Table Of ContentBetween Prague Spring and French May
Protest, Culture and Society
General editors:
Kathrin Fahlenbrach, Institute for Media and Communication, University of Hamburg.
Martin Klimke, German Historical Institute, Washington, DC I Heidelberg Center for
American Studies (HCA), University of Heidelberg, Germany.
Joachim Scharloth, Dokkyo University, Tokyo, Japan.
Protest movements have been recognized as significant contributors to processes of
political participation and transformations of culture and value systems, as well as to the
development of both a national and transnational civil society.
This series brings together the various innovative approaches to phenomena of social
change, protest and dissent which have emerged in recent years, from an interdisciplin
ary perspective. It contextualizes social protest and cultures of dissent in larger political
processes and socio-cultural transformations by examining the influence of historical tra
jectories and the response of various segments of society, political and legal institutions
on a national and international level. In doing so, the series offers a more comprehen
sive and multi-dimensional view of historical and cultural change in the twentieth and
twenty-first century.
Volume 1
Voices oft he Valley, Voices oft he Straits: How Protest Creates Communities
Donatella della Porta and Gianni Piazza
Volume2
Transformations and Crises: The Left and the Nation in Denmark and Sweden, 1956-1980
Thomas Ekman J0rgensen
Volume3
Changing the World, Changing Oneself Political Protest and Collective Identities in
West Germany and the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s
Edited by Belinda Davis, Wilfried Mausbach, Martin Klimke, and Carla MacDougall
Volume4
The Transnational Condition: Protest Dynamics in an Entangled Europe
Edited by Simon Teune
Volume5
Protest Beyond Borders: Revisiting Social Mobilization in Europe after 1945
Edited by Hara Kouki and Eduardo Romanos
Volume6
Between the Avantgarde and the Everyday: Subversive Politics in Europe, 1958-2008
Edited by Timothy Brown and Lorena Anton
Volume7
Between Prague Spring and French May: Opposition and Revolt in Europe 1960-1980
Edited by Martin Klimke, Jacco Pekelder, and Joachim Scharloth
Between Prague Spring and French May
Opposition and Revolt in Europe,
1960-1980
Edited by
Martin Klimke, Jacco Pekelder & Joachim Scharloth
~
Berghahn Books
New York • Oxford
First published in 2011 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
© 2011 Martin Klimke, Jacco Pekelder & Joachim Scharloth
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Between Prague Spring and French May : opposition and revolt in Europe,
1960-1980 I edited by Martin Klimke, Jacco Pekelder & Joachim Scharloth.
p. cm. - (Protest, culture, and society ; v. 7)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-85745-106-4 (hbk. : acid-free paper) -
ISBN 978-0-85745-107-1 (ebook)
1. Protest movements-Europe-History-20th century. 2. Social move
ments-Europe-History-20th century. 3. Dissenters-Europe-History-
20th century. 4. Opposition (Political science)-Europe-History-20th
century. 5. Government, Resistance to-Europe-History-20th century.
6. Social conflict-Europe-History-20th century. 7. Europe-Politics
and government-1945- 8. Europe-Social conditions-20th century.
9. Europe, Western-Politics and government-20th century. 10. Europe,
Eastern-Politics and government-1945-1989. I. Klimke, Martin.
II. Pekelder, Jacco, 1967- Ill. Scharloth, Joachim.
HN373.5.B43 2011
303.48' 409409045-dc22
2011000704
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Printed in the United States on acid-free paper
ISBN 978-0-85745-106-4 (hardback)
ISBN 978-0-85745-107-1 (ebook)
Contents
List of Figures vii
Introduction
Martin Klimke, Jacco Pekelder, andJ oachim Scharloth
I. Politics between East and West
CHAPTER r. "Out of Apathy": Genealogies of the British "New Left"
in a Transnational Context, 1956-1962 15
Bolger Nehring
CHAPTER 2. Early Voices of Dissent: Czechoslovak Student Opposition
at the Beginning of the 1960s 32
Zdenek Nebfenskj
CHAPTER 3. National Ways to Socialism? The Left and the Nation in
Denmark and Sweden, 1960-1980 49
Thomas Ekman Jorgensen
CHAPTER 4. The Parti communiste franfais in May 1968: The Impossible
Revolution? 64
Maud Anne Bracke
CHAPTER 5. 1968 in Yugoslavia: Student Revolt between East and West 84
Boris Kanzleiter
II. Protest Without Borders: Recontextualization of Protest Cultures
CHAPTER 6. "Johnson War Criminal!" Vietnam War Protests in
the Netherlands 103
Rimko van der Maar
CHAPTER 7. Shifting Boundaries: Transnational Identification and
Disassociation in Protest Language 116
Andreas Rothenhofer
CHAPTER 8. A Tale of Two Communes: The Private and the Political in
Divided Berlin, 1967-1973 132
Timothy Brown
vi I Contents
CHAPTER 9. "Stadtindianer" and "Indiani Metropolitani":
Recontextualizing an Italian Protest Movement in West Germany 141
Sebastian Haumann
III. The Media-Staging of Protest
CHAPTER ro. Mediatization of Provos: From a Local Movement to
a European Phenomenon 157
Niek Pas
CHAPTER l l. The Revolution Will Be Televised: The Global
1968 Protests in Norwegian Television News 177
RolfWerenskjold
CHAPTER l 2. Performing Disapproval toward the Soviets:
Nicolae Ceau§escu's Speech on 21 August 1968 in the Romanian Media 199
Corina L. Petrescu
IY. Discourses of Liberation and Violence
CHAPTER l 3. Guerrillas and Grassroots: Danish Solidarity with
the Third World in the 1960s and 1970s 213
Karen Steller Bjerregaard
CHAPTER 14. Sympathizing Subcultures? The Milieus of West German
Terrorism 233
Sebastian Gehrig
CHAPTER l 5. The RAF Solidarity Movement from a European
Perspective 251
]acco Pekelder
V. Epilogue
CHAPTER 16. The European 1960-70s and the World: The Case of
Regis Debray 269
Ingrid Gilcher-Holtry
Chronology of Events of Protest in Europe 1968 283
Rolf Werenskjold
Bibliography 308
Contributors 331
Index 335
Figures
Figure 11.1. Demonstrations by regions 1965-1970-NRK Dagsrevyen 186
Figure 11.2. The total monthly distribution in percentage of the coverage
of demonstrations, strikes, and riots in the Norwegian televison news
in 1968 188
Figure 11.3. Broadcasting priority demonstrations 188
Figure 11.4. Demonstrations in 1968 by regions 189
Figure 11. 5. Demonstrations in the First World in 1968-Dagsrevyen 190
Figure 11.6. Demonstrations in the Second World in 1968-Dagsrevyen 190
Figure 11.7. Demonstrations in the Third World in 1968-Dagsrevyen 191
Introduction
Martin Klimke, ]acco Pekelder,
and Joachim Scharloth
From 28 July until 6 August 1968, Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, staged the 9th
World Youth Festival. In the middle of the Cold War, 20,000 visitors from more
than 130 countries poured into the city to celebrate the unity of Communist
and socialist youth across the globe. Events, however, would soon make a mock
ery of the festival's motto, "For Solidarity, Peace, and Friendship," and turn Sofia
into a showcase of ideological divisions among the Left in East and West.1
Signs of discord emerged as early as the opening ceremony in Sofia's Vasil
Levski National Stadium when the West German delegation chanted "Dubeek,
Dubcek'' as they passed the dignitaries' loge. This provoked severe consterna
tion among Bulgarian officials, who did not look kindly upon the Czechoslovak
Communist leader's reform efforts.
Tensions continued to mount when the Bulgarian secret police tried to pre
vent a demonstration against the Vietnam War that West German SDS president
Karl-Dietrich Wolff had called for. Pushed away from the local U.S. embassy,
Wolff gave a speech standing on a wall of the nearby Georgi Dimitrov Mauso
leum, in which he denounced Bulgaria's political censorship and the lack of free
and open exchange during the festival. Among other things, he derided the prohi
bition on carrying portraits of Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, or Mao Zedong.
The situation escalated a few days later, when a Bulgarian delegate compared
Wolff to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels after the German SDS
leader had complained about the manipulation of the list of speakers. As an in
dignant Wolff stormed to the podium, other Bulgarians caught him and dragged
him out of the building, smashing his glasses in the process. Thereafter, turmoil
erupted. Delegates from Belgium, Denmark, Great Britain, Italy, Sweden, and
the Netherlands left the scene in protest. Disregarding traditional Cold War al
legiances, participants from Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia followed suit.2
That delegates from these two Communist countries joined their Western
counterparts in protest not only reveals the ideological rifts among the young,
organized Left at the end of the 1960s. It also highlights the gap between the
party line and political attitudes at the grassroots level. Moreover, the events in
Sofia illustrate that conflicts emerging from this gap between political expecta
tions and reality among the younger generation were not confined to the liberal
democracies of the West, but were also fought out within and among the Com
munist countries of Eastern Europe. Opponents of established political dogmas
