>How and why did protest movements challenge existing social, economic, and political institutions in both western Europe and the East Bloc? Chapter 29 examines the challenges to the postwar social and political order that began in the 1960s and continued into the 1990s. As Europe entered the 1960s, the political and social systems forged in the postwar era appeared sound. By the late 1960s, however, this hard-won sense of stability had begun to disappear as popular protest movements in the East and the West arose to challenge dominant certainties. In the early 1970s, the astonishing postwar economic advance ground to a halt, with serious consequences. In western Europe, leaders and citizens alike grappled with the political implications of economic decline and the growth of global competition. In the East Bloc, leaders vacillated between central economic control and liberalization and left in place tight controls on social freedom, leading to stagnation, frustration, and ultimately to revolution.

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