Editing Henri Barbusse (section)

==Life==

=== Early life and career ===
The son of a French father and an English mother, Barbusse was born in [[Asnières-sur-Seine]], France in 1873.<ref name="ReferenceA">{{cite magazine |title=Milestones, Sep. 9, 1935 |url=https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,748978,00.html |magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] |date=9 September 1935}}</ref>  Although he grew up in a small town, he left for [[Paris, France|Paris]] in 1889, at age 16. In 1895, he published a poetry collection ''Mourners'' (''Pleureuses''), which is sometimes identified as "neo-Symbolist".<ref name="f">{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SXkVKq86YIkC | isbn=9781438108360 | title=The Facts on File Companion to the World Novel: 1900 to the Present | date=2008 | publisher=Infobase }}</ref>

In 1908, Barbusse wrote a novel ''[[Hell (Barbusse novel)|Hell]]'' (''L'Enfer''), in which he described the life of a young Parisian who lives in a boarding house and spies through a hole in his wall on the other boarders and sees birth, death, adultery and lesbianism. The novel produced controversy because of breaking taboos and crossing conventional moral boundaries of the time;<ref name="f"/> this work is identified as 'neo-Naturalist'.<ref name="britannica"/>

=== First World War ===
In 1914, at age 41, he enlisted in the [[French Army]] and served on the Western front during [[World War I]].<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|title=Under Fire: The story of a squad|url=https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/under-fire-story-of-squad|access-date=2020-10-19|website=The British Library|archive-date=2021-09-08|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210908232525/https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/under-fire-story-of-squad|url-status=dead}}</ref> Invalided out of the army three times, Barbusse served in the war for 17&nbsp;months, until November 1915, when he was permanently moved into a clerical position due to pulmonary damage, exhaustion, and [[dysentery]].<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|last=barbusse|first=henri|title=Le Feu: Journal d'une escouade|publisher=gallimard|year=2006|isbn=978-2070342792|pages=483–484}}</ref> On 8 June 1915, he was awarded the [[Croix de guerre 1914–1918 (France)|Croix de guerre]] with citation.<ref name=":0" /> In 1916, he participated in the [[battle of Verdun]].<ref name="f"/> He was reformed on 1 June 1917.<ref name=":0" />

Barbusse first came to fame with the publication of his novel ''Le Feu'' (translated by [[William Fitzwater Wray]] as ''[[Under Fire (Barbusse novel)|Under Fire]]'') in 1916, which was based on his experiences during World War I. By this time, Barbusse had become a pacifist, and his writing demonstrated his growing hatred of [[militarism]].<ref name=":1" /> ''Le Feu'' drew criticism at the time for its harsh [[Naturalism (literature)|naturalism]], but won the [[Prix Goncourt]] in December 1916.<ref>{{cite web|last=Duffy|first=Michael|title=Henri Barbusse|url=http://www.firstworldwar.com/poetsandprose/barbusse.htm|work=www.firstworldwar.com|access-date=26 July 2013}}</ref>

=== Political and cultural activities ===
In January 1918, he left France and moved to [[Moscow, Russia|Moscow]], where he married a Russian woman and joined the [[Bolshevik Party]]. His novel, ''Clarté'', is about an office worker who, while serving in the army, begins to realize that the imperialist war is a crime.{{citation needed|date=July 2013}} [[Vladimir Lenin]] commented that this novel was censored in France.<ref>{{cite news|last=Goode|first=WT|title=An interview with Lenin|newspaper=The Guardian|url=https://www.theguardian.com/century/1910-1919/Story/0,,98448,00.html|access-date=19 October 2017}}</ref>

The [[Russian Revolution]] had a significant influence on Barbusse's life and work. He joined the [[French Communist Party]] in 1923 and later travelled back to the Soviet Union. His later works, ''Manifeste aux Intellectuels'' (''Elevations'') (1930) and others, show a more revolutionary standpoint. Of these, the 1921 ''Le Couteau entre les dents'' (''The Knife Between My Teeth'') marks Barbusse's siding with [[Bolshevism]] and the [[October Revolution]].<ref name=":2">{{Cite web|last=Relinger|first=Jean|date=3 November 2010|title=Barbusse Henri [Adrien Gustave Henri ]|url=https://maitron.fr/?article97985|access-date=2020-10-19|website=maitron.fr}}</ref> Barbusse characterized the birth of Soviet Russia as "the greatest and most beautiful phenomenon in world history".<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_gd1Aw0ZlEwC | isbn=9781906924270 | title=The End and the Beginning: The Book of My Life | date=2010 | publisher=Open Book Publishers }}</ref> The book ''Light from the Abyss'' (1919){{citation needed|date=July 2013}} and the collection of articles ''Words of a Fighting Man'' (1920){{citation needed|date=July 2013}} contain calls for the overthrow of capitalism. In 1925, Barbusse published ''Chains'', showing history as the unbroken chain of suffering of people and their struggle for freedom and justice.{{citation needed|date=July 2013}} In the publicistic book ''The Butchers'', he exposes the White Terror in the [[Balkan countries]].{{citation needed|date=July 2013}}

In 1927, Barbusse participated in the Congress of Friends of the Soviet Union in Moscow. He led the World Congress Against Imperialist War (Amsterdam, 1932) and headed the [[World Committee Against War and Fascism]], founded in 1933. He also took part in the work of the International Youth Congress (Paris, 1933) and the International Congress of Writers in Defense of Culture. Additionally, in the 1920s and 1930s, he edited the periodicals ''[[Monde (review)|Monde]]'' (1928–1935)<ref name=":2" /> and ''Progrès Civique'', which published some of [[George Orwell]]'s first writings.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Barbusse|first=Henri|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dbx9CgAAQBAJ&q=barbusse+progres+civique&pg=PT4|title=The Inferno|date=2015-11-04|publisher=Read Books Ltd|isbn=978-1-4733-7657-1|language=en}}</ref> He was also [[literary editor]] for the daily newspaper ''[[l'Humanité]]'' from 1926 to 1929.<ref name=":2" />

In 1934, Barbusse sent [[Egon Kisch]] to Australia to represent the International Movement Against War and Fascism as part of his work for the [[Comintern]]. The resulting unsuccessful [[Attempted exclusion of Egon Kisch from Australia|exclusion of Egon Kisch from Australia]] by the conservative Australian government succeeded in energizing Communism in Australia and resulted in Kisch's staying longer than Barbusse had intended.{{citation needed|date=July 2013}}

An associate of [[Romain Rolland]]'s and editor of ''Clarté'', he attempted to define a "[[proletarian literature]]", akin to ''[[Proletkult]]'' and [[Socialist realism]].

Barbusse was an [[Esperantist]], and was honorary president of the first congress of the [[Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda]]. In 1921, he wrote an article titled "Esperantista Laboristo" ("Esperantist worker") for ''Esperanto'' journal.<ref>''[http://www.freeweb.hu/eventoj/steb/gxenerala_naturscienco/enciklopedio-1/encikl-b.htm Enciklopedio de Esperanto] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070708174358/http://www.freeweb.hu/eventoj/steb/gxenerala_naturscienco/enciklopedio-1/encikl-b.htm |date=2007-07-08 }}''. 1933.</ref>

=== Support for Stalin ===
In his 1928 book ''Voici ce qu'on a fait de la Géorgie'', Barbusse praised post-[[sovietization]] political, social, and economic conditions in [[Georgian SSR|Georgia]] and completely glossed over the brutal methods employed by Stalin which disturbed the dying Lenin,<ref name="three"/> triggering a critical response from the Georgian émigré Dathico Charachidze who published in 1929 ''Barbusse, les Soviets et la Géorgie'', with a sympathetic preface by [[Karl Kautsky]].<ref>{{cite book|title=Russian Revolution and Civil War 1917-1921 an Annotated Bibliography.|date=2006|publisher=Continuum International Pub. Group|location=London|isbn=1441119922|page=468}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=David-Fox|first1=Michael|title=Showcasing the great experiment: cultural diplomacy and western visitors to Soviet Union, 1921-1941|date=2012|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Oxford|isbn=978-0199794577|page=231}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Kandelaki|first1=Constantin|title=The Georgian Question Before the Free World|date=1953|publisher=Navarre|page=46}}</ref>

In 1930, he published a book ''Russie'', an account of year-long living in the Soviet Union which contained flattering references to Stalin.<ref name="three"/>

In 1932, Barbusse agreed to write a biography of Stalin.<ref name="three"/> Originally, Stalin wanted [[Maxim Gorky]] to write it, but he didn't, and the task was handed to Barbusse;<ref>{{cite book | last1=Geller | first1=M. | last2=Nekrich | first2=A.M. | title=Utopia in Power: The History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present | publisher=Hutchinson | year=1986 | isbn=978-0-09-155620-4 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NmQjAQAAIAAJ| page=250}}</ref><ref>{{cite book | last=Rosenthal | first=B.G. | title=New Myth, New World: From Nietzsche to Stalinism | publisher=Pennsylvania State University Press | year=2010 | isbn=978-0-271-04658-7 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ppvr3LZ8o2wC | page=308}}</ref> the key condition was that it would be checked and subject to editorial changes in the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, and Barbusse assured that he would break with the "Trostkyist elements" in the editorial of his journal ''Monde''.<ref name="s"/> It appeared in 1935 as ''Staline: Un monde nouveau vu à travers un homme'' (''Stalin: A New World Seen Through the Man''). Barbusse praised Stalin, whom he called in his personal notes as "great comrade",<ref name="s"/> as a man with "the head of a scholar, with the figure of a worker, and with the dress of a simple soldier" and as the only true heir of Lenin;<ref name="three"/> one of the phrases of the book, "Stalin is the Lenin of today", became one of the most celebrated slogans of the Stalin cult; according to [[Isaak Mints]], the slogan was written by Stalin himself.<ref name="s"/> Although Barbusse had a friendly relationship with [[Leon Trotsky]] in the middle of the 1920s, in the book he was condemned as an intriguer and a deviationist, a [[Menshevik]] at heart.<ref name="three"/> Nevertheless, [[Aleksei Stetskii]],  one of the chief ideologues of the Stalin cult, was concerned by Barbusse's description of Stalin not as "the greatest theoritician of Marxism after Lenin", as he was described in the Soviet Union, but as a "man of action" and practice, while Trotsky still seemed as a "different type of leader": the opposition between Trotsky and Stalin seemed as an opposition between Trotsky's intellectualism and Stalin's anti-intellectualism. The book was published in Russian in the same year.<ref name="s"/>

[[Victor Serge]], a writer and a member of the [[Left Opposition]], met Barbusse in the 1920s and tried to make him aware of the political repression in the USSR:
{{blockquote|When I told him about the persecution, he pretended to have a headache, or not to hear, or to be rising to stupendous heights: "Tragic destiny of revolution, immensities, profundities, yes... yes... Ah my friend!" My jaws juddered as I realised that I was face to face with hypocrisy itself.<ref name="three"/>}}
After this conversation, Barbusse made Serge one of the cosponsors of ''Monde'',<ref>Victor Serge. Memoirs of a Revolutionary</ref> but removed him from the masthead after his imprisonment.<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Cm3nDwAAQBAJ | isbn=9781781689578 | title=Victor Serge: A Political Biography | date=15 April 2014 | publisher=Verso Books }}</ref>

Trotsky criticised Barbusse as representative of a "pretentious ... humanitarian, lyric and pacificstical 'communism'".<ref>Trotsky, L ''The Revolution Betrayed'', Introduction</ref>