Talk:Pierre Cot

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Untitled[edit]

The passage about Cot's relations with Soviet Intelligence implies that he was directly working for a controller. It is far from clear whether this was in fact the case. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Benkivo (talk • contribs) 15:08, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The references for the passages suggesting Cot was a Soviet agent are also incomplete (as are all of the references for this article). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.126.174.176 (talk) 20:18, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Assessment comment[edit]

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Pierre Cot/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

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This is a nice article, but the following fragment might need some clarification:

[After fall of France Cot] flew to London and offered his services to Charles de Gaulle's Free French movement, but de Gaulle considered him to be too pro-Communist and offered him no position. Cot then went to the United States, where he spent the war years teaching at Yale University.
Cot was an influential figure among French political exiles, and in 1943 de Gaulle appointed him a member of the provisional French advisory assembly based in Algiers. De Gaulle also sent him to Moscow to negotiate Soviet recognition of the Free French government in exile.

Here is a summary of relevant passages of articles of two French historians published (in a Russian translation) in proceedings of the French-Russian workshop "USSR and France during the Second World War" (Moscow: MGIMO, 2006): Jacques Bariéty "French diplomatic and military representation in the Soviet Union, June 1941-December 1944" (P. 182-202) and George-Henri Soutou "The Free France and the place of the Soviet Union in the European system" (P. 154-181).

Bariéty writes that Cot "refused to collaborate" with De Gaulle in London in 1940 (as if he was offered a position or asked by De Gaulle to collaborate with his Free France) and moved on to the States (P. 196). In October 1943 he was indeed appointed a member of the provisional French advisory assembly and become a member of its commission on foreign affairs (Soutou, P. 161-162). On March 3rd, 1944 Cot sent to Moscow with a mission described by the authorities of the Free France to the French mission in Moscow as "purely informative" rather than political; Cot "had no right to represent the Committee" (the French National Liberation Committee, a provisonal government of the Free France). Cot spent six months in Moscow and upon his return to Algiers submitted a large report (see ref. below).

In fact the Free France was recognized by the Soviet Union already on September 26, 1941; a French mission in Moscow and Kuibyshev, where the Soviet government moved to be safe from German troops, existed since November 1941, and the French National Liberation Commitee was recognized by the Allies (after rather forceful prodding by the Soviet Union) on August 27, 1943, soon after its creation (ibid., P. 151). Thus the goal of Cot's visit definitely could not be negotiating "Soviet recognition of the Free French government in exile." Most probably Cot's task in Moscow was to probe the Soviet position on questions of after-war settlement in Europe (the Rhine region) and in the French colonial empire; probably Cot was chosen for this mission because being not a Communist he was independent of Soviet leadership but his frendly attitude to the Soviet Union was known and appreciated in Moscow.

Bariéty cites a number of sources that, in his words, prove that during the war Cot was closely collaborating with the Soviet intelligence: Peter Wright. Spycatcher: Tge candid authobiography o a senior intelligence officer. NY, Viking, 1987. P. 238-241; Thiery Wolton. L'hitoire interdite. Paris, J.-C. Lattes. P. 192-204; Christopher Andrew et Vassili Mitrokhine. Le KGB contre l'Ouest, 1917-1991. Paris, Fayard, 2000. P. 170-171, 844. Note however that this sources might be somewhat biased in favor of the American perception of the events.

Bariéty also cites French archival sources on Cot's mission: archive du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, Comité Français de Libération Nationale, dossiers 1264, 1610, 1611, 1612, and especially 1268, which contains Cot's main "Compte-rendu de mission" (121 pages) and "Rapport complémentaire" (13 pages) submitted in Sepember 1944.

Andrei Sobolevskii (ansobol at google mail - the correct email adress should be rather obvious) 83.167.112.74 (talk) 20:21, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Last edited at 20:21, 27 December 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 02:58, 30 April 2016 (UTC)