LEARNING WITH OUR ELDERS /// A Mysterious Manuscript at the End of the Colonial War in Algeria

TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH BY LÉOPOLD LAMBERT

We continue our “Learning with our Elders” section with a text by 92-year-old anti-imperialist activist Nils Andersson. During the Algerian Revolution, Nils was publishing books from Lausanne, Switzerland, that had been banned and seized in France for informing and reflecting upon the torturous and murderous nature of the colonial counter-revolution in Algeria. With the following words, Nils reminisces about the moment when he received a mysterious manuscript from one of the instigators of this counter-revolution, who will then become President two decades later.

The Funambulist asks me for an example of a lesson to be learned from our elders by recounting a mistake or failure in their life as an activist. This prompts me to think about my career as an anti-colonialist publisher, and a particular episode when I committed an error of judgment, a lack of political lucidity—which served as a lesson.

In theory, a publisher can publish just about anything without feeling bound by what they publish. But when publishing is an ideological and political commitment, there is an obligation to be true to oneself, to those one publishes, and to the ideas one defends.

First, it is necessary to understand the context that led to my lack of clarity. The year is 1958, and I am in contact with Jérôme Lindon to promote his books in Switzerland. As the director of Éditions de Minuit in Paris, he introduced Samuel Beckett and the Nouveau Roman to the mainstream. Jérôme Lindon was also the first publisher to publish testimonies denouncing the use of torture by the French army during the Algerian Liberation War. The use of torture was conceptualized by French officers during the so-called “Indochina War,” under the name “counter-revolutionary war”—a concept that would be applied during the Algerian war of independence. The concept of “counter-revolutionary warfare” would infect the political and judicial powers, which would cover up and legalize torture as a system of warfare. Known as “the French school,” the concept would be exported and adopted in the United States and Latin America.

The first book published in 1957 by Éditions de Minuit, Pour Djamila Bouhired, recounts the torture suffered by a militant of the National Liberation Front (FLN), sentenced to death for planting a bomb in Algiers. Ten years after the fall of Nazism, the book provoked strong reactions in France and elsewhere. An international campaign spared Djamila Bouhired from capital punishment. This prompts an initial reflection on the state of public opinion in the 1950s, which rallied against the execution of an activist who had committed an attack for a “just cause”—these were the terms used at the time to argue for her pardon.

Taking his denunciation further, Jérôme Lindon had the courage to publish Henri Alleg’s book La Question, which bore witness to the use of torture during the war in Algeria—the manuscript had been rejected by all French publishers for fear of prosecution and condemnation. Jean-Paul Sartre had written then: “The French are discovering this terrible truth: if nothing protects a nation from itself, neither its past, nor its loyalties, nor its own laws, if fifteen years are enough to turn victims into executioners, then opportunity alone decides: depending on the opportunity, anyone, at any time, can become a victim or an executioner.”

La Question is seized by the government, and I meet Jérôme Lindon, who asks me if it is possible to republish the book from Switzerland. He argues this is important for two reasons: first, to show the French government that, despite being seized, the book is reappearing and that the facts cannot be silenced; second, to insist on the symbol of the book being republished in Switzerland, a country from where works by Éditions de Minuit were published after being banned by the Nazi occupation of France during World War II. Committed to the cause of colonized peoples, my answer was obviously yes. Circumstances turned me into a publisher. La Cité-Éditeur was born with the reissue of La Question in 1958.

La Cité will also publish La Gangrène, another document seized from Éditions de Minuit, which reveals that torture is also practiced in France on Algerian militants. Then there are several accusatory works, including Les Disparus (The Disappeared), which recounts hundreds of attempts made in Algeria by families to find a parent or a sibling from whom they had no news since their arrest. It shows that there are thousands of “disappeared” people and that torture is not an occasional wrongdoing, but rather a common practice. Another book, La Pacification, recounts all the means of repression used against the Algerian people: torture, but also summary executions, “forbidden zones” (regions emptied of their population), regroupment camps, smoke attacks, the use of napalm, and more.

Books published by La Cité are banned in France; I am regularly questioned by the Swiss police about my publishing activities, and the DST, the French counter-espionage service, arrested me in Lyon and notified me that I was banned from French territory because of my work.

It was in this context, in 1962, at a time when the Evian Accords were leading Algeria to independence, that a gentleman accompanied by a female colleague carrying a briefcase came to the publishing house. He told me that he belonged to François Mitterrand’s brain trust. I was obviously surprised by such a contact and found myself saying, “Mitterrand, who’s that?” Of course, I knew who François Mitterrand was, the man who, as minister in 1954, had declared, “Algeria is France; from Flanders to the Congo river, it is France,” and “The only negotiation is war.” As Minister of Justice, he applied the “special powers” voted by the French parliament and, in 1957, transferred police and judicial powers to the army, paving the way for the “counter-revolutionary war” in Algeria. He refused to pardon many independence activists who had been sentenced to death. I could not ignore who François Mitterrand was, but for me he was politically dead, like all the politicians of the Fourth Republic who had not rallied to de Gaulle in 1958.

The visitor is one of Mitterrand’s “sherpas,” the name given at the time to his closest companions. He informs me that he has come to offer me a manuscript by François Mitterrand. I am doubly surprised: after learning that in 1962 there was a “brain trust” to lead François Mitterrand to the presidency of the Republic—an idea that would take two decades to become a reality—even more surprising: the manuscript is being offered to a publisher committed to Algerian independence who denounced the war waged by France with Mitterrand’s active participation? This was despite the fact that there was nothing secret about my contacts with the French Federation of the FLN, with the “suitcase carriers,” the networks supporting Algerians, and with the French rebels and deserters who refused to participate in this colonial war. What’s more, I was “banned from French territory” by a prefectural decision.

Having said this, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, the visitor informed me that his colleague would come back in a week to find out my answer. Publishing the manuscript never crossed my mind. It is obvious that if one of the publishers who denounced the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the war in Algeria—to quote Jérôme Lindon, “you can count them on the fingers of one hand”—had published a book by François Mitterrand at that time, it would have been a major event, but I have never been intoxicated by the idea of a exclusiveness and was convinced that it would have been a betrayal.

My error in judgment, which is the lesson to be learned, does not lie in the decision—the only possible one—not to publish the manuscript. It lies in the fact that, during the week it was on my desk, I did not open it, I was not curious enough to find out what it contained in order to understand the reasons for submitting it to La Cité. My lack of clarity was not limited to not consulting the manuscript; I did not photocopy it for “archival” purposes before handing it over to the person who came to collect it! So it remained a secret; I did not mention it to Jérôme Lindon, François Maspero [another publisher engaged against French colonialism; he was, for instance, Frantz Fanon’s publisher], or anyone else. This contact was beyond my comprehension.

To find an explanation, the events unfolded at a particular moment in time; what had been unimaginable in 1954, the independence of the Algerian people, was becoming a reality. It had been demonstrated that such a victory against colonialism was possible. My attachment to the cause of the Algerian people and the warmth of the bonds of solidarity with the Algerians and the French who supported them prevailed over everything else.

A more rational answer is that I was more of an activist than a publisher. But questions remain that I did not ask myself at the time about the content of the manuscript and the incredibility of it being presented to La Cité, a small publisher in Lausanne. At a time when the war in Algeria was coming to an end, it is unthinkable that Mitterrand’s brain trust did not have a political objective. François Mitterrand’s first book after Algeria’s independence, Le coup d’État permanent (The Permanent Coup), published two years later, in 1964, by Éditions Plon, a major publisher of numerous works on so-called “French Algeria,” makes the matter even more obscure. This book deals with the question of power in opposition to de Gaulle: it is unlikely that this was the manuscript submitted in 1962.

One possibility is that Mitterrand wanted to speak out after the war, about his decisions and policies during what he referred to as “the events” in Algeria. This speculation is based on his statements reported by his biographer, Jean Lacouture: “I have made at least one mistake in my life, that of not pardoning Fernand Iveton”—a communist activist and the only French citizen in Algeria to be guillotined for participating in an attack that did not result in any casualties. Some argue that his decision to abolish the death penalty shortly after his election as President of the Republic was to “redeem” himself for this mistake… Still we can talk about his refusal to pardon 32 Algerians who were guillotined during his tenure as Minister of Justice.

Another reason may have been to make it known that, after handing over police powers to the army in January 1957, he had expressed reservations about the intensity of the repression resulting from the application of the concept of “revolutionary warfare” during the Battle of Algiers. But a minister either decides, implements, or, if he refuses, resigns. This is all, of course, speculation on my end.

My mistake—an aberration— was to not want to know the contents of the manuscript and understand why it had been submitted to La Cité? What was the goal, what maneuver was behind it? Added to this was a reality that would soon be revealed: François Mitterrand’s brain trust existed and was active. Nineteen years later, he was elected President of the French Republic. So, I learned a lesson: never underestimate your opponents and never fail to observe the paths and machinations that lead to power in order to better understand and counteract them. ■