Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Detente

In this book Jeremi Suri puts the tumultuous 1960s into a truly international perspective in the first study to examine the connections between great power diplomacy and global social protest. Profoundly disturbed by increasing social and political discontent, Cold War powers united on the international front, in the policy of d?tente. Though reflecting traditional balance of power considerations, d?tente thus also developed from a common urge for stability among leaders who by the late 1960s were worried about increasingly threatening domestic social activism. In the early part of the decade, Cold War pressures simultaneously inspired activists and constrained leaders; within a few years activism turned revolutionary on a global scale. Suri examines the decade through leaders and protesters on three continents, including Mao Zedong, Charles de Gaulle, Martin Luther Kung Jr., Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He describes connections between policy and protest from the Berkeley riots to the Prague Spring, from the Paris strikes to massive unrest in Wuhan, China. Designed to protect the existing political order and repress movements for change, d?tente gradually isolated politics from the public. The growth of distrust and disillusion in nearly every society left a lasting legacy of global unrest, fragmentation and unprecedented public skepticism toward authority.

About the Author :
JEREMI SURI is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Review :
In clear and concise prose, Suri tells the tale of the stalemate in the Cold War, the rise of global protest in the 1960s, and the coming of d?tente as a conservative reaction to these events...The watershed year is 1968, when Berkeley, West Berlin, Washington, Paris, Prague, and Wuhan, China were all convulsed by protests that added up to 'global disruption.' The reaction was, Suri argues, d?tente. Rejecting the traditional balance of power, he uses instead the 'balance of order' to describe the emerging common interest. Thereafter, Nixon, Brezhnev, Mao, and Willy Brandt worked in concert to stabilize their societies, avoid direct challenges, increase secrecy, secure arms control, and repair their personal images through treaties and summits...[I]n the final analysis, this is an indispensable new work.--C. W. Haury"Choice" (01/01/2004) This is a remarkable book which should command a good deal of attention. Not only does Jeremi Suri come up with a striking interpretation of detente but he has thought-provoking things to say about how to do international history. Above all, perhaps, Suri has produced a deeply researched monograph based on a large range of primary sources in several languages which also tackles large issues. There seems little doubt that Suri's book will stir the pot of cold war studies...This book is a major achievement and is eminently worth arguing with.--Richard Crockatt"Cold War History" (02/01/2005) Unlike many first books, "Power and Protest" is no narrow specialist monograph. On the contrary, Suri draws together domestic and international developments in a meaningful, even ambitious, manner to offer a history of the 1960s on a grand scale.--Peter Beck "History " ambitious, manner to offer a history of the 1960s on a grand scale. book will stir the pot of cold war studies...This book is a major achievement and is eminently worth arguing with. control, and repair their personal images through treaties and summits...[I]n the final analysis, this is an indispensable new work.