Dear colleagues, dear friends,

I write to you at the end of this year 2009 in order to give you three brief informations about the life of our association Liberté pour l’histoire.

1. If the memorial debates have been solved for the time being in France, thanks to the parliamentary Rapport Accoyer published by the National Assembly, which declared that no more laws concerning historical facts should be introduced, the problems have moved to the East. In Russia, Ukraine and the Baltic States, a battle has been raging for the last six months. Its stakes are even more important than those we have known. Liberté pour l’histoire takes its share, modest but determined, in this battle by expressing its full and entire solidarity to our Russian colleagues who defend in their country the very same cause than ours and who need our support.

Dear Mrs Armita Jones,

I’ve read on the American Historical Association web site the letter that you have addressed to President Dmitri Medvedev on the 17th of June, 2009, a letter in which you expressed the anxiety of the AHA about the recent creation of a commission “to fight against attempts at falsifications of history to Russia’s detriment”.

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

I do not want the end of January, 2009, to pass without communicating to you an assessment of our activities in the past year. On the whole it is positive.

As you have possibly learned from articles in the press, the mobilization of Liberté pour l’Histoire, today across Europe (cf. Le Monde November 28, 2008) and our Appel de Blois (October 11, 2008), have allowed us to score the following decisive points :