Leader for three decades of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) which he co-founded in 1974, he remained deeply Trotskyist all his life, affirming in 1993: "The older I get, the more I am revolted".

Born July 10, 1941 in Paris, Alain Krivine comes from a family of the Jewish petty bourgeoisie, immigrants from Central Europe.

Very quickly, his older brothers, who all passed through the Communist Party, traced the route to follow.

Direction, in 1955, the Union of Republican Youth of France (UJRF), before becoming the following year responsible for all the communist high school students in Paris.

The former leader of the Revolutionary Communist League (G) Alain Krivine and supporters of the Palestinian cause sing the International, September 23, 1970 in Paris - AFP/Archives

Krivine was then the main leader of the left-wing Union of Communist Students (UEC) in the "Sorbonne-Lettres" sector, from which he was expelled in 1965 after criticizing the PCF leadership.

In 1966, as a young history teacher, he was one of the founders of the Revolutionary Communist Youth (JCR).

Founding episode

A member of the support networks for the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) in Paris, Alain Krivine was deeply influenced by the events of May 68, in which he actively participated.

With the JCR, he oversees and animates the student movement in Paris, of which he quickly becomes one of the leaders, alongside Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Jacques Sauvageot and Alain Geismar.

"When the cops entered the Sorbonne on May 3, and they took us into the buses, the Latin Quarter left in turmoil. We didn't know where it came from, it was spontaneous", says- he in 2018, half a century later, about this founding episode.

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"Thousands of students took bottles of beer from the tables in bars and beat the cops in kepi! I said to my friends: + But what's going on? + It was the beginning of May 68".

But after Charles de Gaulle's speech on May 30, he understood that the movement had failed.

The JCR is dissolved and Krivine finds himself imprisoned for a month in the prison of La Santé.

The former secretary general of the Revolutionary Communist League Alain Krivine speaks on April 21, 1972 during a press conference in Paris AFP / Archives

Obliged to do his military service, he learned a few months later from his barracks in Verdun that the political office of the brand new Communist League (LC) had nominated him as a candidate for the presidential election of 1969.

A year after May 68, the whole of France discovers Krivine, curly hair, glasses on his nose, and his program: to destroy the capitalist order and redistribute wealth.

He won only 1.06% of the vote.

- "Shooted at the social movement" -

In 1973, the Communist League was in turn dissolved, following clashes between some of its members and far-right activists, before reviving briefly under the name of Revolutionary Communist Front (FCR).

Then, Alain Krivine created the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) in 1974, of which he remained the historical leader for more than thirty years.

He ran again that year for the presidency and won 0.37% of the vote.

The 1990s were marked by his opposition to the Gulf War, the Maastricht Treaty and, in 1995, pension reform in France.

The peasant trade unionist José Bové (G), candidate for the 2007 presidential election, and the spokesperson for the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) Alain Krivine take part in a unitary meeting in Aubagne, June 29, 2006 PATRICK VALASSERIS AFP / Archives

"He's drawn to the social movement", said of him Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, a figure of the PS and from Trotskyism.

"Being a revolutionary means wanting to put an upside-down society right side up," he said, ardently defending his "100% left" line.

Journalist for the weekly "Rouge", the organ of the party, and MEP between 1999 and 2004, he resigned from the political bureau of the LCR in 2006, while remaining spokesperson for the movement until its dissolution in 2009.

At the time of retiring, he confided: "We have many more reasons to revolt than in 1968. The barbarism has worsened. I expect a May 68 which succeeds, a May 68 with a program".

© 2022 AFP