Mai 68 : l’incandescence en Europe – 68 Année ZERO – Documentaire Histoire témoignages – AT

1968 dans sa dimension européenne. Six parcours de vie qui témoignent de l’incandescence des “années 68”, mais aussi de leur devenir et de leur héritage.

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68, année zéro retrace les parcours de six Européens : une lycéenne turinoise devenue militante à Lotta Continua et féministe ; un étudiant parisien maoïste “établi” aux usines Peugeot ; un ouvrier de Peugeot acteur de la grève d’occupation de mai-juin 68 et militant syndical ; une jeune Allemande immergée dans la contestation étudiante qui s’engagera dans le combat féministe et écologiste ; un couple tchécoslovaque qui, après avoir vécu le Printemps de Prague, s’élèvera contre l’invasion soviétique et le régime de “normalisation” au prix d’années d’emprisonnement… Six parcours de vie qui témoignent de l’incandescence des “années 68”, mais aussi de leur devenir et de leur héritage.

00:33 L’année 1968 en Europe
12:14 Luttes ouvrières à Sochaux
26:22 Les débuts de l’électrification
28:11 Les mouvements étudiants en France
36:36 L’impact des grèves ouvrières
40:46 La fin des mouvements de révolte
51:18 La force révolutionnaire
01:00:26 Transition vers le militantisme syndical
01:11:54 Mouvement de libération des femmes
01:22:40 Résurgence des feux de 68 aux usines Lip
01:42:32 Vivre la réalité après la révolution
01:45:03 Rétrospective sur l’engagement
01:46:47 Évolution des anciens militants
01:47:59 Le joli mois de mai à Paris

“68 Année Zéro”
Réalisation : Ruth Zylberman
© ARTE France, ZADIG PRODUCTIONS – 2008

In the indistinct crowds, Who are they, these faces crossed by history? The great history, that of demonstrations, struggles, great hopes and glorious leaders and the other. That of the days which always follow one another, that of the collective rumor which irrigates a life, a destiny.

Having scored 68 in Turin, Paris, Prague, Berlin or Sochaux. What is it having done? To be made of 68 is to be made of what? Berlin, 1965. West Germany is still stuck in the world of reconstruction and the post-war period. In the city symbol of the Cold War,

The voices of student revolt rumble. Contestation of authority within the university, mobilization against the Vietnam War and against American imperialism, we rebel. We debate in rallies, sites run by the radical student movement, the SDS and its leader Rudi Dutschke. It is in this atmosphere that a young 20-year-old provincial girl arrives in Berlin.

She was raised in a family of pastors who belonged to the anti-Nazi opposition; her name is Eva Kuistore. In the summer of ’65, I arrived on the campus of the Free University of Berlin for the first time to enroll. And that’s how I participated in one of the first in sites

Which took place in the courtyard of the university. At the time, there were small signs at the edge of the university lawns saying lawns prohibited. It must seem weird and ridiculous today, but at the time it was like crossing the Rubicon. I remember that feeling of lifting one foot

And passing it over that little sign, and then passing the other one over it and sitting down on the lawn. It was a small cultural revolution for us. I had not decided to become politically involved or to become a protester. I arrived in this atmosphere and followed him.

And then there were the first leaflets. I read them avidly and little by little, I discovered what the Vietnam War was like. I reacted immediately. These were not only protests against the US war in Vietnam, but also protests against the German government’s support for the war. And these protests were marked

By virulence, suspicion and a whole historical context. For us, Germany should never again support a war. And especially not a completely fake war. Paris, 1967. Yves Cohen is sixteen years old. He studied at the Lycée Louis le Grand, in the heart of an entire Latin quarter agitated by revolutionary rhetoric.

Whether you are a Guevarist, a Trotskyist or a follower of the Chinese cultural revolution and Mao Zedong, it is above all a question of breaking with the order of the elders, the Gaullist order, of course, but also that of the Communist Party. My parents are communists, my whole family is communist

And I alone am not in anything at all. And at that point, I was actually looking for something. When I read Bakunin, I was an anarchist or when I read about my life as a Trotskyist, I was a Trotskyist. Anyway, that’s how it was while sailing.

One of the things that made me switch to the Maoist side, for example, was seeing the high school students of Louis the Great, the militant high school students of Legrand fighting with the fascists at the door. And I said to myself, hey, they’re both incredible intellectuals.

So I already had an admiration for these young intellectuals and they are capable of pulling punches at the same time. Another aspect which also really convinced me was discovering the thoughts of Mao Zedong and for example this sentence which convinced me in an instant Power is at the end of the gun.

This is an absolute truth. Of course that power is at the end of the gun, therefore, and that this is valid not only for Vietnam or for the people of the Third World, but it is also valid for us when the revolution will inevitably be violent.

So, and we are right to revolt, it’s magnificent. So these few things like that which made me switch to the Mao side, in this kind of quest, etc. There you go, so I returned fully and therefore fully to the CVB

As they said in Vietnam at the base of Louis the Great, but also of the 13th. I remember that we followed the battles day by day. We knew the name of each Liberation Army battalion engaged. We sang the songs of the Liberation Front. We were completely caught,

Caught, caught, caught up in the war and its progress, etc. So that was really something, an experience too, quite, quite, quite astonishing. Ending the old world. In unison with the rest of Europe, Italy, Autumn 1967. the University of Turin, like that of Rome, Milan, Genoa or Pisa, is occupied.

These occupations with which it all began mark the emergence on the scene of a new student generation, breaking with traditional Italian society, still marked by the legacy of fascism. Among the occupants of the Palazzo Campana, the Faculty of Letters of Turin, a very young girl of fourteen years old, Vicky Franzinettie.

School year 67 68 was my first year of high school. I was still at home for a few months and then I left. I went to school and at the same time I started working. And then I started, as they said then, to get into politics. For what ? I do not know.

But still, I started wearing a mini skirt instead of the knee length skirt that my mother always made me wear. I read in the newspapers that there was an occupation, and I came here, to Palazzo Campana. Just sitting on the stairs smoking, to us that sounded fantastic.

Throwing cigarette butts on the ground, laughing, singing, eating here was dominating a public space from which we had until then felt strangers. The beginning was really very joyful, very amusing. It was like suddenly finding yourself in a tribe where everyone is family, where you trust everyone.

Truly here broke out a large generation which had grown up without war. And so we were not afraid. I was fourteen years old, it’s true, but I was involved by older students who demanded a different university because it is certain, the university as it was

Then absolutely no longer corresponded to the needs of what the world had become. Furthermore, we must not forget that, except for the youngest, the teachers had been so under fascism because only twelve refused the teacher’s card under fascism in Italy. This means that everyone else who was over 45 at the time

Had either been fascists or started their careers at that time. So they were used to the same weather as when they were young. I don’t think I’ve ever studied so much in my life, even if it makes a lot of people smile

Because 68 was identified with the idea of ​​not wanting to study. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever learned as much as I did against the course. Could I have learned how the dollar and gold conversion worked at fourteen? I remember that this was one of the topics covered.

I remember it precisely because I had difficulty understanding it. How to say that was like saying that. Everything that happened in the world, I could understand. There was this possibility. Normally, we obviously wouldn’t have closed the door because the room was almost always crowded when I entered. Here all the places were. Taken.

On this side, there were lots of people standing and on this side too, near the doors, people were crowded together. I almost always tried to get a seat up front, to see the stage and the people well, but also to be able to exit relatively quickly through the front doors.

Sometimes it was important to be able to escape from this suffocating mass whose moods changed often. But also to be able to escape the police if they ever showed up. During teaching and at the critical university between 67 and 69, not a single week

Or even a single day went by without there being a major demonstration on the themes History of fascism or mechanism of fascism. We were thinking a lot about the development of authoritarian character and what could be an antidote to that.

We had learned that Eichmann had defended himself during his trial by affirming that he had only obeyed orders and we could perhaps explain very clearly and a little harshly the importance of the anti-authoritarianism which It is manifested in many forms by the fact that we ourselves do not want

To become of this character and that person. We also wanted to prevent such characters and such people from ever coming to power again in Germany, Europe or elsewhere. People who obey orders without thinking and without scruple. And of course, it had repercussions in families. In many German families,

Harmony was broken, there were real tears. Some never saw their parents again after insulting them for collaborating with the Nazis. We spent entire evenings getting together and discussing the cost of the soul. There were also a few retirees or those famous widows from Berlin who had

All survived the war, but whose husbands had fallen at the front. We still came up against this generation from the 50s. These widows who insulted us, accused us of destroying Germany. To go opposite, go to the other side. It was one of their slogans We should put you in the gas chambers,

We should put you in the gas chambers. Going to the other side meant East Berlin. At the beginning of 68, many of those who started these struggles were the children of those who had made the resistance. And it was only later that the movement expanded. By involving everyone

Because we came from families where this heritage had been passed down to us. That is to say that we were not completely detached from the hopes of those who had resisted and who had won. Many of them felt like they had made an incomplete resistance.

That is to say that yes, they had made the resistance, but they should also have made the revolution. So many had a very ambiguous attitude towards us, of hatred, not perhaps not of hatred, but of both opposition and jealousy. For our part, we had the problem of legitimizing ourselves as a political generation.

The others were legitimized by chasing away fascists or by contributing fascists. And what could we do to legitimize ourselves? We began to think of ourselves as resistance fighters operating in the occupied country, occupied by the bourgeoisie, by its police, etc. As if, in some way,

We have to invent the enemies our parents had. We were at the same time in the terrible criticism of the parents and their abandonment, their resignation in relation to social or revolutionary or political problems. And in fact, in a great tribute that was paid to them by saying

But we, we want to live this experience that you lived, we want to live up to what you have done. Little by little, I was absorbed by politics, I was completely into activism and therefore I read a lot of politics. I discovered Mao, I discovered Marx, I had never read Marx.

We were communists, we wanted a communist revolution, but certainly not Soviet-style, certainly not bureaucratic, etc. And there, this is the effect of the cultural revolution on us. For us, the cultural revolution was the fire at the headquarters, it was Chairman Mao himself telling young people, students, high school students to attack the bureaucrats.

It seemed extraordinary to us, it seemed fabulous to us that we could, in communism itself, call into question the authority of bureaucrats. For me, there was a necessity for revolution. Yes, it stood out as a kind of evidence imposed by the world, the state of struggles. Moreover, we very quickly became interested

In workers’ struggles, in the forms of workers’ struggles and in particular in dissident forms of Workers’ Struggle, that is to say in forms which were not completely controlled by the PC and the CGT. Far, very far, it seems, from the Latin Quarter. The Peugeot factories in Sochaux. 30 zero zero zero workers,

The largest factory in France at the time of the 30 Glorieuses, it was the apogee of Taylorism, assembly line work, intense pace and unskilled workers. Bones. At the beach, you go from father to son, like your father, like your mother. Jean-Paul JT joined at the age of 18 in 1967. He was 34.

When I returned to the factory. I thought it was huge and it was dirty. It was noisy. He smelled oil there. I had the impression that they were convicts, the manufacturers, sparks everywhere, welding, you see, hammers, noise. At close range, it was 110 decibels. I discovered this when I returned to the factory.

When I was 18, I discovered my mother pushing a cart with shoes, with shoes. A good woman of one meter 58, I don’t even know if she was 1 meter 58. But in those waters, she was pushing the cart and I found it unfair. And I didn’t accept that kind of thing.

The chief was arriving. For example, the little chef told him we work with our hands in our pockets. Suddenly, we had a kind of boss reflex, we removed our hands, our pockets. Yes, it’s a bit of the boss’s fear. That’s a bit of the chef’s fear. It’s a bit submissive, really.

And then it was little by little that I built my character. Dare to say what you thought and slowly assert yourself. There were unions. The unions, that was it. There were movements. So at the beginning, I looked at it a bit from afar, you see.

Then I started to integrate myself into all that a little bit. But. But I had organized, I was. I pay my stamp, you see, that’s all. And then the years followed. So every time I saw. Little by little, as I saw a delegate or someone, I called them. I said to him Now

There are things that are wrong, what do you do? And then finally, at the CFDT, they said they said a period in the 60s, well before 63, I think, that way. There are guys who said there’s a guy there in the club,

He always calls out to us when we go from being an active guy, etc. And I joined the union council like that. And then afterwards, I started to meet guys who had another slightly leftist language, well what we call leftists who spoke of permanent revolution. That’s actually how I got started. Women’s roles.

Unbearable physical tragedy. Über mich nicht Motorhead which they say. And I believe that I too had the feeling of being part of a revolutionary atmosphere and renewal. Yes. It really felt like we were part of a global revolution. But otherwise. I felt like I had to stay

In Berlin, that I couldn’t take a vacation like that. Normally. My brother asked me one day Don’t you want to come to Amsterdam? And there were all these new vacation destinations. It was like New York, Majorca or Malaysia today. We said Ah,

You’re coming with us to Italy, we’re going there with our little two horses. It was fun to go to Italy or France with a mini van or a two-horse car. But I was thinking, How can they go on vacation now? The revolution is at the door.

You have to be there, day and night, on alert and ready to really participate. Eva Kuistorene will soon be completely immersed in the revolutionary atmosphere she is calling for. On June 2, 1967, the student mobilization reached a hitherto unknown intensity to protest against the official visit of the Shah of Iran to Berlin.

Students are deserting universities and taking to the city streets. The police response was extremely brutal. A young student, Benoni Sorg, is killed. For the students, but also for part of the country’s liberal opinion, this death is a crucial turning point which testifies to the escalation of state violence.

When we find ourselves for the first time in such a situation and I, it was the first time that I found myself in confrontation with the police on June 2, 67. It is a very worrying and uncertain situation. And the word violence is far too abstract. In this. Case. We see the uniforms,

We see the batons, we look where there could be an escape, where there is a barricade. Is she going to crush me? Is there a retiree somewhere who is going to hit the head with an umbrella? It’s all very concrete. It was as if the entire city was

Gripped by tension, as if everything was on hold for those involved. As if time had stopped. And we had. The impression that it was a historic moment that was taking place. And we didn’t yet know exactly how it was going to continue. But at the level.

From the political atmosphere and the tone of the debates, it has become radicalized. The mobilization is intensifying more and more. Parliament is preparing to vote on emergency laws, the nostalgia of those who would authorize the government to assume full powers in the event of an emergency. The students rebel.

Resurgence of fascism, he accuses. It was in this turbulent atmosphere that in April 68, Rudi Dutschke Deutsch was the victim of an attack which left him for mobile death. Student anger is directed against the Springer group’s newspapers, accused of having fostered a climate

Of hatred against Roddy the Red and his gangs of thugs. 1500 1925. In 199929. Strike demonstrated Student on a Newton. Deslandes Martainville. At the same time, the freshness of Balzac inspired me to Stendhal. For five days, the toughest street battles witnessed since the end of the Weimar Republic took place throughout Germany

. But. We are. Also remembered the tradition of. 1920s. The tradition of Red Aid when workers, communists, socialists and anarchists organized themselves here on their own. Against. Troops of Nazi thugs. And. Against the. Police. It was an aspect of the movement that was no longer so light. Really, it wasn’t so light anymore.

It even led. Lots of gravity, but perhaps also illusions. That’s what I would say today. As if we were somehow trying, as Marx already wrote, I believe, to put on the costumes of another era. On the other side of the wall, the other Europe. In January 68,

The wind of freedom which is about to rush into Czechoslovakia is not identical to the Western revolutionary whirlwinds which, glimpsed from the alleys of Prague in the land of real socialism, can appear very incantatory or bitterly naive. For Peter Hall. However, it is a little different.

This young engineer, just graduated, took advantage of the timid signs of liberalization of the regime visible since the mid-1960s to travel to Paris and frequent circles of the Trotskyist far left. For him, criticism of Stalinist communism constitutes a bridge between the two sides of the wall.

It was therefore as a critical citizen that this young man of 26 observed, in January 1968, the political struggles at the head of the Czechoslovak Communist Party which would lead to the replacement of the conservative Antonin Novotny by Alexandre Dubcek. In Prague in January. This year, spring will bloom in winter.

So what ? That’s really it. I know well. I remember that the world opened up to me in January 68, but to tell the truth, in January and February, Czechoslovak society had not yet experienced the electrification of mobilization. And the. Changes were happening at the top

And people were watching this with still uncertain hopes. Real change only came in March with the removal of censorship. When newspapers start publishing articles about terror. Policy. From the 1950s. And then people started to debate. Very low characteristics in one of the. Characteristics of spring 68 was, for example, that every morning

I got up a little earlier to go to the newsstand to buy all the newspapers, all the dailies and weeklies published that day. Michelet per week. Then I would spend two or three hours reading everything. That was characteristic of that era for me anyway. Each day brought a number

Of new events and we thrived on them. If one day it will exist. Hooray! It was. This is the purpose of the visit to the Sorbonne. Television was also free at that time. When Dubcek arrived at the office in the morning, about ten or twenty

People were waiting for him on the steps of the government building and he spent half an hour talking with them. It was something incredible, never seen before. There had never been such contact. No one would have ever thought they could talk to the party’s general secretary. The idea was that the.

People who were discussing in the street, in the street, Prix Copé for example, that we had renamed Hyde Park, it was in July. They were probably reading the same articles as me and wanted to discuss them with other people. It was at this time that I realized

, and it formed me for the following years, that freedom of expression is the most important freedom. And even when everything has failed, freedom of religion, freedom to travel, to undertake and I don’t know what else, if we have freedom of expression, then the other freedoms are renewable. Tock tock. Tac. Tic tac.

The poor thing isn’t there. Poor Habiba. It’s going to be a bullet. You know. I’m going to take you to the ball! Sam protested. I. Protest. And I’m ten years younger than my husband. At the time, I was 17 years old. And. My age obviously determined my perception of events.

And what’s more, I didn’t live in Prague. But the Prague Spring, where the Czechoslovak spring affected the whole of society, all social strata, provincial towns and the countryside. I followed everything that was happening closely and discussed it at home. I also read a lot of newspapers and that’s what really distinguished that era.

I then fully experienced a feeling of freedom and hope. This union. As far as I’m concerned. In May I joined a political group. It was a far-left movement that demanded self-management, defended the interests of third world countries and fought against capitalism. What is Slovenian? It is the link between the

Opposition movement of Czechoslovak students of the year 1967, May 68 and 69, and the students of the Western movements was not obvious. He was not. I must say that I belonged to this minority of people who tried to link these movements, even if this link was a little

Artificial since the demands were really different. When Rudy Duc came to Prague, we were very attentive and sensitive to what he told us. Then we translate his words. In Czech, there is no word for anti-authoritarianism. Six months ago. I remember that with a friend,

We thought for a good half hour before finding this. Word that was. Then integrated into the vocabulary. Anti-authoritarian. Anti-authoritarianism and anti-authoritarianism. Extensions that are. From Western languages ​​were therefore invented in Czech, precisely in 68. And this word was necessary for us because it was also our program. There was a common denominator

Between the Western movements and the Czechoslovak movement. And this denominator was socialism, democracy and freedom. Speak. Tell me about family A Don’t be one of them. The imprisonment of our comrades at the closing of the faculties. The police occupation of the Sorbonne. We responded with a week

Of demonstrations to the charges against the mobile guards in the hands of the CRS. We opposed the cobblestones of Paris. Not bad. I was completely stunned by what was happening in the Latin Quarter. I remember very well going up a huge, very, very long line of

Mobile guard buses at the moment when the mobile guards were getting out of the buses. So I went back up with my Solex, seeing the doors opening one after the other and the mobile guards in black, with nasty faces, batons in their hands. Get out of the buses at full speed to intervene.

We had a feeling of living in a historical moment, that is to say that we were constructing lots of historical references and at the same time we were trying to see what was new. I remember very well a reflection on the barricades, the geography of the barricades.

Is this the same geography as that of 1848? And what are the barricades of the commune and the barricades of 1848 compared to the barricades of the Latin Quarter? Boulevard Saint-Michel. Is paved and has no paving stones. I arrive in Paris in May. It’s extraordinary to see this crowd of young people shouting

Against the government, demanding the slogans Workers, Workers, Peasants. Students. Same fight, same struggle. I thought it was great, you see. Life wasn’t like that. It no longer resembled what we lived in the country, in the country of Montbéliard where it was quite static. If you want.

Well, there were things, but this one was like fireworks. For me it was. I didn’t have enough eyes to look, to hear, to listen, to. Soak up. I. I was involved. I only hear about reform here and in my opinion this term should be denounced. Reforms mean nothing. It’s about pronouncing it.

The word revolution distorts. I was amazed to see the number of guys distributing leaflets, information, from various groups, etc. But I said to myself Wait! All this comes in a somewhat generic box, they say what are we? Well, it’s worse than the ads we’re getting in our mailboxes today.

It seemed like that to me, you see, I said to myself but it’s not possible that there is so much movement, you see the anars and LO, the League, well all the groups, the three Trotskyist currents, anyway. And others, you see. Including all the guys who also distributed the Spanish news.

All that was. And what’s more, it scared me. Then what’s more, it was an enrichment for me because I have. I saw that there was multiple information. Simply, at some point you had to choose something. In ’36, I did that, I did that. But yes, because in 36, there hadn’t been 36.

You, my little friend, wouldn’t you be there to begin with? There is a side, sir. Was there no politics in France in 36 36? 30 years ago, there wasn’t that there wasn’t everything that there is now like. It lasts, it won’t change again. There is a groundswell, of course, but of course.

I remember very, very well, participating in discussion groups which were formed around a poster, around something like that, and I had great joy in that. And for me. 68 The moment, finally May 68, 68 remains a lot, that too is not simply the actions that we did at the factories,

But really also these instantaneous encounters, even brief, even fleeting, these discussions, this indeed this this fact of capacity to discuss everything, this possibility of discussing everything, of being critical, of inventing, of, of being among, of simply, among a multitude of points of view

Which are expressed at the same time between people perfectly unknown. And that was it. It was quite wonderful, and it could be met really on the street corner, literally, during that month of May, on any street. I participated in the occupation of the Sorbonne. From that moment on, obviously,

I no longer went to any Louis the Great classes. I was spending my time. In fact, at the Sorbonne, we had a stand of him. JCM the Union of Communist Youth, Marxist-Leninists. I sold Red Guards to serve the people and piles of brochures, books, books by Mao or from Lenin’s grandpa.

Politics was everywhere in the sense that it was an opportunity to make everything political: life, consumption, sex, culture, everything was discussed in the element of politics, in the element of what is what. who is to be done, what we must do, who to ally with, why, etc.

What meaning did things have all at once? All aspects of life took on a political meaning. No more borders. It is well beyond the Sorbonne, well beyond the Latin Quarter, that the revolt is now spreading. At the Sud Aviation factories in Nantes, two young workers launched the first sit-down strike on May 14.

The next day, it was the turn of the Renault factories in Billancourt, Flins and Le Mans. On May 20, there were 7,000,000 strikers, three times more than in 1936. France has never experienced a general strike of such magnitude. It wasn’t just young people, there were also guys who had a drink.

There were guys who were crying, who were old, who were saying that. Anyway, I’m going to see this before I die, you see. I saw old people, old people, well old militants who were certainly Anar militants. before the war, I don’t know much about it, or who participated in the resistance, etc.

And who saw this, that it exploded, who said? Who certainly remembered 36 in their youth. Finally you see. The point on which we settled. So in the 68 movement at that time, it was about making the connection, making the connection between the students and the workers,

So making this crossing like that of the classes, obviously. What was the CGT against? What was the PC against? Against it were the leftists. For the CGT, the only serious thing that happened was what was happening in the factories. It was a working-class logic. The students, whether they fight in their own

Corner, but especially when they don’t meet. In pants with the workers in the fight for their demands? Lead our strike ourselves. And we refuse any external interference. Do you feel like you’re being overwhelmed by the students? This is the necessary confrontation. First there were the. Workers, students in the street and several students.

I had. Participated in the outing to Renault to meet the workers and it was obviously us who had organized this thing and launched it. And we arrive at Billancourt. And literally, the CGT closes the factory doors to us, prevents, prevents contact.

And there was this fantastic banner that took up the entire width of the street. Which was also the translation of or which was in Chinese, literally in the Chinese language, which was hard. The workers will take back the feeble hands of the students. The red flag of the workers’ struggle.

For the fight is engaged by the. There is nothing more. Abandoned by wolves. Here in the corner, we’ve been waiting but we know we’re going to be busy. Whatever we say, at some point, it’s Peugeot who will tell us that we have to stay at home because they had more supplies.

And that’s how one Saturday, we met there and then there was a show of hands. We cut, we cut the factory, so we entered the factory, we were in the different gates, the Peugeot guards left, etc. That’s how we set up. At all doors.

There were groups depending on the location who organized themselves for their food, the shifts because there were some who were returning, who were coming back. There were some who slept around, one who didn’t actually sleep around. There was. Everyone organized themselves

So that there was a rotation, so that there were always people there. There were people who painted, there were people who wrote poems, there were, there were guys who improvised things. Hoping for victory. He’s not my friend. This morning, my friend. This night facing barricades.

Green, red or blue night, king of universes and barricades. Green night. Red or blue black. Whatever my friend, whatever my friend. I was happy. He had to pay for the broken pots. I paid the price after May. But I mean, there I was. I was comfortable at home.

I was in my in my box, in my factory. And then today, we were the ones holding the box and it was us who should perhaps also ask our opinion. Not like it always was before. Security is security. And then that asshole. The worst was the bullying. The forums. We imposed them.

There are even people who do not occupy the factory during the day but who came to the forum in the evening. There were discussions, debates, then contradictions. There are people who have started to speak, there are people who have started to express themselves, there are people who have dared.

I thought that it wouldn’t actually change the revolution. I didn’t want to break everything. I wasn’t going. I wasn’t the type to go steal the bourgeois’s house and move in, then kick him out and then steal his furniture. That wasn’t my thing, it was to change the spirit,

The spirit and then also the directives, and so that we could give our opinion. Well yes, it’s participation in the discussion, not just that we have to listen like in church when we were going to preach in one direction, and then down below, we don’t have the right to respond .

After the increase in wages and purchasing power, immediately after comes freedom of association. Once union freedoms are possible in the company, the boss will no longer be in control of his company. Because once we have this claim, the others will succeed automatically. Maybe we’ll make some cobblestones for you,

We’ll boil them a little more, we’ll keep you going. I still have all this in my heart. I still live it, I do it, I know it as if I were still there. These are things that have marked me in life, like the birth of my children.

Actually. It was yes, it was another day. You could say that. Another day anyway. In June 1968, called by Peugeot management , the CRS and mobile guards forcibly dislodged the strikers who had launched a new occupation of the factory. After a brief return to work. Striking and non-striking workers

Unite to respond. In Sochaux, in Montbéliard, hidden rifles are brought out. Since the end of the war, the atmosphere has been insurrectional. Among the workers, 80 were injured and two dead. The funeral of the young worker Jean Belleau, which a large crowd attended, recalled the seriousness of the clashes

Which took place at the Peugeot factories after their occupation by the police forces. The clashes in Flins also caused a victim, Gilles Taupin, the drowned student whose funeral took place in Paris. I do not have. In fact, my journey is linked. Connect these three deaths in some way.

Since, since I knew Gilles Autun very well, I was very close to him at the time when he was going to die and that and that in fact I was going two years later to join Sochaux, so where were the deaths and the other two dead of the May movement?

Without being aware of being part of a great revolt movement. International, this is the watchword in Warsaw in Persian. So counts for. The end of 68 which saw growth in Italy. An ever more massive student mobilization is also the moment of a decisive turning point. The students are gradually turning away from strictly

University protest to get closer to the workers in struggle. In Turin, students flock to the doors of the Fiat. They participated in the strikes which punctuated the end of the year 68 to culminate in the autumn of 69, during the hot autumn,

The autumn of Aldo, a strike movement of unequaled magnitude in Italy. This student-worker political union was notably defended by the political organization to which Vicky then joined. La Lotta continued The struggle continues. Today in processions, during the holidays, among those identified. Campaign. Opera and sudden conflict. Island, pottery, opera.

And in the Scola del Pedro, born. Sempronius is dead. Long live the revolution ! When can. He is emphatic van. Rosalie, anonymous companion. Aren’t there cartels and currencies in the other blinds? Will he remain Brujah? Disturbing machinery when destiny shatters, that violence, violence, violence, the revolt that hesitated.

Volta of Romani bullshit to lawyers in l Corpo antifa Trésor identity companion Green unleashed with such bullshit. Suddenly, he will carry scrap metal in the Squadra del patronne gathered at Raymond Viva the revolutionary when crushed by Violette. Not thought of, unless it came from the little camel if you prefer.

It is a sign of bias of massive political affiliation, organization and organization and taking back the. Reins of school. And no. From the factory. Strikes. There were a lot of them. Strikes, layoffs, factory takeovers one after the other. I thought it would never end. In fact, the shock was when it ended.

Ciao, ciao, ciao, ciao Giovanni. I was coming to the. Maximum four days a week and usually I came for the lunch tour change. In the morning, I went to school and so I came in the morning, that is to say around five or 6 a.m., only if there was a strike or something.

So day after day, I don’t say every day of the week, but at least four. After a while, you become part of the landscape. And besides, we were a means of communication for the workers. Because during. During periods of big struggles, thanks to us, they learned what had happened elsewhere.

Of course, the newspapers didn’t talk about it and as for the unions, it depended on the turn of events. And so. During times of struggle, we were really helpful to them. Of course, still, it’s difficult to win in Beijing, the United States campaigned about 70% of us in secret our newspaper.

It involves managing a hotel operating in Catanzaro. We defended the idea that everyone should be a delegate and that there should be no union representation. Some agreed, others, however, who were union members, discussed and protested. We are. Argued. The younger workers you found in politics were completely

Different because they no longer looked the same. They were of my generation, they didn’t have the taste of defeat in their mouths. And so they exploded. While. The unions which knew fear, which had operated for years with internal representations, with internal commissions which engaged in negotiations which had. Fear.

They found themselves completely overwhelmed. By revolutionary force. And that’s what we call revolutionary force. It is these two groups that ignore fear for completely different reasons that are exploding among students and workers. We, we are. A single thing. And that. Clearly, I didn’t like it at all.

And not only are we one. Thing. But we are something outside the parties, outside the unions, outside the committees. Yes. That’s what we are. And we are. Organized. And the revolution is bad. Perceived In August 68, I was in Paris.

I saw in a newspaper that someone was reading a photo of a Soviet tank. Who tanks with. Behind the National Museum and the statue of Saint Wenceslas. When Russian tanks in Prague. And I said. So to the woman I was with Look what the Chained Duck is capable of.

They really don’t care about anything. Don’t forget. Then I got closer and I understood that it was not the Chained Duck, but that it was François. So, with trembling hands, I went and bought myself a copy of the newspaper. This man sat down on the curb and we almost started crying.

No, for us. It really was one. Shock. We don’t get there. Absolutely not expected. The whole of Europe woke up shaken on the morning of August 21, 1968. The previous night, 300,000 Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia in the face of intervention troops. The entire population immediately adopts an attitude of non-collaboration and resistance.

But after a few days, we have to face the facts that spring is over. Right now. I felt a very strong feeling of despair and sadness. Also. And also anxiety about what was going to happen. There was also anger within me, Great anger. Anger, despair, betrayed. Even when they are not very clear,

Hopes always provide an opening. Now, what happened there was truly great despair. And that’s when I realized for the first time that I, personally, would never conform to it. Little by little, over days and weeks, slowly, very slowly, the atmosphere and the politics began to change.

I understood what a high point the year 68 had been for me. In reality, I only understood it in retrospect. Once what we had experienced was lost, a very firm conviction crystallized within me that I would not submit. Not. Which I will do without really knowing what yet.

But I knew I would do something about it. We are options. I was a citizen and I became a homo politicus. That, my friends, is the style that charms me. However, it is spring. Who transformed me. Then the invasion and the struggle to maintain the democratic elements that we had acquired. Previously.

Later I. Perceived Charter 77 as a continuation of this struggle that we were leading. Rosa Passo and. The year 1989 is for me in the same continuity, that of the Charter and therefore in the heritage of 68. First And it is for me like the only thread of my life.

In Paris, the promise sounds for many like a crossroads. Reconnecting with the normal course of life or continuing the struggle in other forms and preparing for this gift was only the prelude to the revolution. Yves Cohen joined the ranks of the Proletarian Left which succeeded the

Marxist-Leninist Youth Union in the fall of 1968. One of the priority objectives of the GP, the establishment in order to maintain centers of revolutionary agitation, young Maoists are hired within the factories themselves to participate in and encourage workers’ struggles. For Yves Cohen, no hesitation, he will also be established.

Head to one of the emblematic places of the Sochaux working town. When I was hired for September 3, 70, I had won the prize. Joining Peugeot was really a must. At the time, we called it factory number one in our Chinese vocabulary. Fed up with the machine that’s messing with our

Heads, fed up with the clock bosses that are killing us. Fed up with the life of a slave, with life, with misery. Listen to Our voices. They announce war. We are the new sniper partisans. Of class war. The people’s camp is our camp. We are the new supporters.

In fact, I didn’t expect what I would find. What I was going to find were. It was an absolutely monstrous factory, immense, with walls kilometers, kilometers long and. And precisely, to go to Sochaux, to go see Sochaux, you had to follow these walls, these concrete walls like that. Huge, right?

I did this with a little Breton with whom I had taken the tests and we could hear the presses, the presses of the weaving tip. There was the smell of electro drilling, of electro drilling. That is to say, these are baths in which we immerse the boxes which are therefore metallic.

And so walk along these walls. With it, we didn’t see anything happening, we didn’t see any city arriving. It was completely mind-blowing. There was something very , very strange. The Breton who was with me said, But I’m not coming back here, there’s no way I’m coming to work here.

And I said to myself, well, this is where I’m going to have to settle down and it wasn’t for me. On the contrary, it was here that I was going to stay. It’s time to take the idea of ​​revolution to its conclusion. Otherwise, obviously,

From the point of view of the discovery of life and the joy of living and from there what we can do when we are 19 years old. Obviously, it wasn’t about choosing to work in the largest factory in France, it was obviously not. Choosing to go and have fun

In the happiest place in the world was indeed there, there was a deliberately ascetic aspect that I took on the most, most excessively ascetic side that there is. When the factory took over, when we started again after all these events, we returned to the company with euphoria. We were a little proud, really.

And then we no longer looked at the directions in the same way. We did the work, then in the same way, we did it with desire, We did the work with desire if you want, but knowing that well, we could, we were capable of reforming that through these

United attitudes that we had, collective, etc. You see, we couldn’t tell a guy who had occupied the club or who had experienced all that, even if he lived a little far away, we could, we couldn’t talk to him in the same way anymore, that’s it. ‘is clear.

We were no longer spoken to in the same way. 68, that was I was in the starting block, 60 arrived and I left in the 100 meter lane within the CFDT. So I was a union representative for sociability in the morning and I was the liaison between the morning rounds

And the after 12 p.m. evening tour. I wanted the union organization to be offensive, to be based on demands, not senatorial demands, direct demands. For years, until 72, I came home very often at 11:00 a.m., the evening when my wife was waiting for me.

She had put down the words, but she was waiting for me. You see, Afterwards I told him he shouldn’t wait for me any longer. But I came home at 4 a.m., left again, slept 4 hours a night. You see, it was. I was available.

Me as established moe, I had my personal style, the usual established. These flamboyant styles arrive in the factory. You spot the thing that you can block the line, sabotage a little, find the most rebellious workers. I wasn’t in this immediate action, but I wasn’t like my friend Duduche, for example. Jean-Claude Poirson.

Him, barely. He had been there for a month, a month and a half, on line, in bodywork, blowing up a transformer, a transformer. He was blocking the channel, you see. And he got fired, etc. There was a story about a boss, he got fired extremely quickly, you see.

Me, I wasn’t really into that thing. I wasn’t 100 years old in promoting the cause of the people to sell my duck. I did it every time there was a new people’s cause to show to friends, etc. But I wasn’t constantly wanting to sell my duck.

I talked about everything, China, the May 68 revolution, intellectuals, Maoism, philosophy if necessary. So I was in my place as activists and students who came to confront the workers with their way of being in the press 68. Two days ago, there was very strong repression. There were delegates following.

As soon as, as soon as a delegate took delegation hours, there was a guy to follow him through the workshops, to listen to what he was saying, what was being said with the guys. There were these anti-Mao brigades who sought to provoke. I remember seeing people passing my post a little strange.

And I think they were people anyway. But there were cops everywhere, there were old people, there were. It was the only place in France where there had been worker deaths in 68. There was really a leaden atmosphere in this factory. Despite the blows that took place in 69,

The pistol strike, the youth ferry strike, etc. There was an extremely heavy atmosphere that weighed on everyone and it felt like it would be very difficult to make anything happen. December 1969. Peter Hull experiences his first hours in prison.

He actively participated in the fall of 68 in the mobilization of the student movement to defend the achievements of the Prague Spring in the occupied universities. Peter or the same founded the Revolutionary Youth Movement ideologically close to the far left. This small group comes into the open, then goes underground to resist

With calls for insubordination, the gradual resumption of power. In vain. Gustav USA, which had become a normalizer, succeeded Alexandre Dubcek in April 1969. After attempting to commemorate the anniversary of the invasion, the group was infiltrated by the police. All its members were arrested in the last days of 1969.

I hope the search lasted something like three or 4 hours. She had a very unique appearance. They wanted me to type on their typewriter the titles of the books they had confiscated from me. I refused to do it, so they were the ones tapping with one finger. Dirty. They were writing.

Books in. Foreign language. Simply a book. Without even knowing if they were in German, French or English. Because it was a culture shock for me. I felt like these people came from another world. Ah! The books were chosen at random because they had no idea what

The book was if it was subversive or neutral, who knows. Books written in a foreign language that might make sense of it, right? How awful ! There are people who read books in foreign languages. There were only two of us who knew the indictment. The judge-rapporteur and me.

No one else even made the effort to read it, because everyone knew it was pointless since the decision would not be made in court. But the verdict would come from elsewhere. And just one moment. I was sentenced to four years in prison, partly because I protested during the trial.

Thanks to her, I was imprisoned at 20 and a half years and released at 22 and a half. I was arrested for distributing leaflets at the time of the elections which took place in November 1971. The leaflets told people that if they did not agree with the policy of restricting freedoms,

Then they could do so. express by not going to vote. We said something very simple: voting is a right, not an obligation. I was released on December 15, 1973, after four years. It was very difficult because I suddenly found myself in a totally different society from that of December

69 which was at the time, in my environment, a united and united society. A protest society. Protest here and there. Nothing, nothing more. Except for a few friends who were also coming out of prison. The majority of people didn’t want to hang out with us.

My wife and I always said we were destined to marry together. Because who else would have wanted to marry us? She too had just been released from prison. It was terrible to observe how Boussac and his clique had managed to control the whole of society,

To force it back into the private sphere, into country houses, into cars, into hospital apartments. And people had stopped being interested in politics. One day, when I came back from work, I found a man at our house. By chance, Petr. It was Peter visiting his cellmate in Bory Prison.

This companion was my brother. This is how we got to know each other. I immediately knew who it was when he introduced himself. We agreed to meet the following week in Prague, where I was to visit my father who was himself imprisoned in Little Mirette Prison.

But it is in the shocks that before nothing. We arranged to meet in a café and as I am a cautious man and I wanted to have a witness, I also invited my best friend at the time. Best regards, Aubin Drew. And why did you want to have a witness?

Well, I assumed we were going to have a political debate and that we would be there representing the non-Stalinist left. later my friend told me when I arrived and saw you through the window, sitting around a table, in such an intimate discussion, I understood that my presence was useless and I left.

We were no longer at the peak of enthusiasm. We could no longer let ourselves be carried away by movement and feel big and strong. We could no longer flood the city with brilliant ideas like a wave, and everyone participates. That feeling was gone. It’s true. As the enthusiasm of unanimous enthusiasm fades away.

How to continue? Which path to choose? That of a violent confrontation with the State? Or the less spectacular one of the struggle for the transformation of minds in the field of daily life? In this quest which is also that of the metamorphosis of a fight,

The women, Éva, Vickie, will have to invent their own answers. Fortunately, we, from tradition, didn’t care, because if we had followed our culture. I will not have. Was able to have children without getting married. I couldn’t have had an abortion. I wouldn’t have been able to use birth control.

I were not able to. Live and work as I did. The deal had none. The woman did not have the right to abandon the marital roof. A widow’s inheritance was less than that of a widower. The woman did not have the same rights as her husband over the children.

For the applicants. For employment, there were separate lists. Paying women less than men was legal. There was no divorce, no contraception, no abortion. During. Childbirth. If we had to choose between the life of the mother and that of the child, we chose the child because he was a pure soul.

This is the picture of Italy at that time. When I became a professor, people still asked you if you were married. It was a real act of emancipation, daring to tell a colleague that you were not married. And it wasn’t just an act. We spent weeks racking our brains.

Of course, today we find that normal. But they were invisible walls. All these steps that women took at that time, It was against invisible walls. It was much more difficult to cross them than to climb the barricades. That was ridiculously easy in comparison.

These are men from 68 who, in a certain way, told the women because at At the beginning, they were the ones who assigned us our place. As an activist and. As an activist, in the wake of what had been typical of the Communist Party and the Socialist Party. Strong as comrades.

Strong, solid and available to everyone or like girlfriends, wives, fiancées. One day in 69 70, during a political quarrel, a guy said to me You, you need to be **** **** by a worker. For me, that was the last straw. So it’s at that time.

That I started looking for the few women’s groups that already existed, women’s groups for health, for the home. All kinds of women’s groups. Politics swims in understanding the nature of the condition. Women and why? There are many people, of course, who surround us and our acquaintances. In 1973, there was the first

Feminist demonstration at the Memorial Church. We were fighting against paragraph 218, the paragraph on abortion. I myself experienced this in 1969, becoming pregnant and not feeling capable of studying , raising a child and earning a living at the same time. I remember. Of this feeling when leaving the metro.

It was great to suddenly see so many women around the church. It was something completely new. We felt united and no longer so alone. Good woman, slave and breaking the fetters of us all. Gisèle, it was the same sparkling atmosphere as at the start of the student movement.

We said to ourselves, Something new is beginning. This only has a tiny bit of cushioning at the hummingbird level. Just yesterday. I had learned how to perform abortions. We used tubes for suction and also a bicycle pump. At the beginning, there must have been a young woman with me, a doctor.

But one time this young doctor, we were doing an abortion, she hears a noise coming from the stairs and she says My God, the police, She’s leaving. She runs away leaving me alone. And from that moment on, I did the abortions alone. We found each other again.

Between groups of practice and we talked. We also talked about technical questions and our anxieties. Because most of us, I remember that I did interventions on Tuesday and. Friday. And from Tuesday to Friday, I didn’t make love. And. It was something quite distressing. As new. German feminist movement of the 70s

, we undoubtedly had other themes than the French, Italian or American feminists. Of course. The Cross of Honor of the German Army. And the myth. Of the mother under the Nazi regime certainly played a role. A role. We had to.

To approach the image of the mother and the very fact of being mothers differently. I think it’s one of the. Reasons why many of these women did not have children. There was probably this unconscious conflict. How, being another mother, how can we be sure not to

Fall back into this role, not to educate and train children for a system? How can we do otherwise? There is mine. My generation is the first. I belong to the young part of this generation. But my generation is the first generation of women who was able to choose to live as they wanted.

And it’s not nothing. July 1971, Yves Cohen’s revolutionary workbench journey came to a complete halt. No more Peugeot, no more towing the cause of the people in the main street of Montbéliard. No more strikes and no more speeches , at least for a time, following a fight between the police

And young Maoists, Yves and two of his companions were arrested at dawn on July 18, 71 in a small house in edge of the Doubs. Verdict fifteen months in prison. I was hardly moved to end up in prison then. In addition, it was at a time when there were

Lots of other friends in prison, for lots of reasons and also battles, selling out the cause of the people, acts of political violence who themselves were fighting for their political regimes. And it was also the start of the revolts in the prisons in particular. While we were there, there was the

Toulouse prison revolt, which was an absolutely splendid revolt. The workers coming out, the convict workers coming out on the roofs, expressing their demands, etc. So that was very important because we started to support the other prisoners from within.

Not for a moment did I regret it and say to myself what the hell am I doing here? Etc. That is to say that for me, I was there because I had been convicted and condemned. So ultimately, my conviction verified that I was truly an enemy of the bourgeoisie.

It was undoubtedly in prison that this manifested itself the strongest. This difficulty for me to feel things vividly and sensitively and emotionally. But I think it was very linked not only to the intensity of what I was experiencing, the political, activist intensity, etc. But from all the load I had put into it.

From the relationship to the relationship, for example, from the relationship to the resistance, from the relationship to myself, from the relationship to the deportation. I remember that the first visit my parents made to me in prison was a very good reminder that mom was crying in Montbéliard prison and for me,

I interpreted it without knowing if it was her thoughts. I interpreted it as. The thought she had of her own prison during the war, of her arrest, of the Romainville health depot, then of Auschwitz. From this. I imagined that was what she was thinking.

A few years later, not immediately, I had a dream. And in fact, the Peugeot factory is a factory in two parts separated by the national highway. And in my dream, the plan of Auschwitz was superimposed on the Peugeot factory with, in place of the national road,

The railway tracks which penetrated the shale to the gas chambers. It’s this thing, this connection that I had never made explicitly. I had never done it. I had never talked about it. I never even thought about it. Well I did it in a dream. So there was something

Extremely profound in this kind of force of investment where nothing existed for me other than what I was experiencing at that moment, and especially not precisely emotions that were specific to me and personal and emotional. And so yes, that was it. It took years to get over that. The backlash awaits.

For Jean-Paul Vita, who tried to perpetuate Mai’s legacy in his activist practice. Within the CFDT itself, the permanent challenge to authority and the union bureaucracy is causing some teeth to grind. In 1972, the leftist Gita was excluded from his union. Six months later, management of The Mutant is sulking.

Factory far from workshops, far from friends. I was at a workbench facing a wall, as if here where there was. I could have counted the studs that were on the wall since it wasn’t plastered, it was raw. And then behind me, they found me on my right, behind, at an angle.

Like that, there were the offices which were glazed. They saw me all the time, so they saw who came to chat with me. And then when it lasted too long, we came to remind the guys that if they were in the service, it’s not in the service, etc. I could no longer campaign,

I could no longer move around, I could no longer go to the workshops, I went there, I didn’t leave there, I no longer had any direct action in the company. So outside, what can you do? Not much. You can be supportive.

So when there was a strike, I did, I went on strike, you see? I was leaving my shift alone, you know? So you know, when they leave a department alone, it’s still hard. So there. I stayed, I stayed there for ten years.

For ten years, I made sure there was nothing in my car that could put me in danger of getting fired, being accused of theft, etc. That was something terrible, really. And I remember getting into my car, starting it, driving a few meters, stopping, getting out, not opening my hood, whatever.

And for ten years, I repeat ten years. That’s crazy ! When I think about it today. I feel like it’s not me. Well, I feel like I’m telling someone else’s stories, but that’s mine. At the Lip factories in Besançon, 80 kilometers from Sochaux, the fires of 68 resurfaced. In June 1973.

Occupations of factories, restart of production by the workers themselves according to the principle of self-management. Jean Paul. Gitta rushes there, just like Eve Cohen who, after her release from prison, took a job in small factories in the region.

But if Jean-Paul rediscovers in Lip the taste for the forums of 68 for Yves and the whole of the Proletarian Left, the meeting of the Lips will have an unexpected effect. It was the meeting of one of a workers’ movement which was capable of doing everything, of inventing everything.

Without us, there was not a single Mao militant in Lip at that time. Lip’s last militant Mao had left him two months before saying nothing will ever happen in there. We said to ourselves, But what are we doing? What is our destiny,

If not that of becoming a small communist group imitating the CP, imitating, renewing, as the Trotskyists do eternally, rehashing the same speech for 20, 40 or 50 years, with the same impotence? Is this really what we want? Is this really how we think? The revolution ? Good.

And so there was a whole reflection which led to the idea of ​​dissolving, of dissolving oneself. Me, I was perfectly consistent with this thing, with this idea of ​​stopping dissolving, etc. So it took on a very strong meaning on a lot of levels.

In terms of activism, for me, it was stopping the GP, it really meant that I stopped and that I really stopped. And for example, I didn’t walk in things at all. There were loads of friends who continued, who went to Ireland to see what was happening with the IRA, who rushed to Portugal

For the Carnation Revolution, I don’t want to, or who were becoming a bit silly. So I became a bit of a fool, but I didn’t dive into the community as a way out. Enough at this end of activism which was an extremely difficult time for everyone.

You led to death, led to overdose, led to extremely difficult experiences of reconversion anyway. To restore compatibility with society. How to live in there again? How can we accept the gestures that we have always refused the gestures? How can we accept submission to an order,

To orders, to commandments, when we systematically refuse it? How to escape this? Or how to accept it? How and where was the limit? Let’s go. Y. When everything calms down, I’ll try to. Calm down in the mid-1970s. For several years now, in Italy, left-wing movements

From 1968 have been confronted, like the rest of the country, with terrorist violence. It all started on December 12, 1969 in Milan. That day, a bomb exploded in Piazza Fontana in the heart of the city. Sixteen dead, 86 injured. Left-wing anarchists were immediately arrested and charged. The investigation deliberately rules out the

Neofascist avenue, although it is the most plausible for the Italian left. This attack exposes the collusion between neo-fascists and the state apparatus. That was it. The end of. Innocence. Because it was obvious that it was a fascist bomb. From this moment. Everything the previous generation told us.

Be careful, the fascists are coming back. We liberated Italy. They are terrible. They will come back. All this. Suddenly seemed. TRUE. And from there all this rhetoric about new partisans was born. From there too, there were coup attempts, sometimes real, sometimes feared, and that was the loss of innocence.

Because it’s not so much that we no longer believed in the government and the police on this specific point, but on nothing. We were suspicious of everything. Barely a year after Piazza Fontana, the Red Brigades claimed responsibility for their first attack. For the Red Brigades. The reference to the resistance and the struggle

Of anti-fascist supporters is omnipresent. The BR, like the Red Army Faction in Germany, also proclaim themselves the armed arms of proletarian justice. Attacks, kidnappings, murders follow one another inexorably in both countries. In 1977, the Red Army Faction of Ulrich Meinhof and Andreas Baader kidnapped and assassinated the president of

German employers, Hans Martin Schleyer, a former prominent member of the Nazi party. In the spring of 78, it was Aldo Moro, the leader of the Christian democracy, who was killed by the Red Brigades. For the far left. In Germany as in Italy, the question of the link with terrorist organizations

, the question of the legitimacy of the violence it exercises will arise in a nagging and dramatic way throughout these years of lead. Furnace. They were horrible years. Horrible. I have. Known to people who got shot. Above and below. People shooting. What was. Extremely serious is that part of the left was fascinated.

Or the fact is that many of us would have had great difficulty cooperating with the police if they had asked us to. That’s one thing because. That we distrusted the police, we distrusted the State. It took repentance for us to start talking. Not to mention I would never have known the details.

Because I have never been part of or even flirted with these organizations. But some were romantically fascinated, as if being illegal increased one’s intelligence quotient. This does not mean that I would have denounced them. But I didn’t like him. I fought against them. MR It was. Hard times. Intellectuals. Intellectuals were insulted

And accused of sympathizing with the Red Army Faction or of having accommodated Ulrik Meinhof. Fortunately, it never rang at my house. I don’t know how I would have reacted. If I had read some of these articles and I thought she had done some very good critical journalism for a while.

It resonated with some, who then found themselves faced with a dilemma. They were neither for the Red Army Faction nor for acts of terrorism, but neither did they want to be merciless with those who feared prison and severe punishment. That’s why for a while there was an in-between. A gray area. Said Rafah.

Baader’s gang acted as if we were still living under fascism or as if we were soon going to live there again. I think they felt like the Avengers, the avengers of the German Resistance, destroyed and too weak. And therefore, they believed that they did not need to respect any rules,

Not even the most minimal rules of humanity. Serious yes. The little girl’s living conditions in a terrorist group. At. Within NATO continued. Some said they were comrades who were going astray and others were in favor of violence anyway. I, like many others, were very clearly opposed to the use of this violence.

During the occupation of the hospital. During the occupation of the hospital, during our fight for abortion. We, the organizers, realized that there were women who had been recruited by terrorist organizations. And what happened was that we denounced certain doctors with banners that said this doctor was watching the football match,

This woman died while she was watching a football match instead of operating on seven other doctors, performs paid clandestine abortions, etc. etc. Alain They shot him in the elbow, another in the leg. The doctors. They pulled them in the elbows because then they could no longer operate.

So a few of us got together and said goodbye. And that’s it. That happened. We never again denounced doctors, We no longer denounced the hospital because it is one thing to denounce and another to decide that a person will no longer operate. There really was. In Turin a gloomy atmosphere.

Withdrawal into oneself. It was necessary. Years for it to pass. And in a certain way. It has. Allowed the most conservative and reactionary forces. To reread. The past. As if. 67, 68. 69 had to. Inevitably lead to. That. In 1976, plagued by terrorism, weakened by the protests of women

Within the organization itself, Lotta continued. Just like the Proletarian Left, two years earlier, dissolved itself. This is not the end of her activist journey for Vickie who will continue to devote herself to the cause of women. But if the ebb of revolutionary hope is evident in Europe, other forms of fighting appear

Into which the generation of the student movement will be engulfed. In Germany, the anti-nuclear fight and then ecology will give a new form to the aspirations to change the world. So, for me, there. Question of ecology didn’t start with something like But let

This flower grow and let this tree grow and let this frog jump. From the beginning it was for me a big question of world history. The questions of atomic energy and the nuclear bomb are major strategic questions. And. I presented my first theses on feminism and ecology in 1977

And all my eightie and feminist friends looked at me askance and said to me but what is that Eva Kuistore? Feminism and ecology, what does that mean? And I even spoke about electro fascism and offered a workshop at the Women’s University around this theme.

It appeared very clearly to me that from now on we could no longer rest on our old problems and our old struggles, but that we had to understand that with atomic energy, the nuclear bomb and global industrial and technical development. News. Questions arose that could not

No longer be resolved by the ideas of the left of the 19th century. Century. These workers’ struggles are class struggles and all the categories of thought developed then could no longer respond to these new problems. Prague, 1976. Peter and Lena Tova continue their journey of dissidence which will

Soon take them alongside, among others, the Slavic playwright Havel. Towards the founding of Charter 77, the Charter would be the first official document formulated by the Czechoslovak dissidence. She calls on the regime to respect human rights enshrined in the country’s constitution. While this man of the year. 76 was a very important year.

It was at this moment that different political opposition circles began to forge links between them. The event that accelerated these connections was the trial of the Plastic People, a group of young musicians. When they were arrested, solidarity petitions were circulated. But as the trial date approached, we felt that

Something bigger had to be done, that it was important. And in the corridors of the court where the trial took place, which lasted at least two or three days, there were a lot of meetings. People who did not know each other before,

Who came from different spheres of social life, got to know each other there. And it is in this atmosphere of solidarity that this very united environment was created and very characteristic of the spirit of what was to give rise to Charter 77. I remember that when Vaclav Havel arrived in his outfit saying.

Where was the beer, the. Cop at the entrance to the court asked him Are you from the accused’s family? But that would suit me too. Ravel thought for a moment. He replied Yes, I am his brother. Of course, it was like a brother in the sense. Spiritual. Yes, from a spiritual brother.

And they let him in. The Charter brought together 242 signatories as soon as it was disseminated in January 1977. Repression fell on those who, like Peter Hull and Anna Tova, were its main instigators. Engineer Peter Hull, now a mechanic, is the subject of continuous police surveillance. We can already imagine.

I admit that even though we tried to deal with this situation with humor at times, it really wasn’t easy. Some police officers purposely followed us very closely so that we could hear the heels of their shoes clicking. It was a very unpleasant feeling to have these men always, always around you.

In fact, it was all very difficult. This lasted until my arrest in May 79. When Peter was imprisoned for the second time in 1979 and when he was sentenced to five years in prison. We have. Think. The possibility of emigrating. We exchanged several letters on this subject. So say it.

And when Peter. Said. In my opinion. It was a difficult thought, Peter wanted me to make the decision, me who was free while he was imprisoned. He had written to me that he would not get angry , that he would accept my decision, whatever it was. He asked me to decide freely

Based on what I believed to be best. So I decided freely and made what I believed was the best decision. It’s at. Say stay. And so we stayed. November 17, 1989. A little more than 20 years have passed since the Czechoslovak spring. A week since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Here and here. Prague students take to the streets. Day after day, they are joined by an ever-increasing crowd. This is the beginning of the Velvet Revolution. Of autumn. It was Monday. 17 18, 19 No. On November 20, I approached Wenceslas Square. It was almost 4 p.m. and the place was full, completely full.

To the demonstrations of the previous days. There were people there, but they were far from filling the entire place. And there, the crowd filled it completely. That’s when I understood. That. It was the end of this regime. And I must. Saying that my impression was a bit

Strange, probably influenced by the fact that Peter was in prison. I felt a little bitter. It’s difficult for me to talk about it. And there, I said to myself. How easy! By the time so many people are getting into it, it’s easy. Games are made. Do I.

Did you know full well that it was over? And since I saw that suddenly it was so easy, I admit that I did something terrible. Ah! Instead of rejoicing with the crowd, I simply went home and told myself that no one needed me anymore. There was no longer any need for courage.

So I came home. Next week in the six. I have been. Released on Saturday night. Sunday. The car that took me to drive for an hour or two before arriving home. At eight. From Angelica Street, around 3 a.m. Jenna The kitchen was full of people. There was my wife and a strange thing.

On. The fridge had one. Television of televisions. I had never had a television. Before and. We have had them ever since. Had one of the first normal ones in front of the TVs. The images that the television broadcast that night seemed free to me. In the Americas.

She was already on the side of the Revolution. That’s when I understood that yes, we had won. Between 65 and 69, I had an extremely dense and intense social experience, a real concentrate of life. I think I learned as much. Whereas if I had learned fifteen languages, ten musical instruments,

30 different styles of painting, as much as if I had learned fifteen trades. What I experienced in the second part of the 70s and afterwards I did not experience it alone. It is the idea of ​​renouncing a form of activism, which was a commitment of my whole person.

And that, really, is something that is shared by an entire generation. The problems started afterwards in a certain way, but perhaps because the problems started with the real life afterwards and that there it was, it was a life in a certain imaginary way, like a life.

In the dream, in the dream of revolution, in the dream of love, in the dream of other things, in the dream of. Perhaps this is. Maybe that’s what I’m nostalgic for. It is about this life in the dream and that the long road after the GP, it was the path of precisely

Recontacting reality, of recontacting the reality of ordinary life of a life precisely, unfortunately without hope, that is to say devoid of this great revolutionary hope. What ? But this life where? Where precisely, we had to look in the very moment, in what could be the source of something strong and living.

And it’s much harder when you’re not revolutionary. Of course, it’s much harder. GOOD. It’s worse than memories. It is. And when I leave there, it’s a bit like dizziness, like. And it moves at the speed of a film, not in slow motion but in acceleration like we see films. It goes.

There would be piles every time. I perceive the little things of things, these little things that we did but which seemed. Not much. But in this overwhelming, suffocating universe, where we had to react to apathy to give energy, to campaign, we had to believe in it. It was necessary. Picket. Picket line tonight.

Bring the roller skates so you can escape quickly. October 28. 1968. Tract on Berthier high school. It’s in. 1975. Femme femme de Lotta Continua. Family planning abortion. 67. From 1967 to 2007, that’s 40 years. An activist life. No no. I don’t know. If I would define myself as an activist. I’m making some.

Things. Activists in the idea. All our debates. Activists. It is the idea that someone must follow a political line and precepts. But at least. That’s not really my type. I do what feels right at the time I do it. I feel a little. Guilty towards the new generation. Because.

On a number of things we lost. We may have failed to save a lot of things. What is certain is. That we have not transmitted the love of politics. And that really means something. I didn’t keep the love letters. I kept politics. After 1989, Peter Hull notably became

The Czech government’s delegate for human rights. Today he is a journalist. Anna Shabat Tova was a mediator with the government for several years. Both are strongly committed to the defense of the Roma community in the Czech Republic. Eva KuistoreCastor was an MEP for the German Greens from 1989 to 1994.

She founded the Women’s Peace Movement, which she still leads. After completing a thesis on the history of the Peugeot factories, Yves Cohen now teaches history at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences in Paris. He actively participated in the mobilization against the war in Chechnya. Jean-Paul JT remained at Peugeot until 1982.

He then joined the town hall of Belfort, then managed a reception center for immigrants until his retirement. Vicky Franzi Nettie is an interpreter in Turin. She continues to do what feels right at the time she is doing it. In the lovely month of May in Paris,

In the lovely month of May in Paris. And then the spring novelty spread throughout the neighborhoods. I saw the wind, time and space turning everywhere. Laughter at. Will arrive tomorrow in Paris. Oh ! The lovely month of May in Paris! Alexander. America is not very big and the Eiffel Tower?

Thousands of years passed.