1968: Europe in Technicolour

Question 1

What factor does Klimke believe is the key to the social movements of 1968?

Answer 1

Demographic changes - baby boom reached climax in 1947 coinciding with massive economic growth

Question 2

What did the protest movements of 1968 advocate?

Answer 2

Individuals and collective emancipation from constraints of modern industrial society and pursued a utopian vision of post-materialistic values to effect socio-political transformations

Question 3

Why is 1968 so significant?

Answer 3

Still polarises in Europe today

Question 4

What effect did the baby boom have?

Answer 4

Placed unprecedented strain on education systems - though not all of this can be blamed on numerical increase of children

Question 5

What were the key new features of life in Europe postwar?

Answer 5

Fewer work hours and more vacation meant people enjoyed new leisure and entertainment activities
Advances in transportation and communication e.g. increasing ownership of cars improved connectivity

Question 6

What did advances in leisure and communication/transportation culminate in?

Answer 6

Growing ‘visibility of youth’ - became new target audience in consumer society and players in it (set social trends and fulfilled those desires for individuation with their increasing purchasing power)

Question 7

How did education change in the postwar period?

Answer 7

Reforms created a system of mass secondary education enabling more children to be socially mobile
University transformed from elite privilege to mass education

Question 8

What was the share of uni students amongst 20 to 24 year old on 1960 and 1970?

Answer 8

1960 = 7%
1970 = 14%
Led to growing gulf between elites professors and frustrated students and overwhelmed administrators

Question 9

What clarifications need it be made when it comes to students?

Answer 9

Still a privilege minority

Not all took an interest in political issues that would lead to activism

Question 10

What was the ‘New Left’ composed of?

Answer 10

Student activists in second half of 1960s

Roots in international pacifist movements that protested the atom bomb since the 1950s e.g. World Peace Council

Question 11

What triggered the rise of the new left in the UK?

Answer 11

1956 e.g. soviet invasion of Hungary and Suez crises where the UK and France displayed their imperialism in attacking Egypt

Question 12

What was the response of the new left to the events of 1956?

Answer 12

Freed themselves from purely class based analysis of modern society - more complex picture in which they critiqued the west’s anti-communism and nuclear deterrence policy and emphasised a anti bureaucratic socialism

Question 13

How did socialist associations in Western Europe respond to the new left?

Answer 13

Created a operation infrastructure to channel their rage into a more permanent network e.g. congress of the International Union of Socialist Youth

Question 14

Where did the first ‘transnational youth revolt’ start?

Answer 14

Emergence of pop-cultural rebels e.g. rock and roll starts like Ellis and film stars like Marlon Brando

Question 15

How did the ‘first transnational youth revolt’ develop?

Answer 15

European offshoots e.g. British Teddy Boys who adopted the proletarian styles of jeans and leather jackets and sparked debates about juvenile delinquency and moral decay of the young

Question 16

Give an example of articulations in counter culture?

Answer 16

Allen Ginsburgs poem Howl (1955) were they transformed their alienation from society into a withdrawal from its conventional hierarchies and values

Question 17

How did advances in media and communications make the counter culture possible?

Answer 17

Allowed ideas to be spread across borders - allowed activists to promote their causes, mobilise their peers and provoke scandals to generate public attention

Question 18

Name 3 American social movements that helped inspire european youth.

Answer 18

Civil rights movement - examples of direct action and civil disobedience
Free speech Movement at the University if California Berkeley - critique of economic influence on universities and lack of democratic participation in uni affair
Anti Vietnam campaign

Question 19

What context caused the large embrace european youths would give to the anti Vietnam war movement?

Answer 19

Third world liberation movements and the legacy of colonialism already on the agenda for student activists fostered by the precedence of immigrant students on European campuses

Question 20

What form did the anti Vietnam war movement take in Europe?

Answer 20

American led war became symbol of imperialist oppression and the nemesis of the ‘free west’
Vietcong become international icons embodying the struggle against the all powerful force of imperialism

Question 21

What determined the nature of dissent and the extent to which it could be articulated and give an example?

Answer 21

Local circumstances - activists in GDR had to frame their movement carefully to avoid state repression and imprisonment e.g. 1956 invasion of Hungary

Question 22

Give an example of a Eastern European protest movement.

Answer 22

Poland 1968: play by 19th century writer Adam Mickiewicz banned by communist party for anti soviet themes
Student protests demanded ‘independence without censorship’ and signed petition to parliament to lift the ban - supported by Writers union
4th March: polish militia broke up peaceful protest - led to student riots and strikes
Militias centrally gained control by end of March - 2700 arrested, used Jews as scapegoat and forced 1500 of them to leave

Question 23

What were the events in Eastern Europe in 1968 characterised by?

Answer 23

Complex dynamic of liberalisation efforts from below and above (Yugoslavia), preservation of the communist project and ties to Moscow and concerns about political stability - students often crucial but not only participants (unlike in West)

Question 24

Give a Western European example of a protest movement.

Answer 24

Italy 1966: socialist student Paolo Rossi killed in class with fascists
Happened same time as students were demanding university reform though occupying as they weren’t represented in the traditional student union
Activists interpreted Rossi’s death as a manifestation of Italian repressive society
Student occupied universities in Milan and Pisa in opposition to the Vietnam war and proposed university reforms
Used violence e.g. ‘Battle of Valle Giulia’ where students attacked police at university of Rome

Question 25

What characterised protest movements in the west?

Answer 25

Faulted organisationally and became single issue movements and continued to exercise an informal influence in their societies
Some used terrorism to achieve goals and dominate headlines

Question 26

What has recent historiography tried to do in regards to 1968?

Answer 26

Establish a more nuanced image of pan-European developments e.g. taking into account repressive regimes in Southern Europe e.g. how students reacted to a military coup and abolition of democracy in Greece in 1967

Question 27

What facilitiated the growth in geographic perspective of the events of 1968?

Answer 27

Recognition of the transnational nature e.g. activists united by anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist beliefs, solidarity with movements in third world and a distrust of liberal democracy

Question 28

What has been one of the most significant advances in studying 1968?

Answer 28

Situating it in a cultural history of Europe e.g. how a global pop culture movement came to represent notions of individualism and freedom and how the authorities reacted to this