope and votes of many at the left in Might 1981, replied to the extremely dramatized announcement of the “austerity turning point”, on March 21, 1983. On that date, the franc was once devalued via the Ecu gadget and for the 3rd time the Monet was once retained for the social gadget. This selection of Mitterrand is observed via some as a selection of reason why and Europe. For others, it alerts, along with the rejection of the “second monetary policy”, the top of socialist social and financial voluntarism, the triumph of the “market” and liberal Europe. The adoption of the Maastricht Treaty via referendum via a slim majority in September 1992, in spite of the robust private advocacy of François Mitterrand, confirms this Ecu and liberal predominance of the presidential path for many who have been dissatisfied in 1983. If the commercial truth and the chronology of this “turning point” that F. Put into standpoint via Boeritz, fresh paintings returns to this “national neurosis,” a second that is still specifically painful in historical past at the left.
If the Mitterrand steadiness exists even after 1983 (we predict, for instance, of the advent of the minimal integration source of revenue in 1988), the trauma that was once felt on the announcement of the “turning point” actually introduces a department that separates, at the one hand, the primary measures of 1981-1982. fifth week of paid depart, 39-hour week, decentralization, retirement at 60, audiovisual reform, Aurouk regulations) and, however, austerity, cohabitation and the second one seven-year mandate extra vital on the diplomatic stage than on the home stage. A “socialist” time would thus be contrasted with a extra “Gaullo-Mitterandist” time, distancing it from the lineage of Jaures and Bloom.
The 3rd favourite president of the French
In 2026, the worry of the go back to energy of the intense appropriate, the polarization of the general public debate on post-colonial, migration and identification problems via the latter, the continual worsening of the commercial, political and Ecu disaster are problems with which the Mithradov legacy does now not appear probably the most unambiguous and efficient for the left and fresh socialists. The dynamics of the “Union of the Left” that introduced Mitterrand to energy, to the detriment of his companions, additionally does now not be offering a reactive type, against this to the extra far off and likewise fantasized “popular front”.
In 2021, in keeping with the Ifop ballot, François Mitterrand was once the 3rd favourite for the presidency of the French Republic. On the best of the listing, de Gaulle, a countrywide hero and the one president to ascertain a political circle of relatives with everlasting rights to his legacy. 2nd, the golist Jacques Chirac, who was once declared a “swag” icon (taste, cool) via the wave of nostalgia within the 2010s, and whose demise in 2019 brought about robust feelings. François Mitterrand, then again, was once a long way forward amongst left-wing sympathizers.
Just like the pantheonization in 2025 of Robert Badinter, his good friend and minister, who consecrates a part of the socialist and humanist heritage of 1981, we will be able to think that militant reminiscence, in addition to nationwide reminiscence, will proceed to make use of this “right of inventory” at the Mitterrand document – which Lionel Jospin argued in 1995 can, even lately, be unifying.
Judith Bonnin is the creator of Mitterrand, with Pierre-Emmanuel Gig, to be printed via PUF_ on January 13, 2026.
