On 29-30 November 2006, delegates gathered in the trade union offices of Bobigny for a conference on the significance for French communism of the cataclysmic year of 1956. The setting was suitably symbolic: a building by Brazilian marxist architect Oscar Niemeyer, in close proximity to the avenues Maurice Thorez, Salvador Allende and Lenin and the Karl Marx housing estate, in the capital of Seine-Saint-Denis, one of the last two departments to have a communist president. The latter, Hervé Bramy, alluded to the 'irrationality, confusion and violence' of recent riots in the erstwhile Red Belt, and appealed for understanding and dialogue rather than division. He was followed by the embattled PCF national secretary and presidential candidate, Marie-Georges Buffet, who made an eloquent and moving speech based on poet Aimé Césaire's letter of resignation to Thorez. Buffet, herself a history graduate, lamented the 'missed opportunities' of 1956: not only the party's approval of Soviet tanks in Budapest and denial of Khrushchev's secret speech, but also the voting of special powers in Algeria, opposition to birth-control, and the 'fracture' between the party and intellectuals and other social layers. It was necessary, in the words of Césaire, to 'remake what has been undone'. This conference was, from the outset, as cathartic as it was scholarly.

In the light of documents found in the archives of the Comintern in Moscow and of the PCF in Bobigny, the opening roundtable set out the debate concerning how far 1956 constituted a turning-point in the history of the PCF. Denis Peschanski traced the hesitations of the PCF leadership after the twentieth congress of the CPSU: that summer, Thorez and Jacques Duclos would take advantage of Khrushchev's retreat, in the face of conservative opposition, to minimise criticisms of Stalin and suppress the report. Marc Lazar evoked the violence of the debate in the party, which is captured on the recordings of meetings of the central committee. Here, the majority resisted any attack on the foundations of their political identity, and re-affirmed an absolute fidelity to the USSR. For example, the PCF would follow the other parties in approving the execution of Imre Nagy. On this issue, the only dissenting voice was Poland's Gomulka, and not the Italian communist leader Togliatti. Indeed, in Lazar's view it is necessary not to overstate the differences between the PCF and PCI leaderships, for the latter only modified its line under pressure from the rank and file.

For Lazar, the demystification of Stalin undermined the 'teleology' and frame of reference of the PCF. Or, in the words of Bernard Pudal, it threatened to break the 'magical ties of identity'. According to Serge Wolikow, the party, faced with the secret speech and Hungary, but also the escalating war in Algeria and the Suez expedition, fell back on itself and its relationship with the USSR. No doubt alluding to events fifty years later, Roger Martelli - who has resigned from the PCF leadership over Buffet's candidacy - spoke of the 'cultural temptation of immobility'.

A nuanced view of 1956 emerged from these exchanges. The events did encourage a move towards more collective leadership, as well as attempts to listen to, as well as control, the intellectuals. But in this dramatic year, which, notably during the Soviet intervention in Hungary, saw violent assaults on PCF offices, the party apparatus was shaken but remained intact, while the vast majority of its membership and electorate stayed loyal. The process of disillusionment and decline would take longer. In retrospect, it seems that 1958 was far more catastrophic for French communism, which could understand neither the De Gaulle phenomenon, nor the rapid modernisation of French society.

In the sessions that followed, case studies showed what did and did not change in 1956: crisis in the party press but resilience of L'Humanité; unrest among party lawyers over 'socialist legality' in eastern Europe; replacement in the party cadre school of Soviet manuals with French ones; campaigns in favour of the Algerian nation and against the sending of troops… Although the interventions had a scientific rigour, it was regrettable that more was not said on how these events were lived by the party activists: such testimonies could supplement or even contradict the archives and relativise the 'monolithic' nature of the party. There was little or no reference to culture: one paper on communist posters, but nothing about literature, cinema, or the burgeoning popular culture of the time. Nor were there references to non-French scholarship on 1956.

Constant claims of dispassionate 'objectivity' were also irksome, and made me wonder why on earth they chose to study the subject in the first place. It was therefore a relief to hear the impassioned témoignage of Henri Martin, communist veteran and symbol of the anti-colonial struggle. He reminded the younger historians in the hall that it was necessary to remember the 'context': soldiers mobilised for Algeria after a bloody and futile war in Indochina, L'Humanité seized by the authorities for calling for the independence of Algeria, communists lynched in the streets of Hungary, 'which ten years previously was the last ally of Nazi Germany', the 'warlike strategy' of NATO… It was therefore with 'immense relief' that Martin heard Duclos, in his infamous speech at the Salle Wagram, refer approvingly to Stalin. At the end of his oration, Martin was surrounded by ashen-faced and apologetic young scholars protesting their objectivity. We might quibble with Martin's take on 1956, but it was good to have a living sense of the passions of that year.

Gavin Bowd, University of St Andrews