Founder and driving force behind Spartacus Publishing, Joseph Lefeuvre (1902-1988) was born and raised in Livré, Ille-et-Vilaine, where he attended public school-his parents being deeply opposed to private education-before spending a school year in Rennes. He is better known by his first name, René, after his older brother who died at the age of 10, and whom he adopted upon arriving in Paris.
At 15, while his father, a bricklayer, was mobilized, he worked at Crédit Lyonnais, then became his apprentice when his father returned in October 1918. He would have liked to be a schoolteacher, but his sister was already pursuing that path, and their parents couldn't afford to support a second student. However, he told his father that the physical exhaustion was taking its toll and that one day he would go to Paris. He also understood his attraction to boys, something impossible to acknowledge in the village. His mother passed on her passion for reading: "During my childhood, boredom was a benevolent companion that would either immerse me in my books or glue me to my bedroom window." He devoured everything by Loti. Renan's Life of Jesus profoundly affected him, to the point of transforming him... into an unbeliever. To "escape the boredom of[his]Breton village," he enrolled in military training so that he could choose his posting and leave without disappointing his family. On the banks of the Seine, he discovered Marx, Kropotkin, Engels, Proudhon, Luxemburg, and several political journals, including Boris Souvarine's *Le Bulletin communiste*, which particularly influenced him, as well as Romain Rolland's *Jean-Christophe*, which drew him to a pacifist and humanist ideal.In 1926, he joined the Marx and Lenin Communist Circle and then the Democratic Communist Circle, alongside Souvarine, "a tireless communist activist critical of Stalinism." He became secretary of the association of friends of the journal *Monde*, a communist weekly founded by Henri Barbusse, which had resisted any takeover by the Party. To disseminate the discussions and ideas resulting from the meetings, conferences, and screenings organized within this framework, he created the journal *Masses*, a reference to the New York magazine *New Masses*. He thus learned the craft of editor-in-chief. In issue number 5, in May 1933, he launched a campaign for the release of Victor Serge, and in 1934, he also founded the journal Spartacus, while working as a proofreader in a printing shop. After the riots of February 6, he joined the Socialist Battle section, led by Jean Zyromski and Marceau Pivert, within the SFIO (French Section of the Workers' International), which he left in October 1935 to found, with Pivert and Daniel Guérin among others, the Revolutionary Left, and then, in 1938, the Socialist Workers' and Peasants' Party (PSOP). Mobilized in September 1939, he was taken prisoner during the surrender of Dunkirk and spent five years in northern Germany.
Denis Heudré thus retraces his life and commitments, his relationships with Simone Weil, Mika Etchebéhère, Serge Quadruppani, and many others, alternating first-person narratives, imagined from his writings, and biographical chronicles, carefully integrating this activist journey into broader historical context, regularly providing chronological markers as a backdrop: the Russian and Spanish Revolutions, the World's Fair, and the assassination of Trotsky, for example.
He also presents selected articles and titles from the 600 issues of the Cahiers Spartacus published, some with print runs of 30,000 copies. Many are groundbreaking, even prophetic: on the Russian Revolution and Stalinism, on the dangers of fascism for Europe, the relationship between Hitler and Stalin that would lead to the German-Soviet Pact, Algeria, and more. This impressive catalog has recently been acquired by Syllepse publishers, who intend to continue its publication.
A biography that pays tribute to a man convinced that the transmission of ideas helps fuel struggles.
Ernest London (UCL Le Puy-en-Velay)
Denis Heudré, The True Story of a Young Man Who Came to Paris to Make a Revolution: René Lefeuvre in the Struggles of the 20th Century, Syllepse, March 2026, 144 pages, EUR12.
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Lire-Denis-Heudre-La-Veritable-histoire-d-un-petit-gars-monte-a-Paris-pour
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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