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RESISTANCE TO DICTATORSHIPS IN A DEMOCRATIC EUROPE
Professor Iscte Sociology and Public Policy
CEI-Iscte Researcher
Portugal, Spain, and Greece were involved in a project investigating young Europeans' role in the resistance to dictatorships in southern Europe during the second half of the twentieth century. This research, led by Iscte, follows another on the role of various European countries in the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War.
What was the project's aim on youth activism in southern Europe during times of dictatorship?
The project Free Your Mind: Youth Activism in Southern Europe in Times of Dictatorship sought to highlight the importance of youth and student activism in opposing and eventually overthrowing the dictatorial regimes of Southern Europe in the second half of the twentieth century. More specifically, the European Remembrance 2020 line is a knowledge transfer project mainly intended for public and dissemination activities, such as conferences and exhibitions. It also privileges a young audience, so our idea would be, based on research, to demonstrate to young Europeans of the 21st century how, despite the existing political and legal constraints, previous generations of young people were able to organise, mobilise and fight in the countries of southern Europe against dictatorial regimes, actively contributing to the advent of democracies. The theoretical justification of the project – essential for its financing – was the explanation that, although the Second World War meant, in theory, the triumph of democracies over dictatorships, there were certain countries, both in southern Europe and in eastern Europe, in which dictatorial regimes remained. It also explains that these regimes adopted laws and legal provisions that greatly restricted young people, but not only the most elementary freedoms: freedom of association, demonstration, assembly, etc. It was intended that today's young people understand that these values and rights are precious, but they are not 'natural' rights – and how, not so long ago, they did not exist in countries such as Portugal, Spain and Greece.
Is there an absence of knowledge of this collective memory in the new generations, which they have sought to fill?
I am not saying there is a lack of knowledge since these topics are already part of university curricula. At Iscte, for example, our courses give great prominence to the second half of the twentieth century in Portugal and the rest of the world. But I wanted to emphasise that the parents and grandparents of these generations, despite living in societies where these rights were denied, could organise and fight and, ultimately, played a key role in overthrowing these dictatorships.
Indeed, the dictatorships of southern Europe did not fall only because of youth activism. Still, in the case of Portuguese, the successive student crises of 1962 and 1969, the growing opposition of young people to the colonial wars and the impact of international events, such as the collective mobilisation of May 1968, or, in the United States against the Vietnam War, It was very important. This is a very interesting story to tell today's young people, and they should also be aware that they have to be attentive and committed and maintain an active and conscious citizenship to guarantee their rights. On the other hand, it is important to understand that the fall of dictatorships did not occur only at that final moment when, for example, in Portugal, the regime fell due to the intervention of the Armed Forces. Since the beginning of the 1960s, youth activism has been present in university circles, later extending even to secondary education. The "captains' movement" also turns out to be the expression of the nonconformism of a younger generation of the Armed Forces. On the other hand, a good part of the generation that assumed political leadership in the post-April 25 period was forged in activism of resistance to the dictatorship, and former president Jorge Sampaio is a good example of this. This student activism against the dictatorship was a political school for the young generation in our country, as well as in Spain and Greece.
Our idea would be to demonstrate to young Europeans of the 21st century that despite the existing political and legal constraints, previous generations of young people were able to organise, mobilise and fight against dictatorial regimes, actively contributing to the advent of democracies
Was the research, therefore, part of a European project of evoking collective memory?
This funding line was not intended for research projects only but was part of the Europe for Citizens Programme and the European Remembrance 2020 line. Funding is allocated by the type of activities we organise and greatly favours the involvement of civil society organisations and not only universities. These are knowledge transfer projects. The larger the audience and the more diverse it is in terms of nationality and representation, the greater the funding. Prior to this, we had already developed another project that focused on European countries' role in the Cold War's final phase and the fall of the Berlin Wall. We usually associate this narrative with the United States and the Soviet Union. Still, Europe has played an important role in the Cold War's de-escalation and end since the 1970s, with the Helsinki summit as the high point. We developed This project with partners from Finland, the Netherlands and Germany.
Our challenge to the youth associations we collaborated with was to identify the "walls" erected today in contemporary societies. At Iscte, there is a natural audience for this type of project. I direct the Master's in International Studies, taught in English, in which about 60% of the students are from outside Portugal. Every year we receive 90 students and, therefore, we can easily fill an auditorium with students who are very interested in these topics, which happened in both the first and second projects, especially if we add students of History, Political Science and other areas.
Regarding team and partnerships, how did you manage FYM – Free Your Mind: Youth Activism in Southern Europe in Times of Dictatorship?
We collaborated with Professor Guya Accornero, a great specialist studying student movements at Iscte. This helped us a lot in building the team and identifying partners.
As international partners, we had the Complutense University of Madrid, with whom we already had a relationship through Professor Óscar Garcia (who studied student activism in Spain in the 1960s and 1970s) and the University of Crete (Greece), where Professor Maria Kousis an authority on these issues, pontificates.
Civil society associations were also involved: in Greece, the Society for Historical Studies of Crete manages the historical museum of Heraklion. In Portugal, the civil society partner was the Ephemera Association, directed by José Pacheco Pereira.
The risk of autocratic drift and an erosion of democracy and freedom values makes it important to study moments in the past when this has already happened.
As projects that privilege the dissemination and transfer of knowledge, we also take advantage of this funding to produce knowledge. Ephemera has a fantastic archive of student activism during the dictatorship, and Pacheco Pereira himself has that past. One of the highlights of the project was the holding of a large exhibition here, at Iscte, based only on the archive of Ephemera, which was inaugurated by the President of the Assembly of the Republic and which was open for several months, with guided tours for undergraduate and master's students, etc.
We also held a conference to open the project, with three panels. The first panel was composed of academics and researchers who took stock of what we know, in historical terms, about this subject. Then we had two panels of young activists: the first of activists before the 25th of April and a second panel of activists of the present, also involving our Student Association. It was very interesting to see the contrast between the concerns of one and the other as young people. Sustainability, climate change, inclusion, and the right to difference are the themes young people are mobilising today.
Reports on democracy, discussed in another interview in this magazine, indicate that there are more autocratic leaders in Europe today. Does that make these studies more pertinent?
I think so. As historian Marc Bloch said, studying and knowing the past helps us better understand what happens today. If there is this risk of an autocratic drift and an erosion of the values of democracy and freedom, it is important to study moments in the past where this has already happened. Of course, the contexts are different, but historians are concerned with pointing out that if there is one lesson that history teaches us, it is that the present is not something acquired but a momentary arrangement. We live in a world where acquired rights can be questioned and not last forever. There are advances and setbacks, and the new generations must be aware of these trends and the political proposals that may call these rights into question.
For many years, we have insisted with our History students on the importance of fact-checking when dealing with the past: not making statements about History, not writing theses, articles, or books without the conclusions being properly supported by reliable documentation in primary sources that prove what we are saying.
The project bet heavily on its quantitative impact on audiences. In addition to the Ephemera exhibition and the great conference that accompanied it, what other activities were part of the project?
There was an activity with secondary school students in Madrid and a workshop followed by a public debate in Greece, this one with interventions by various experts and several testimonies about the dictatorship in Greece. There was also a more academic conference, the final conference.
The pandemic greatly affected all this, which proved to be an extra challenge: how can a project designed and prepared to attract an audience be carried out without having this audience in person?
Zoom developed some activities, a solution that allowed us to count the participants in addition to not removing our audience.
Overall, we have gotten the message across to a different audience regarding age, geography, and nationality. We carried out more academic and other public activities, which corresponded well to the project's spirit.
What requirements should a researcher in Modern and Contemporary History consider when formulating a research project proposal like these?
There are two important dimensions. One concerns the international contextualisation of research in the History of Portugal, in this case, with a project focusing on the second half of the twentieth century. We start from the principle that we can only study and understand the history of the Portuguese dictatorship if we do so in the international context.
Along these lines, the historian Vitorino Magalhães Godinho spoke of the so-called "historical-geographical complexes", a concept that I think is very pertinent. The second premise comes from the tradition of history that is made at Iscte. The founder of our department, Professor Miriam Halpern Pereira, insisted on the dimension of "comparative history". This means that we can only truly understand the History of Portugal if we do so from a comparative perspective because this allows us to overcome the myth of exceptionality, or Portuguese originality, and to identify similarities and differences with the realities that are comparable to us.
To sum up, the context and comparative dimensions are very important. This also allows for European funding because this is the only way to insert the History of Portugal into the international research agendas. That would be advice I would give to our students and young historians.