Jacques Numa Sadoul, commonly known as Captain Sadoul (, Zhak Sadul; May 22, 1881 – November 18, 1956), was a French lawyer, communist politician, and writer, one of the founders of the Communist International. He began his career in the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) in Vienne, and, by the time of World War I, was serving under Albert Thomas, the Minister of Armaments. A French Army Captain, he was Thomas' envoy to the Russian Republic, keeping contact with the socialist circles and steering them toward the Entente Powers. After the October Revolution, he maintained close contacts with the Bolsheviks, pledging them his support against the Central Powers during the crisis of 1917–1918. He was unable to prevent Bolshevist Russia from signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which took her out of the war, but, having established close contacts with Leon Trotsky and other communist leaders, became a communist himself.
Opting not to return to France during the Russian Civil War, Sadoul co-founded the French Communist Group in Russia, fighting for control of it against Pierre Pascal and Henri Guilbeaux. Helping to set up the Red Army, he was sent to the Ukraine, where he instigated mutinies among the French intervention troops, and then to Germany, where he set up communist cells. Sadoul also mediated between the International and the SFIO's left-wing, attracting members for what became the French Communist Party (PCF), and contributed doctrinaire essays in L'Humanité. A French military court sentenced him to death in absentia, while the SFIO presented him, symbolically, as a candidate in the 1919 elections.
Finally moving back to France in 1924, and acquitted upon retrial, Sadoul remained at the center of controversy. He joined the PCF, but failed to win any elections, and was generally marginalized by the party leadership. A Stalinist apologist and Izvestia correspondent in the 1930s, he helped the Soviet Union maintain contacts with the French establishment, and represented Soviet interests in France. He was pressured into collaborationism with Vichy France during World War II, but openly returned to communism in 1944, and ended his career in politics as mayor of Sainte-Maxime.
Biography
Early career
The son of a magistrate, Sadoul was born in Paris on May 22, 1881. He was an alumnus of Lycée Condorcet. While studying there, he met and befriended Eugène Schueller, future founder of the L'Oréal cosmetics empire. Together with Marcel Cachin, they founded a socialist people's university in the settlement of La Chapelle. In 1903, Sadoul registered with the bar association and worked for the Court of Appeal of Paris.
A provincial lawyer assigned to the appellate court of Poitiers, and a reserve officer, Sadoul married Yvonne Mezzara (born 1889), who was distantly related to the historian Ernest Renan. Their son, Ary, was born in 1908. Jacques soon entered party politics, joining the SFIO. He was its secretary in Vienne during the 1910s, and also served as head of the local Confederation of Labor. In August 1912, the SFIO selected him to run for a vacated National Assembly seat in Montmorillon. He won some 3,900 votes, but lost to the Radical Party candidate. He ran a second time in the legislative election of May 1914—the last vote before the outbreak of World War I later that summer. For the next three years, he stood on the SFIO's center, but was sympathetic to its far-left wing, the "Committee for the Resumption of International Relations".