Contenu du sommaire

History and power in 1984, François Bédarida. A visionary and iconoclastic book, going against the mainstream antifascist progressivism of the 30s and 40s, George Orwell's 1984, published in 1949, has put before the historian the issue of the subjection of the past to power in a totalitarian System. Big Brother's theocracy has conquered memory and denies ail forms of objective historical truth. The future, however, needs the past : Orwell's message is a defense and illustration of the pedagogical and civic function of history.

The Middle Ages between the future and the life to corne, Jacques Le Goff The high Middle Ages ignored the future and put everything on the life to corne. Rome and St. Augustine had bequeathed the idea of a succession of ages up to the Last Judgement : the life-to-come was imposed by salvation. As of the 12th and 13th centuries, time was mastered, people began to count, growth began, archives became necessary : an earthly linear future became conceivable. The millenarist spurt was not mastered by it, but the age of progress and enlightenment could begin. This medieval wavering can help us understand the 20th century's dramas.

Stakhanov, a normative hero, Eric Vigne The " new man " imposed by Lenin and Stalin assured the hegemony of the Party over society and that of taylorized standards over production. A miner, Stakhanov, embodied this normative hero as of 1935. The movement bearing his name allowed the intelligentsia of the recognized technicians to serve the Soviet state blindly, against the workers. Against this new conquest of Stalinism there was neither revoit nor return of old repressed practices, for the political police never believed in the " new man " ; it took care of the files of the "old man", right into the camps.

After Mao, the return of the Old Man, Marie-Claire Bergere. Since 1976, People's China has been trying to resolve its economic and social crisis through the policy of the four modernizations. Material stimuli, decollectivization of agriculture, rebirth of private enterprise, abandonment of socialist morality : the break with Mao's ideal and the Cultural Revolution seems total. The " old man " is born again, the return of the old traditions favors popular cults, individualism, even infanticide, while the West's cultural objects continue to fascinate. But this renaissance only reflects the failures and contradictions of the age of Mao. Civil society keeps quiet ; there is barely any social criticism ; political opposition is weak. The " old man " has not awakened China.

Italian fascism and the vision of the future, Pierre Milza Mussolini's vision of the future was primarily a banal imperialist plan : fascist Italy would break out of the bars of the " Mediterranean prison " and would surge forward, great among the greats of the 21st century, on to the ocean and towards India. Already in 1937, in a draft by Il Duce, Europa 2000, there were totalitarian omens : the appeal for more births and the plan of " cultural revolution " were meant to fashion a "new man ". But how could the very conservative official ideal of an Imperial Roman soldier-laborer be reconciled with the indispensable futurism of such geopolitics ? Only war, Mussolini thought, could resolve this contradiction.

Imagining the unimaginable. Nuclear war and American strategy since 1945, Pierre Mélandri Since 1945, the American strategy has had to " imagine the unimaginable " : total nuclear war. But not without hesitations and variations when the President, his advisors, Congress and the army confronted each other. Truman envisaged recourse to nuclear arms only as the " last extremity ". In 1954, Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles accepted the idea of " massive retaliation " in order to make deterrence credible. Kennedy and McNamara, on the other hand, as early as 1960, wanted a pure " anti-force " strike, sparing the cities. In 1968, the inevitable " assured destruction " strategy was deemed necessary, but in 1974, its suicidal aspect was already an object of worry. Today, Reagan seems no longer to believe that such a war could be limited. Is the USA really capable to " cope whith history before it happens ", to use H. Kahn's words ?

The population horoscope, Hervé Le Bras In this brief history of long-term demographic forecasts from the 17th century to the present, prediction seems both useless, for it is inaccurate, and essential, as it reveals the concerns of the time. Petty's economie arithmetic, Pearl's logistic laws, Glass's mathematical sophistication witness the refining of the methods. Yet the Future Population of Europe and the Soviet Union that a proud Princeton team published in 1944 describes the 1970 European horizon with margins of error exceeding 35 %, in spite of the new reliability of statistics. The post-war increase of the birth rate and the magnitude of population movements had not been suspected, because of the American researchers' obsession with the USSR's demographic imperialism : an admission of failure pregnant with lessons.

Reading on the hazy futures of the long crisis, Jean Bouvier Since 1973, the world economy has settled into the long crisis which tolls the end of our intellectual haughtiness. The crisis had not been foreseen in the scenarios of the future worked out at the time growth. Nevertheless, however flawed, economic forecasting, probability, and futurology are indispensable. Futurology, above all, which attempts to organize the unpredictable by transforming an imprecise future into a multitude of possible futures. To challenge this — an easy task when one rereads, as the author does, the most recent works — does not preclude making hypotheses for the end of the 1980s. In France, they can be summed up in three fateful terms : low growth, unemployment, inflation.

The century of contingency ?, René Rémond Virtually all forecasts have corne to naught during the 20th century. This chronic discrepancy between prediction and reality confronts the contemporary historian with the central role of contingency, the irritating challenge to his desire to explain logically the passing of time. Population, economy, culture, and above all, politics — no field of human activity manages to escape the accident of contingency. The historian, therefore, has to avoid two contrary excesses : attributing to events a spurious logic, and making the flow of things depend on minor causes. Only the historian can show that all situations have a variety of possible future scenarios, and that choice is always irreversible.

Applied history, or the thaumaturgic historians, Henry Rousso. In recent years, the social demand for history has been growing. Many historians are doing commissioned work on contract with the government, administrative agencies or private companies. In the USA, Public History is looking for a new definition of the " historian ", in the context of unemployment in the universities. In Europe, and especially in France, where the first transplantations of the American " model " can be seen, the social sciences are attempting to find a new balance between fundamental and applied research. History is thus taking the place of other disciplines, such as economies or sociology. This presents risks for the future of the profession. There is an epistemological debate on the object of historical research.