Republican Union

Gambetta called his policy a policy of results. “To stay in power,” he said in Marseilles on January 7, 1878 , “the Republican Party must become a ministerial party. A year of power is more fruitful than 10 years of the most heroic opposition. ” For the sake of the goal expressed in these words, Gambetta abandoned his previous radical program, retaining from it only one significant point - elections by lists ( French scrutin de liste ), which his followers subsequently refused when this election system was convenient for their enemy, General Boulanger .

Gambetta's enemies from the extreme left camp called his opportunist policy, that is, a policy of adapting to circumstances. Gradually, this nickname began to be adopted by those to whom it was attached: in 1890, one of the party’s prominent representatives, Joseph Reinach , called the collection of his articles “Opportunist politics” ( French Politique opportuniste ; Paris, 1890), explaining in the introduction that He considers it more necessary to abandon the name of the opportunists, although neither Gambetta nor his closest followers used this expression.

After Gambetta, the opportunist party leaned more and more to the right , attracting elements from the camp of conservative republicans, and then even from the joined monarchists . Her program more and more lost its progressive character and turned into a conservative-bourgeois program.

The opportunists protested:

• against revising the constitution in a democratic manner,
• against separation of church from state ,
• against income tax
• against factory law;
• were supporters of colonial policy and protectionism ;
• during strikes, the opportunist ministries were always on the side of the manufacturers.

The final push to the right was given to the Republican Union by the radical ministry of Leon Bourgeois (1895-1896), uniting all radical elements and forcing the elements to come together moderate and conservative; but just from that time on, the name “opportunism” gradually went out of use.

Since the time of the Gambetta Ministry (1881), power, with short interruptions (the ministries of Floquet and Bourgeois ), has been constantly in the hands of opportunists of various shades; they included the presidents of the republic, Sadi Carnot , Casimir Pierre Perrier and Felix Faure . The most prominent opportunists after Gambetta were Jules Ferry , Pierre Marie Waldeck-Rousseau and Auguste Bourdo .

• Gambetta, Leon-Michel // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron : 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
• Opportunists // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.