Pierre Célestin LENTENGRE, aka Pierre LENTENTE

Born in Paris (in the 20th arrondissement) on 17 December 1890 – died in Draguigan (Var) on 20 March 1982. Mechanic then book-keeper: anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist.

Active in the 19th arrondissement in Paris’s Union Anarchiste (UA) group, Pierre Lentente was the administrator of the La Revue anarchiste and of the daily edition of Le Libertaire between 11 December 1922 and 14 December 1924.

He was also part of the “anarcho-syndicalist” minority which, during 1924, broke with the CGTU and looked to the UFSA (Federative Union of Non-Aligned Unions). At the Saint-Ouen conference in 25 June 1925, he was put in charge of the UFSAF archives. He later joined the CGT-SR (Revolutionary Syndicalist CGT) once it was launched in November 1926. Elected on to the UA steering committee at the November 1925 congress, he spoke out against the Platform. At the November 1927 congress when the organization adopted statutes inspired by the Arshinov Platform and changed its name to the UACR (Revolutionary Anarchist-Communist Union), a hostile minority broke away to launch the AFA (Anarchist Federalists’ Association).

As a member of the 20th arrondissement group in Paris, Pierre Lentente handled secretarial matters for the AFA on a temporary basis up until his replacement by René Darsouze in February 1928. He was also an editor and administrator with the AFA mouthpiece Le Trait d’union libertaire, which went on to become La Voix libertaire that May, up until it relocated to Limoges in October 1928.

At its April 1930 congress, the UACR discarded its platformism. Pierre Lentente, a co-signatory of the Manifesto of Anarchist Communists which was in favour of reunification, was voted on to the UACR steering commission. The AFA then stopped operating as a frankly rival organization. Lentente remained a member of it and in 1933, even became its secretary.

In November 1932, At the 4th CGT-SR congress, he was appointed to the steering commission and made administrator of Le Combat syndicaliste. 

By the time of the Liberation, Pierre Lente was living at 55 Rue Pixérécourt in the 20th arrondissement in Paris, was a regular subscriber to Le Libertaire and a distributor for Sébastien Faure’s Encyclopédie anarchiste part-works, having been a contributor to that venture. In 1948 he and Justin Olive, served as the very first secretaries of the Paris chapter of the Friends of Sébastien Faure, an association launched in Lyon at the Liberation with the purpose of promoting Faure’s life and works.

In the autumn of 1952, along with Pierre-Valentin Berthier for one, he was a member of the Philo-Social Research Centre which laid on weekly debates at the Salle des Sociétés savantes.

Original entry by Jean Maitron then complemented by Rolf Dupuy, in Les Anarchistes. Dictionnaire biographique du movement libertaire francophone, Editions de l’Atelier, 2015, pp 495-486

Lentente’s papers are held by the Istituto storico di Modena (Historical Institute of Modena) who have digitised some of them - see https://www.modenastoriedigitali.it/carte-pierre-celestin-lentegre-pierre-lentente-1882-1975 

The digitised materials are at https://lodovico.medialibrary.it/media/ricercadl.aspx?page=1&rictree=Istituto+per+la+storia+della+Resistenza+di+Modena%2fArchivio+Pierre+C%c3%a9lestin+Lentengre 

Translated by: Paul Sharkey.