Communist Resistance leader Léon Landini (1926-2025)

The following are excerpts from a eulogy for Resistance fighter and communist leader Léon Landini. It was endorsed by current leaders of the Pole for Communist Revival in France Fadi Kassem, Jean-Pierre Hemmen, Georges Gastaud and Annie Lacroix-Riz, and by René Barchi, historian of the Soviet women’s battalion Rodina who fought in France under the Occupation.

Translated and excerpted by John Catalinotto.

Surrounded by his daughters Gilda and Mireille, his son-in-law Noël, and his granddaughter Manon, Léon Landini passed away peacefully on September 21, 2025, at the age of 99.

He was unable to reach his 100th birthday, as we had all hoped, when an official meeting was to be organized at his request in honor of the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans de la Main-d’Oeuvre Immigrée [Sharpshooters and Partisans of the Immigrant Workforce] (FTP-MOI), whose memory Léon tirelessly defended and shared.

At the age of 16, Léon became involved in the most dangerous of battles, that of communist urban guerrilla warfare. He took part in dozens of armed actions against the Wehrmacht [World War II German Army], attacks on German military trains and numerous derailments. Arrested in Lyon and tortured like 52 of his comrades who died at the hands of [Nazi Secret Police head Klaus] Barbie and Co., our comrade emerged from the war as an FTP-MOI officer and … a Grand Mutilé de Guerre (Great War Disabled).

For his acts of resistance, Léon was awarded the rank of Officer of the Legion of Honor by President Francois Mitterrand, a distinction that had been anticipated by the Medal of Resistance.

Following in the footsteps of his father Aristide Landini, an indomitable Italian anti-fascist who had been forced to flee to France, Léon [whose sister Hermine and brother Roger were also Resistance heroes], symbolized throughout his life this “common thread” that linked, throughout universal history, the October Revolution, the anti-fascist Popular Fronts, the Resistance to the Nazi occupation, and the post-war struggles of the French Communist Party (PCF) for the “happy days” promised by the National Resistance Council (CNR), and with them the tireless commitment of communists to social progress, the freedom of peoples, international socialism, the sovereignty of France and world peace.

Pressed by his friends Henri Alleg, Pierre Pranchère, Jacques Coignard, Simone Vachon, Bernard Parquet, and Jean-Pierre Hemmen, Léon [he and the others named had left the PCF, which they said had abandoned the struggle for communism] responded without hesitation to the request of Geo Hage and Georges Gastaud to assume the executive presidency of the Pôle de Renaissance Communiste en France (Pole of Communist Revival in France), created in 2004. As he never ceased to proclaim at the time: “I did not abandon the Party: it was the Party that abandoned me.”

Léon never stopped fighting for French independence, for social gains, for world peace threatened by the EU-NATO, and for a new generation of socialism-communism.

Inseparable from his qualities as a communist leader, Leon was also a man full of humor, always ready to sing the songs of the Italian proletariat and those of the French Revolution.

For his resistance struggle, his peaceful commitment, and his constant fight against anti-Sovietism, which has more recently turned into Russophobic warmongering, Léon was decorated by the USSR. He also received the Medal of Friendship from the Republic of Cuba for his constant political solidarity with Cuban socialism.

Unforgettable Léon, not only do we miss you with all our hearts, but, we [of the PRCF] swear to remain united against resurgent fascism, for peace, for the reconstruction of a fighting communist party, for the rebirth of a “free, strong, and happy” France, and for those new happy days to which you devoted your life of light.

Comrade Léon Landini, you will forever remain an example and an honor to us all!

September 21, 2025 – 2 p.m.