Georges Cogniot (15 December 1901 in Montigny-lès-Cherlieu, Haute-Saône â 12 March 1978) was a French writer, philosopher and politician of the French Communist Party.
Biography
He was born Georges Auguste Alexandre Cogniot in to a middle-class family and graduated from ÃÂcole normale supérieure.
A member of the French Communist Party since 1922 he was elected to its central committee in 1926. Prior to the Second World War he was elected to the French National Assembly as part of the Popular Front. He was an organizer of the World Committee Against War and Fascism and protested against the Munich Agreement. He was the representative of the PCF in the Executive Committee of the Communist International and also succeeded Paul Vaillant-Couturier as editor of L'Humanité.
In 1938 with Paul Langevin, he created the Marxist journal La Pensée.
After the Nazi invasion of France, he was conscripted into the army however he de-mobilized for health complications. Cogniot was arrested by the German police in 1941 but managed to escape alongside other prisoners and became active in the French Resistance and was responsible for Communist Party press.
In 1944 he once again became editor of L'Humanité and was elected to the National Assembly. A close associate of Maurice Thorez, he was the first director of the Maurice Thorez Institute.
He was part of the Cultural Affairs Committee. In 1966, he was appointed member of the control commission responsible for examining the problems of orientation and selection in the public service of education.
Works
- L'évasion. Récits, ÃÂditions Raisons d'être, 1947
- Proudhon, ÃÂditions de l'Union Française Universitaire
- Rationalisme et laïcité, Les Cahiers rationalistes
- Le Peuple est souverain, Librairie de la Renaissance Française
- De l'enthousiasme àla conscience enchaînée. La question scolaire en 1848 et la loi Falloux, ÃÂditions Hier et Aujourd'hui, 1948
- Hommage àPaul Langevin, texte inclus dans La Pensée et l'Action, les ÃÂditeurs Français Réunis, 1950
- Réalité de la nation, l'attrape-nigaud du cosmopolitisme, ÃÂditions Sociales, 1950
- Petit guide sincère de l'Union Soviétique, ÃÂditions Sociales, 1954
- Conclusions in Mésaventures de lâÂÂanti-marxisme â Les malheurs de M. Merleau-Ponty (ouvrage collectif), Paris, ÃÂditions Sociales, 1956 ; p. 149-157.
- Laïcité et réforme démocratique de l'enseignement, ÃÂditions Sociales, 1963
- Le matérialisme gréco-romain, ÃÂditions Sociales, 1964
- Qu'est-ce que le communisme ?, ÃÂditions Sociales, 1964
- La lyre d'airain : poésie populaire et démocratique, 1815-1918, ÃÂditions Sociales, 1964
- Prométhée s'empare du savoir, la Révolution d'Octobre, la culture et l'école, ÃÂditions Sociales, 1967
- Karl Marx notre contemporain, ÃÂditions Sociales, 1968
- L'Internationale communiste. Aperçu historique, ÃÂditions Sociales, 1969
- Présence de Lénine, ÃÂditions Sociales, 1970
- Maurice Thorez : l'homme, le militant, avec Victor Joannès, ÃÂditions Sociales, 1970
- Parti pris (2 volumes), ÃÂditions Sociales, 1976
- Matérialisme et humanisme : Démocrite, ÃÂpicure, Lucrèce, Goethe, Marx, Le Temps des Cerises, 1998
References