François Furet between history and journalism, 1958-1965

French History

Volumn 15, Issue 4, 2001, Pages 421-447

  Christofferson, Michael Scott ^a  

^a BEHREND COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60949998924     PISSN: 02691191     EISSN: 14774542     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/fh/15.4.421     Document Type: Review

References (79)

1. F. Furet, Penser la Révolution française (1978)
2. and F. Furet and D. Richet, La Révolution française (1973). Note that Furet and Richet's book was entitled La Révolution when it came out in two volumes in 1965 and 1966. La Révolution française, the better-known title of the 1973 edition, is used here.
3. A. Cobban, The social interpretation of the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1964) was also published in the mid-1960s.
4. F. Furet, 'Le catéchisme révolutionnaire', Annales ESC, 26 (1971), 255-89
5. republished in Penser la Révolution française, pp. 133-207.
6. A. Soboul, 'Avant-propos', in C. Mauzauric, Sur la Révolution française: contributions à l'histoire de la révolution bourgeoise (1970), p. 5.
7. Furet's first article on French politics ('Qui a répondu non?', France Observateur, 2 Oct. 1958, 11-13) is very academic, replete with erudite references to the scholarly literature on French elections. The change in his style is evident from a comparison of this article with those of the 1960s.
8. M. Ozouf, 'Préface', Un itinéraire intellectuel: l'historien journaliste du France Observateur au Nouvel Observateur, ed. Ozouf (1999), p. 11.
9. P. Bourdieu, Raisons pratiques: sur la théorie de l'action (1994), p. 81.
10. P. Tétart, 'France Observateur 1950-1964: histoire d'un courant de pensée intellectuel', 6 vols., unpub. doctoral thesis (IEP, Paris, 1995).
11. Percentages calculated from raw budget data in Tétart, 'France Observateur', v. 604.
12. iv. 772.
13. e République (1993), p. 521 for circulation figures
14. and L. Pinto, L'intelligence en action: le Nouvel Observateur (1984).
15. G. Martinet, review of Un itinéraire intellectuel, ed. Ozouf, in Le Monde, 26 Feb. 1999, Monde des livres section.
16. The comments of Martinet and Ozouf, 'Préface', p. 8, confirm the hypothesis that Furet left the PCF in 1958, not 1956 as he insisted.
17. For further analysis of the date of Furet's exit from the PCF and its significance: M. S. Christofferson, 'An antitotalitarian history of the French Revolution: François Furet's Penser la Révolution française in the intellectual politics of the late 1970s', Fr Hist Stud, 22 (1999), 577-82.
18. Furet's first text, signed Jean Delcroix, was published on 6 February 1958. Furet began using the pseudonym André Delcroix in the issue of 8 May 1958. Furet's pseudonym became François Delcroix on 26 November 1964. The first article signed with the name François Furet dates from 1 December 1965.
19. Regular contributors to France Observateur who left the PCF in the 1950s and early 1960s include: Jean Poperen, Annie Kriegel (alias David Ellimer), Denis Richet (alias Augustin Picot), Edgar Morin, Claude Roy, Jacques-François Rolland and Marguerite Duras.
20. In the years 1975 and 1977 Furet signed a total of twenty-five texts in Le Nouvel Observateur: Pinto, L'intelligence en action, p. 97.
21. Tétart, 'France Observateur', iv. 787 n. 7
22. iv. 794-803.
23. According to Revel's memoirs, he directed the cultural pages of France Observateur between 1959 and 1963. Revel claims that it was Furet who convinced Bourdet and Martinet to give him the job: J.-F. Revel, Mémoires: le voleur dans la maison vide (1997), pp. 212, 348.
24. The first evidence in the pages of France Observateur of Furet's work as an editor is his introduction to a dossier on Khrushchevian Russia in the issue of 12 October 1961. His article 'Vive la Paix!', of 1 March 1962, is labelled an editorial by France Observateur.
25. Tétart, 'France Observateur', v. 32.
26. France Observateur (Fr Obs), 12 Nov. 1964, 3. The advertisement states: 'To create this weekly two teams of journalists have decided to come together' and then lists the following names: Jean Daniel, Michel Bosquet, K. S. Karol, Serge Lafaurie, Robert Namia, Gilles Martinet, Hector de Galard, André Delcroix, Serge Mallet and Olivier Todd.
27. France Observateur continued to publish historical essays after 1960. They were written by other historians such as Roger Paret.
28. Furet did not write the analysis of the results of the 28 October 1962 referendum on the election of the President by direct universal suffrage. Furet wrote nothing at all on the 1967 legislative elections.
29. 'La gauche face aux projets algériens des instituteurs', Fr Obs, 10 Aug. 1960, 4-5
30. 'L'opération "3e force" ', Fr Obs, 26 Jan. 1961, 7
31. and 'A la recherche d'une paix sans vaincus', review of Les ennemis complémentaires, by G. Tillion, Fr Obs, 2 Feb. 1961, 17.
32. 'France: la fin du parlementarisme', Fr Obs, 30 Dec. 1959, 10. Furet also criticized the nationalism of the Left in this article.
33. 'Vive la paix!', Fr Obs, 1 Mar. 1962, 6. Péju's words obviously referred to Sartre's play La Putain respecteuse.
34. 'La gauche face aux projets algériens des instituteurs'
35. 'La nouvelle génération communiste', Fr Obs, 28 Feb. 1963, 6.
36. Christofferson, 'An antitotalitarian history of the French Revolution', pp. 577-8.
37. 'Qui a répondu non?', Fr Obs, 2 Oct. 1958, 13
38. Review of Perspectives de l'homme, by R. Garaudy, Fr Obs, 17 Dec. 1959, 19.
39. 'Les raisons de Khrouchtchev', review of La coexistence pacifique, by V. Leduc, Fr Obs, 15 Mar. 1962, 21
40. and 'Europe: les communistes divisés'.
41. 'Vive la Paix!'
42. 'Le congrès de Maurice Thorez', p. 4
43. 'P. C.: l'avènement d'un dauphin', p. 10.
44. Mona Ozouf obscures Furet's complicated relationship to Communism in this period in her preface and editing in Un itinéraire intellectuel. Furet's caustic and critical 'Le congrès de Maurice Thorez' is the only article on Communism from this period that she includes in the collection. Her exclusive focus on it allows her to conclude mistakenly that Furet's judgement of the PCF 'evolved very little in the course of these forty years (1958-97), being very firm from the beginning': 'Préface', Un itinéraire intellectuel, p. 15
45. 'Le parti communiste et ses étudiants', Fr Obs, 12 Mar. 1964, 5
46. 'La voiture-balai', Le Nouvel Observateur (Nouvel Obs), 11 Mar. 1965, 5.
47. 'Un Lénine khrouchtchévien', review of Lénine, by J. Bruhat, Fr Obs, 14 Jan. 1960, 22.
48. For a late example, see 'La monnaie de l'absolu', review of Islam et capitalisme, by M. Rodinson, Nouvel Obs, 16 Mar. 1966, 32-3.
49. 'Une société opaque', review of De l'état socialiste, by J. Dru, Nouvel Obs, 11 Mar. 1965, 26.
50. 'De Staline à Khrouchtchev: le grand tournant', review of Le grand tournant, by G. Boffa, Fr Obs, 3 Aug. 1960, 19
51. and 'Une société opaque', p. 26.
52. 'La gauche meurt-elle d'avoir gagné?' (R. Aron interviewed by F. Furet), Nouvel Obs, 1 Mar. 1967, 40-4
53. 'Que deviendra la France après la décolonisation?' (interview of R. Aron by G. Martinet and F. Furet), Fr Obs, 27 Apr. 1961, 12-13.
54. F. Furet, 'Les intellectuels français et le structuralisme', in his L'atelier de l'histoire (1982), pp. 37-52
55. originally published in Preuves, 92 (February 1967).
56. 'Lénine et la fin du rêve', review of Lénine, by L. Fischer, Nouvel Obs, 1 Feb. 1967, 37-8.
57. J. Poperen, La gauche française: le nouvel âge 1958-1965 (1972), p. 354 and passim.
58. Furet's last article on the politics of the French Left in the period studied here was 'Defferre, oui ou non?', Nouvel Obs, 3 June 1965, 6-7.
59. P. Burke, The French historical revolution: the Annales school, 1929-1989 (Stanford, Calif., 1990), p. 67 and passim.
60. On serial history, see also F. Dosse, New history in France: the triumph of the Annales, trans. P. V. Conroy, Jr (Chicago, 1994), pp. 152-63.
61. For Furet's advocacy of serial history see his 'Le quantitatif en histoire', in his L'atelier de l'histoire, pp. 52-72
62. originally published in Annales ESC, 26 (1971).
63. e siècle, Cahiers des Annales, 18 (1961)
64. e siècle, matériaux et études, Industrie et artisanat, 1 (1965)
65. e siècle (2 vols., 1965-70).
66. F. Furet interviewed by M. Ozouf, J. Revel and P. Rosanvallon, Histoire de la Révolution et la révolution dans l'histoire, Savoir et mémoire, 5 (Abbeville, 1994), pp. 10, 21, 22.
67. According to Furet, in Histoire de la Révolution et la révolution dans l'histoire, p. 23, he and Richet wrote the first volume in the summer of 1963 and the second in the summer of 1964. It seems likely that Furet advanced the writing process by one year in this recollection, especially since, in an interview published in Le Nouvel Observateur of 21 September 1989, Furet dated the writing of the first volume to the summer of 1964. (S. L. Kaplan, Adieu 89, trans. A. Charpentier and R. Lambrechts, 1993, n. 3, pp. 759-60).
68. In the summer of 1964 Furet published two articles in July and no articles in August and September.
69. The specific use of the term 'friends' in this instance is taken from Pinto, L'intelligence en action.
70. G. Martinet, 'Révolution française: une vision nouvelle', Nouvel Obs, 20 Oct. 1965, 30.
71. N. Kauppi, French intellectual nobility: institutional and symbolic transformations of the post-Sartrian era (Albany, N. Y., 1996), pp. 127-33.
72. Furet, in Histoire de la Révolution et la révolution dans l'histoire, p. 23.
73. Kaplan, Adieu 89, p. 681
74. Richet also disapproved of the radical anti-Communism of some former Communists. Richet's 1978 protest against the fashion 'among some of my former comrades to renounce their past, to try vainly to exorcise the ghost of it, to have left communism only to enter an anti-communism forgetful of its origins', might well have been directed at Furet: D. Richet, 'Pourquoi j'aime l'histoire: essai d'autobiographie intellectuelle', De la Réforme à la Révolution: études sur la France moderne (1991), p. 547.
75. Furet indicates as much in a 1988 interview: Libération, 29 Oct. 1988, 2.
76. Furet interviewed by F. Ewald, 'Penser la Révolution', Le Magazine Littéraire, 228 (March 1986), 93.
77. Preuves, 188 (October 1966), 11-21
78. Martinet, 'Révolution française: une vision nouvelle', p. 31.
79. In March 1951 Edgar Morin had published an article in L'Observateur under his real name and was kicked out of the PCF as a result. Thereafter many Communists and former Communists used pseudonyms when writing in the weekly. Tétart, 'France Observateur', i. 239-40.