A look at the courageous life and terrible execution of French Bolshevik revolutionary Jeanne-Marie Labourbe (1877-1919) who worked among the interventionist armies in Odessa to spread word of the revolution and to get them to refuse to fight. She was caught and shot without trial in early March, 1919 and memorialized in Pravda later that month.
Labourbe became a hero of the early days of sacrifice in the fight for socialism and was remembered by Lenin and Alexandra Kollontai who wrote of her: "She devoted all her thoughts, her whole ardent heart to the great world proletarian revolution."
We republish an account of her life and struggle from Socialism: Theory and Practice in March, 1984:
A black-framed obituary published in a Pravda issue of March 1919 was printed in Russian and French and told of the tragic death of comrade Jeanne-Marie Labourbe, who was shot in Odessa by mercenaries on the payroll of French capital. The closing words of the obituary were: '’The memory of our glorious comrade who perished while serving the cause of the revolution will live forever."
In spring 1919, the young Soviet Republic was engulfed in the flames of the civil war. Foreign interventionist troops controlled the north and south of the country and its Far East. The defenders of Soviet power–the Red Army units and underground revolutionary fighters–were engaged in heroic and selfless combat on the civil war fronts and in the enemy-occupied territories. A large underground contingent was active in Odessa, a port on the Black Sea, which was then occupied by counter-revolutionary troops. On the night of March 2, an underground group, of which Jeanne-Marie Labourbe was a member, was captured and shot by enemies of Soviet power.
What sort of woman was she? What brought her to Odessa, a city occupied by White Guards and interventionists, at the height of the civil war?
“THE VERY PERSONIFICATION OF INDEFATIGABILITY'’
The proletarian revolution. which triumphed in Russia in October 1917, rocked the entire world. Revolutionary internationalists, the envoys of various peoples, did not hesitate for a moment to join the ranks of those defending the gains of the October Revolution. In the spring and summer of 1918 several groups of foreign communists – Hungarian, Czechoslovakian, German, etc - were formed under the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). They united into a Federation of Foreign Groups of the RCP(B). which was headed by Bela Kun, a prominent Hungarian internationalist. Jeanne-Marie Labourbe was Secretary of the French group which had over 30 members. The group members, like other communist-internationalists, considered it their revolutionary duty to rally under the banner of revolution the progressive forces of various peoples, all honest people, ready to fight for the ideals of socialism.
Jeanne-Marie Labourbe, a teacher by profession and a passionate political worker by calling, set about this task with particular enthusiasm and energy. Daughter of a farm labourer from the small French town of Lapalisse, she was forced to leave her native land in search of a living. She first found a post as governess in the family of a Polish aristocrat and then came to Moscow. Her acquaintance with Polish and Russian revolutionaries helped her correctly assess the significance of the events in Russia in 1917.
Jacques Sadoul, one of her comrades-in-arms, said that she devoted all her time and energy to political education work among the French who were living in Moscow at that time, doing her best to sow the seeds of communist ideals in their hearts and minds. ''She was the very personification of indefatigability, sincerity, and devotion to the revolutionary cause,“ Jacques Sadoul said of her. "Jeanne always filled the group with enthusiasm whenever our spirits were low or there were some obstacles in our path. Our group drew fresh inspiration and energy at the very sight of Jeanne’s tireless efforts."
"HEART AND SOUL WITH THE RUSSIAN WORKERS'’
Inactivity was organically alien to Jeanne’s selfless nature. She was not one of those intellectual dreamers who go on enthusiastically about a splendid future but who, in fact. do absolutely nothing to bring it about. Jeanne was a woman of action: she delivered ardent speeches at internationalists’ meetings, wrote an appeal to the Anglo-French troops who had invaded the northern territory of the Soviet Republic, in the Murmansk area. However she did not content herself with this. She longed to go to the front, for she believed that she, a French woman, would be particularly useful for carrying out revolutionary political education work among the interventionist troops.
The Central Party Archives in Moscow has preserved a letter sent by Jeanne-Marie Labourbe to Lenin. She wrote to him on behalf of a group of internationalists who were anxious to serve the cause of the Russian revolution. The letter went: “There are political education workers among us. Moreover, we all have firm political convictions.“ She asked Lenin to think about using the internationalist political workers in the interests of Soviet power, for the sake of the cause which they ardently longed to serve.
Lenin replied to her letter-and he and Jeanne met on August 1 9, 1 918. They discussed the activities of French and British communists on the territory of Soviet Russia. That day, Lenin sent the following note to Georgy Chicherin, People’s Commissar (Minister–Ed.) of Foreign Affairs:
"Comrade Chicherin, Please receive comrade Jeanne-Marie Labourbe, the petitioner I was telling you of, Discuss the details with her. Yours, Lenin (Complete Works, vol. 50. p. 158 (in Russian))
As a result, Jeanne and her comrades-in-arms were given the necessary support. The French communist group plunged into work. Jeanne saw its aim in making the truth about the Russian revolution, about the Bolsheviks known to the West European workers. She was convinced that if the workers of the West learned the true facts about Soviet Russia they would never allow international imperialism to get it in the stranglehold of intervention. The first communist paper in French was published in Moscow on the initiative of Jeanne-Marie
Labourbe.
The report written by the French group after Jeanne's death said that it had been able to attract the necessary workforce, find the paper and printing works–a very difficult thing to do in those days–thanks to her persistence and energy. Paper was in short supply in Moscow. The task of publishing a newspaper in French seemed unfeasible. However, it was Jeanne who made this possible, for she wanted the truth to be known by the French proletariat everywhere–in Moscow, in the ranks of the interventionist armies, and lastly, in France.
The first issue of the weekly was published on October 20, 1918. It opened with an editorial appeal to the workers of France and called on French workers and peasants to refuse to murder their brothers–the workers and peasants of Russia. The newspaper said that the truth had gradually filtered through the veil of lies and reached the soldiers and sailors serving in the ranks of the imperialist armies. Examples were cited of entire units of French and British soldiers who had refused to fight against the Republic of Soviets. The newspaper called on the interventionist soldiers to follow in their footsteps.
One article on the Moscow celebrations of the first anniversary of the October Revolution was signed ''J.L.” There is every ground for assuming that Jeanne was the author of this article which told of the crowds of people who thronged the streets of Moscow celebrating the first anniversary of the revolution, thereby refuting the villainous slander of the enemies who claimed that the Soviet Republic did not mirror the will of the people. Never before had a government enjoyed such broad support among the masses as the Soviet government did. To defend people's power, to support the Russian proletariat was the internationalist duty of all revolutionaries, for the Russian proletarians’ struggle against the joint forces of oppression was part of the common struggle of all working people.
Jeanne-Marie Labourbe always cherished these thoughts and upheld the ideas of proletarian solidarity at the conferences and meetings she addressed. At one meeting, the report of which was published in Pravda, Jeanne declared that although British and French imperialists had invaded revolutionary Russia, the British and French workers were with the revolutionary workers of Russia heart and soul
''YOU ONLY DIE ONCE!''
No matter how many important and difficult tasks Jeanne had to deal with in Moscow, she never gave up the idea of going off to the front. She did not flinch from danger, and the fact that she had found personal happiness in Moscow did not keep her from going there. Jeanne's husband was Vukasin Markovic, a Montenegrin, one of the leaders of the Yugoslav communist group. Their common struggle for Soviet power in Russia united the lives of these two internationalists.
Jeanne’s comrades, knowing her tireless nature and desperate bravery, realized the danger she would be in working among interventionist troops on the front, the great risk that she would be running. But who else if not such people utterly devoted to the revolution as she was could be entrusted with this mission?
Jeanne’s cherished dream came true early in 1919, when she was sent behind White Guard lines to the Odessa underground, charged with an important party mission–to deliver propaganda literature and money to comrades from the underground regional committee of the Communist Party of the Ukraine.
Was Jeanne aware of what she was getting into when she left for the city occupied by White Guards and interventionists? Yes, she was–she walked knowingly into the lion’s den. She wrote her Moscow friends a note on the day of her departure: “Give me your blessings. The most difficult lies ahead, the path is strewn with thorns. This letter might be my last.'’
When Jacques Sadoul advised her to take care as she was leaving, she answered: ”You only die once!“
Jeanne's charisma made a lasting impression on those who met her. Raisa Borisova, who fought in the civil war, got to know Jeanne at a meeting in Moscow. A certain sympathy arose between the two women. Many years later Raisa described the Frenchwoman thus: “She was taller than average, had gentle features and an ineffable smile. She looked a great deal less than 40 - slender, smart, in a plain black dress, with a white lace collar, she gave the impression of being a young woman. This impression was made all the stronger by her ardent
speeches."
On the eve of her departure, her parting words to Raisa were: “Comrade Raisa, I'm going off to the front. I shall carry out my mission, even if it costs me my life. This French communist is going off to fight for socialism.
"HER NAME BECAME A BATTLE-CRY"
Jeanne was right when she hoped that she would be of use carrying out political education work among the interventionist soldiers. A board for carrying out political education among foreigners was operating in the port of Odessa, where many foreign troops were stationed. This board led by the underground regional Party Committee, with I. Smirnov-Lastochkin as its head, was composed of internationalists. It stepped up its work among the troops of the imperialist powers after the arrival of Jeanne-Marie Labourbe and two other comrades.
French soldiers and sailors were full of goodwill towards their compatriot who spoke out in support of the Russian revolution with heartfelt sincerity. Women were barred from warships, so Jeanne had to find a way to speak to the sailors in the Odessa streets and in the pubs where they were fond of spending their evenings.
'’The Red Army will soon come to liberate Odessa,” Jeanne-Marie would say. “I beg you not to fire on its men. Return to France, and tell the French people that the Russian working class has launched the struggle to liberate all working people."
Here, as in Moscow. she played an active part in publishing a newspaper in French. The underground printing works was housed in the Odessa catacombs, in abandoned quarries. Leaflets and appeals to the interventionist troops were printed there, as was the newspaper Kommunist in Russian and French.
The Odessa underground immediately asked Jeanne to edit material for the newspaper Le Communiste. If the first two issues published before she arrived were full of mistakes, the third, which Jeanne cooperated on, was distinguished by the high quality of its language, which even attracted the attention of the enemy counter-intelligence.
Later, assessing the role of the political education work carried out among French and British soldiers in their native tongue. Lenin said: "True, we had only tiny sheets, whereas in the British and French press propaganda was carried on by thousands of newspapers and every phrase was published in tens of thousands of columns. We issued only two or three quarto sheets a month; at best it worked out at only one copy for every ten thousand French soldiers. I am not certain whether even that many reached their destination. Why, then, did the
French and British soldiers believe them? Because we told the truth, and because when they came to Russia they saw that they had been deceived." (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works , vol. 30, p. 385)
The political education work carried out among the interventionist troops in Odessa bore fruit: the sailors of the Mirabeau , a French battleship, refused to obey orders, and the crews of other ships followed suit. All the military counterintelligence and agents of the White Guards were called in to deal with the situation. The commander of the French armies in the East arrived in Odessa. A wave of arrests swept the city.
A regular meeting of the board for political education work among foreigners was held on March 1, at a secret address. The question of preparing an armed uprising against the invaders was the order of the day. Jeanne-Marie Labourbe was among those who spoke out in favour of an uprising and she was certain that it would succeed.
Jeanne went back to her tiny room in a house in Pushkin Street elated, joyful and excited. At about 10 o'clock that evening, White Guard officers, accompanied by a few Frenchmen, forced their way into her room. The room was searched and the newspaper Le Communiste was discovered, along with some leaflets. Jeanne was taken off to enemy headquarters. Several other comrades were arrested at the same time as Jeanne. They were all taken outside the city at midnight and shot, without a trial, without any inquiries. The interventionists were forced to allow the underground fighters to be given a legal funeral. When Odessa paid its last respects to Jeanne-Marie Labourbe and her comrades-in-arms on March 6, about 6,000 people lined the streets. Light snow was falling - it caressed the faces of the dead and lingered on them. Members of the underground regional Party Committee laid wreaths on the fresh graves in full view of the enemy's undercover and uniformed agents. ”Death to the murderers!’' was written on one side of the blood-red ribbon and ’'From the Odessa Regional Committee of the Bolshevik Party of the Ukraine'’ on the other.
Alexandra Kollontai, Lenin’s comrade-in-arms, a Soviet party and government figure, wrote in an article dedicated to the memory of Jeanne-Marie Labourbe: '’She devoted all her thoughts, her whole ardent heart to the great world proletarian revolution."
Lenin recalled Jeanne-Marie Labourbe warmly. At the Seventh Congress of Soviets in Moscow he said: “We know that the name of the Frenchwoman, comrade Jeanne Labourbe, who engaged in communist activity among French soldiers and workers and was shot in Odessa, became known to the entire French proletariat and became a battle-cry...” ( V. I. Lenin, Collected Works , vol. 30, p. 210).
Her name lives on today in the memory of Soviet people and the working people of France as a symbol of the international solidarity of revolutionary fighters.
Based on A. Dunayevsky’s book Jeanne Labourbe–the Familiar Stranger (Moscow, 1982, in Russian) and other materials. It was translated and published in the March 1984 issue of Socialism: Theory and Practice.