International Solidarity

Belle Époque socialism was proudly internationalist. The Second International, meeting periodically, coordinated cross-border organizing. French workers supported distant strikes, boycotted goods from repressive regimes, and hosted political refugees.

The 1905 Russian Revolution energized French leftists. Collections supported Russian strikers. Demonstrations protested Tsarist repression. Russian refugees, including Lenin and Trotsky, found sanctuary in Paris, cross-pollinating revolutionary ideas.

This internationalism extended to feminism. The International Woman Suffrage Alliance, meeting in Paris in 1913, brought together activists worldwide. French feminists, embarrassed by their nation's suffrage delays, organized magnificently. Seeing British and American achievements inspired renewed French efforts.

Colonial subjects also found support among French progressives. Ho Chi Minh, then using the name Nguyễn Ái Quốc, worked in Paris hotels while developing anti-colonial consciousness. He attended socialist meetings, absorbing ideas he'd later apply in Vietnam. The contradiction—French socialists supporting colonial subjects while France maintained empire—would haunt the left for decades.