Abstract
Richard Wolin’s The Wind from the East seeks to explain how the French 1960s,
which saw an upsurge in revolutionary politics in 1968, ended up democratizing
France by regenerating its civil society and liberating the country from the dom-
ination of technocracy in the early Fifth Republic. Focusing on Maoism – mainly
that of the Gauche prole´tarienne (henceforth GP) – and intellectuals, Wolin argues
that the Maoist notion of cultural revolution gradually shifted, via a ‘constructive
political learning process’ (p. 4), from an emphasis on a revolutionary seizure of
power to a focus on democratic change in the course of the late 1960s and early
1970s. It thereby offered a generation ‘an exit strategy to escape from the strait-
jacket of orthodox Marxism’ (p. 20). Although Wolin admits that Maoism ‘cannot
take sole credit’ (p. xii) for this change, he clearly gives it the lion’s share.
Unfortunately, The Wind from the East offers little that is new. Although its
author attributes more importance to Maoism than previous scholars, its thesis is
old hat. It echoes the narrative of Ge´ne´ration, the journalistic account by Herve´
Hamon and Patrick Rotman published over twenty years ago.1 More recently,
Julian Bourg’s From Revolution to Ethics examined many of the same actors and
events in a history that exceeds The Wind from the East in its subtlety, depth of
research, and sophistication, while concluding similarly that 1968 and its aftermath
democratized France.2 The Wind from the East also disappoints with the relative
shallowness of its research. Scholars of the period will find little new information in
it because it relies largely on the existing secondary literature, is based on little or
no archival research, and does not delve deeply into the published primary sources
on most issues.