The Sixties is the decade that refuses to end. We seem to be riding on a continuous wave of nostalgia and reflection to the extent that all adults have experienced their own slice of the Sixties even if they weren’t born until after 1970. The attraction is obvious, as the appealing first page of quotes in this book show: ‘Millions of young people all over the world,’ the iconoclastic William Boroughs wrote, ‘are fed up with shallow unworthy authority running on a platform of bullshit.’ Right on, brother!
The Sixties is now a period saturated with historiography that comes from every angle: cultural, economic, or political. It would seem that there is little new ground to cover, so Mark Kurlansky has set himself a hard task with his homage to the decade in ‘1968: The Year That Rocked the World.’
Kurlansky is the author of now legendary books ‘Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World’ and ‘The Basque History of the World’, and has built a reputation for adding colour to underreported aspects of history. So it comes as a little surprise that he should pick an era already well covered. It seems doubtful that he started with one year in mind, but with the Sixties in general. Although great claim is made for 1968 being a particularly special year, this really is a book on how the decade impinged on different societies and nations around the world.
In particular, the central role of twenty-something youth, who may have not necessarily have been the leaders of the social and political movements, but were certainly the shock-troops in countries as far apart as China, America, France and Cuba.
Kurlansky’s narrative is one of emphasising the centrality of youth amongst the new regional and international currents, but also of concentrating on individuals who found themselves elevated onto the world stage – sometimes with careerist determination, such as the American clowns Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, other times with naive hopefulness, such as with Alexander Dubcek, or complete surprise, as with Daniel Cohn-Bendit.
The new radical Left movements, the political backbone of the times, were more diverse and multifaceted then had been seen since the late nineteenth century. Less ideologically dogmatic than their ‘old’ Left counterparts, they were refreshingly playful with art, language and strategy. Needless to say, there was a ridiculous side to this youthful approach (LSD and pot are never going to change the world), but amongst this there came some inventive and original forms of protest, an example being, the invigorating posters – called atelier popular – being produced in their hundreds from the arts schools of the Sorbonne in the spring of ’68.
The New Left – a label that covered Trotskyites, anarchists and various shades of libertarian thought – were hostile to the Soviet Union block, critical of perceived ideological corruption and weakness. Instead, they looked to China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and its self-declared aim of cutting out political decay. They also looked to Cuba, which, although surviving on Soviet subsidies, was seen by many on the New Left as the vibrant progressive society that the USSR had long ceased to be.
Generally speaking though, the only issue that united this so-called counter-culture was opposition to the Vietnam War, with an American defeat looking possible after the New Year’s Tet Offensive.
In response to the new movements the attitude of the various Communist Party’s was, according to Kulansky, mixed. In America the CPUSA was hostile to such movements as Black Power, while the French CP actively undermined the May strikes. In Czechoslovakia, the CP was split with one side leading the revolt while the other supported the reaction. Which, in the case of the latter, reflected in the Comintern with only ten of the 88 Communist Parties in the world approving of the Red Army invasion.
Mark Kurlansky’s Sixties odyssey is more than just a single year in one decade, with interesting backdrops provided to 1968’s events. For instance, he supplies an illuminating account of how the American media establishment fawned over Castro’s rebels before the Revolution, while a thorough explanation is given to the post-war political machinations of the Eastern Block that reveals discontent and confusion from the top to bottom of society.
Granted, of the world’s population, few were active within or connected to the movements that Mark Kurlansky writes about, with many indifferent TV-watchers more concerned with the geraniums in their allotment than with Franz Fannon or Herbert Marcuse; but then social change has always been the prerogative of the minority. To quote a well-used saying, freedom is a road seldom travelled by the multitudes. Kurlansky competently remembers that particular Sixties road with verve.
‘1968’ may not necessarily break new ground, but it certainly covers old ground with a lively pace.
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