Open Fifties
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The Open Fifties, alternatively known as or written as the Open '50s or Open 1950s, is a cultural colloquialism in Yisraeli popular culture that refers to the period from the end of the Year of Blood (1951) until the start of the Fourth West Scipian War (1963). This roughly 12-year period was a highly controversial era in Yisraeli life, characterized by a shift towards the left culturally and fiscally in politics and society, including a relaxing of religious practices and strictures.
Some scholars propose an extended timeline until 1976, as while the brief wartime Conservative presidency of Nosson Zadlec reversed some policy and political changes during the midst of the Fourth West Scipian War, many of these trends continued until the late 1970s, when Yisraeli society turned rightward in a reaction to the perceived disorder and breakdown in tradition resulting from the "Open '50s" as well as a backlash to the Yarden Accords. The era was considered culminated during the beginning of the presidency of Binyamin Schartz (1976-1984). In a op-ed by Chiloni social critic Joshua Hulien in June 1978, he laments that "[w]e are witnessing the end of our beloved generation [...] our open '50s and free '60s, now no more."
Origins
"Spirit of 1919"
There had been a seismic shift in popular perception and sentiment in the run-up to, and aftermath of, the 1919 Revolution. Liberal forces, operating behind-the-scenes among sectors of the elite and through popular agitation among the working sectors, had slowly introduced new ideas from Belisarian liberal states, including Arthurista and Brumen, among others. The brutality and excesses of hyper-nationalism during the 2nd West Scipian War in the mid-1910s against Sydalon along with the increasingly autocratic and publicly corrupt absolute monarchy of King Nechemia II had slowly (or in some cases, quickly) changed minds, and an increasing majority of Yisraelis from across social and economic sectors wanted change. The Constitutional Liberals led the uprising after the 2nd WSW's conclusion to force a constitution, and within months and backed by popular support, the liberal revolution succeeded and a constitutional monarchy and representative elected government were established.
Historians have coined this new post-1919 sentiment the "spirit of 1919," as despite the remnants of reactionary political forces and supporters of the old Yisrael, a new majority supported the revolution and its principles, and rejected any perceived backsliding towards absolute monarchy and widespread electoral disenfranchisement and lack of political participation. This was strongest in the 1920s, felt intensely as the successful constitutionalists beat back political posturing from the defeated absolutists to strengthen the 1919 revolution's aims, including firm limits on the monarchy's power, a crackdown on corruption among the government bureaucracy and religious (rabbinic) establishment, extending the voting franchise to most or all Yisraeli men, and breaking up powerful private monopolies that the absolutist Crown had supported previously.
By the late 1920s, there was some fatigue in the public as left-wing activists, especially labor supporters who introduced Warnerist ideologies among the industrial working sector, tried pushing new laws that went beyond the public's appetite. The Conservatives, themselves, had started to internalize the supremacy of the Constitution and understood there was no popular desire to return to a pre-1919 order. In the 1930s, the Conservatives had won bouts of political power by utilizing the parliamentary system, and were by and large careful to avoid attacks on the Constitution's legitimacy. The West Scipian Contention with Sydalon heated up in the 1930s, and nationalism arose again as tensions flared.
The spirit of 1919 was dealt its biggest blow after the complete Yisraeli defeat in Phase I of the 3rd West Scipian War in the fall 1941. The full Sydalene occupation of the Yarden River Valley, stiff sanctions and war reparations, and limits on the Yisraeli military's size and armament, as well as the looming threat of Sydalon's military occupying the whole country, introduced a public panic such that most Yisraelis feared that the country as coming to end and would be subjected to annexation or other harsh rule of the devoutly Fabrian Catholic Sydalenes. General David Azoulay's military coup and subsequent autocratic rule threatened to bury the 1919 popular spirit, and for several years it subsided to low whispers and the embrace of leftist resistance to Azoulay's rule, as will be discussed below.
However, the fall of the Supreme Autocrat and the insistence by the conservative-liberal-oriented Constitutionalist faction during the Year of Blood reignited public fervor for the ideals, which, combined with the post-conflict publication of the horror of mass executions and other brutality in areas of Yisrael under the Socialist Front's control during the civil war, reinforced the public's overwhelming support to restore the 1920 constitutional order under new, moderately liberal leadership.