Legislative and Executive Positions
With the founding of the Fourth Republic (1946-1958), Mitterrand actively entered politics and gained valuable parliamentary experience, being elected a deputy to the National Assembly (1946-1958) and serving in 11 different governments. Under the Fourth Republic his ministerial appointments included minister of war veterans (1947-1948), minister for information (1948-1949), minister for overseas territories (1950-1951), minister of state (1952), minister for the Council of Europe (1953), minister of the interior (1954-1955), and minister of justice (1956-1957).
The founding of the Fifth Republic in 1958 by de Gaulle in the midst of the Algerian independence movement pushed Mitterrand into the opposition and, subsequently, his political thought and leanings gravitated toward the left. He opposed de Gaulle's founding of the Fifth Republic and charged that the general's "new republic" represented a permanent coup d'etat. During the first 23 years of the Fifth Republic, Mitterrand dedicated himself to opposing de Gaulle and his heirs. While no longer holding a ministerial post, he was elected to the Senate (1959-1962) and to the Chamber of Deputies (beginning in 1962). (He was also mayor of Château-Chinon beginning in 1959.) In time Mitterrand came to realize that to defeat de Gaulle the non-Communist left needed to be revitalized and an alliance established with the French Communist Party (PCF).
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