Restless Youth

In March 1969, Henry Kissinger forwarded to President Lyndon B. Johnson a report produced by the CIA entitled Restless Youth, sub-titled What Makes Johnny Riot. The report begins by laying out the historical ubiquity of youthful protest:

“Student dissidence is not a recent phenomenon. It was a periodic occurrence in Ancient Greece and Imperial Rome. Socrates complained that students of his time had ‘bad manners, contempt for authority, disrespect for older people.’ Medieval Cambridge and Oxford experienced periods when protesting students burned and sacked the town…”

The new temporary exhibition at the House of European History which borrows the title Restless Youth agrees that every generation has its protest movements. The show subtitled Growing up in Europe 1945 to Now, highlights four recent periods, the after war era of the late 40s and early 50s (Europe’s Quiet Generation?); the late 60s (Generation Revolution); the 80s (Between Despair and Hope) and the 2000s (Generation Me?).

A subject that most Western Europeans are not familiar with is the extent of youth unrest in the Soviet block and the show surprises with examples of youth protest in the East such as Russian punk outfits, and a map of Czechoslovakia produced by the authorities which shows county by county which have the highest percentages of young males with long hair.

The show is very rich in both physical objects and audio visual historic material. Kieran Burns, the lead curator of the show gives us a rundown.

www.historia-europa.ep.eu