Pierre Courtade
Pierre Courtade was a French writer and journalist.
Biography
Pierre Courtade was born in to a modest family of a post office employee.A student of Jean Guéhenno, Courtade began his career as a journalist at Le Progrès de Lyon. During this period he met writers such as Louis Aragon, Roger Vailland and René Tavernier who greatly influenced him.
He joined the French [Communist Party] during the Second World War while participating in the Resistance. In 1944, he was arrested at the Au Vieux Paris café in the company of fellow Communist resistance members. After the Liberation, he joined the editorial staff of the weekly L'Action, close to the Communist Party.
In 1946, Maurice Thorez asked him to hold the international section of L'Humanité which directed it until his death. In April 1948, he was in Genoa with Roger Vailland and Claude Roy to cover the major strikes taking place there. He also contributed to other Communist Party publications, including Les Cahiers du communisme, Démocratie nouvelle, L'Humanité-Dimanche. He was sent as a permanent correspondent for L'Humanité in Moscow.
Courtade decided to leave Moscow at the end of April 1963; his successor, Jean Kanapa, had already been appointed. Fifteen days after his return to Paris, he was hospitalized and died of cardiac complications.