Georges Cogniot

Georges Cogniot (15 December 1901 in Montigny-lès-Cherlieu, Haute-Saône – 12 March 1978) was a French writer, philosopher and politician of the French Communist Party.

Biography

He was born Georges Auguste Alexandre Cogniot in to a middle class family and graduated from École normale supérieure.

A member of the French Communist Party since 1922 he was elected to its central committee in 1926. Prior to the Second World War he was elected to the French National Assembly as part of the Popular Front. He was an organizer of the World Committee Against War and Fascism and protested against the Munich Agreement. He was the representative of the PCF in the Executive Committee of the Communist International and also succeeded Paul Vaillant-Couturier as editor of L'Humanité.

In 1938 with Paul Langevin, he created the Marxist journal La Pensée.

After the Nazi invasion of France, he was conscripted into the army however he de-mobilized for health complications. Cogniot was arrested by the German police in 1941 but managed to escape alongside other prisoners and became active in the French Resistance and was responsible for Communist Party press.

In 1944 he once again became editor of L'Humanité and was elected to the National Assembly. A close associate of Maurice Thorez, he was the first director of the Maurice Thorez Institute.

He was part of the Cultural Affairs Committee. In 1966, he was appointed member of the control commission responsible for examining the problems of orientation and selection in the public service of education.

Works

• The escape Rationale Publishing, 1947
• Enthusiasm to consciousness chained. The school issue in 1848 and the law Falloux Publishing Yesterday and Today, 1948
• Reality of the nation, the gimmick of cosmopolitanism, Editions Sociales, 1950
• A short guide sincere Soviet Union, Editions Sociales, 1954
• Secularism and democratic reform of education, Social Publishing, 1963
• Materialism Greco-Roman Social Publishing, 1964
• What is communism?, Editions Sociales, 1964
• The lyre of brass folk poetry and democratic 1815–1918, Editions Sociales, 1964
• Prometheus takes knowledge, the October Revolution, culture and school Editions Sociales, 1967
• Karl Marx Our Contemporary Editions Sociales, 1968
• The Communist International. Historical overview, Editions Sociales, 1969
• Presence of Lenin, Social Publishing, 1970
• Maurice Thorez: man, activist, Victor Joannes, Editions Sociales, 1970
• Bias (2 volumes), Editions Sociales, 1976
• Materialism and humanism: Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, Goethe, Marx, Temps des Cerises, 1998