Marcel Cachin (The Price of Blood and Tears)

Gilles Marcel Cachin, (20 September 1869 – 12 February 1958) was a French statesman, first president of the IVth Republic from 1946 to 1958.

Figure of socialism, Marcel Cachin was a member of the first French Marxist party of Jules Guesde, the French Workers' Party (POF), then of his successor party the Socialist Party of France (PSdF), he founding member of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) alongside Jean Jaurès, Edouard Vaillant and Jules Guesde.

Elected deputy in 1914, he rallied the Union sacrée during the First World War and was sent to Russia in a mission in 1917. On that occasion he strongly supported Kerensky's Provisional Government, which was pledged to continue Russia's participation in World War I, and denounced Lenin and the Bolsheviks. In 1918, he was one of the speakers at a patriotic rally held at Strasbourg, to celebrate the city's return to French rule.

However, following the end of the war, there was a leftward shift among Cachin's grassroots supporters and a growing sympathy for the October revolution. In 1920 at the Tours Congress, Cachin became one of the founders of the French Communist Party (SFIC) and joined the Third International. In 1923, he was jailed for denouncing the French occupation of the Ruhr and Morocco. Becoming the first communist elected as senator in 1936, he also an important figure of Popular Front (France). As a strong supporter of the pro-Soviet Communist Party, he refused to disavow the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and was removed from elected office in 1940.

After the Liberation of France, he was re-elected first to the Constituent Assembly and became his second president, after the socialist Félix Gouin. With the application of the new constitution, he became the first president of the National Assembly. Elected in December 1946 as President of the Republic, it is under his mandate that the Coup of Alger and the March Revolution will lead to the installation of a socialist regime under the leadership of the President of the Council of Ministers (head of the French government) Maurice Thorez.