Stavisky Affair
Encyclopedia
The Stavisky Affair was a 1934 financial scandal generated by the actions of embezzler
Alexandre Stavisky
. It had political ramifications for the French
Radical Socialist moderate government of the day. The scandal was described by the New Yorker
' s Paris
correspondent Janet Flanner
as follows:
"), was a Russia
n Jew born in modern-day Ukraine
whose parents had moved to France. He tried various professions, working as a café singer, as a nightclub manager, as a worker in a soup factory, and as the operator of a gambling den. In the 1930s he managed municipal pawnshops in Bayonne
but also moved in financial circles. He sold lots of worthless bonds and financed his "hockshop" on the surety
of what he called the emerald
s of the late Empress of Germany — which later turned out to be glass.
Stavisky maintained his façade with his connections to various people in important positions. If some newspaper tried to investigate his affairs, he bought them off, sometimes with large advertisement contracts, sometimes by buying the paper.
In 1927, Stavisky was put on trial for fraud
for the first time. However, the trial was postponed again and again and he was granted bail
19 times. He probably continued his scams during this time. One judge who claimed to hold secret documents was later found decapitated.
Faced with exposure in December 1933, Stavisky fled. On 8 January 1934, the police found him in a Chamonix chalet
agonizing from a gun wound. Officially Stavisky committed suicide but there was a persistent speculation that police killed him. The latter is the theory proposed by Janet Flanner
, writing as Genêt
, in her "Letter from Paris" column in the New Yorker. Fourteen Parisian newspapers called it suicide and eight did not. The distance the bullet had traveled led Le Canard enchaîné
to propose the tongue-in-cheek theory that he had "a long arm".
amidst accusations from the right-wing opposition that Chautemps and his police had intentionally killed Stavisky to protect influential people.
Chautemps was replaced by Édouard Daladier
from the same Radical-Socialist Party. One of his first acts was to dismiss the prefect of the Paris police
, Jean Chiappe
, notorious for his right-wing sympathies and suspected of encouraging previous anti-government demonstrations. Next Daladier dismissed the director of the Comédie Française, who had been staging William Shakespeare
's anti-democratic Coriolanus
and replaced him with the head of the Sûreté-Générale, who was as reliably leftist
as the Paris police chief had been of the right. He also appointed a new Interior Minister, Eugène Frot, who announced that demonstrators would be shot.
The dismissal of the Prefect by the Paris police was the immediate cause of the 6 February 1934 crisis
, which the historian Alfred Cobban
characterizes as a right-wing putsch. It would be more accurately characterized as a "putsch attempt", in the words of French historian Serge Bernstein. However, the left-wing at the time did fear an overt fascist
conspiracy. Fomented by conservative
, anti-Semitic
, monarchist
, and fascist groups, including Action Française
(AF's leader, the novelist Léon Daudet
, called the government "a gang of robbers and assassins"), the Croix-de-Feu
and the Mouvement Franciste
, the riots resulted in fourteen deaths over six hours on the night of 6–7 February 1934 at the hands of 800 police. The événement failed in its aim of overthrowing the Third Republic
(1871–1940) but Daladier had to resign. His successor was conservative Gaston Doumergue
who created a coalition
cabinet. It was the first time during the Third Republic that a government had to resign before the pressure of the streets. They also led to the formation of anti-fascism
leagues and to the agreement between the SFIO socialist party
and the communist party
, which in turn led to the 1936 Popular Front
.
was asked why she had been photographed with Stavisky at a nightclub; Georges Simenon
reported on the unfolding affair and Stavisky's ex-bodyguard threatened him with physical violence; Colette
, referring to the inability of any of Stavisky's high-placed friends to remember him, described the dead con artist as "a man with no face".
The trial of 20 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 involved was estimated to be equal to eighteen million contemporary dollars plus an additional fifty-four million that came within months of fruition. The location of Stavisky's wealth is still unknown.
The Stavisky Affair left France internally weakened. France remained deeply divided for the rest of the decade, but the political weaknesses it exposed and exacerbated were not confined to France. The Stavisky Affair was emblematic of a broader erosion of democratic values and institutions in post–World War I Europe.
Embezzlement
Embezzlement is the act of dishonestly appropriating or secreting assets by one or more individuals to whom such assets have been entrusted....
Alexandre Stavisky
Alexandre Stavisky
Serge Alexandre Stavisky was a French financier and embezzler whose actions created a political scandal that became known as the Stavisky Affair....
. It had political ramifications for the French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
Radical Socialist moderate government of the day. The scandal was described by the New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
correspondent Janet Flanner
Janet Flanner
Janet Flanner was an American writer and journalist who served as the Paris correspondent of The New Yorker magazine from 1925 until she retired in 1975. She wrote under the pen name "Genêt"...
as follows:
Stavisky
Serge Alexandre Stavisky (1888–1934), who became known as le beau Sacha ("Handsome SashaSasha (name)
Sasha is a female and male given name. It originated in countries of Central, Eastern and Southern Europe as a diminutive of Alexander and Alexandra. It is also found as a surname, although this is very rare...
"), was a Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n Jew born in modern-day Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
whose parents had moved to France. He tried various professions, working as a café singer, as a nightclub manager, as a worker in a soup factory, and as the operator of a gambling den. In the 1930s he managed municipal pawnshops in Bayonne
Bayonne
Bayonne is a city and commune in south-western France at the confluence of the Nive and Adour rivers, in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department, of which it is a sub-prefecture...
but also moved in financial circles. He sold lots of worthless bonds and financed his "hockshop" on the surety
Surety
A surety or guarantee, in finance, is a promise by one party to assume responsibility for the debt obligation of a borrower if that borrower defaults...
of what he called the emerald
Emerald
Emerald is a variety of the mineral beryl colored green by trace amounts of chromium and sometimes vanadium. Beryl has a hardness of 7.5–8 on the 10 point Mohs scale of mineral hardness...
s of the late Empress of Germany — which later turned out to be glass.
Stavisky maintained his façade with his connections to various people in important positions. If some newspaper tried to investigate his affairs, he bought them off, sometimes with large advertisement contracts, sometimes by buying the paper.
In 1927, Stavisky was put on trial for fraud
Fraud
In criminal law, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual; the related adjective is fraudulent. The specific legal definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Fraud is a crime, and also a civil law violation...
for the first time. However, the trial was postponed again and again and he was granted bail
Bail
Traditionally, bail is some form of property deposited or pledged to a court to persuade it to release a suspect from jail, on the understanding that the suspect will return for trial or forfeit the bail...
19 times. He probably continued his scams during this time. One judge who claimed to hold secret documents was later found decapitated.
Faced with exposure in December 1933, Stavisky fled. On 8 January 1934, the police found him in a Chamonix chalet
Chalet
A chalet , also called Swiss chalet, is a type of building or house, native to the Alpine region, made of wood, with a heavy, gently sloping roof with wide, well-supported eaves set at right angles to the front of the house.-Definition and origin:...
agonizing from a gun wound. Officially Stavisky committed suicide but there was a persistent speculation that police killed him. The latter is the theory proposed by Janet Flanner
Janet Flanner
Janet Flanner was an American writer and journalist who served as the Paris correspondent of The New Yorker magazine from 1925 until she retired in 1975. She wrote under the pen name "Genêt"...
, writing as Genêt
Genet
-Aircraft:*Armstrong Siddeley Genet, aircraft engine*Armstrong Siddeley Genet Major, aircraft engine-Animals and Plants:*Genet , a colony of plants, fungi or bacteria that come from a single genetic source....
, in her "Letter from Paris" column in the New Yorker. Fourteen Parisian newspapers called it suicide and eight did not. The distance the bullet had traveled led Le Canard enchaîné
Le Canard enchaîné
Le Canard enchaîné is a satirical newspaper published weekly in France. Founded in 1915, it features investigative journalism and leaks from sources inside the French government, the French political world and the French business world, as well as many jokes and humorous cartoons.-Early...
to propose the tongue-in-cheek theory that he had "a long arm".
Political crisis of 6 February 1934
The affaire Stavisky went public with Stavisky's arrest, escape and death and rumors of murder. Then his long criminal record as an embezzler and confidence trickster went public. The suicide or murder, the losses many of the general public suffered, and his close involvement with so many ministers led to the resignation of premier Camille ChautempsCamille Chautemps
Camille Chautemps was a French Radical politician of the Third Republic, three times President of the Council .-Career:Described as "intellectually bereft", Chautemps nevertheless entered politics and became Mayor of Tours in 1912, and a Radical deputy in 1919...
amidst accusations from the right-wing opposition that Chautemps and his police had intentionally killed Stavisky to protect influential people.
Chautemps was replaced by Édouard Daladier
Édouard Daladier
Édouard Daladier was a French Radical politician and the Prime Minister of France at the start of the Second World War.-Career:Daladier was born in Carpentras, Vaucluse. Later, he would become known to many as "the bull of Vaucluse" because of his thick neck and large shoulders and determined...
from the same Radical-Socialist Party. One of his first acts was to dismiss the prefect of the Paris police
Prefecture of Police
The Prefecture of Police , headed by the Prefect of Police , is an agency of the Government of France which provides the police force for the city of Paris and the surrounding three suburban départements of Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis, and Val-de-Marne...
, Jean Chiappe
Jean Chiappe
Jean Baptiste Pascal Eugène Chiappe was a high-ranking French civil servant.Chiappe was director of the Sûreté générale in the 1920s. He was subsequently given the post of Préfet de police in the 1930s, in which role he was very popular...
, notorious for his right-wing sympathies and suspected of encouraging previous anti-government demonstrations. Next Daladier dismissed the director of the Comédie Française, who had been staging William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
's anti-democratic Coriolanus
Coriolanus (play)
Coriolanus is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1605 and 1608. The play is based on the life of the legendary Roman leader, Gaius Marcius Coriolanus.-Characters:*Caius Martius, later surnamed Coriolanus...
and replaced him with the head of the Sûreté-Générale, who was as reliably leftist
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
as the Paris police chief had been of the right. He also appointed a new Interior Minister, Eugène Frot, who announced that demonstrators would be shot.
The dismissal of the Prefect by the Paris police was the immediate cause of the 6 February 1934 crisis
6 February 1934 crisis
The 6 February 1934 crisis refers to an anti-parliamentarist street demonstration in Paris organized by far-right leagues that culminated in a riot on the Place de la Concorde, near the seat of the French National Assembly...
, which the historian Alfred Cobban
Alfred Cobban
Alfred Cobban was a Professor of French History at University College, London, who along with prominent French historian Francois Furet held a 'Revisionist' view of the French Revolution.-Biography:...
characterizes as a right-wing putsch. It would be more accurately characterized as a "putsch attempt", in the words of French historian Serge Bernstein. However, the left-wing at the time did fear an overt fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
conspiracy. Fomented by conservative
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
, anti-Semitic
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
, monarchist
Orléanist
The Orléanists were a French right-wing/center-right party which arose out of the French Revolution. It governed France 1830-1848 in the "July Monarchy" of king Louis Philippe. It is generally seen as a transitional period dominated by the bourgeoisie and the conservative Orleanist doctrine in...
, and fascist groups, including Action Française
Action Française
The Action Française , founded in 1898, is a French Monarchist counter-revolutionary movement and periodical founded by Maurice Pujo and Henri Vaugeois and whose principal ideologist was Charles Maurras...
(AF's leader, the novelist Léon Daudet
Léon Daudet
Léon Daudet was a French journalist, writer, an active monarchist, and a member of the Académie Goncourt.-Move to the right:...
, called the government "a gang of robbers and assassins"), the Croix-de-Feu
Croix-de-Feu
Croix-de-Feu was a French far right league of the Interwar period, led by Colonel François de la Rocque . After it was dissolved, as were all other far right leagues during the Popular Front period , de la Rocque replaced it with the Parti social français .- Beginnings :The Croix-de-Feu were...
and the Mouvement Franciste
Mouvement Franciste
The Mouvement Franciste was a French Fascist and Antisemitic league created by Marcel Bucard in September 1933; it edited the newspaper Le Francisme. Mouvement Franciste reached of membership of 10,000, and was financed by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini...
, the riots resulted in fourteen deaths over six hours on the night of 6–7 February 1934 at the hands of 800 police. The événement failed in its aim of overthrowing the Third Republic
French Third Republic
The French Third Republic was the republican government of France from 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed due to the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, to 1940, when France was overrun by Nazi Germany during World War II, resulting in the German and Italian occupations of France...
(1871–1940) but Daladier had to resign. His successor was conservative Gaston Doumergue
Gaston Doumergue
Pierre-Paul-Henri-Gaston Doumergue was a French politician of the Third Republic.Doumergue came from a Protestant family. Beginning as a Radical, he turned more towards the political right in his old age. He served as Prime Minister from 9 December 1913 to 2 June 1914...
who created a coalition
Coalition
A coalition is a pact or treaty among individuals or groups, during which they cooperate in joint action, each in their own self-interest, joining forces together for a common cause. This alliance may be temporary or a matter of convenience. A coalition thus differs from a more formal covenant...
cabinet. It was the first time during the Third Republic that a government had to resign before the pressure of the streets. They also led to the formation of anti-fascism
Anti-fascism
Anti-fascism is the opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals, such as that of the resistance movements during World War II. The related term antifa derives from Antifaschismus, which is German for anti-fascism; it refers to individuals and groups on the left of the political...
leagues and to the agreement between the SFIO socialist party
Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière
The French Section of the Workers' International , founded in 1905, was a French socialist political party, designed as the local section of the Second International...
and the communist party
French Communist Party
The French Communist Party is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism.Although its electoral support has declined in recent decades, the PCF retains a large membership, behind only that of the Union for a Popular Movement , and considerable influence in French...
, which in turn led to the 1936 Popular Front
Popular Front (France)
The Popular Front was an alliance of left-wing movements, including the French Communist Party , the French Section of the Workers' International and the Radical and Socialist Party, during the interwar period...
.
Further consequences
The scandal brought in a remarkable range of personalities from politics, high society and the literary-intellectual elite of Paris. MistinguettMistinguett
Mistinguett was a French actress and singer, whose birth name was Jeanne Bourgeois. She was at one time the best-paid female entertainer in the world...
was asked why she had been photographed with Stavisky at a nightclub; Georges Simenon
Georges Simenon
Georges Joseph Christian Simenon was a Belgian writer. A prolific author who published nearly 200 novels and numerous short works, Simenon is best known for the creation of the fictional detective Maigret.-Early life and education:...
reported on the unfolding affair and Stavisky's ex-bodyguard threatened him with physical violence; Colette
Colette
Colette was the surname of the French novelist and performer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette . She is best known for her novel Gigi, upon which Lerner and Loewe based the stage and film musical comedies of the same title.-Early life and marriage:Colette was born to retired military officer Jules-Joseph...
, referring to the inability of any of Stavisky's high-placed friends to remember him, described the dead con artist as "a man with no face".
The trial of 20 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 involved was estimated to be equal to eighteen million contemporary dollars plus an additional fifty-four million that came within months of fruition. The location of Stavisky's wealth is still unknown.
The Stavisky Affair left France internally weakened. France remained deeply divided for the rest of the decade, but the political weaknesses it exposed and exacerbated were not confined to France. The Stavisky Affair was emblematic of a broader erosion of democratic values and institutions in post–World War I Europe.
Portraits of the affair
- French film director Alain ResnaisAlain ResnaisAlain Resnais is a French film director whose career has extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included Nuit et Brouillard , an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps.He began...
told the story in the 1974 film Stavisky...StaviskyStavisky... is a 1974 French film drama based on the life of the financier and embezzler Alexandre Stavisky and the circumstances leading to his mysterious death in 1934. This gave rise to a political scandal known as the Stavisky Affair, which led to fatal riots in Paris, the resignation of two...
, featuring Jean-Paul BelmondoJean-Paul BelmondoJean-Paul Belmondo is a French actor initially associated with the New Wave of the 1960s.-Career:Born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, west of Paris, Belmondo did not perform well in school, but developed a passion for boxing and football."Did you box professionally very long?" "Not very long...
in the title role and Anny DupereyAnny Duperey-External links:*...
as his wife Arlette.
Sources
- Alfred Cobban, A History of Modern France, vol.3:1871–1962 (1965). Penguin Books. (No ISBN)
- Janet Flanner (Genêt), Paris was Yesterday, (1972), articles from The New Yorker, 1925–1939. ISBN 0-207-95508-5
- Paul JankowskiPaul JankowskiPaul Jankowski is a history professor at Brandeis University. Jankowski has given several lectures concerning important world affairs such as the Paris riots. He has written books about events like the Stavisky Affair. He is the Raymond Ginger Professor of History at Brandeis University, and the...
, Stavisky - A Confidence Man in the Republic of Virtue, (2002) ISBN 0-8014-3959-0 - David Clay Large, "Between Two Fires: Europes Path in the 1930s," W.W.Norton and Company: New York, New York, (1990) p.14