Contenu du sommaire

Does The Left know how to manage France (1936-1937 / 1981-1984), Robert Franck. The comparison between the economic policies of the 1936 Popular Front and those of the left of 1981 is inevitable. Not only does the memory of 1936 obsess Pierre Mauroy's first governments, but the similarities are also striking. The two experiences follow a chronology which displays the same rhythm. Both are conditioned by constraints - « inheritances » - of the same type, and primarily by a major economic crisis. The record of one leads to questions about the other.

Independences and dependences in the Insular Pacific, Paul De Deckker A handful of islands, a complex population : Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia, which make up the insular Pacific, seem doomed to be scattered. Since 1945 they have been, however, a stake controlled by the superpowers, whether colonial or not. London, Canberra and Wellington have in turns favored independence and dependence. Washington, for strategic reasons, has followed closely the evolution of the Pacific. In this struggle where the global stakes are very clear, has France still a place in 1985 ? The examples of New Caledonia and the Polynesian islands are here analysed in detail.

French Protestantism three hundred years after the revocation of the Edict

Beaubourg, Year VIII, Gérard Vincent Beyond aesthetic quarrels and unjustified accusations, the historian can, after eight years of the existence of the National Center for Art and Culture at Beaubourg, ask the real question : have the missions assigned to the Center been accomplished ? In other words, has the access of the masses to culture been facilitated ? Have the barriers between the various activities been broken down by the coexistence of a museum and other forms of culture ? Has Beaubourg become not only the cultural brain of France, but also its heart, irrigating the Hexagon with the flow of culture produced by such a pump ? Lastly, how has the surrounding neighborhood been renovated and with what results ?

Painting in France (1945-1960), Etienne Fouilloux. The 1950s witness the triumph of abstract art. Until the beginning of the decade, that was not yet clear. And nothing during the pre-war was paving the way for a victory of abstraction. After the Liberation, abstract art had to battle against a two-fold realism : the « new realism » of Communist artists and Bernard Buffet's expressionism. It took several years before abstract art was to impose itself.

Zeev Sternhell : an Italian reading, Sergio Romano. Returning to Z. Sternhell's book, Ni droite ni gauche (Paris, Le Seuil, 1983), Sergio Romano explains why it could appear controversial to an Italian reader. While it is true that Mussolini himself acknowledged his debt to Sorel and to the Italian syndicalist revolutionaries, the cultural sources of fascism were diverse. The roots of its ideology, which Sternhell sees mostly in France, must not be separated from their peninsular attachments and from the context of moral crisis following the First World War. What is lacking in this otherwise valuable book is a more rigorous intellectual definition and a more concrete historical one.

The Alsatians drafted by force into the German Army during the Second World War : Denial, convocation and provo cation of memory, Geneviève Herberich-Marx, Freddy Raphaël. Between 1942 and 1944, after the annexation of the Alsatian and Lorrain departments by the Third Reich, 130 000 men were drafted by force into the Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS. After 1945, the « despite ourselves » experienced great ambivalence, both shameful for having participated against their will in the bloody Nazi adventure and fighting against scorn, claiming nevertheless a specific suffering. Denouncing France which had abandoned them, according to them, they corne up against an obstacle : how can one transmit the memory of an unutterable and unique experience ?