One must distinguish the counter-culture from various other resistance movements. Many citizens residing in colonial and postcolonial territories had long opposed the great power politics that, in their eyes, contributed to imperial domination over their societies. Nationalist leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru in India, Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, and Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam were not part of the counter-culture because they never accepted the initial Cold War framework surrounding Friedan’s disillusion. The same could be said for many domestic actors within Western societies, particularly early civil-rights activists. Although figures like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., supported the basic tenets of liberal democracy, others - including Robert F. Williams in the United States and Frantz Fanon in Algeria - did not. They were not part of the counter-culture because they advocated full-scale revolution. Social and political change was not enough for them; they wanted to destroy society and rebuild it from the ground up.688
The enormous influence of the counter-culture derived fTom its powerful presence within mainstream society. By the middle of the 1960s, Friedan’s problem with no name had become a focus of discussion among leading journalists, intellectuals, and even policymakers. Unlike the Third World nationalists or domestic radicals whom one could dismiss as extreme figures, the suburban housewives, corporate employees, and college students who questioned basic social assumptions were core political constituencies. They were the future of each society - the people whom leaders claimed to serve. These "children of a generally affluent generation - West or East," according to the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Richard Helms, "are deeply engrossed in the search for some newer means of arriving at moral values." "For the moment," he warned President Lyndon B. Johnson, "they seem to have settled on a reaffirmation of the dignity of the individual. Most commentators agree that Society’s values are in flux; ifthis is so, restless youth are symptomatic of a deeper current than their numbers alone suggest." The president’s special assistant for national security affairs, Walt Rostow, affirmed this judgment, pointing to the "conflict of 'ardent youth’ and big machines, causing increasing numbers of young people to ask: 'Where do I fit?’"689
These sentiments were not unique to American leaders. As early as 1960, the West German chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, lamented what he called the "most important problem of our epoch" - the "inner political" weakness and superficiality of daily life in the Cold War. East-West rivalries and the
Nuclear-arms race encouraged what he derided as an empty “materialism.” Adenauer longed to reawaken public interest in what he called the “Christian” belief in the simple devout life, fTee from military tensions, superficial consumerism, and impersonal bureaucratic institutions.690 One of Adenauer’s rivals and successors, Willy Brandt, shared this perspective. In September 1968, when he served as West German foreign minister, Brandt observed that: “Young people in many of our countries do not understand why we, the older ones, cannot cope with the problems of an age dominated by science. Not force, but reason alone, can give them an answer.” Brandt argued that peace between Cold War rivals was necessary for restoring domestic tranquility among a young discontented generation of citizens. 691
Soviet leaders had similar concerns about the evidence of growing public disillusionment, despite the repressive control over information in their country. The official Soviet youth journal, Komsomolskaiapravda, called attention to problems with the “psychology of contemporary young people.” They had apparently lost the combination of pervasive fear and intensive nationalism that had motivated conformity, and even public enthusiasm, during the years after World War II.692 A public survey conducted by Soviet authorities in 1964 revealed that more than four out of every five students refused, despite severe threats, to heed the leadership’s call for the cultivation of “virgin lands” and other patriotic Communist projects. Government leaders, particularly KGB director Iurii Andropov, became obsessed with the regime’s domestic vulnerabilities.693
An uprising by citizens in the Russian city of Novocherkassk confirmed these fears. On June 2, 1962, local workers, joined by their families and area youth, seized Communist Party headquarters and the central police station. They demanded reduced food prices, better work conditions, and, most significant, a change in political leadership. In the eyes of many protesters, local authorities were out of touch with the needs and wants of society. They enforced an ideological order that contributed to growing public discontent. To control unrest in Novocherkassk and its “spillover” into other areas, the Soviet army deployed brute force, killing twenty civilians and injuring many more as soldiers fired into crowds of demonstrators. Soviet leaders put down the protests, but they never recovered from the anger and resentment inflamed by these events.694
Despite the violence, the citizens who challenged established authorities in the Soviet Union, West Germany, the United States, and other countries lived better lives than prior generations. These were privileged men and women who had unprecedented access to consumer goods, education, and leisure time. They also lived relatively secure lives, even in Communist societies, generally free from the domestic terror of the Stalinist years in the Soviet Union and the deprivations of economic depression in the United States and Western Europe. This was a revolt, in many cases, of the privileged against the leaders who conferred privileges.695
The counter-culture was not about material needs. It focused on unrealized spiritual and ideological demands that citizens believed the Cold War, and its dominant leaders, stymied. Competition between capitalism and Communism limited the perceived space for creative programs that combined or subverted the two systems. Foreign interventions also diverted resources and energies from domestic reforms. Most damning, the inherited logics of military and diplomatic strategy gave legitimacy to a group of Cold War “wise men,” while undermining the respectability of innovative political leaders who were not “present at the creation.”696
The experience of World War II and its aftermath provided figures from that generation with a political gravity that younger citizens acknowledged but also resented. Students for a Democratic Society in the United States was one of many groups to proclaim that the world faced new challenges - civil rights, nuclear-arms control, decolonization, and others - that the elder statesmen, for all their experience, were unprepared to address. According to this argument, the "wise men" emphasized toughness, rather than peaceful cooperation. The "wise men" focused on military power, not social change. Most of ah, the "wise men" were part of a conservative old culture of suits and big band dances, not a new culture of jeans and rock’n’roll. The "wise men” sought to preserve their way of life against challenges from within; the new men and women sought to transform basic assumptions about politics, foreign policy, and daily life. The new men and women also sought to consume a popular culture of personal freedom more fully, without the traditional restrictions imposed by an inherited culture of self-control and public discipline. Dissent was ideological, and it was fun.17
World History
