Generations in Twentieth-Century Europe

The concept of generation is ubiquitous in common parlance and public discourse: it is used to explain family relationships, consumer preferences, political change, and much else besides. But how can generation be used by historians? Do generations really exist, or are they constructed and manipulated by social and cultural elites? In pursuit of answers to these questions, this book ranges from World War I to the baby boomers and from Spain to the Soviet Union.

STEVEN LOVELL is a Lecturer in Modern European History at King’s College London. He is the author of The Russian Reading Revolution: Print Culture in the Soviet and Post-Soviet Eras (2000), and Summerfolk: A History of the Dacha, 1710-2000 (2003).

Introduction–S.Lovell * Modern Lives: Age Groups, Generations and Modernization Theory, 18th-20th Centuries–C.Conrad * Cultures of Change: Political Generations and Silent Generations in Post-War Germany–B.Weisbrod * Orphaned by History: French Youth in the Shadow of the Second World War–R.Vinen * ‘Don’t Trust Anyone Over 30’: ‘Generation’ as a Political Argument in West European Protest Movements, 1958-1968–H.Nehring * The First Soviet Generation: Children and Religious Belief in Soviet Russia, 1917-41–S.Smith * Identity, Agency and the ‘First Soviet Generation’–A.Krylova * Age Groups, Political Conflict and Sociological Thought in Interwar Spain–S.Souto Kustrin * The War Child: A German Trauma?–N.Stargardt * ‘Good Night, Little Ones’: Childhood in the ‘Last Soviet Generation’–C.Kelly * Generations and Inter-Generational Relationships, Public and Private, in Twentieth-Century Britain–P.Thane * Soviet Russia’s Older Generations–S.Lovell