Nature plays a significant role in the discussion for and against modernism, which got under way from the late eighteenth century onwards. The rationalists of the Enlightenment considered not only human nature, but also the whole uncultivated realm of nature beyond, that of the animals and plants, as wild and dangerous. It should, according to them, be tamed for the benefit of mankind and put to use. Thus they laid the ideological foundations that made possible the unrestrained exploitation of natural resources for the free development of the market and specifically for industrialisation, ie for material and ideological modernisation processes. The Romantics, on the other hand, emphasised the importance of non-material values. In their view the inherent and irretrievable beauty of nature should not be sacrificed on the altar of utilitarianism. A century later the critics of unrestrained economic modernisation expanded on the Romantics' view. They criticised the ‘tumours’ of industrialisation, urbanisation and materialism, advocating greater preservation of the wilderness and, indeed, of agrarian land and the rural way of life. For them, such things were not just symbols of originality, beauty and health, but were also part of the ‘national character’. They were unique treasures, unlike replaceable material interests. Nature, as a source of raw materials, became a multifunctional cultural heritage. ‘Materialism’ and the idea of progress, the central characteristics of modernisation, were challenged by criticism of civilisation and by historicism. Thus the basic cultural and political camps were established, but also the decisive ideological preconditions for the emergence of a nature conservation movement.

On 17 January 1936 Winston S. Churchill, the back-bench bête noire of the Conservative Party, wrote to his wife Clemmie from Marrakesh, where he was on holiday, about the frightful international situation. Japan had ruptured the conference on naval aramaments, and Nazi Germany was rearming at break-neck speed. The ‘two predatory military dictatorships’, it seemed to Churchill, were now working together. ‘No wonder’, he said, ‘the Russian bear is quaking for his skin and seeking protectors among the capitalist powers he deserted in the war and sought to destroy at the close of it. What – to quote a famous phrase – “What a fearful concatenation of circumstances”.’2

Citizens of the Polish People's Republic have a right to enjoy cultural achievements and to participate creatively in the development of their national culture …. The Polish People's Republic is concerned for the all-round development of scholarship, literature, and the arts, and surrounds with particular care the creative intelligentsia and those engaged in scientific, educational, literary and artistic work.

The Constitution of the Polish People's Republic, 1952.

Since the so-called ‘Change’ of 10 November 1989, Bulgarian historiography has been, with its society as a whole, ‘in transition’. That phrase, it should be noted, has acquired what is at best a desultory connotation in the harsh realities of contemporary Bulgaria. Blocked by protracted economic crisis and failed political leadership, the road to reform has been uncertain, its destination obscure. The same situation has held true for practically all of the institutions of Bulgarian life, including the profession of history. Some welcome changes and positive achievements have been so much accompanied by problematic trends as to preclude any definitively favourable prognosis.

Is France racist, as Michel Wieviorka has suggested in a recent book?1 And if so, why? Is France more or less racist than her European neighbours, and is the degree of racism increasing or decreasing? These questions are being hotly debated in the wake of the electoral successes of the National Front, which is seen as a ‘racist’ party by three-quarters of French people old enough to vote.2

It can scarcely be said that François Mitterrand lacked reasons for despondency between September 1994 and May 1995: the oppression of imminent retirement, the ravages of illness, the loss of his dearest friends; the tide of scandals mounting towards the presidency; the disastrous Socialist performance in both the legislative elections of 1993 and the European elections of 1994; the political, intellectual and emotional collapse of the brand of left-wing magnanimity which he had made his own and which had borne him to power; the ingratitude of public opinion, anxious for change. Most of the books devoted to the last months of his ‘reign’ fail to go beyond a fairly mechanical rendering of a feeling of anti-climax. Something of an exception is L'Année des adieux (‘Year of Farewells’),1 a bitter-sweet chronicle of life in the President's entourage by Laura Adler, an adviser to the Elysée; but her comradely offering does little to stem the tide of hostile, regretful or frankly accusatory offerings. It is no coincidence that Jean Montaldo's Mitterrand et les 40 voleurs (‘Mitterrand and the Forty Thieves’),2 has become a long-term best-seller: Montaldo, a former police officer, mercilessly exposes the nexus of scandal and intrigue in the presidential entourage. Or that Thierry Pfister's novel Le Nègre (‘The Negro)3 uses a thinly disguised cast of characters to make a violent attack on the betrayal of socialist ideas, with a bitterness felt also in Daniel Rondeau's Mitterrand et nous (‘Mitterrand and Ourselves’),4 referring to the post-1968 generation which the author claims to represent. Or, again, that it should be the President's most consistently vitriolic radio critic, Philippe Alexandre, who in a tardy attack of pseudo-remorse has undertaken a Plaidoyer impossible pour un vieux président abandonné par les siens (‘Speech in defence of the indefensible, on behalf of an ageing president deserted by his followers’).5 All in all, a display of authorial individuality and ardour, as writers scramble to accomplish the finally rather banal task of presenting the departing President with History's bill for board and lodging.