Lionel Jospin

Lionel Robert Jospin (born July 12, 1937 in Meudon, a suburb of Paris) is a French statesman who served as Prime Minister of France from 1997-2002.

Trotskyist past

During his school years in the 1960s, Jospin joined the Internationalist Communist Organization, a secretive group dedicated to an unreconstructed Trotskyist program of overthrowing France's parliamentary democracy for the "dictatorship of the proletariat". He remained active in it during the 1970s while also serving as a trusted member of the Socialist Party.

Related Topics:
1960s - Internationalist Communist Organization - Trotskyist - Dictatorship of the proletariat

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Jospin concealed this relationship, and specifically denied it when asked about it later. In 2001, investigative journalists and successive revelations by former Communist associates showed him to have been lying, and he confessed the truth. Having lied hurt him politically more than having been in a cell of the revolutionary left, but the political damage was not severe or long-lasting in France — various other left-wing or right-wing politicians having had stints with radical groups in their youth, then later denying them or blaming them on youthful indiscretion (see Occident, Alain Madelin for instance).

Related Topics:
Youthful indiscretion - Occident - Alain Madelin

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See also:

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• Politics of France
• List of Prime Ministers of France