Virgile Barel

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Virgile Barel (17 December 1889 – 7 November 1979) was a French Communist politician. He served in the National Assembly at four different periods: 1936–1940, 1945–1951, 1956–1958, and 1967–1973. A street in Nice, Boulevard Virgile Barel, in the Saint-Roch neighborhood, is named after him.

He was born in Drap, in the Paillon Valley. His father was a saddler and his mother a seamstress. He studied at the École normale in Nice from 1906 to 1909, finishing at the top of his class, and then worked as a teacher in Breil, Castellar and Menton. In World War I he served as a non-commissioned officer and later as an officer, was wounded three times, and received the Croix de Guerre and the Légion d’Honneur.

Barel began in politics with the SFIO in 1919, inspired by wartime experiences and literature like Henri Barbusse’s Le Feu. He later left socialism and joined the Communist International, becoming active in the CGTU union and writing for Notre Arme. In 1922 he founded a Menton branch of ARAC, the veterans’ association. A 1928 trip to the Soviet Union strengthened his convictions, and he became a full member of the Communist Party. He retired from teaching in 1934 for medical reasons.

With Maurice Thorez, he helped implement the party’s anti-fascist line in the Southeast in the mid-1930s and co-founded the communist weekly Le Cri des travailleurs des A.-M. in 1935. Virgile Barel died in Nice in 1979 at the age of 89.