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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Solidarity as a weapon : the International Red Aid, an organization of defense in face of repression of the communist movement (1918-1934)

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In the aftermath of the First World War, a major anticommunist and repressive wave swept across the European continent, following the smashing of attempts to export the Bolshevik revolutionary breath from Russia. In this context, the Communist International founded, at its 4th Congress in 1922, the International Red Aid (IRA), a auxiliary organization specifically charged with helping revolutionary militants who were victims of repression. Its French section, which was created the following year, organized material, moral and legal support for the accused and prisoners, while at the same time carrying out the political struggle for amnesty. IRA is also one of the main actors of the practical application of a proletarian and revolutionary internationalism. It was the organizer of major transnational solidarity campaigns which, from the denunciation in the 1920s of the white terror in the Balkans to the popular mobilization in favor of Republican Spain in 1936, set the pace for the interwar period. Ardent defender of the right of asylum, he also participated in the reception of political refugees, from the first Italian anti-fascists to the victims of Nazism in Germany. Its intervention in the peripheral territories under colonial administration, in support of independence and revolutionary circles, only reinforced the mistrust of which the IRA was the object among the authorities. Affected by the strategic inflexions of the Comintern, the Red Aid also had a prominent social function. It participates in militant socialization and serves as a vector of diffusion of the communist influence in the society. Major organization of the communist galaxy, the Red Aid will become in 1936, facing the issues of the Popular Front, the Secours populaire de France (predecessor of the current Secours populaire français).