1. Henri Barbusse began his literary career in the 1890s as a Symbolist poet and continued as a neo-Naturalist novelist; in 1916, he published Under Fire, a novel about World War I based on his experience which is described as one of the earliest works of the Lost Generation movement or as the work which started it; the novel had a major impact on the later writers of the movement, namely on Ernest Hemingway and Erich Maria Remarque.
Henri Barbusse died in 1935 and didn't see the events that followed, like the Moscow trials and the Nazi-Soviet pact.
The son of a French father and an English mother, Henri Barbusse was born in Asnieres-sur-Seine, France in 1873.
In 1908, Henri Barbusse wrote a novel Hell, in which he described the life of a young Parisian who lives in a boarding house and spies through a hole in his wall on the other boarders and sees birth, death, adultery and lesbianism.
Barbusse first came to fame with the publication of his novel Le Feu in 1916, which was based on his experiences during World War I By this time, Barbusse had become a pacifist, and his writing demonstrated his growing hatred of militarism.
Henri Barbusse's novel, Clarte, is about an office worker who, while serving in the army, begins to realize that the imperialist war is a crime.
Henri Barbusse joined the French Communist Party in 1923 and later travelled back to the Soviet Union.
Henri Barbusse characterized the birth of Soviet Russia as "the greatest and most beautiful phenomenon in world history".
In 1925, Henri Barbusse published Chains, showing history as the unbroken chain of suffering of people and their struggle for freedom and justice.
In 1927, Henri Barbusse participated in the Congress of Friends of the Soviet Union in Moscow.
Henri Barbusse led the World Congress Against Imperialist War and headed the World Committee Against War and Fascism, founded in 1933.
Henri Barbusse took part in the work of the International Youth Congress and the International Congress of Writers in Defense of Culture.
Henri Barbusse was literary editor for the daily newspaper l'Humanite from 1926 to 1929.
In 1934, Henri Barbusse sent Egon Kisch to Australia to represent the International Movement Against War and Fascism as part of his work for the Comintern.
Henri Barbusse was an Esperantist, and was honorary president of the first congress of the Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda.
In 1932, Henri Barbusse agreed to write a biography of Stalin.
Henri Barbusse's funeral drew 500,000 people and he is buried at the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
The parc Henri Barbusse was the site of the Chateau d'Issy.