Some may argue that it was always. No, and again no, and no. In the past, States waged uninterrupted wars (like in our time, actually. The atomic peace has shortly reconciliated the principal blocks of States: the western and the eastern one, that’s all.) and warriors were on particular demand. The price for youth, for men in the age of warriors was high. Only the creation of slave-using monarchist States in XVI-XVIII centuries has created possibilities of a general military duty and the peasants serfs of some Gessen could be sold to fight against the American colonizers. But this state of things exists since a short time. And during the entire length of human kind’s history the warrior was valued. From the times of the Neanderthals or from the creation of the world, whatever one prefers.
In epochs of revolution the biological, natural order of things, even for a short time, even in the limits of a single generation, triumphed and the youth came out in the first roles in the State and society. It had power and often property. A classic example Napoleon Bonaparte – emperor at 31 and his marshals, coming from the lowest estates – the children of the French Revolution. Another classic example: the Bolsheviks. Molotov, Trotsky, Dzerzhinsky, Stalin, entered the party at 16, 17, 18, 19 years old and finding themselves on the key posts in the State already at thirty and something. Blumkin, the very same which killed the German imperial ambassador after Mirbach, celebrated by Gumilev, Blumkin, who has arrived from his native Odessa in Moscow at 18 was instantly appointed chief of the counter-intelligence VChK. At 18 years old! One can recall the cult of youth among the national socialist of Germany and fascists of Italy, and these were revolutionary movements. Around Hitler and Mussolini and Lenin were then gathered in the beginning of the XX century young and very young people. Studying the experience of the revolutions near to us in time: The Russian of 1917, the German – national-socialist, the Italian fascist, but also more distant – the Great French of 1789, one can ascertain that they were not a proletarian revolution, a fascist or a bourgeois Great French Revolution. But they were also, in essence, revolutions of the youth against the middle class and the elderly. A revolution is always carried out by the young people, the reaction is the work of the middle age and the elderly.
As far as I know, historians did not study revolutions as a phenomenon of war between generations, contenting myself with only facts, without their analysis; Yes, Bolsheviks or national-socialists were very young people, only Lenin (47) and Hitler (44) were far more older then their comrades.
I will try to generalize and I ascertain: all the revolutions that have won – they are victories of children over their fathers, the youth over the middle age.
Lecture 4
In the second half of the XX century too, young people kept rebelling and trying to take the power away from their fathers. The last time it had all began with China. It is Mao Zedong who called the “Hunveybins”, his young Red Guards to the foreground of History. The old, sly wise man Mao, possibly, was sincere in his terror before the new bureaucracy that the Chinese communism has created only in 17 years, from 1949 up until 1966, resurrecting the thousand years old cast of fat functionaries-mandarins. Possibly he used students and young people in the fight against his political opponents, which is not the point. He had precisely put the finger to the wound, having sensed it: on the sharpest problem of all modern societies. And precisely: the young people are the most oppressed class of society. Having proclaimed: “Bombard the Headquarters!” – Mao gave schoolchildren and students the right of inspection and punishment of the functionaries. And the Chinese boys with little red books thrown in the air, the fanatic boys enjoyed it fully. They leaded the highest officials of the State through the entire country in fools caps (like from paintings of Goya and Bosch!), they beat, spit, kicked and sent on reeducation in the country teachers and even the premier Liu Shaozi and the ministers Zhou Enlai or Deng Xiaoping. All of this began in 1966 and calmed down only in 1976.
The example was contagious. In 1968, on May 2nd, right in the midst of the cultural revolution of the Hunveybins when French newspapers daily brought the news of million people strong raids of Chinese red guards on the offices of Chinese officials, in Paris the student revolution of May 1968 began. At the sociology faculty in Nanterre, a Paris suburb students headed by the 23 years old German Daniel Cohn-Bendit organized a meeting, which transformed itself in a confrontation with the police. The police closed down the faculty but the unrest moved to the Latin Quarter, in the heart of Paris, in the building of the Sorbonne. The rector addressed the police for help. The police broke into the auditorium. Fights between two thousand of students and the policemen lasted several hours. People started to put cars on fire, they built a few barricades. 596 students were arrested. The Sorbonne was closed and the police stood in front of the entrances. Some students appeared in court and received two months of prison. But the next day student demonstrations resumed. As did the confrontations with the police – 460 students were arrested. Student organizations demanded on May 7th to withdraw the police from the Latin Quarter, to free the convicted students and to open the faculties in Paris and Nanterre.
It is interesting that the instigators everywhere were students of human sciences faculties, that is, those who were the most stuffed with the ideas of western civilization. It is also curious that General de Gaulle perfectly understood that the wind blew from the East. On May 7th he stated in anger to his ministers: “This means that we are talking about a trial of strength. We will not tolerate such a situation. Order has to be restored, before everything… These bad students do not want to return to their studies. They are making fun of the return to calm and work. They strive for the Chinese Cultural revolution. Not for anything in the word! Concessions are out of question.”
The situation became particularly heated on May 10th. Students have built about 60 barricades in the district of Edmond Rostand Square. Above the barricades – black and red flags. Around – several thousands of policemen wait for the order for the siege. Students are armed with Molotov cocktails and rocks. The policemen are armed with clubs, big plastic shields and gas grenades. At 2 o’clock AM comes the order of the siege. The fighting lasted five hours. The totaclass="underline" 367 wounded, among them 32 heavily, 188 burned cars. The students disperse on orders of Cohn-Bendit. The workers unions decide to have a general 24 hours strike of protest. The 13th May begins the general strike and demonstration. More than a million of protesters have participated in the march from the Republic Square to the Denfert-Rochereau Square.
The slogans of the demonstration: “De Gaulle – to the archives!” “De Gaulle – to the pauper’s house!” “Farewell De Gaulle!” “Ten years is enough!” Arrived to Denfert-Rochereau the demonstrators, as previously decided, disperse. But groups of students call on to walk further and to take over the Elysee Palace. The moderate unions do not follow them.
The 14th of May the police leaves Sorbonne. Leftist students take residence in the auditoriums. Now it is a “critical” or “free” university. Meetings go on days and nights. They are singing the “International”, hands are flashing red books of Mao’s sayings, they are being distributed by the Chinese embassy. They demand the abolition of exams, mandatory programs and courses. They often cite Trotsky. Sorbonne’s walls are covered with inscriptions: “Be realists – demand the impossible!” “Forbidden to forbid!” “Imagination to power!” An “uninterrupted artistic revolution” was declared. The Sorbonne was not enough for the students and they seized the theater “Odeon” where activities took place similar to the one in Sorbonne with the participation of the Paris intelligentsia. On May 14th De Gaulle went on a visit to Rumania.