Dissidents and Police: The Polish March 1968 and a Tale of Two Generations
Dissidents and Police: The Polish March 1968 and a Tale of Two Generations
Author(s): Piotr OsękaSubject(s): Civil Society, History of ideas, Political history, Government/Political systems, Post-War period (1950 - 1989), History of Communism, Sociology of Politics
Published by: SAGE Publications Ltd
Keywords: 1968; communism; Poland; dissent; generation;
Summary/Abstract: March 1968 in Poland witnessed two different revolutions. The first one occurred at the universities. The students—the generation of twenty-year-olds—revolted against an oppressive, authoritarian state and demanded freedom of speech. But there was also a second, parallel revolution. It exploded with the anti-Jewish purge carried out by lowand mid-level party officials in their forties. These apparatchiks, born around 1930, denounced the student revolt as a “Zionist plot” and pushed for a nationalist version of the communist system. This article explores why those two generations clashed in 1968 and what was the outcome of that struggle, both in political and social terms.
Journal: East European Politics and Societies
- Issue Year: 33/2019
- Issue No: 04
- Page Range: 861-880
- Page Count: 20
- Language: English
- Content File-PDF