To: H-1960S@H-NET.MSU.EDU
Subject: Kazin on Suri’s _Power and Protest_

Michael Kazin, Prof of History, Georgetown University

I haven’t yet had a chance to read Jeremi’s provocative book, so I can only
respond to his introduction and what I’ve gleaned from a few of the glowing
reviews. Greg Eghigian’s comments are exceptionally smart and learned, and I
look forward to reading Jeremi’s response to them.

Clearly, the time has come to study the 1960s as international history. As part
of that doddering band who helped make the history I now write about, I can
testify that the sense of being part of a world “revolution” was quite palpable
to New Left activists. This was as true for SNCC in its glory days during the
early to mid-1960s as for SDS and other white radicals in the late 60s (my own
cohort) and for Puerto Rican members of the Young Lords and the PSP in the late
60s and early 70s. That we made little attempt to draw distinctions between the
activists of the Prague spring, the Red Guards in China, and Palestinians like
Leila Khaled who hijacked passenger jets testifies that our enthusiasm
overwhelmed our political reason. But that identification – and the way in
which an equally diverse set of rulers coped with it -- seems to be one of
Suri’s main points. Mark Kurlansky’s 1968 provides a good narrative of these
movements, even if an analytically thin one.

But, like Greg Eghigian, I wonder how new a development this was. Hasn’t the
left, since the term itself was coined in the late 18th century, always been
conscious of itself as an international movement? The failure of all three
Internationals (Workers, Socialist, and Communist) and the irrelevancy of the
Trotskyist attempt to start a fourth didn’t dampen the desire for such a
formation. In fact, as we all know, developments in technology and the
remarkable prosperity much of the world enjoyed during what Hobsbawm calls “the
Golden Age” (1947-73) made such internationalism --  expressed through popular
culture as well as political protest --  seem less forced than ever before. How
would Jeremi view the 1960s international in this world-historical context? How
did the crackdown during the 1970s that he analyzes compare with those in the
1790s-1815, the period following the Paris Commune, and the 1920s?

I’d also like to read Jeremi’s thoughts about the international mass Right in
this period. Scholars like Hans-Georg Betz have traced the rise of a “populist”
conservatism in Western and Central Europe to the influx of guest-workers and
post-colonial migrants in the 1960s. One can see the “white backlash” in the
U.S. during this period as an analogous formation. Did American and European
leaders view this insurgent force as a tool to help defeat the left in their
nations? Or, as liberals and social-democrats, did they view it as an equally
serious threat to the dominant order?

One might conclude that a plebeian backlash was gathering strength on both
sides
of the Iron Curtain in the late ‘60s.  Kurlansky’s book documents evidence of
this from 1968: New York City police, almost all of whom hailed from
working-class families, severely bloodied Columbia students in the course of
breaking their sit-ins. That summer, most Americans backed Mayor Richard Daley
when he sent Chicago cops to bludgeon thousands who had come to protest the
Democratic Convention. After big riots in West Berlin, touched off by the
attack on Rudi Dutschke, an opinion poll disclosed that almost eighty percent
of young working-class residents opposed the students’ actions. In Warsaw, the
government was able to mobilize a worker’s militia to crush street
demonstrators who were calling for intellectual freedom. According to
Kurlansky, the Polish militiamen “were told that the student protesters were
privileged kids who lived in the best apartments and took trips to Paris, all
of which was by and large true.” (121) That workers and students made common
cause in Czechoslovakia was a big reason that only external troops could be
mustered to overthrow Dubcek’s government.

As we internationalize the 1960s, we should never forget that oppositional
movements in that period did not emerge only on the left. Jeremi’s narrative
pits the “68ers” against the leaders of major nations. But perhaps the defeat
of the former had as much to do with the rise of a mass right as with the
machinations of rulers.

Thanks to Jeremi for sparking this discussion.

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