Anniversaries of major international events bring an inevitable proliferation of publications on the subject. The phenomenon is remarkably observable every decade after crucial dates in recent history, such as 1968 and 1989 (as will undoubtedly be the case in 2011), not encompassing a single event but an impressive series of them. 1968 in Europe is one of the numerous books published this year about the international protest mobilization that shocked the world four decades ago. However, Klimke and Scharloth’s contribution has good reasons to stand out from the rest. The first and maybe foremost reason is their ability to facilitate new insights into “the long 1960s” on the European continent, thus showing us how far we are from exhausting the issue.
Most of the twenty-nine contributors are young researchers conducting ongoing projects (some Ph.D. dissertations) on different aspects of the protests and movements under review in the volume. Their background is not limited to history, as it includes political sciences, sociology, geography, philology and media studies, thus making the volume a transdisciplinary endeavour, which in general benefits from an appropriate understanding of concepts and approaches developed in the analysis of collective action.
Klimke and Scharloth write a fine, concise and comprehensive introduction, where they underline the specific dimension of 1968 in Europe: the multiplicity and variety of a transnational protest taking place almost simultaneously in a continent divided into two blocs, a myriad of political traditions and a broad spectrum of domestic political opportunities. Around the interpretation and contextualization of this “microcosmos” (p. 2), Klimke and Scharloth established two goals for the volume: to present a concise reference for students and researchers, and to facilitate further comparative studies.
The book is divided into three large, chronological parts: the subcultures and movements that prefigured and armed the 1968 international mobilization; the 1968 protest in different European countries; and post-1968 protest networks and narratives. Most of the twenty-five chapters share a similar core of headings, adapted to the respective phenomenon: historical introduction, cognitive orientation, organizational structure, forms and tactics of protest, key events (or activities), and consequences and narratives. Furthermore, every part includes one or two new headings: one on “transnational relations” and “attitudes toward the Superpowers and the Cold War” in the second part, and one either on the “influences on” or “relation to” the 1968 protest movement in the first and third part respectively. Finally, all chapters but one (the last) end with a brief, annotated bibliography of the most relevant works on the subject.
Part 1 opens with one of the few texts in English about the Dutch Provos. Pas writes a brilliant chapter that, among other aspects, delves into the diffusion facilitated by the mass media, here summarized on the Provo “media exposure” (p. 18); a valuable insight which suggests the need to conduct further research into the analysis of broad, transnational processes of diffusion and reception. Situationism, the international peace movement and the British New Left are well explained in subsequent chapters, illustrated with interesting contributions, such as Frey’s account of the use of the human body in pacifist confrontational tactics, and Davis’s comparison between the revisions of Marxism in Great Britain and France. Finally, two chapters deal not with movements or subcultures but with more vague phenomena: pop-rock music and the “emotional dimension” of the 1968 movement. Given the width of the former and the complexity of the latter, both contributions are less concrete than the rest of this part, with Taner’s text on emotions adopting the form of an agenda for future research. Nevertheless, reading these two chapters together points to an important inner tension underlying the 1968 protest: the tension between the demand for authenticity and the standardization of (cultural and emotional) patterns through mass media.
Part 2 represents the core of the volume and presents the 1968 protest of eighteen European countries in fifteen chapters: six on eastern Europe and nine on the western part, including two compound – and hence too densely packed – chapters on Scandinavia (Denmark, Sweden and Norway) and on Spain and Greece combined. One of the peculiarities of the chapters devoted to the east is that the analysis includes changes in the establishment, or even focuses on them, as in Petrescu and Pavelescu’s contribution on Ceauşescu’s regime and to a lesser extent Szabó’s piece on Hungary, while in chapters on the west, the establishment is merely described as controlling protest or as an involuntary vehicle to its radicalization. This more institutional focus is in some cases corroborated by the use of slightly different headings, as in Pauer’s on Czechoslovakia. However, as it has been said before, Europe is not defined here as two parallel universes but as a microcosmos with complex contentious politics taking place around different dimensions.
International events with transnational consequences, as the Vietnam War and Prague Spring, impacted with similar strength on activists from both sides of the Iron Curtain, while being interpreted in different ways by others within the same country (as Klimke shows about West Germany). Factory workers helped to channel protest toward a political solution in France, whereas they were an additional anti-parliamentary catalyst in Italy. In some countries, protest erupted after a dramatic event (with the assassination of Benno Ohnesorg in West Berlin perhaps the most salient example), whereas in others, no such “iconic turning points” occurred (p. 130, in Nehring’s chapter on Great Britain). On occasions, traditional political cultures played the paradoxical role of facilitator of newer ideologies, as Puritanism did with Maoist demands for simplicity and authenticity in Norway and Sweden. The linguistic dimension was at the core of the conflict in Belgium, while linguistic barriers weakened protest in Switzerland. Local churches played a varying role in different countries: inhibiting protest in Romania, allying with dissidence in Poland, collaborating circumstantially with protesters in Spain. Finally, diversity is also reflected in the different factors that helped to bring the protest to an end, e.g. repression by police forces (Switzerland and Northern Ireland), external military intervention (Czechoslovakia), or the interference of nationalistic demands (Yugoslavia), among others. To collect and show all this complexity is a noteworthy merit of this part of the volume.
The first post-1968 network of Part 3 is left-wing terrorism. Focusing on West Germany and Italy, Hauser writes a rather factual, but clear contribution on the phenomenon. The next and more multifaceted network is the 1970s women’s movement, which Schultz illustrates in detail, e.g. providing concise information on the distinction between expressive and instrumental logic of action (the basis for symbolic or social feminism respectively), although too much contextualization is given, for example, by including a redundant introduction to the New Left. The third and last network is the environmental movement, the description of which Rootes classifies according to the different countries where it was strong, delving later into the anti-nuclear mobilizations of the 1970s. The last chapter of the volume is Gassert’s on “narratives of democratization”, which takes more the form of a separate article dealing with the paradoxical impact of 1968 in western European democracies, where right-wing parties and the establishment came out stronger, and its footprint in later processes of democratization in the east. The volume ends with an afterword by Tom Hayden, who writes a vivid report on the 1968 protest in the US in first person – the reader will appreciate the detail after more than 300 pages in the third person – and its interpretation within a broader model of social change.
Hayden’s account on the American side may need to be complemented by a counterpart on the other “Superpower”, the USSR (whether a volume on 1968 in Europe should include a chapter on that country is part of a different debate). On the subject of Hayden, one misses his name in the biographical notes on contributors: a brief paragraph could have been added to his report as an introduction to those unfamiliar with his work, or his social and political activities. Another minor aspect open to question on the excellent editing job of Klimke and Scharloth is the inner chapter structure. It certainly facilitates comparison – one of the general goals of the volume – but proves to be rigid in certain cases, as with chapters on the east struggling to adhere to the same structure as those on the west, e.g. including short headings on “transnational relations” or “attitudes toward the Superpowers”.
1968 in Europe has an uncommon merit: it is a superb book, both for non-specialists who want to know about contentious politics in 1960s Europe and researchers of the subject. Footnotes are not so many as to entangle reading, while still appropriate for facilitating academic debate. Its tightness is not to the detriment of subtlety, and the contributors’ effort in this respect will be welcomed and appreciated by the readers. The first goal established by the editors in the introduction is, then, fully accomplished. The second one will only be tested in the near future. The quality of the book is nevertheless the best guarantee for success in inspiring further examinations and comparisons. This reviewer can suggest two. One is a comparison over space between 1968 protests in south and east European authoritarian regimes. The other is over time, between protests in the 1960s and today, taking into account the technological jump: then, with new mass communication channels and the improvement of means of transport; now, with the possibilities created by the Internet.
The editors’ interest in bringing a better understanding of European protest does not stop with the publication of the book. In fact, there is an additional step. The volume is accompanied by an online teaching and research guide (www.1968ineurope.com), including a comprehensive chronology divided into countries (a fine job delivered by Rolf Werenskjold), additional sources (including online videos available from the website), links to archives and information on conferences on the subject of 1968. These useful initiatives come together with a broader project that Klimke and Scharloth are coordinating along with Kathrin Fahlenbrach: the Marie Curie Conference and Workshop Series “European Protest Movements since the Cold War”, which has represented an excellent platform of academic exchange since 2006 and provided high-level instruction to international researchers.
