Atdhe Hetemi (Universiteit Gent)
The 1960s will remain in history as times of momentous changes that occurred both on the global and local level. The student movements of the 1960s are considered as revolutionary acts aiming to create a better world. Unlike in the United States and Western Europe where the youth aspired to move away from wild capitalism, their counterparts in Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) lived in a different social order, namely Communism. Thus, the Westerners were mobilized for countercultural reasons, whereas students in SFRY were demanding ‘better implementation of Communism’. The demands in SFRY were mostly of social nature and centered on a critique of the bureaucratization of the Party, but they did not necessarily threaten the SFRY political system. However, the 1968 SFRY student movements are still considered very important because they represent the first public criticism of self-management socialism. This paper argues that the student movements of 1968 did not have the same character in the West and SFRY. Additionally, they did not have the same character even within SFRY: while in Belgrade, they were primarily socially motivated, the student demonstrations in Zagreb and Prishtina were also considered as nationalist. Nevertheless, the 1960s were the rhetoric decade when important developments took place in global, regional (SFRY) and local level (Kosovo) due to the actions taken by students. Several authors and concepts of social movements contexts will govern the main arguments of this paper. In addition, a wide range of newspaper articles, archival documents, personal interview materials on this subject will be consulted and analyzed to gain an understanding on the influence of these movements as well as how the global wave of revolt passed through SFRY.