French Communist Party in the context of "Liberation of France"

In late February 1948, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), with Soviet backing, assumed undisputed control over the government of Czechoslovakia through a coup d'état. It marked the beginning of four decades of the party's rule in the country.

The KSČ enjoyed a period of popularity following the reestablishment of pre-war Czechoslovakia. After a successful performance during the 1946 parliamentary election, party leader Klement Gottwald became prime minister of a coalition government at the behest of President Edvard Beneš. By summer 1947, however, the KSČ's popularity had significantly dwindled, and the party was expected to be soundly defeated in the May 1948 elections. This, along with the electoral failures of the French and Italian communist parties, prompted Joseph Stalin to harden his approach and order Gottwald to seize power.

The departmental councils (French: conseils départementaux [kɔ̃sɛj depaʁtəmɑ̃to]; singular, conseil départemental [kɔ̃sɛj depaʁtəmɑ̃tal]) of France are representative assemblies elected by universal suffrage in 98 of the country's 101 departments. Prior to the 2015 French departmental elections they were known as general councils (conseils généraux; singular, conseil général).

The Urban Community of Marseille Provence Métropole (French: Communauté Urbaine Marseille Provence Métropole) is a former intercommunal structure gathering the city of Marseille (in Provence, southern France) and some of its suburbs. It was established on 7 July 2000. On 1 January 2016 it merged into the Metropolis of Aix-Marseille-Provence.

The Urban Community of Marseille Provence Métropole only partly encompassed the metropolitan area of Marseille because the other independent communes of the metropolitan area (such as Aix-en-Provence) refused to join in with the city of Marseille, which was perceived as poor and unruly by the wealthier suburbs. Some other suburban communes (such as Aubagne, Gardanne, and Martigues) which were ruled by the French Communist Party also refused to join in with Marseille which was ruled by the center-right UMP.

Pol Pot (born Saloth Sâr; 25 May 1925 – 15 April 1998) was a Cambodian politician, revolutionary, and dictator who ruled the communist state of Democratic Kampuchea from 1975 until his overthrow in 1979. During his reign, his administration oversaw mass atrocities and he is widely believed to be one of the most brutal despots in modern world history. Ideologically a Maoist and Khmer ethnonationalist, Pot was a leader of Cambodia's Communist movement, known as the Khmer Rouge, from 1963 to 1997. He served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea from 1963 to 1981, during which Cambodia was converted into a one-party state. Between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge perpetrated the Cambodian genocide, in which an estimated 1.5–2 million people died—approximately one-quarter of the country's pre-genocide population. In December 1978, Vietnam invaded Cambodia to remove the Khmer Rouge from power. Within two weeks Vietnamese forces occupied most of the country, ending the genocide and establishing a new Cambodian government, with the Khmer Rouge restricted to the rural hinterlands in the western part of the country.

Born to a prosperous farmer in Prek Sbauv, French Cambodia, Pol Pot was educated at some of Cambodia's most elite schools. Arriving in Paris in October 1949 on an academic scholarship, he later joined the French Communist Party in 1951 while studying at École française de radioélectricité. Returning to Cambodia in 1953, he involved himself in the Khmer Viet Minh organisation and its guerrilla war against King Norodom Sihanouk's newly independent government. Following the Khmer Viet Minh's 1954 retreat into North Vietnam, Pol Pot returned to Phnom Penh, working as a teacher while remaining a central member of Cambodia's Marxist–Leninist movement. In 1959, he helped formalise the movement into the Kampuchean Labour Party, which was later renamed the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). To avoid state repression, in 1962 he relocated to a jungle encampment and in 1963 he became the CPK's leader. In 1968, he relaunched the war against Sihanouk's government. After Lon Nol ousted Sihanouk in a 1970 coup, Pol Pot's forces sided with the deposed leader against the new government, which was bolstered by the United States military. Aided by the Viet Cong militia and North Vietnamese troops, Khmer Rouge forces advanced and controlled all of Cambodia by 1975.

Legislative elections were held in France on 11 and 18 June 2017 (with different dates for voters overseas) to elect the 577 members of the 15th National Assembly of the Fifth Republic. They followed the two-round presidential election won by Emmanuel Macron. The centrist party he founded in 2016, La République En Marche! (LREM), led an alliance with the centrist Democratic Movement (MoDem); together, the two parties won 350 of the 577 seats—a substantial majority—in the National Assembly, including an outright majority of 308 seats for LREM. The Socialist Party (PS) was reduced to 30 seats and the Republicans (LR) reduced to 112 seats, and both parties' allies also suffered from a marked drop in support; these were the lowest-ever scores for the centre-left and centre-right in the legislative elections. The movement founded by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, la France Insoumise (FI), secured 17 seats, enough for a group in the National Assembly. Among other major parties, the French Communist Party (PCF) secured ten and the National Front (FN) obtained eight seats. Both rounds of the legislative election were marked by record low turnout.

In total, 206 MPs lost reelection, and 424 (75%) elected MPs were new members. There was a record number of women elected. The average age of parliamentarians decreased from 54 to 48. Ludovic Pajot from the National Rally became the new Baby of the House, being elected at the age of 23. Édouard Philippe, appointed as Prime Minister by Macron following his victory in the presidential election, was reappointed following the second round of the legislative elections and presented his second government by 21 June. The 15th legislature of the French Fifth Republic commenced on 27 June.

The Socialist Party (French: Parti socialiste [paʁti sɔsjalist], PS) is a centre-left to left-wing political party in France. It holds social democratic and pro-European views. The PS was for decades the largest party of the "French Left" and used to be one of the two major political parties under the Fifth Republic, along with the Rally for the Republic in the late 20th century, and with the Union for a Popular Movement in the early 2000s. It is currently led by First Secretary Olivier Faure. The PS is a member of the Party of European Socialists, Progressive Alliance and Socialist International.

The PS was founded in 1969 from a merger of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO), the Convention of Republican Institutions led by François Mitterrand, and other groups. In the 1970s, the PS surpassed the Communist Party's share of the left-wing vote. It first won power in 1981, when Mitterrand was elected president. The PS achieved a governing majority in the National Assembly from 1981 to 1986, and again from 1988 to 1993. PS leader Lionel Jospin lost his bid to succeed Mitterrand as president in 1995 to conservative Jacques Chirac, but he served as prime minister in a cohabitation government from 1997 to 2002, when he was again defeated by Chirac in the presidential election.

The Democratic Alliance (French: Alliance démocratique, AD), originally called Democratic Republican Alliance (Alliance républicaine démocratique, ARD), was a French political party created in 1901 by followers of Léon Gambetta such as Raymond Poincaré, who would be president of the Council in the 1920s. The party was originally formed as a centre-left gathering of moderate liberals, independent Radicals who rejected the new left-leaning Radical-Socialist Party, and Moderate Republicans (Gambetta and the like), situated at the political centre and to the right of the newly formed Radical-Socialist Party. However, after World War I and the parliamentary disappearance of monarchists and Bonapartists it quickly became the main centre-right party of the Third Republic. It was part of the National Bloc right-wing coalition which won the elections after the end of the war. The ARD successively took the name "Democratic Republican Party" (Parti Républicain Démocratique, PRD), and then "Social and Republican Democratic Party" (Parti Républicain Démocratique et Social), before becoming again the AD.

The ARD was largely discredited after supporting the Vichy regime during World War II, an option strongly supported by its major leader Pierre-Étienne Flandin and other members such as Joseph Barthélemy. The centre-right party tried to reform itself under the direction of Joseph Laniel, who had taken part in the Resistance. It temporarily joined the Rally of Republican Lefts (Rassemblement des gauches républicaines, RGR) before merging into the National Center of Independents and Peasants (Centre national des indépendants et paysans, CNIP). The AD, which in contrast to the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) or the French Communist Party (PCF), never became a mass political party founded on voting discipline (in these left-wing parties deputies usually vote in agreement with the party's consensus), turned at that time in little more than an intellectual circle whose members met during suppers. However, it was dissolved in only 1978, long after its effective disappearance from the political scene.

Hồ Chí Minh (born Nguyễn Sinh Cung; 19 May 1890 – 2 September 1969), colloquially known as Uncle Ho (Bác Hồ) among other aliases and sobriquets, was a Vietnamese Marxist-Leninist revolutionary and politician who served as the founder and first president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam from 1945 until his death in 1969, and as its first prime minister from 1945 to 1955. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist, he founded the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930 and its successor Workers' Party of Vietnam (later the Communist Party of Vietnam) in 1951, serving as the party's chairman until his death.

Hồ was born in Nghệ An province in French Indochina, and received a French education. Starting in 1911, he worked in various countries overseas, and in 1920 was a founding member of the French Communist Party in Paris. After studying in Moscow, Hồ founded the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League in 1925, which he transformed into the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930. On his return to Vietnam in 1941, he founded and led the Việt Minh independence movement against the Japanese, and in 1945 led the August Revolution against the monarchy and proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. After the French returned to power, Hồ's government retreated to the countryside and initiated guerrilla warfare from 1946.