cover image STAVISKY: A Confidence Man in the Republic of Virtue

STAVISKY: A Confidence Man in the Republic of Virtue

Paul Jankowski, . . Cornell Univ., $35 (384pp) ISBN 978-0-8014-3959-9

Brandeis historian Jankowski (Communism and Collaboration: Simon Sabatini and Politics in Marseille, 1919–1944) patiently pieces together the story of Sacha Stavisky, a lifelong trompeur whose business dealings and mysterious death in 1934 left a wake powerful enough to threaten the Third Republic of France. The affair revolved around a complicated soft money racket operating through a municipal credit union, wherein fraudulent bonds were cashed out to Stavisky—already under court investigation and making the scandal sheets as a runaway show promoter—who then covered the bonds with other fraudulent sureties. Through the use of bribes, blackmail and intimidation—which the author examines with élan—Stavisky warded off judicial intervention and further bought his way into the administration of several Parisian newspapers, controlling first advertising and then the news. In the forging of such political ties, argues Jankowski, a charlatan revealed the corruptibility of a state already seriously marred by scandal, but his tar-and-feathering also paved the way for anti-Semitism (Stavisky was of Jewish descent) in France. Jankowski captures every twist and turn in the case, but potentially more interesting material—an ensuing riot, the horrific results of French anti-Semitism, the inevitable collapse of the Third Republic—isn't given enough play here, and an ambiguous epilogue leaves the reader hanging. While the book provides an ornate portrait of the Third Republic before the rise of Vichy, its appeal will be mainly to academics and historians and serious readers of French history. 19 b&w photos. (May)