This study of the French Communist Party (PCF) traces PCF reactions to the popular democracies from their birth in 1944-45, through social and political crises to the events of 1956 in Moscow, Poznan and Budapest. Drawing on original sources and archive material, the author shows how the PCF's approach was shaped not only by Cold War antagonisms and a slavish adherence to the Moscow line, but also by the domestic context of the French labour movement and political conflicts in France.