Paix et Liberté (French:[pɛelibɛʁte],Peace and Liberty) was ananti-communist movement that operated inFrance during the 1950s.[citation needed]
In response to theStockholm Appeal fornuclear disarmament,Jean-Paul David, thenRadical Socialist Party deputy mayor ofMantes-la-Jolie and later Secretary General of theRally of Republican Lefts, createdPaix et Liberté in 1950, to counter the activities of theFrench Communist Party.
Its propaganda efforts received substantial financial backing from theUnited States.[1]Paix et Liberté was one of the organizations of the "anti-Communist apparatus" booming during theCold War. The organization had the support of prime ministerRené Pleven and many other politicians of the time. But the experiment stopped in 1955 because of a thaw in international relations.
Paix et Liberté published, distributed and posted hundreds of thousands of posters in France in the 1950s. These posters were reproduced in the form of vignettes, attacking theSoviet Union andcommunist ideology, but also theFrench Communist Party and its leaders, such asMaurice Thorez andJacques Duclos, accusing them of being agents of the USSR. Jean-Paul David also used the radio with his showLes causeries au coin du feu (fireside chats), which lasted only a few minutes, inaugurated on September 22, 1950.
"The dove that goes BOOM" (1950, 300,000 copies) was the first in a series of posters (on average 3 per month were released between 1950 and 1955). It parodiedPablo Picasso's Dove of Peace, thatLouis Aragon had chosen to symbolize the congress of theWorld Peace Council, held in Paris in April 1949. In this picture, the dove was shown metamorphosing into a Soviettank: its wings have become tank treads and its head a tank turret. This picture was later used at the end of the 1951 US Army anti-communist propaganda filmThe Big Lie.
In reference to the Stockholm Appeal (L'appel de Stockholm inFrench), a poster was produced ofLa pelle de Stockholm ("The shovel of Stockholm"), digging the grave of the countries inEastern Europe.