1968. a Global Approach

Notes on contributors 1968. A Global Approach. Edited by Grzegorz Piotrowski 165 1968. A Global Approach. Edited by Grzegorz Piotrowski Preface ...................................................................................................... 5 Table [Grzegorz Piotrowski] of contents How 1968 Changed the World: Movements Making History, History Making Movements ...................................................................15 [Laurence Cox] May 1968 and Social Sciences .............................................................33 [Michel Wieviorka] The May Movement or Utopian Communism ......................................47 [Alain Touraine] May 1968 – The Cunning of Capitalism ...............................................61 [Mikołaj Rakusa-Suszczewski] Events of March 1968 in Poland ...........................................................73 [Grzegorz Piotrowski & Przemysław Ruchlewski] Political Journey of Turkey’s 1968: From Privileged Youth to Political Defeat ...................................................................................89 [Demet Lüküslü] 1968 in Hungary: Half a Century Later ...............................................103 [Máté Szabó] 1968: The Primitive Democrats. Fifty years later, what has changed and what still exists ..............................................................121 [Sergio Zermeño] The Japanese Global Sixties in Isolation: Towards a Global Historical Sociology of the Sixties.......................................................135 [Kei Takata] Notes on contributors ...........................................................................158 3 Preface Uwaga, uwaga, tu obywatelki! tu obywatelki! uwaga, Uwaga, 1968: A Global Change Grzegorz Piotrowski This volume is an outcome of a conference. “Generational Experience/ Transformational Experience of 1968” was held in Gdańsk in May 2018, the 50th anniversary of 1968. The goal of the conference was not only to commemorate the important historical events and to check what is still left today of the social revolution but also to see if any mechanisms observed in 1968 can affect the contemporary world. 1968 became a turning point in the histories of many countries – both in Europe, and beyond. The events of the time took different forms, but in many cases became an important caesura for national histories and marked a certain generational experience. From the Prague Spring and attempts to liberalize communism, through the anti-Semitic March cam paign in Poland, and the May events in France, Germany, Mexico and Japan, 1968 mobilized large groups of people, resulting in an emergence of new elites and new types of activists, both of which transformed entire societies. In all cases, these events were a reaction against the “old” – the communist regimes of Eastern Europe, the establishment, the cultural and political elites of the West, the old Institutional-Revolutionary party of Mexico, 7 Preface Preface etc. The events also coincided with the development of countercultures, Eastern Bloc began to call for reforms in their socialist countries. What subcultures and art movements. New tactics and slogans were introduced is also important was the emancipation of the youth as a separate social into mainstream discourse. “The new” penetrated public opinion. class: the children raised in late 1950s and early 1960s had a much larger chance to get the education they wanted. Culture played a significant role: on the one hand, prominent artists took part in the events and made their voices heard; on the other, the youth- The third context is technology. With president Kennedy announcing that -propelled cultural revolution was in the air almost all over the world. 1968 USA would bring man to the moon, the sixties are now remembered as rose to become a symbol of a new kind of revolution: one that was groun- the “can do” era. Apart from the spectacular event of 1969, numerous ded in cultural matters, with French students calling for changes within minor developments have made great impact, too, improving the living the higher education system, Polish students opposing the censorship standards (measured by the number of refrigerators, washing machines, of a major theatre play, and Americans building a large anti-war move- and TV sets per household) and facilitating routine labour. According to ment. As a symbol, 1968 seems rather misleading; that special year saw Jerzy Jarniewicz, 1968 had a large influence on people who later formed a culmination of changes that had been accumulating for at least half high-tech companies; it created in them the awareness that the world a decade. In 1968, the sixties reached boiling point. is a complex and interconnected system (2019). In Jarniewicz’s view, an approach of this sort was closely related to experiments with mind-ope- There were numerous contexts for the events. One was geopolitics: in the ning drugs (mostly LSD) on the other hand, and inspirations from far-East early 1960s the cold war rhetoric began to soften, though the Cuban crisis philosophies that became part of the hippie counterculture, on the other. of 1962 and the growing involvement of USA and Russia in local conflicts in tensive growth of media industry allowing people access to what was in Africa, Asia, and other parts of the world, reinforced the polarization. happening around the world, armed conflicts appeared to be just at our Moreover, this involvement shifted from covert intelligence operations and doorstep,. The media not only helped to spread information and develop coups to large-scale military activities such as the war in Vietnam and trends around the globe, but also began to be seen as part of the system the compulsory military draft in the US. These tensions affected the East the youth rebelled against. and the West; other issues arose with the Chinese model of communist revolution becoming more and more problematic for the Kremlin. The ten- The fourth context are the arts and the political engagement of artists. sions reached a peak in the border war between China and USSR in 1966. Beginning with the poets from the Beat Generation, popular culture became the new “opium for the masses”. The Beatles were at some point Another change in the global context, decolonialization took place throu- “more popular than Jesus Christ”. In contrast to musicians, filmmakers, ghout the 1960s, completing a long collapse of global empires and chal- and writers of the previous decade, many artists in the 1960s openly sta- lenging the political status quo. Former colonies struggling for indepen- ted their political views and anti-establishment attitudes, consequently dence not only attracted the attention of both global superpowers, but attracting large and predominantly young audiences. also gave an impulse to other national liberation processes throughout the world, empowering minorities on the one hand and questioning grand The arts and social movements developed a growing synergy, the best narratives (such as communism) on the other. This tendency resulted example of which was perhaps the “summer of love” of 1967 that was in a disillusionment with communist and, to a large extent, capitalist – more than just a gathering around music. A sense of unity was there ideologies. Additionally, it forced thinkers and activists alike to search for among young people rebelling against their parents in all possible ways: alternatives. from clothing and hairstyles (or lack thereof), through music, lifestyle, to values and beliefs. Jarniewicz claims that love began to be used as a tool The second context is demographics. The generation responsible for the for doing politics, of opposing the actions of the generation of the parents protests in 1968 was one that had no experience of World War II, of the (2016). Young people began to protest against the whole political system, Holocaust or of the atrocities of military conflict. This is why the move- rejecting the bi-partisan organization of the US (biggest riots organized ment against the war in Vietnam began to grow so strongly in the US (and by the Yippie movement accompanied the convention of the democra- many other countries as well), why young French students supported the tic party) or criticizing politics in the global context as such. New social emancipation of former French colonies, and why young socialists in the experiments, such as communal forms of living or the use of hallucino- 9 Preface Preface genic drugs, were strongly supported by artists and therefore replicated on a large scale among their audiences. This trend spread across borders and even beyond the Iron Curtain, with hippie groups emerging in the (...) authors Eastern Bloc, and copying their Western counterparts. in this volume The development of counterculture was a bonding element for a whole generation of people who entered their adult lives at the end of the 1960s. A brief glimpse of the key events associated with the movement shows present various that the rebellious youth were, in the end, just a minority. However, they were a minority so loud that nowadays they are seen as “the voice of ways a generation”. Besides the strength of the voice, the most crucial issue in this case was perhaps the formulation of radical claims, which, as it seems, resonated powerfully within the society in general, and the youth of understanding in particular. Many of these claims undermined the existing political and social order, making the “1968 generation” a revolutionary one. Besides 1968 as undermining the concept

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