Contenu du sommaire

The Blum-Byrnes agreements, France's modernization and the Cold War, Irwin M. Wall. The financial agreements signed on 1946 May 28 between France and the United States are sometimes viewed as a step in the « alienation » of national independence, a premise to the Cold War. American archives allow that interpretation to be changed. Far from being a one-way negotiation, the Blum-Byrnes agreements reflected the context of 1946. On the French side, economic modernization was the main concern, along with strategic considerations. For the Americans, financial aid was part of a policy applied to other countries, including the USSR, previously to the Marshall plan. Disappointing for both sides, the agreements were in no way an episod of American interference in French affairs.

Preuves in the Paris of the Cold War, Pierre Grémion. While not an underground magazine, Preuves did not shake the convictions of an intellectual milieu which leaned to the left. That did not prevent it from crossing swords for many years with its left-wing opposite numbers. The study goes beyond counting blows. It shows that French ideological phenomena must be considered in their international dimension, not only concerning external stakes, here the Cold War, but also the associations of the French intellectual milieu, whose external ramifications are quite clear in this case.

Cold War and Christian progressivism. La Quinzaine (1950-1953), Yvon Tranvouez. During the Cold War, La Quinzaine, recently founded by Dominican fathers and transfered to lay hands, threw itself into the « struggle for peace » after some Christians heard the communist Stockholm Appeal. « Hypocritical ravages » of American civilization, « new world » in the East : everything apparently led this bi-monthly from Christian progressivism to a manichean view of international relations. The political trials in the people's democracies nevertheless revealed a deep split within the editorial team which displayed greater diversity than the monolithic image conveyed by its opponents. Condemned by the Holy Office in 1955, the magazine had in extremis distinguished fellow traveller Christians from followers of a nascent « new left ».

What is the use of neo-corporatism, Michèle Ruffat. As a concept, an outline or a model, « neo-corporatism » originates in political science. In the United States in particular, after the failure of the Dahl pluralist model, questions have been asked concerning the lack of self-regulating mechanisms for conflict between interest groups and public power ; or, in democratie terms, the incompatibility of individual self-interest and the general will. This very empirical outline has been applied with varying degrees of success to several post-war European societies. In France, where neo-corporatism does exist, the word is spurned. Can historic research nonetheless put it to good use ? That is the question broached in an article by a political scientist in which the stakes are set out, with the answers, in terms of research, left to historians.