I SHOULD LIKE TO START WITH AN EXTREMELY SIMPLE STATEment about the French Revolution. This is that there are many historical arguments among historians on many subjects, but that none of these arguments is so intense and so heated as the one which takes place in every generation about the French Revolution. It is as though the historical interpretation of this particular subject and the arguments of specialists directly reflect the political struggles and the gamble for power. It is true that we are all aware today that there are no unbiased historical interpretations: the selection of facts which provide the raw material for the historian's work is already the result of a choice, even although that choice is not an explicit one. To some extent, history is always the result of a relationship between the present and the past and more specifically between the characteristics of an individual and the vast realm of his possible roots in the past. But, nevertheless, even within this relative framework, not all the themes of history are equally relevant to the present interests of the historian and to the passions of his public.

IT IS NOW OFTEN SAID THAT THE MODERN WORLD IS interdependent, that there is an intensive interaction of military, political, economic and other factors in the world. There is no doubt that one of the most important aspects of this interaction process is the international flow of information, and that political ideas have a special place in that exchange of information.

What follows is an attempt to look at some phases in the development of the Soviet perception of Western non-socialist political ideas over the past few years. As is generally known, Soviet ideologists have often emphasized the need for ideological struggle against these non-Marxist, bourgeois political ideas, and they continue to do this even in the present period of perestroika. At the same time it is obvious that major changes are taking place in Soviet political thought.

IN A BRILLIANT ARTICLE, FERDINAND MOUNT RECENTLY drew up a balance sheet of the ‘Thatcher decade’ in which he attempted to discern the laws governing political longevity. Now, when he looks at various politicians who are or were remarkable in their capacity for survival, it is striking that he does not so much as mention the head of a neighbouring country, an almost exact contemporary of Mrs Thatcher, since Franpis Mitterrand has been President of the French Republic since 1981 and should, in principle, remain president until 1995. This no doubt is because, in the eyes of F. Mount, Mitterrand's longevity is of a different nature from that of Mrs Thatcher and is far less politically instructive.

THESE ARE UNSETTLED AND UNSETTLING TIMES HERE. THE NEW government of the United States remains un unknown quantity, so that the public eye has been directed outward to Gorbachev's spectacular efforts to free the Soviet Union from the dead weight of bureaucratic communism while simultaneously holding together the disintegrating Federation of Soviet Republics, and inward to the continuing decay of our cities, our environment and our race relations.

THROUGHOUT THE WORLD, NEW TECHNOLOGIES ARE bringing greater specialization and scale of production, and hence more need for interdependence among the economies of nation states. Nowhere is this need more keenly felt than in Europe, both East and West.

SINCE THE 1950s, THERE HAS BEEN A GROWTH OF REGIONAL integration, not only in Europe, but in other continents too. It is based on a deep foundation: the ‘real socialization’ of production. This means that production is transformed from a process confined within narrow groups to an ever-widening social process, whereby the production or consumption of each individual depends to a growing extent on the production and consumption of all membersof the society, the limits of which are continuously expanding to mankind as a whole.