In Europe

other things on their minds: their ‘socialism with a human face’ was under increasing pressure from a ranting and raving Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet leader who had succeeded Khrushchev in 1964. On the night of 21 August, 1968, he drummed up half a million soldiers from five ‘socialist brother states’ to invade Czechoslovakia. When Soviet spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov was asked in 1987 to explain the difference between the Prague Spring and his boss Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika, his reply was: ‘Nineteen years.’
    A Parisian friend of mine once told me that, right before another storm blew in, he had walked past the cordons of riot police in the streets of the capital and saw behind their visors, to his amazement, not the faces of robots but of tired, middle-aged men, probably with teenage children at home. We were sitting in the evening sun in front of Café Flore, one of the revolutionary road houses of that day. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘the people here haven't really changed. They're just acting in a different play.’
    Run, comrade, the old world's on your heels.
Forbidden to forbid.
Power to the imagination.
Count your hard feelings and be ashamed.
Be realistic, demand the impossible.
Beneath the paving stones lies the beach.
    The memory of May 1968 may be preserved in such lovely one-liners, but the actual daily practice of the celebrated Parisian revolution was a fairly chaotic one. During those May evenings in the Latin Quarter, one former student demonstrator said he had felt more or less like Stendhal's protagonist Fabrice del Dongo during the Battle of Waterloo: events were happening all around, but he barely understood what was going on. At first the revolt had been little more than a prolonged and massive series of street skirmishes, prompted largely by the violence displayed by the police. That had begun as early as 22 March at Nanterre, where demonstrators had been badly beaten, and on 3 May, when students still committed to non-violence were thrashed out of the Sorbonne. After that, day by day, the fighting in the streets of Paris escalated, until finally the boulevards were filled with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators.
    At the same time, there was the imagination, the dream that briefly ruled the streets. The Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom has described how, sitting at the feet of a lady who launched into the ‘Internationale’ every ten minutes, he watched a demonstration pass by:‘A never-ending procession, filling both sides of the boulevard, students, Spanish workers, hospital personnel in white, setters, printers, drivers, hotel employees, teachers, all groups with their own songs, of all ages, often arm in arm, an incredible number of women and girls among them, everything that fills the pavements of Paris, a happy crowd that finally merges into itself like a river.’ Later he went to the Odéon, where a packed auditorium was in the midst of self-examination. ‘A young man in the centre aisle of the theatre is leading the talk. It remains glorious: someone speaks from one of the golden theatre boxes, the lovely and serious, the faces – no longer bored – at last turn in that direction, the arguments flow back and forth in the longest conversation in the world which has been going on for days, around the clock.’
    As a young reporter for a student paper, I went with a colleague to Paris to report on the revolt. I remember a truck full of students tearing down the Champs-Élysées waving red flags, a classroom at the Sorbonne where girls passed out bread and sausage donated by sympathetic Parisians, the plush and the gold leaf of the packed Odéon, and a Spanish Gypsy family that put on shows in front of the theatre with a dancing monkey and agoat in culottes. Red flags, trucks, free food: if this wasn't a revolution, we didn't know what was. I found a few of my old notes from the weekend of 18 May.
    Concerning the atmosphere in the occupied Sorbonne: ‘The lack of sleep begins to assume major forms. ‘In view of the rising number of nervous crises and depressions, the auxiliary services organisation asks you to sleep at least five hours a night. Comrades, people can only contribute to a revolution when they sleep and eat regularly.’ Beethoven, Chopin and jazz that sounds like Erroll Garner is playing in the hall. A boy with a clarinet tries to play along, everyone claps, a drunken
clochard
dances in circles.’
    Concerning the uneasy contacts between students and workers: