L’unique Occidental, Prix Staline de littérature: André Stil, un « ingénieur des âmes » en France
The Only Stalin Price of Literature in the Western World: André Stil, an « engineer of the souls » in France

Summary/Abstract: The French writer André Stil (1921-2004) is now almost forgotten, but he was the first and only Westerner to receive, in March 1952, a Stalin prize of literature. He was then the editor of the main communist newspaper in France, L'Humanité, and a candidate member in the Central Committee of the French Communist Party. This was the first time that a Stalin prize was awarded to some non-Soviet writers and the last time that it was awarded under this appellation. A question arises: why was this prize, extremely prestigious in the communist world, attributed to André Stil, and not to Louis Aragon or Paul Eluard, communist writers of incontestable literary talent? Articles and speeches of that time give an unequivocal answer: because André Stil represented then, better than anyone else in France, the literature and the writer, as conceived by Soviet ideologues. Therefore, analyzing the reasons, the context and the consequences of this specific Stalin Price means exploring the attempt to transfer and promote in France the model of writers, advocated by Andrei Zhdanov.

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