Breaking the Walls of Privacy: How Rebellion Came to the Street

This article approaches the events of 1968 not—as traditionally done—by focusing on the agents of activism but rather on the spaces of their activism. Drawing from examples in Poland, Ireland and the Soviet Union, it argues that the street and square as sites of protest assumed more and more significance in the run-up to and during the events of 1968, changing both the nature of protests and the symbolic and physical nature of the spaces concerned. In Poland 1968 was a rare moment when resistance to the socialist regime spilled out of the confines of safe spaces such as Warsaw University into public places, thus involving not only a select group of non-conformists, but the Polish people at large. For Ireland, too, 1968 was a year when Irish protesters crossed physical boundaries, taking their protest not only to the street but into hostile territory. The Soviet Union had seen a gradual transition from conspiratorial resistance hidden from the public view to more and more open protests that used its very publicity as a weapon. Events culminated in the tragic self-immolation of a Kaunas youngster on the site of the local hippie hang-out and opposite the local Communist Party headquarters. The article's analysis of the spaces of protest highlights not only the complex inter- and re-actions between the different participants involved in 1968, but also illustrates how space itself was transformed from being a site of protest to being a symbol of and reason for protest.