Suzanne Labin: Fifty Years of Anti-Communist Agitation

Abstract

Suzanne Labin (1913–2001) may be largely forgotten today, but she deserves to take her place in the front rank of anti-communist “professionals”.1 If referred to at all she is often summarily considered as a member of the extreme right, a label that is simplistic, largely false, and one that does not permit an understanding of the career and intentions of a woman who was originally from the socialist left, and was fiercely anti-Stalinist in the 1930s.2 Details are limited, with the main source on her career being a work of hagiography published by Suzanne Labin herself.3 That aside, apart from some notes from specialists in literary history who recall her links with André Breton or Louis Guilloux,4 her role in the networks of transnational anti-communism has largely been ignored.