1968, West and East
I. What happened in 1968?
II. The postwar social and cultural revolutions
III. Students and workers in Paris, May 1968
IV. The Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact invastion, August 1968
V. Václav Havel's Power of the Powerless

the culture of the sixties as both a rebellion against the world of reconstruction and a product of it
technocracy
functionalism
social planning
alienation
the "new left"
Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man

"the children of Marx and Coca-Cola" (French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard)

postwar expansion of universities
"new universities"
Nanterre
Sorbonne | Paris | Latin Quarter
in Germany: reckoning with the parents' generation
Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, 1963-1965

Dany Cohn-Bendit
"The university has in fact become a sausage factory which turns out people without any real culture, and incapable of thinking for themselves, but trained to fit into the economic system of a highly industrialized economy."

Pressures in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s
1. "the little Stalins": hard-line Stalinist leadership of Communist Party
2. a peculiarity of CZ: pressure for Slovak autonomy
3. discontent of intellectuals, writers, students
4. frustrated managers within the Communist Party

Alexander Dubcek: "socialism with a human face"
"Prague Spring"
economic reform
Slovak autonomy
abolition of censorship (March 1968)

Communist reform: Dubceck's "Action Program" (April, 1968)
1. "The methods of direction and organization hitherto used in the national economy are outdated and urgently demand changes, that is, a system of economic management able to enforce a turn towards intensive economic growth…"
2. "A broad scope for social initiative, frank exchange of views and democratization of the whole social and political system becomes virtually the condition for the dynamics of socialist society"

Brezhnev doctrine (military intervention to prevent the fall of Communist regimes/"protect Communism from imperialist subversion")

six outcomes of "1968":
1. the "postwar" order in the West: the beginning of the end
2. BUT: revolution will not be on the agenda in the West
3. social/cultural liberalization is compatible with postwar political institutions
4. it dramatized new social, cultural, and "quality of life" issues: background to the new social movements (feminism, environmental, anti-nuclear, citizens' groups)
5. an offshoot: some parts of a wave of terrorism and political violence in the 1970s (Italy: Red Brigades; Germany: Red Army Faction)
6. in Eastern Europe: new debates about how to mobilize an opposition (Havel is part of those debates)

some "lessons" of 1968 for Eastern Europe's opposition:
1. Communist parties are not going to reform themselves out of power (but look ahead: Gorbachev!)
2. direct confrontation with the state is a losing strategy (though workers' pressure is good)
3. prevent the state from dividing workers against intellectuals
one alternative: focus on building an alternative "civil society"

Václav Havel, "The Power of the Powerless" (1978)
playwright | "dissident" (notice that he rejects the label--why?)
absurdist theater
first president of post-Communist Czechoslovakia
détente: here, relaxation in Cold War confronation during 1970s
(détente is a diplomatic term, originally French, meaning an easing of hostility or strained relations between countries)
Helsinki accords: "Final Act" 1975, agreement on human rights
Plastic People of the Universe
Charter 77:  petition in Czechoslovakia to stop violations of human rights, based on appeal to the Helsinki accords

Havel's "Power of the Powerless"
1. as an analysis of “what he calls "post-totalitarian society":
     everyday life in Communist societies by the 1970s
     the power of the system is both all-pervasive and fragile
     the power of appearances | "automatism" and ritual
2. as a proposal for the power of “"living in truth":
     pre-political action
     spontaneous acts of dignity
     the self-organization of society
     Q: relationship of this approach to more traditional forms of political opposition?
3. as an expression of its moment:
     the culture of dissidents
     postwar existential philosophy
     1960s cultural radicalism
     critique of consumer society, east and west
4. as a proposal for spontaneous democracy from below, an alternative to East and West