TheStavisky affair was a financial scandal inFrance in 1934, involvingembezzlerAlexandre Stavisky. The scandal had political ramifications for theRadical-Socialist government after it was revealed thatPrime MinisterCamille Chautemps had protected Stavisky, who died suddenly in mysterious circumstances.
Political rightists engaged inlarge anti-government demonstrations on 6 February 1934, which resulted in theParis police firing upon and killing 17 demonstrators. A right-wingcoup d'état seemed like a possibility at the time, but historians agree that the multiple rightist forces were uncoordinated and not trying to overthrow the government.[1]
Serge Alexandre Stavisky (1888–1934), who became known asle beau Sacha ("HandsomeSasha"), was aRussianJew who was born in modern-dayUkraine; his parents had relocated toFrance. Stavisky tried various professions, working as a café singer, a nightclub manager, a soup factory worker and as the operator of a gambling den. During the 1930s, he managed municipalpawnshops inBayonne and also knew people active in the financial sector. Stavisky sold worthlessbonds and financed his "hockshop" on thesurety of what he called theemeralds of the lateEmpress of Germany, which were later revealed to be glass.
Stavisky maintained his reputation by using his acquaintances with important people. If a newspaper tried to investigate his affairs, he paid it to stop either with large advertisement contracts or by buying the newspaper's company.
In 1927, Stavisky was put on trial for fraud for the first time. However, the trial was postponed repeatedly, and he was granted bail nineteen times. Stavisky probably continued his scams during that time. One judge who claimed to have secret documents involving Stavisky was later founddecapitated.Janet Flanner wrote:
The scheme which finally killed Alexandre Stavisky, his political guests' reputations, and the uninvited public's peace of mind, was his emission of hundreds of millions of francs' worth of false bonds on the city of Bayonne's municipal pawnshop, which were bought up by life-insurance companies, counseled by the Minister of Colonies, who was counseled by the Minister of Commerce, who was counseled by the Mayor of Bayonne, who was counseled by the little manager of the hockshop, who was counseled by Stavisky.[2]
At the risk of exposure in December 1933, Stavisky fled. On 8 January 1934, the police found him in a chalet inChamonix; he was dead from a gunshot wound. Stavisky was officially determined to have committedsuicide, but there was a persistent speculation that police officers had killed him. Fourteen Parisian newspapers reported his death as a suicide, but eight did not. The distance that the bullet had travelled caused the newspaperLe Canard enchaîné to propose sarcastically that Stavisky had "a long arm".
After Stavisky's death, details about his long criminal history, his relations with the French establishment and his controversial death became public. His involvement with so many ministers caused the resignation ofPrime MinisterCamille Chautemps with accusations from theright-wing opposition that he and his police had killed Stavisky intentionally to protect influential people. The new Prime Minister wasÉdouard Daladier, and one of his first acts was to dismiss theprefect of the Paris police,Jean Chiappe, who was notorious for his rightist sympathies and suspected of encouraging previous anti-government demonstrations. Daladier then dismissed the director of theComédie Française, who had been stagingWilliam Shakespeare's controversial playCoriolanus, and replaced him with the director of the Sûreté-Générale, a protégé of Chautemps and Daladier's centre-leftRadical‐Socialist Party. He also appointed a new Interior Minister,Eugène Frot, who announced that demonstrators would be shot.
The dismissal of Chiappe was the immediate cause of the6 February 1934 crisis, which some considered as a possible rightistputsch. According to the historianJoel Colton, "The consensus among scholars is that there was no concerted or unified design to seize power and that the police lacked the coherence, unity, or leadership to accomplish such an end".[3] The historian offascism,René Rémond, described it as "barely a riot... a street demonstration".[4]
However, leftists feared an overt fascist conspiracy. Fomented by several conservative,anti-Semitic, monarchist or fascist groups, includingAction Française, theCroix-de-Feu and theMouvement Franciste, the demonstration occurred on the night of 6–7 February 1934. The police fired upon and killed 17 people.
Daladier was forced to resign. His successor was the conservativeGaston Doumergue, who formed acoalition government. It was the first time during the Third Republic that a government had to resign as a result of riots by the opposition. Other results were the formation ofanti-fascism leagues and an alliance between theFrench Section of the Workers' International (SFIO), the main socialist party, and theFrench Communist Party. That resulted in the 1936Popular Front, which won that year's elections.
The scandal involved a remarkable range of people from politics, wealthy society and the literary-intellectual elite of Paris.Mistinguett was asked why she had been photographed with Stavisky at a nightclub.Georges Simenon reported on the affair and Stavisky's ex-bodyguard threatened him with physical violence.Colette, referring to the alleged inability of any of Stavisky's important friends to remember him, described the dead con artist as "a man with no face".[citation needed]
A trial of twenty people associated with Stavisky began in 1935. Printed charges were 1200 pages long. All of the accused, including Stavisky's widow, two deputies and one general, were acquitted the next year. The amount defrauded was estimated to be the equivalent of $18 million at the prevailing exchange rates, plus an additional $54 million that came within months[clarification needed] of being attained. The location of Stavisky's wealth is still unknown.
The Stavisky affair left France weakened internally. The country remained divided politically for the rest of the decade, but the political weaknesses it exposed and exacerbated were not confined to France. The affair was emblematic of a more general decrease of popularity of democratic values and institutions in Europe during the Great Depression.[citation needed]
In 1937, Warner Brothers, released a film based on the Stavisky Affair titledStolen Holiday. Directed byMichael Curtiz, it featuredClaude Rains as Stavisky's fictional counterpart andKay Francis as his wife. The film asserted unequivocally that Orloff was shot by police and his death was made to look like a suicide.
InForces occultes, a movie commissioned in 1942 by thePropaganda Abteilung, a delegation ofNazi Germany's propaganda ministry withinoccupied France, Stavisky was presented as both aFreemason and a crook.
Le dessous des cartes, a 1948 French crime film directed by André Cayatte is loosely based on the Stavisky Affair.
French movie directorAlain Resnais told the story in the 1974 movieStavisky, featuringJean-Paul Belmondo with the title role andAnny Duperey as his wife Arlette.
The affair also forms part of the background of the events inJ. Robert JanesKaleidoscope, one of the Kohler & St. Cyre mystery novels published in 1993.