1968 in Europe

A Handbook on National Perspectives
and Transnational Dimensions of 1960/70s Protest Movements

Ed. by Martin Klimke and Joachim Scharloth
(New York/London: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2008)

Research on both the domestic dissent and social unrest in the U.S. and on the transatlantic nature of political protest has been blossoming for several years. However, the specific European dimension of protest movements and their subcultures during the Cold War has hitherto only been analyzed marginally and within closed national contexts. This extensive gap in historical research is all the more regrettable since Europe at the time of the Cold War can be considered a microcosm for global political events. It was here that the geopolitical faultline between East and West was most visible, with the Berlin Wall as its symbolic embodiment. Consequently, not only the unique geopolitical environment but also the variety of national experience ranging from the Communist East European states of the Warsaw Pact to the democratic nations of Western Europe, as well as the dictatorships of Spain, Portugal and Greece, warrant a more thorough examination with respect to border transcending cultures of domestic dissent. Despite similar political concerns and international counter-cultural inspirations, national variants of what was perceived as a worldwide generational revolt were often strikingly different.

Whereas activists in Western Europe frequently attacked the United States for its imperialist interventions, most notably in Vietnam, dissenters in Eastern Europe often utilized American cultural items such as music or clothing to voice their grievances. International encounters or meetings such as the World Youth Festival in Sofia 1968 occasionally illustrated the distance of political concepts and intellectual sources between the two: while the young generation in Eastern Europe, for example, welcomed efforts such as the Prague Spring, the same was often denounced as reformist by their Western counterparts.

The goal of the volume is to present a concise reference for researchers on the protest movements of the 1960/70s. It aims at presenting information

• on the history of the various national protest movements in order to facilitate comparative studies,
   
• on the multifaceted transnational aspects of the student movements in order to gain a deeper understanding of the similarities between the various national movements
   
• on common narratives and cultures of memory to further the discussion on the consequences and relevance of domestic protest in the various countries as well as for Europe as a whole.

Featuring contributions by, among others, Niek Pas, Thomas Hecken, Agata Grzenia, Michael Frey, Wilfried Mausbach, Zdenek Nebrenski, Detlef Siegfried, Timothy Brown, Corina Petrescu, Boris Kanzleiter, Nicole Peter, Thomas Ekman Jörgensen, Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey, Holger Nehring, Louis Vos, Kostis Kornetis, Dorothea Hauser, Philipp Gassert, and Kristina Schulz.

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