Jean-Baptiste Doumeng

Jean-Baptiste Doumeng (1919 - April 6, 1987), born with Lavernose-Laced Haute-Garonne, was French businessman and Communist who was called the "Red Millionaire".cite web|url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE7D7143AF934A35757C0A961948260&sec=&spon= |title=Obituaries: Jean-Baptiste Doumeng, 68, Wealthy French Communist |publisher=The New York Times |date=April 7, 1987 |accessdate=2008-09-04]

This farmer from Noe, a village of Haute-Garonne, adhered to the French Communist party at sixteen years and remained to him faithful until its death. It became one of the most important businessmen of the world Agroalimentaire.

Its pace of rough and simple man would have masked vast and fine culture of autodidact curious about all, which suffered not to have been able to continue its studies. Its diatribes against the intellectuals and the graduates were the assertion of a revenge. Louis Althusser counted among his close relations. They dined one-to-one two or three times per annum, and Philosophy was on the menu.

Its “terrestrial faith” was as essential as fidelity with its origins. He repeated: “If I were not communist, I would be nothing any more. ” has Michel Poniatowski, which questioned it on its convictions, this militant of a particular kind answered: “My judgment on the Soviet application of the Marxism has beautiful hard being, I remain basically communist. Of reason and heart. I also think that it is good and necessary that in capitalist mode there are people to be posed as weaker defenders and more stripped. However, I conceive now extremely well that a man of the right, Capitaliste in addition, can show Anticommuniste savagely. ”

This " man of honneur" , according to some, was with the service of the commercial relations of France with other countries.

Paying tribute at the time of its funerals, Gaston Plissonnier found the words right: “This veteran of the Party, which passed all the storms, was especially an impassioned man. Impassioned by the country life, impassioned by the national interest (...). Above all deeply good, it could listen to the others. This man of honor did not take part in the organisational activity of the Party. He was with the service of the commercial relations of France with other countries, an international leader of the co-operative movement. ” " Jean" , as called it them his, itself underlined: “I prefer to act for the international economic convergence, which selects me for a particular activity, rather than to assume a task of propaganda, say the word, in a medium condemned to remain pilot. ”

In its work, Rene Mauries makes litter of the gossip on the alleged occult banker of PCF. “Its label communist had become essential to its brand image (...). But, without any doubt, he spent finally more money in more or less happy engagements: football, cinema, real estate in particular, that for its political faith. ”

Testimonys abound:

“One of largest the businessmen of the world, doubled of a man fundamentally good” , judge one of his main competitors, the American stockbreeder Franck Seckler. Former vice-president of the Franco-Soviet Chamber of commerce, Evgueni Golanov increases: “He was a very large tradesman. ” Jean-Baptiste Doumeng was also a “East-West messenger”, “secret liaison officer between the Elysium and the Kremlin”, of De Gaulle to François Mitterrand.According to Jacques Attali quoted by Mauriès: “It would be, today, more useful to the world than ever”.

Former adviser of Valery Giscard d'Estaing to the presidency of the Republic, François de Combret ensures: “Politically, it was, well before the hour, French Gorbatchev. ” the former Head of State of the ex-USSR was still in functions when it underlined in a short foreword his twenty years old friendship for the late one. Rene Mauries thinks that the president of the firm Interagra had been made “the business manager of Gorbatchev in Occident”. He presents it even like an adviser of the perestroika, lucid on the blocking of the Soviet economy.

A great failure: that of the project of “world bread” in order to fight against the famine in Africa.

References