Promises of 1968: Crisis, Illusion and Utopia

Published by Central European University Press 2010

Promises of 1968

Crisis, Illusion and Utopia

Edited by: Vladimir Tismaneanu

https://doi.org/10.1515/9786155053061

Overview
Contents

About this book

This book is a state of the art reassessment of the significance and consequences of the events associated with the year 1968 in Europe and in North America. Since 1998, there hasn't been any collective, comparative and interdisciplinary effort to discuss 1968 in the light of both contemporary headways of scholarship and new evidence on this historical period. A significant departure from earlier approaches lies in the fact that the manuscript is constructed in unitary fashion, as it goes beyond the East–West divide, trying to identify the common features of the sixties. The latter are analyzed as simultaneously global and local developments. The main problems addressed by the contributors of this volume are: the sixties as a generational clash; the redefinition of the political as a consequence of the ideological challenges posed to the status-quo by the sixty-eighters; the role of Utopia and the de-radicalization of intellectuals; the challenges to imperialism (Soviet/American); the cultural revolution of the sixties; the crisis of 'really existing socialism' and the failure of "socialism with a human face"; the gradual departure from the Yalta-system; the development of a culture of human rights and the project of a global civil society; the situation of 1968 within the general evolution of European history (esp. the relationship of 1968 with 1989). In contrast to existing books, it provides a fundamental and unique synthesis of approaches on 1968: first, it contains critical (vs. nostalgic) re-evaluations of the events from the part of significant sixty-eighters; second, it includes historical analyses based on new archival research; third, it gathers important theoretical re-assessments of the intellectual history of the 1968; and fourth, it bridges 1968 with its aftermath and its pre-history, thus avoiding an over-contextualization of the topics in question.

Author / Editor information

Tismaneanu Vladimir :

Vladimir Tismaneanu is Professor of politics and Director of the Center for the Study of Post-communist Societies at University of Maryland (College Park).

Reviews

"This book offers a vision of 1968 as a time when exciting ideologies pulsated throughout Europe and then suggests an eastwest difference: that the ideologies going through the capitalist west were dangerous ones, guided by irrational utopianism, while those in the state socialist east were emancipatory ones, marked by a rejection of utopianism and an embrace of a liberal universalism that would finally make themselves clear during the next turning point of 1989. As the book’s subtitle indicates, the book offers essentially a conservative reading of 1968... the commentators on the west are highly critical. The essays devoted to 1968 in eastern Europe have a quite different hue. They are all sympathetic refl ections, either by participants or contemporary observers. The longest chapter by far is Mark Kramer’s superb dissection of the genealogy of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, based on a close examination of Kremlin archives and written with the care and attention to detail that we have come to expect of Kramer. We learn that invasion was not a foregone conclusion and that, once it began, it ran into many unexpected problems, beginning with the inability of the hardliners to capture formal control of the party"

"The case studies will serve as valuable additions to any advanced-level undergraduate or postgraduate course on '1968', especially the latter's intellectual dimension. The volume also presents a thought-provoking contribution to transnational history: whereas 'transnational moments of change' synchronize events and processes in different national contexts, this volume, by revealing fundamentally different frames of reference imposed by the different political realities in Cold War Eastern and Western Europe, demonstrates that synchronicity does not mean similarity."

"Vladimir Tismaneanu wrote the volume’s introduction. In it he not only summarized all the contributions, but also reminded us that 1968 was a “transnational movement of revolt against the status quo beyond the East-West divide” (p. 1) which, ironically, led to liberalism reasserting itself in a revival of democracy in the West and to the eventual disintegration of communism in the East. In the book’s conclusion, Charles S. Maier, an historian at Harvard University, opined that the 1960s were a reaction to the previous decades by young people who rejected the discipline of their elders. 1968 was also a repudiation of the Yalta Agreement of 1944 by which the USA and the Soviet Union tried to control the world. The rebels of 1968 felt alienated by their societies and sought self-fulfilment in various ways. These papers are a good introduction to 1968 in Europe."

"Vladimir Tismaneanu has assembled a highly qualified group of authors and a diversity of perspectives from the retrospective and self-critical to the somewhat nostalgic for fadedyouth, along with some country-specific essays about experiences further East. Poland’s educated young were in general a 'special population'—not all were Jewish, but a large number were. Irena Grudziñska-Gross offers an excellent summary of this drama of “spoiled children,Marxists and Jews,” placing herself among the dramatis personae. Ceauqescu was, after all, 'a latent neo-Stalinist, a sly Antonín Novotný, not an Alexander Dubcek', and was steering his country toward the peculiar blend of domestic repression and foreign policy nonalignment that persisted in Romania until 1989. On some level, are 'Paris' and 'Prague' to be taken equally seriously? Charles Maier’s essay is the only attempt to 'make sense of it all.'As he puts it, the expectations (some added afterward) that surround what turn out to be 'great years' have a lot to do with what we think amounted to success or failure. We can look back on 1848 and see romantic nationalist revolts as failures in some senses, but not in others—1848 did not emerge triumphant in 1849, but no definitive judgment was possible until more time had passed."

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Table of Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction Vladimir Tismaneanu Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part One. Picking Up the Pieces: 1968 between Memory and Theory
Revolutions and Revolutionaries, Lessons of the Years of Crises Three Czech Encounters with Freedom Martin Palouş Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	21
1968 in Poland Spoiled Children, Marxists, and Jews Irena Grudzinska Gross Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	43
In Search of a New Left Dick Howard Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	55
Rethinking the Political Scientifically Brief Reflections on 1968 by a Child of the Seventies Jeffrey C. Isaac Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	65
What Did They Think They Were Doing? The Political Thought of (the West European) 1968 Revisited Jan-Werner Müller Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	73
Thinking Politically Raymond Aron and the Revolution of 1968 in France Aurelian Craiutu Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	103
The Divided Spirit of the Sixties Karol Edward Sołtan Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	131
Part Two. Lessons and Legacies of 1968
The Year 1968 and Its Results An East European Perspective Agnes Heller Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	157
The Prague Spring 1968 Post-Communist Reflections Jiři Pehe Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	167
From Revisionism to Dissent The Creation of Post-Marxism in Central Europe after 1968 Bradley Abrams Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	179
Post-Marxist Mentality and the Intellectual Challenge to Ideology after 1968 Tereza-Brînduşa Palade Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	197
Yugoslavia’s 1968 The Great Surrender Nick Miller Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	227
1968 Romania Intellectuals and the Failure of Reform Cristian Vasile Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	241
Part Three. 1968 in Pieces: Case Studies of Transformation
Betrayed Promises Nicolae Ceauşescu, the Romanian Communist Party, and the Crisis of 1968 Vladimir Tismaneanu and Bogdan Iacob Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	257
The Kremlin, the Prague Spring, and the Brezhnev Doctrine Mark Kramer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	285
1968 and the Terrorist Aftermath in West Germany Jeffrey Herf Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	371
The Prague Spring Resistance and Surrender of the PCI Victor Zaslavsky Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	387
“Don’t Push Us, Comrade!” De Gaulle in Bucharest Cătălin Avramescu Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	407
Conclusion 1968—Did It Matter? Charles S. Maier Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	413
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	435
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	441

Language: English
Publisher: Central European University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 460
Keywords: 1968; Cold War; Ideology; Political philosophy; Political studies; Communism

eBook

Published: November 10, 2010
ISBN: 9786155053061