"Today Sardines Are Not For Sale is a microhistory of a single, emblematic event: the demonstration on the rue de Buci, a food protest that took place on May 31, 1942 at a central market area in occupied Paris. It was a time of dire food scarcity, escalating tensions between shoppers and merchants, an upsurge of urban guerrilla violence, and relentless repression of dissent by the authorities. The French collaborationist government at Vichy saw the demonstration as a crime against the State. For the German occupiers, it was "terrorism." For the French Communist party activists who staged the event and participated in it, it was an act of people's justice. What ultimately became known as the "Buci affair" had tragic consequences for the demonstrators and far-reaching ramifications for the underground communist resistance. How did a relatively obscure incident become a short-lived cause célèbre? Why did it mobilize the French police, the courts, and the German military authorities but fail to mobilize the public? How did the party and party activists use gender to shape the event and perceptions of it? This close-up of a single episode reveals the motivations of the committed women and men who orchestrated it, and the visible but unseen moving parts of the "above-ground underground." Today Sardines Are Not For Sale is the product of a privileged moment when it was possible to confront written sources-newly accessible police and court records---with the oral testimony of surviving participants"-- Provided by publisher.
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