The liberation of France from German occupation in 1944 marked not only the restoration of democratic political life but also the beginning of a new dominance of the Left in French cultural life. This dominance did not decline until the late Seventies. With the exception of the political philosopher Raymond Aron, who died three years ago at the age of seventy-eight, virtually every prominent French writer, thinker, film director, or journalist of the period 1944-75 was either a member of the Communist Party or Socialist Party, or a close sympathizer with one or both. The greatest intellectual battles of the period were fought over how, not whether, to justify Stalin’s genocides; over how, not whether, to destroy the United States and capitalism; over how, not whether, to subvert what was seen as the pernicious notion of individual freedom. Since this period was also the period of French culture’s greatest influence and prestige abroad in modern times, what became known and admired throughout the West was the culture of the French Left. Writers who held positions at odds with the dominant French culture were hardly known outside France, even by specialists. As in the late nineteenth century, French culture was radically divided between an urban, internationally renowned element on the Left and a hidden, reclusive, anti-cosmopolitan element on the Right. In the period 1944-75 the former was never seriously threatened by the latter. When the Left fell, it fell by reason of its own inner contradictions and its own nihilism.