Duchêne, Gabrielle (1870–1954)

French activist who was involved in left-wing, feminist, and pacifist organizations for over 50 years. Pronunciation: gah-bree-ELL du-SHEN. Born Mathilde-Denise Laforcade in Paris, France, on February 26, 1870; died in Zurich, Switzerland, on August 3, 1954; daughter of Joseph Laforcade and Rosalie (Maréchal) Laforcade; married M. Duchêne (a landscape architect); children: daughter, Suzanne-Henriette Duchêne (Mme. Roubakine , b. January 19, 1893).

Named president of the Labor Section of the National Council of French Women (1913); investigated because of pacifist activities (1915); named secretary-general of the French Section of the International League of Women for Peace and Liberty (1919); active in Russian relief (1920–23); intensified her association with Communist front organizations (1927); practiced "realistic" pacifism to counter Hitler's aggression (1934–49); hid from the Gestapo and aided the Resistance (1940–44); was president of the French Section of the LIFPL (1945–54); attended the Congress of Peoples, Vienna (1952).

Gabrielle Duchêne was born into comfortable circumstances, the daughter of Rosalie Maréchal Laforcade and Joseph Laforcade, the Chief of Gardens of Paris. She married a landscape architect, Duchêne, and in 1893 gave birth to a daughter, Suzanne-Henriette, who was to become prominent in women's and peace organizations. The Dreyfus Affair (1894–1906) turned Gabrielle toward social activism, especially on behalf of working women. She participated in the philanthropic Welfare through Work (Assistance par le travail) and in 1908 founded a cooperative, Mutual Aid (Entraide) for laundresses (lingères). Drawn to the union movement, she became active in the shirt and lingerie makers union; as a result, in 1913 she was named president of the Labor Section of the National Council of French Women (CNFF) and founded the CNFF's Office for Women Domestic Workers, housed at 32, rue Fondary (Paris XV).

During the First World War (1914–18), Duchêne continued her advocacy of women's rights in the workplace. She made some progress with the Ministry of Labor on equal pay for women and worked for passage of a minimumwage law for domestic workers (July 10, 1915). As secretary-general of her French Office of Domestic Labor, she brought several lawsuits against employers under this law. She founded (July 19, 1915) the Inter-Union Action Committee Against the Exploitation of Women and linked it to the giant General Confederation of Labor (CGT) to gain more leverage. Male unionists' resistance to women's issues, however, was strong; she fought it by agitating outside union meetings and selling participants copies of La Voix des femmes (The Women's Voice) and La Lutte féministe (The Feminist Fight). In 1917, she started the French Office of Feminine Interests, which spread information on women's issues and sundry social evils. The organization folded in two years in part because of its strong pacifist orientation.

Pacifism, in fact, had become a dominant interest of Duchêne's and remained such for the rest of her life. She supported, but could not attend, the International Congress of Women at The Hague in April 1915 inspired by Jane Addams . In May, Duchêne founded a French section of the International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace (CIFPP), formed at The Hague but not truly launched until 1919 as the International League of Women for Peace and Liberty (LIFPL). Her group—it never numbered more than a hundred or so—won hostile notoriety as the "Rue Fondary Committee" when it distributed an unsigned, uncensored antiwar tract by Michel Alexandre, Un Devoir urgent pour les femmes (An Urgent Duty for Women), in November 1915. It did not call for an immediate peace, and Socialist deputies in Parliament endorsed it. Nevertheless, it caused an uproar. The police searched Duchêne's apartment and seized papers, but no arrests ensued. As a result of the affair, the group faded and the CNFF forced her to resign her Labor Section presidency. She later joined the Society for Critical and Documentary Study of the War, a peace group patronized by Romain Rolland, whom the authorities finally allowed her to visit in Switzerland in 1917. By the end of the war, despite setbacks, Duchêne and other radicals had won a hearing and some respect for their courage.

After the war, Duchêne was a mainstay of organizations supporting world peace and the new Soviet Union. From 1919, she was secretary-general of the French Section of the LIFPL. The section never numbered over a few thousand members, in contrast to the large American and German sections, but she was a major figure in the international organization. She lectured widely and wrote many articles for the LIFPL's magazines S.O.S. (1925–35) and En Vigie (On the Lookout, 1935–39). She attended peace conferences in, e.g., Stuttgart (1920), The Hague (1922), Frankfurt (1929), and Geneva (1932), and participated in pacifist demonstrations. On behalf of Russia, she worked hard on the Red Cross' International Russian Relief Committee during the famine of 1920–23. She never joined the Communist Party, but by 1927 she had become a dedicated fellow traveler. She founded (1927–28) a study group, the New Russia Circle, which organized many lectures; participated in the Society of Friends of the Soviet Union (1927); was a delegate from the Women's Union Section of the Communist CGTU (Unified) to the tenth anniversary celebration of the Russian Revolution; attended the Brussels congress (February 1927) which founded the League Against Imperialism and Colonial Oppression (it urged wars of liberation); and joined the Communist-directed Fraternal Union of Women Against War (1927). The French Section of the LIFPL, however, did not always share her sympathies for Communist affiliations; her political activity helped keep its membership low, and in 1936 it split apart.

In the 1930s, Duchêne's pro-Soviet activity continued unabated. The New Russia Circle became in 1936 the Association for the Study of Soviet Civilization. She was secretary-general and, as its delegate, went to the Soviet Union on a study tour. She wrote for the review La Russie aujourd'hui (Russia Today) and in October 1937 at the Sorbonne participated in the French Days for Peace and Friendship with the Soviet Union. As for the peace movement, the rise of Fascism and Hitler put it under great strain. The Amsterdam-Pleyel movement (1932) spawned organizations involving Duchêne. She was a member of the board of the Committee for the Fight Against War, and she belonged to the World Front. She was one of the four secretaries of the World Committee Against War and Fascism (1932), a Communist creation, and wrote for its publication, Clarté (Brightness). In 1935, she organized and became president of the French Section of the WCWAWF and represented it at the Brussels congress of the Universal Assembly for Peace (1935). This French Section claimed (1936) 100,000 members and 600,000 sympathizers—probably a large overestimate, but impressive nonetheless.

The February 6, 1934, rioting in Paris by right-wing organizations triggered a powerful reaction on the left which led to the Popular Front government of 1936–38 based on a coalition of the Radical, Socialist, and Communist parties. Duchêne was early into the fray, one of the first to join the Committee of Antifascist Action and Vigilance (March 1934). She supported the Popular Front and many organizations aiding victims of Fascism, e.g., Ernst Thaelmann, Ethiopia, Bulgaria, Republican Spain. She came to believe that Fascism could not be stopped by pacifist measures, that in extremis liberty needed to be defended by arms if peace ultimately were to prevail. As a "realist" pacifist, she condemned Hitler's occupation of the Rhineland (1936), calling for League of Nations action. Building a united front of women, however, at the International Conference of Women for the Defense of Peace, Liberty, and Democracy (Marseille, May 1938), proved illusory. With the war imminent in 1939, she opposed the ultrapacifists, who then left the LIFPL. In June 1940 came catastrophe: a defeated France surrendered to Hitler's armies.

Not surprisingly, the Gestapo had Gabrielle Duchêne on their lists. She fled to the Midi, where under an assumed name she aided refugees and the Resistance in the Aix-en-Provence region. A betrayal forced her in 1943 to find shelter with a friend, Claire Géniaux , in Milhars (Tarn). From the end of the war until she died in Zurich in 1954, Duchêne resumed her prewar activity on behalf of women, peace, and Communist causes. She was president of the French Section of the LIFPL until her death. She also was a member of the France-USSR National Initiative Committee (December 1944); of aid organizations for the USSR, Spain, Vietnam et al.; and of the "Fighters for Peace" of the National Council of the Peace Movement of the Union of French Women; and she participated in the First Consultative Congress of the International Democratic Federation of Women, and in the Congress of Peoples (Vienna, 1952).

At her death, Duchêne left a huge, invaluable archive—papers, books, brochures, newspapers, clippings, posters, dossiers—which against all odds had escaped police seizure during the war. Her daughter gave it to the Bibliothèque de documentation internationale contemporaine (University of Paris-Nanterre).

Gabrielle Duchêne, despite an evident näiveté regarding the true nature of Stalinism and the Soviet regime (which she shared with most leftists of the time), put her astonishing reserves of energy and compassion to work on behalf of a host of humane causes, above all world peace. She was an inveterate joiner, but more than that, an activist. That common label, however, seems quite inadequate when one surveys her life's work.

sources:

Bard, Christine. Les Filles de Marianne: Histoire des féminismes 1914–1940. Paris: Fayard, 1995.

Dreyfus, Michel. "Deux fonds interessants pour les historiens à la Bibliothèque de documentation internationale contemporaine de Nanterre," in Mouvement sociale. [Fonds Max Lagard and Gabrielle Duchêne.] 1981, no. 116, pp. 144–146.

——, and Nicole Racine. "Duchêne, Mathilde-Denise, dite Gabrielle," in Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement ouvrier français. Part 4: 1914#x2013;1939. Dir. Jean Maitron. Paris: Éditions Ouvrières, 1964—.

——. "Le Fonds féministe à la B.D.I.C.," in Matériaux pour l'histoire de notre temps (Nanterre) No. 1. January–March 1985, pp. 21–23.

Klejman, Laurence, and Florence Rochefort. L'Égalité en marche: Le Féminisme sous la Troisième République. Paris: Presses de la Fondation national des sciences politiques, 1989.

Smith, Paul. Feminism and the Third Republic. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.

suggested reading:

Agulhon, Maurice. The French Republic 1879–1992. Trans. by Antonia Nevill. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1993.

Dreyfus, Michel. "Des femmes trotskystes et pacifistes sous le Front populaire," in Cahiers Léon Trotsky (Grenoble). No. 9, 1982, pp. 53–60.

Jackson, Julian. The Popular Front in France: Defending Democracy, 1934–38. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Sowerwine, Charles. Sisters or Comrades? Women and Socialism in France since 1876. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

Weber, Eugen. The Hollow Years: France in the 1930s. NY: W.W. Norton, 1994.

collections:

Nanterre: Bibliothèque de documentation internationale contemporaine: Archives Gabrielle Duchêne. Paris: Archives Nationals: F7/12962, F7/13371.

David S. Newhall , Pottinger Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus, Centre College, author of Clemenceau: A Life at War (Edwin Mellen, 1991)