Henri Barbusse (
May 17, 1873, Asnières-sur-Seine—August 30, 1935, Moscow) was a
French novelist, journalist and
communist.
Born in Asnieres-sur-Seine,
France in 1873, he grew up in a small town but in early life left for
Paris in 1889 at age 16. In 1914 already at the age of 41 he enlisted in the
French Army and served against
Germany in
World War I. He came to fame with the publication of his novel
Le Feu (translated as
Under Fire) in 1916, which was based on his experiences during World War I. It shows his growing hatred of
militarism and drew criticism at the time for its harsh
naturalism. His book won the
Prix Goncourt. Barbusse would serve in the war and the French army until 1917 because he was wounded by
shrapnel.
By January, 1918 he left France and moved to the city of
Moscow, Russia where he got married to a Russian woman and joined the
Bolshevik Party and the
French Communist Party and served in the
October Revolution in October of 1918. 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 the Teeth) marks Barbusse's siding with Bolshevism and the October Revolution; he joined the French Communist Party in 1923 and later travelled to the
Soviet Union. He was a member of the
League against Imperialism created in Brussels in 1927.
An associate of
Romain Rolland and editor of
Clarté, he attempted to define a
proletarian literature, akin to
Proletkult and
Socialist realism. Barbusse was a
Stalinist and the author of a 1936
biography of
Joseph Stalin, titled
Staline. Un monde nouveau vu à travers un homme (
Stalin. A New World Seen Through the Man). The book was a Western equivalent of the Soviet
personality cult and Barbusse led a violent press campaign against his former friend
Panait Istrati - a
Romanian writer who had expressed criticism of the Soviet state.
Barbusse was an
Esperantist, and was honorary president of the first congress of the
Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda. In 1921, he wrote an article for Esperanto journal,
Esperantista Laboristo. ("Esperantist worker")
He is buried in Le
Père Lachaise Cemetery,
Paris.
In the foreword to
I saw it Happen, a 1942 collection of eye-witness accounts of the war,
Lewis Gannet wrote: "(...)
We shall be hearing and reading of this war for decades to come. No one of us can yet guess who will be its Tolstoys, its Barbusses, its Remarques and its Hemingways".
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