1. For a detailed analysis of this law, see Léon Morgand, La Loi municipale (Paris, 1923).

2. William Munro, The Government of European Cities (New York, 1927), pp. 230-34. The prefect of the Seine was not a complete autocrat, however; he worked with the Conseil général de la Seine, whose members were elected by the public. On the council's deliberations, see its Procès-verbaux , 1900-1939.

3. "It is well known that those passions which incline either toward a surprise coup against the established government . . . or toward a new distribution of wealth by pillage and by ferment in large cities . . . form a powerful base of support on which revolutionaries know they can always rely. The state itself is therefore singularly interested in watching over everything that happens in a city like Paris" (Albert Lavallée, Le Régime administratif du département de la Seine et de la ville de Paris [Paris, 1901], pp. 1-2). On the special legislation governing the Department of the Seine, see also Raiga and Félix.

4. On conflicts between municipalities and the national government, see Berlanstein, Working People , pp. 159-64; Brunet, Saint-Denis and Un Demi-siècle; Scott, "Mayors versus Police Chiefs." Brunet asserts that, at least in the Paris area, conflicts between leftist mayors and the prefecture were sharper before World War I than in the 1920s and 1930s.

5. Scott, "Mayors versus Police Chiefs," pp. 233-34; Willard, pp. 181-97; McQuillen. During an electoral campaign in Lille, Guesde informed a crowd of listening workers that, whereas they could take city hall by ballots, they could take the prefecture only by gunfire (quoted by Albert Treint, "Les élections municipales," Cahiers de bolchévisme , February 1925, p. 787).

6. "Le parti communiste et le parlementarisme," Thèses, manifestes et résolutions adoptés par les Ier, IIe, IIIe, et IVe congrès de l'Internationale communiste , p. 68. On the beginning of the Communist International, see Helmut Gruber, ed., International Communism in the Era of Lenin (New York, 1972); Jane Degras, ed., The Communist International, 1919-1943 (London, 1971); Dominique Desanti, L'Internationale communiste (Paris, 1970); Fernando Claudin, The Communist Movement: From Comintern to Cominform (New York, 1975).

7. Although brief, this Comintern statement had a major impact upon the PCF's position in the 1920s and 1930s. I came across paraphrasings of it in many articles in the PCF press: for example, in Cahiers de bolchévisme , February 1925, pp. 785-90; 15 May 1925, pp. 1187-95. Cf. a series of articles on municipal policy in L'Humanité , April 1929.

8. "Quatre ans de réalisations ouvrières à Clichy," L'Humanité , 18 April 1929, p. 2 (original author's emphasis). This article was part of a series that L'Humanité ran in April 1929 on Communist municipalities in the Paris suburbs, to impress their accomplishments on working-class voters before the municipal elections of May 1929.

9. That this was no idle fear is shown by the career of Jacques Doriot; he used his position as longtime mayor of Saint-Denis to lay the base for a fascist political party after his expulsion from the PCF in 1934 (Brunet, Saint-Denis , pp. 363-435). On PCF dissidents in the 1920s and 1930s see Girault, Sur l'implantation , pp. 108-17.

10. Pierre Semard and Victor Cat, "Circulaire sur le contrôle de l'action municipale," Cahiers de bolchévisme , February 1926, p. 385.

11. The 1925 PCF Congress decreed that in areas with Communist municipalities, local Party organizations should set up municipal commissions to advise city politicians. These commissions were to be directed by the Central Municipal Commission, under Victor Cat; the CMC set up a National Union of Communist Municipalities to coordinate the work of PCF city governments, especially in the Paris area (Victor Cat, "Fonctionnement de l'union nationale des municipalités communistes," AN, series F7 13092, undated police report).

12. Cf. on this point jederman, La «Bolchévisation» du parti communiste français (Paris, 1971), pp. 37-64; Philippe Robrieux, Histoire intérieure du parti communiste , vol. 1 (Paris, 1980), pp. 225-69. Bolchévisation restructured the PCF's organization, away from that of the old SFIO in particular and of

traditional French political parties in general, and toward that of the Communist party in the Soviet Union.

13. The Central Municipal Commission drew up municipal election campaign programs and submitted them to the national PCF Congress for approval before their use in individual municipalities; the Party wanted uniform municipal campaigns without personality contests between PCF candidates ( Cahiers de bolchévisme , April 1925, p. 1116).

14. Among those expelled were six Paris city councillors and the majority of the Clichy city council (Pierre Semard, "Le tournant décisif dans notre politique municipale," Cahiers de bolchévisme , April 1930, p. 356).

15. In January 1937 the PCF was able to pressure Léon Blum's Popular Front government into investigating corruption in the Saint-Denis city hall; it uncovered significant irregularities, prompting Doriot's resignation and his crushing defeat by the PCF in a special election in June 1937 (Brunet, Un Demi-siècle , pp. 190-202).

16. AN, series F7 13131, police report of 17 March 1933; Girault, Sur l'implantation , p. 117.

17. Jean Garchery, "Programme municipal préparé pour le congrès de Lyon en 1924," Cahiers d'histoire de l'Institut Maurice Thorez 36, no. 2 (1980): 89; Danielle Tartakowsky, "Ecoles et éditions communistes, 1921-1933," doctorat du troisième cycle, Université de Paris-8, 1977. Giving Party militants jobs as city workers also funded PCF activism, since they often did Party tasks on the job.

18. Victor Cat, "Thèse sur l'application du mot d'ordre du 'Bloc ouvrier et paysan' à l'action municipale," Cahiers de bolchévisme , December 1924, pp. 256-57 (original author's emphasis); see also Cahiers de bolchévisme , March 1926, pp. 660-63; 1 February 1927, pp. 118-20.

19. "Rapport auto-critique sur le 1er aôut," Cahiers de bolchévisme , January 1930, pp. 60-67.

20. Jacques Girault makes this point in his chapter on "L'Implantation du parti communiste français dans la région parisienne," in Girault, Sur l'implantation , pp. 110-17; see also Jerome Milch, "The PCF and Local Government," in Communism in Italy and France , ed. Donald Blackmer and Sidney Tarrow (Princeton, 1975), pp. 343-44.

21. L'Humanité , April 1929; Brunet, Un Demi-siècle , pp. 115-81; Girault, Sur l'implantation , pp. 113-16.

22. Cahiers de bolchévisme , April 1930, p. 360; February 1927, pp. 118-20; Cahiers de bolchévisme , August 1930, pp. 836-40.

23. La Voix de l'Est , 19 June 1936, p. 4; Victor Cat, "Les municipalités communistes et le chômage," Cahiers de bolchévisme , February 1927, pp. 118-20; L'Humanité , 8 February 1933, p. 2.

24. On this point see Tony Judt, "Une historiographie pas comme les autres: the French Communists and their history," European Studies Review 12, no. 4 (1982): 465. For a different viewpoint, cf. the preface by Aristide R. Zolberg to Kriegel, The French Communists , pp. xvi-xvii.

25. AN, series F7 13112, police report of 12 May 1928. The Journal de Saint-Denis charged that the Bobigny municipality used a city truck to drive

Clamamus's son to school in Paris (6 April 1929, p. 5); printed PCF leaflets in city hall (27 December 1930, p. 3); dismissed non-Communists from unemployment relief (17 March 1934, p. 6).

26. Jean Maitron, ed., Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement ouvrier français, 1914-1939 (Paris, 1982-1984), vol. 22, pp. 325-29.

27. Roland Gaucher obtained this information from his interview with Clamamus ( Histoire secrète du parti communiste français [Paris, 1974], p. 6). See also Jules Humbert-Droz, L'OEil de Moscou sur Paris (Paris, 1964); Jules Humbert-Droz, Les Partis communistes des pays latins et l'Internationale communiste dans les années 1923-1927 (Boston, 1981); Jenny Humbert-Droz, Une pensée, une conscience, un combat: la carrière politique de Jules Humbert-Droz (Neuchâtel, 1976).

28. The account of this event indicated the interpenetration of Bobigny's municipality with the local PCF section; "the municipality and the secretariat of the section, represented by Pesch, Duval, Menou, Langlois, took the first honor guard"—all four were city councillors ( La Voix de l'Est , 27 November 1936, p. 1; 14 May 1938, p. 4; 7 October 1938, p. 1; 20 January 1939, p. 4).

29. Journal de Saint-Denis , 17 February 1934, p. 3; L'Humanité printed the full text of the prefectural order (24 October 1925, p. 2). On the strike see Ronald Tiersky, French Communism 1920-1972 (New York, 1974), pp. 42-44.

30. L'Humanité, 13 November 1925, p. 1 (emphasis in original). Clamamus's claim that municipal employees were acting on their own was inaccurate.

31. Fernand Grenier, Ce Bonheur-là (Paris, 1974). Cf. also jederman; A. Bernard, "L'école de Bobigny," Cahiers de bolchévisme , October 1925, pp. 1961-67.

32. "L'école de Bobigny," Cahiers de bolchévisme , October 1925; Tartakowsky; Grenier.

33. Jacques Duclos, Mémoires , vol. 1: 1896-1934 (Paris, 1968), p. 174. See also Grenier, who remembers Duclos as the school's star pupil.

34. Quoted in Gaucher, p. 174.

35. L'Humanité , 7 December 1924, p. 1; 10 December 1924, pp. 1, 2.

36. L'Humanité , 8 December 1924, p. 1; AN, series F7 13188, police report from 1924.

37. One exception was the city council's endorsement of a resolution by the Communist municipality of Ivry to liberate Henri Dumoulin, a mutineer in the Black Sea fleet revolt; Dumoulin was elected to the Ivry city council in a June 1927 byelection (RDCM, 3 August 1927). On the fleet revolt, see Jacques Raphael-Leygues, Les Mutins de la met Noire (Paris, 1981).

38. RDCM, 1 September 1921; 26 May 1936; 5 June 1937. Most of these grants were for very little money, and therefore had symbolic importance only. For a comparison with prewar Socialist municipalities, see Berlanstein, Working People , p. 160.

39. Many grants were made during the Popular Front, which explains why a PCF municipality would honor the author of the French national anthem (on this point see Brower).

40. RDCM, 7 October 1925.

41. RDCM, 11 March 1930.

42. RDCM, 22 June 1931; 18 June 1926.

43. RDCM, 1 August 1925.

44. Perhaps the city council did not have much money for political causes; it rarely voted political motions without some subsidy.

45. La Banlieue rouge , 28 January 1922, p. 3; 25 February 1922, p. 3.

46. AN, series F22 224, report of 14 June 1932.

47. La Voix de l'Est , 19 June 1936, p. 4; 26 June 1936, p. 4; 15 January 1937, p. 4; 20 January 1939, p. 4; 24 February 1939, p. 4.

48. During my conversations with Christine Mercier, Mathilde Lacroix, and Jean Cortot, they all emphasized the urban reforms as the reason for the Communists' strength in Bobigny (interviews conducted 7 January 1985, Foyer Gaston Monmousseau, Bobigny).

49. For a detailed example of budgetary analysis, see Brunet, Un Demisiècle . The actual work of drawing up the budgets was done by the city tax inspector ( receveur municipal ), an official appointed by the president of the republic and subject to the Ministry of Finance. This system made city budgets one of the aspects of municipal administration least subject to mismanagement, since a municipality could not easily falsify its budget without higher authorities taking notice (Brunet, Un Demi-siècle , pp. 127-28).

50. Archives de la Seine, Budgets et Comptes, Bobigny (hereafter cited as BC). The system of budget keeping that prevailed among French municipalities in the interwar period was complex. All budgets were divided into receipts and expenditures; each of these two sections was divided into three parts: ordinary, extraordinary, and supplemental. Moreover, a city government drew up two budgets each year: one, the budget primitif , estimated receipts and expenditures for the coming fiscal year and was submitted to the prefect for his approval; the other, the compte administratif , stated the amounts the municipality actually collected and spent during the year. In analyzing the four city budgets, I used the comptes administratifs.

51. The centimes additionnels were based on four national taxes: on land, on movable property, on doors and windows, and on commercial licenses ( patentes ). The national government limited the number of centimes additionnels to prevent local governments from exhausting their tax bases (which would endanger the national government's source of funds) (Brunet, Un Demi-siècle , p. 137).

52. For the PCF, see Cahiers de bolchévisme , April 1925, p. 1049; for the SFIO, see Le Populaire , 23 November 1927, p. 1; see also Brunet, Un Demi-siècle .

53. See Bobigny, Archives communales, for the PCF section's program for the 1935 municipal elections.

54. For example, few Bobigny taxpayers were affected by the patente , one of the four national taxes (see note 51, above).

55. BC; L'Humanité , 8 February 1933, p. 2.

56. BC. By contrast, in other suburbs in the 1920s and 1930s public assistance constituted 27 to 30 percent of the budget in Saint-Denis, 21 to 27 percent in Boulogne, and 20 to 25 percent of the budget in Levallois-Perret. In

1930 and 1931 education was 9 percent of expenses in Neuilly, 13 percent in Boulogne, and 16 percent in Saint-Denis (Brunet, Un Demi-siècle , pp. 151, 158).

57. BC, 1936. RDCM for 1931: 2 March, 22 June, 29 July, and 28 October; for 1932: 7 June, 1 August, 21 October, and 29 December; 15 December 1933; for 1934: 13 March and 31 July; 13 July 1935; 29 December 1936.

58. La Voix de l'Est , 31 January 1936, p. 3.

59. BC, 1931.

60. On the laws concerning allotments in this period, see Geo Minvielle, Traité pratique des lotissements (Paris, 1936); J. Cazenavette, Extension des villes et lotissements (Paris, 1936); Pierre Bénoist d'Etiveaud, Le Régime juridique des lotissements (Paris, 1939); d'Ormesson; Bouffet; Polti.

61. RDCM, 23 October 1921; 18 November 1920; 19 December 1921; 18 February 1924.

62. RDCM, 8 November 1924; 18 February 1924. The report does not mention what percentage of the sewer's cost the developer was asked to pay, or if the developer did pay it.

63. RDCM, 1 August 1925. See also RDCM for 1924: 31 May, 22 August, and 6 December; for 1925: 14 February and especially the session of 19 April, during which the council ruled on six allotments.

64. RDCM, 14 February 1925.

65. RDCM, 3 April and 13 October 1926. This money was taken from the funds for the maintenance of the local road network.

66. The full text of the 1924 law is reprinted in Paul Rouilly, Les Lotissements: droits et obligations des acquéreurs et des vendeurs (Paris, 1925), pp. 83-100; see also Bénoist d'Etiveaud; Polti; Minvielle, Traité pratique .

67. The municipality won the case, winning significant damages of over 4,000 francs ( L'Aube sociale , 31 July 1926).

68. RDCM, 18 February 1924. Other municipalities also took on the lotisseurs ; in Antony Mayor Mounié had posters put up and leaflets distributed at city expense, warning potential buyers of the risks involved in buying land in an allotment (Anne Fontaine, p. 63).

69. In legislative elections, Bobigny also gave him the largest percentage of votes in the district; on the Noisy-le-Sec area see Thomas, pp. 158-61.

70. L'Humanité , 19 September 1925, p. 2; 7 February 1926, p. 2; 15 March 1926, p. 2; 10 April 1926, p. 2; 11 February 1928, p. 2; 26 January 1931, p. 2; 24 April 1932, p. 2.

71. La Banlieue rouge , 25 February 1922, p. 2.

72. L'Aube sociale , 13 March 1926, p. 2; the article illustrates Clamamus's ability to blend the general lines of PCF policy on this issue with the specific needs of his city government.

73. Bouffet, pp. 23-28; the text of the proposed law is reprinted in L'Aube sociale , 4 September 1926, p. 2.

74. Legislators had found it difficult to separate individuals who bought a lot for their own use from small developers (Bouffet, pp. 25-28; Paul Barbier, La Question des lotissements défectueux [Levallois-Perret, 1931], p. 78).

75. L'Humanité , 7 October 1928, p. 3 (emphasis in original). For other examples of the PCF's position, see L'Humanité , 27 November 1927, p. 2, and 10 December 1927, p. 2. Although Clamamus's proposed law was relatively harsh on the allotment developers, it did not live up to the PCF's vow to make them pay for everything; this slogan was, not surprisingly, extremely popular among the mal-lotis but was unrealistic because of the terms of the allotments' contracts.

76. The PCF's poor performance in the 1928 and 1929 elections in the Paris area and elsewhere had more to do with its new ultrasectarian line than with the Sarraut Law.

77. Annie Fourcaut argues that the Sarraut Law did hurt the PCF among the mal-lotis in Bobigny (Annie Fourcaut, ''Bobigny, banlieue rouge," Communisme 3 [1983]).

78. RDCM for 1928: 22 May, 19 July, and 31 October. Most often the municipality asked the Department of the Seine to come up with the money.

79. For an explanation of the 1912 law's effect on associations syndicales, see Bouffet, pp. 54-67.

80. AS dossier André Jaouen, undated letter from the Union amicale des maires de la Seine.

81. On the mal-lotis ' reaction to the Sarraut Law, see Bastié, Croissance , pp. 310-11; Combe, pp. 89-90.

82. See for example AS dossiers: La Renaissance, letter of 29 January 1924; Les Vignes, letter of 12 February 1926; André Jaouen, documents dated 25 June 1925, 31 October 1926; La Bergère, document of 5 March 1931; RDCM, 23 October 1933.

83. AS dossier La Renaissance, letters of 31 July, 4 August, and 28 November 1927.

84. RDCM, 23 October 1933. See also RDCM, 31 October 1928, 27 November 1929, 2 March 1931, and 18 June 1926; AS dossiers: Les Vignes, letters of 21 November 1927 and 13 July 1929; La Bergère, letters of 20 July 1932 and 9 June 1934; Paris-Bobigny, letters of 17 February 1926, 7 August and 18 August 1927; La Favorite, letters of 19 April 1921, 17 September 1925, and 30 January 1926.

85. AS dossier rues Perron and Perrusset, letter of 25 August 1924.

86. AS dossier La Renaissance, letter of 31 December 1925.

87. On the repair of defective allotments in the Paris suburbs, see Bastié, Croissance , pp. 301-31; Anne Fontaine, pp. 63-64; Peru.

88. RDCM, 18 November 1920; these were peripheral areas like the Pont de Bondy and Six Routes.

89. RDCM, 6 December 1924. See also RDCM for 1926: 15 February, 3 April, 10 May, 18 June, 27 July, 2 September, and 13 October; for 1927: 10 October and 14 November; for 1928: 19 March and 22 May.

90. RDCM, 27 November 1929; Bobigny, Archives communales, PCF section's 1929 municipal election platform.

91. RDCM, 29 July 1931.

92. La Voix de l'Est , 9 November 1935; Bobigny, Archives communales, PCF section's 1935 municipal election platform; RDCM for 1930: 25 March,

20 May, and 30 December; 29 July 1931; for 1932: 7 June and 29 December; 16 May 1933; 26 February 1935.

93. RDCM, 23 October 1921; 21 October 1922; for 1923: 23 January and 15 February.

94. RDCM for 1924: 31 May, 22 August, and 8 November; Bobigny, Archives communales, PCF section's 1929 municipal election platform.

95. RDCM, 18 November 1920; 1 March 1925. The Suburban Gas Company, which had supplied the gas lighting, submitted a proposal in November 1920 to install electrical power in Bobigny; the proposal sat in committee for years. In 1923 the city council received a more favorable bid from the North-East Parisian Power Company and got the Suburban Gas Company to cede part of its monopoly, paying Suburban Gas a 5 percent royalty for this concession.

96. Journal de Saint-Denis , 21 March 1925. The contract was not officially ratified until 1927.

97. RDCM, 15 February 1926; Le Prolétaire de Bobigny , 20 July 1929.

98. RDCM, 20 May 1930; 21 May 1938.

99. On utilities in the interwar period, see Fourastié; Michelle Perrot, "Histoire de la condition féminine et histoire de l'électricité," in Electricité dans l'histoire, problèmes et méthodes . Actes du colloque de l'Association pour l'histoire de l'électricité en France (Paris, 1985); Françoise Werner, "Du ménage à l'art ménager: l'évolution du travail ménager et son écho dans la presse féminine française de 1919 à 1939," Le Mouvement social (October-December 1984). I am grateful to Robert Frost for his suggestions on this issue.

100. Le Prolétaire de Bobigny , 30 March 1929; RDCM, 25 January 1920; 17 January 1922.

101. RDCM, 12 August 1922.

102. RDCM for 1922: 3 July and 26 December; for 1923: 23 March, 7 September; 2 September 1926; 21 October 1932.

103. La Voix de l'Est , October 1937. The city council explained its decision: the growing population of the area and traffic in local streets made the old, sidewalk marketplace more inconvenient (RDCM, 7 November 1935).

104. Parti communiste français (PCF), Compte rendu du congrès national du parti communiste français (Villeurbanne, 1936), pp. 253-54.

105. LN, 1911, 1921, 1931. For example, in February 1919 the council talked of establishing a summer camp for needy children; nothing came of this proposal (RDCM, 23 February 1919).

106. Many children from the Pont de Bondy were sent to Bondy's schools; for this service Bobigny paid a certain amount of money per pupil to Bondy (RDCM for 1919: 6 April and 7 June; for 1920: 28 March, 27 June, 26 August, and 17 September.

107. RDCM, 3 April 1926.

108. La Voix de l'Est , 23 September 1935, p. 4.

109. RDCM, 29 July 1931. Before 1931 the only nursery school in Bobigny was located downtown in the girls' school.

110. La Voix de l'Est , 19 May 1939. On the building of the Pont de Bondy's nursery school, see RDCM, 6 October 1930; 5 December 1930; 27

April 1931; 28 October 1931; 18 December 1931; 19 June 1934; 8 December 1936; 27 April 1937; 5 June 1937. Voix de l'Est , 19 May 1939.

111. RDCM, 23 July 1937; 28 February 1939.

112. RDCM, 23 February 1919; 30 June 1921; La Voix de l'Est , 24 July 1936. La Machine's summer camp was so inexpensive because it was not a traditional summer camp; the municipality built no facilities in La Machine but sent children from Bobigny to live with families in the area. Life with "the workers of La Machine" was not just a boarding arrangement; it was intended to be integral to a child's summer experience. The campers did have programs directed by supervisors hired by the municipality of Bobigny. In the summer of 1936 Deputy Mayor Léon Pesch was a head counselor there.

113. RDCM, 10 March 1933. The land for the Ile d'Oléron's camp cost 170,000 francs; this expense was shared by the city's school chest and the municipality.

114. RDCM, 10 April 1930; La Voix de l'Est , 24 July 1936; camp fees were higher for children from outside Bobigny. On the general economic situation of workers, see Sauvy, vol. 2, pp. 510-26.

115. Le Prolétaire de Bobigny , 4 May 1929 (emphasis in original).

116. L'Emancipation nationale , 27 August 1937, p. 4. Given the extreme right-wing and anti-Communist bias of this newspaper under Jacques Doriot, this citation must be accepted with some caution. Yet it reflects the general nature of life at Bobigny's summer camps. Clamamus had been elected Senator in 1936.

117. La Voix de l'Est , 14 February 1936; RDCM, 4 July 1929; 27 November 1929; 16 November 1937; 30 May 1920; 30 June 1921; 22 August 1924; 19 April 1925; 18 June 1926; 27 July 1926; 13 January 1927; 11 May 1927; 19 July 1928; 26 December 1928; 2 August 1929; 7 June 1932.

118. RDCM, 18 February 1924. I came across over twenty city council resolutions protesting conditions of public transit or recommending changes in service, for example those of 26 May 1921, 12 April 1922, 18 February 1924, 16 May 1933, and 21 January 1938.

119. RDCM, 21 October 1922; 1 August 1925; 15 February 1926; 25 March 1930. Intersuburban public transit is still underdeveloped in the Paris area.

120. RDCM, 3 August 1927.

121. RDCM, 11 March 1930; 2 March 1931; 28 October 1931; 1 August 1932; 21 October 1932; 15 December 1933; 31 July 1934; 13 July 1935; 29 December 1936.

122. RDCM, 25 March 1929. City councils in the first decade of the twentieth century also protested such pollution.

123. RDCM, 14 November 1921.

124. Brunet, Saint-Denis , p. 340; Girault, Sur l'implantation , pp. 61-203; Fourcaut, "Bobigny."

125. Jolly, vol. 7, p. 2531; Anne Fontaine, pp. 63-66.

126. Sordes, pp. 529-37; Evenson, 212-13, 220-25. Important works by Henri Sellier on the Paris suburbs include Les Banlieues urbaines and La Crise du logement .

127. Merriman, The Red City , pp. 201-10. See also Scott; McQuillen; Amdur; Trempé.

128. Brunet, Un Demi-siècle , pp. 143-75; Girault, Sur l'implantation , pp. 110-16. The issue of allotments was crucial; the Communists addressed it more thoroughly and had more consistent success with the mal-lotis than the Socialists had.