Convergent responses to disorder: Cultural revolution and detente among the great powers during the 1960s

This dissertation provides a wide-ranging narrative for the international history of the 1960s. It focuses on great power diplomacy and domestic social contention. The author argues that the interactions between the most powerful states, their leaders, and many of their citizens produced a broad crisis of authority in the 1960s. The diplomatic compromises and domestic repressions that accompanied detente at the end of the decade reflected the deepening anxieties of established leaders. Detente, in this sense, had a social origin that scholars have largely neglected.; The 1960s came to a close with diplomacy and domestic politics oddly frozen in place. These were the conservative consequences that, paradoxically, followed from radical social upheaval. Stability did not arise naturally during this period. Instead, it was artificially enforced by the besieged leaders of the great powers.; This dissertation reflects extensive archival research in the United States, Germany, France, Great Britain, and Russia. The author also uses primary sources from China and parts of Eastern Europe. Brought together, these materials allow for a reassessment, and significant revision, of how historians generally describe diplomacy and social change in the 1960s.