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 1976. Some scholars date its conclusion to the start of the Fourth West Scipian War (1963). This roughly 25-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. Critics of this time derisively refer to the generation born or raised in this period as "Pasaniks," from the Hebrew word "Pasa," which means "[to be] open-minded," but also "to be simple, to be naive, to be enticed, or to be deceived." Colloquially, this generation is also referred to casually as the " '50s generation" or among Chareidim as the "Lost Generation." It was in these two and a half decades that Yisrael developed stronger (or at least more cordial) ties with a number of previously hostile or cold countries, including Talahara, North Ottonia, Wazheganon, and of course its arch-enemy Sydalon through the Yarden peace process and subsequent treaty, among others.
Among the majority of historians and political scientists who argue this period existed until the 1970s, they primarily argue that 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 secularizing and liberalizing 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 Wernerist 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 was 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 on a return to the 1919 spirit 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 both the Socialist Front's and Azoulayist loyalists' control during the civil war, reinforced the public's overwhelming support to restore the 1920 constitutional order under new, moderately liberal leadership.
Labor activism
Already by the early-to-mid 19th century, Wernerist and syndicalist-inspired labor activism had reached Yisrael, the former largely from Belisaria and the latter from Talahara. These networks of labor agitation, underground mass meetings, general strikes, assassinations of captains of industry and other illegal actions, were routinely suppressed by the absolute monarchy's Royal Yisrael Secret Service and national police. The great White Terror at the end of that century cemented the labor movement's criminalization.
The youthful and modernizing King Meir II, while implementing the White Terror laws early in his reign, became increasingly sympathetic to arguments for reform by advocates of the middle and poor sectors, which showed the increasing poverty and often harsh conditions in industrial factories. He executed several royal decrees reaffirming halachic requirements by Jewish industrialists and employers over working conditions and treatment of their workers, as well as involving the Crown to oversee and investigate allegations of mispayment and other financial abuses by some industrialists and manufacturers. These reforms eased support for more systemic changes, and between Meir's benevolent approach and the White Terror legal regime, the labor movement remained small, hunted by the state authorities, and largely unable to change many minds towards Wernerist or syndicalist thought as intended.
This changed quickly upon his death in 1909, upon which his son Nechemia II assumed the throne. Considered vain, ambitious, susceptible to flattery and easily angered by criticism, Nechemia removed many of his father's reformist advisors and officials and replaced them with a cohort of reactionary and hardliner supporters. In the 1910s, Nechemia II's harsh response to even polite criticism, large-scale ignorance to the plight of factory workers and other working men and women, as well as a growing public perception that his wealthy and elite supporters were growing richer and more powerful as the workers fell behind, sparked a growing and reinvigorated labor movement. Eagerly backed by Talaharan syndicalist leaders and many Wernerist intellectuals in Arthurista and elsewhere, money, foreign labor activists, and new optimism flooded the Yisraeli working sector.
Helping their cause was the ravages of the 2nd West Scipian War, where thousands of young Yisraeli men lost their lives or were grievously wounded in the static, trench warfare. Traumatized by the war, feeling ignored by their monarch and government, and seeing the struggles of their family upon returning from the front, many young Yisraelis became convinced that the economy needed to be changed and workers empowered, by removing or limiting management and their perceived increasing wealth.
When the 1919 Revolution erupted, the industrial areas and working sector were among the most fervent supporters of the liberal revolutionaries, and fought ferociously against the Nechemia II regime's forces. However, the revolution mainly changed politics, not the economy. A few labor laws were passed in the early 1920s, by labor activists who had the ear of the new liberal elite. But, by and large, systemic change to working conditions and the treatment of workers was not forthcoming, and labor activists formed their own political parties in the late 1920s. Several general strikes broke out by railroad or industrial workers in the late 1920s and early 1930s, all put down by employer-armed strike breakers or state authorities.
Increasing labor strikes or inspired riots in working-income areas became a political foil for the Conservatives in parliamentary elections during the 1930s, and the Constitutional Liberals likewise labelled them "threats to public order and peace" and demonstrated little sympathy. In the 1930s, more hard-line labor activists fully embraced Wernerist or syndicalist thought, and many became anarchists or left-wing revolutionaries, believing that reforms in the existing system were all but impossible and that a worker's revolution along the lines of the Talaharan anarchist revolution in 1838 would be needed. These labor movements were harshly suppressed in the 1940s under the Autocracy but re-emerged with a vengeance after the January 1950 uprising, which kicked off the Year of Blood.
While many, if not most, of the largest and most committed labor factions were aligned with the Socialist Front of Yisrael's brutal campaign for a left-wing revolution, there were more moderate factions of laborists who aligned with the Constitutionalists during the civil war. At the end of the Year of Blood, Azoulayist ideology as well as Wernerist and related syndicalist thought had both been broadly discredited by each faction's violent acts of barbarity during and preceding the civil war, but the faction of railway workers and firearm workers led by laborist Shmuel Akelli emerged victorious, being a top ally and friend to Asher Berkowitz, who led the provisional government and then the restored kingdom's top elected role.
Autocracy era
Perhaps the most fundamental origin of the 1950s shifts come out of the decade-long reign of the nationalist-authoritarian dictatorship by General David Azoulay and his regime, the Autocracy of Yisrael. Conducting a military coup in late 1941 against the Sydalene-approved accomodationist caretaker government that came to power after Yisrael's defeat by Sydalon in what historians call the 'Phrase I' of the 3rd West Scipian War, Azoulay immediately suspended important institutions and key features of the 1920 constitutional order, though at first he promised it was "temporary" to secure the nation against the real threat of further Sydalene domination. The Knesset was suspended, never to reconvene during his rule. He immediately formed a political organization to support his new regime, called the Committee for National Unity (CNU), and all political parties save his were banned.
In the first months, he acted carefully, watching the Sydalenes for signs of displeasure or military intervention, while largely staying benevolent in public. His new government, comprised of militarists, ultranationalists, and others, secretly began a rearmament program overseas as well as suppressing large-scale political protests and other political assemblies, which he justified by claiming they were proxies by the Sydalenes or Latins to destabilize Yisrael and make it vulnerable to foreign invasion.
In February 1942, he conducted the infamous Midnight Coup to depose the sitting King Josiah III at gunpoint, installing his pliable and less-intelligent younger brother, David, on the throne instead. Josiah had been the young reformist son of Nechemiah II who had taken his absolutist father's place on the throne and held regularly upheld the 1920 Constitution's supremacy and legitimacy. David IV, by contrast to his elder brother, was viewed by elite society as less capable and more gullible, and the younger royal had quickly become a supporter of Azoulay on his own, increasing his use to the Supreme Autocrat.
Within a year of his rule, it became evident to many Yisraelis that the pre-1941 order would not be returning. References to "temporary" bans on the Knesset or political parties or the right to protest or assembly disappeared and new laws were issued by his Chancellery emphasizing the Supreme Autocrat as the "savior" of the nation, initiating a cult of personality. Not long after the Midnight Coup, critics or perceived critics of the Autocracy government increasingly were disappeared, to be sent to detainment camps deep in the Ninva desert in the Yisraeli south or to newly built facilities on the outlying Westerly Islands off southwest Yisrael. The Supreme Autocrat, and to a lesser extent, the King, were expected to be revered, and slogans focusing on upholding faith, country, and family were widespread, especially in schools and universities. Nationalist rhetoric, especially language regarding "national rebirth" and "national unity," were the order of the day.
The economy rebounded by 1943, and working hours, especially for laborers, were increased as the demand for goods increased. Youth leagues were formed, and boys and young men were put to work rebuilding from the 1941 war's destruction, including many parts of western Yisrael, where fighting was among the heaviest and most intense outside of the Yarden River Valley front. Many middle- and upper-middle sector Yisraelis grew more comfortable, but many lower and working income families suffered under the increased workload, reduced safety standards, and frequent ideological checks. The height of the regime's popularity may have been between 1943 and 1947, as the economy was soaring, national pride among many were up, the trauma of the war as well as the Sydalene threat had faded, and the country was busy.
However, Azoulay either permitted or turned a blind eye to his inner circle and other allies profiting from their state or party positions, and a culture of corruption and power politics emerged. It was not just in the government and CNU; many in the rabbinic establishment, the judges on the Sanhedrin, as well as industrialists, all fell victim to the impulse, and as a result, nepotism, favoritism, and malfeasance grew. Between 1947 and 1949, when Phrase II of the 3rd West Scipian War erupted, the public's view of the regime had begun to fall. While official statistics were barred, common perceptions spread quick as numerous scandals emerged about corrupt or incompetent behavior. A major turning point was a September 1947 fire in a textile factory in Dervaylik led to the death of 68 working women, which was heavily covered by state-approved newspapers. Word dripped back of Yisraelis killed or injured in the Ottonian war between 1947-49, and new tensions with Sydalon preceding the war in 1949 gripped the public's imaginations. General Azoulay increasing employed open violence, including firing into a crowd of female protestors after the 1947 fire, or public raids to arrest political moderates inside the CNU in 1948, which angered the political class.
Some of these were precluded or smoothed over by Yisrael's smashing victory in the Phrase II of the 3rd WSW, which led to Yisraeli troops evicting Sydalene troops from the southern bank of the Yarden Valley and occupying parts of Petra and southwestern Sydalon. However, the January 1950 leftist uprising struck a chord, and within weeks the leftist united front known as the Socialist Front of Yisrael and the moderate, pro-1920 faction known as the Constitutionalists emerged to separately overthrow the Autocracy regime.
Characteristics
Politics
Politics in Yisrael was thoroughly dominated by the Constitutional Liberal Party, with some political historians characterizing the first half of the epoch as a dominant-party system rather than a competitive system. The Con-Libs controlled the presidency for 20 out of 24 years between 1952-1976, and they controlled the Knesset for almost as long. Both pre-Autocracy parties were revived, but the Con-Libs, as the triumphant ruling leadership in the wake of the Year of Blood, held practical and then institutional power - power that would last well into the 1970s and 1980s. The Royalist Conservatives re-formed from an eclectic mixture of Autocracy-era exiles and expatriates, low-level functionaries, and statesmen "retired" by Azoulay's regime. Many of their numbers were depleted, however, as many pre-1941 Conservatives decided to join Azoulay's CNU and work for the government rather than flee or resist.
1950s
In the summer of 1952, the Berkowitz clique pushed through an electoral college for the presidency that lopsidedly favored the Con-Libs. After the Year of Blood and in the reconstruction of the 1950s, there were large population shifts across the country, scrambling the pre-1941 political calculus. The Con-Libs and a few allied minor left-wing parties won solid majorities in the Knesset for years, with the Conservatives and other right-wing and centrist parties not bringing the Con-Libs' below the super-majority status until 1962.
The ascendant "Berkowitz clique" was moderately liberal, with many of its supporters falling into the conservative-liberal or national-liberal camps. A gush of social welfare legislature passed in the early-to-mid 1950s, with the workweek shortening to 4.5 days, paid time off becoming a public entitlement, a progressive income tax and wealth tax surcharges created and expanded, and legal relaxation of religious enforcement, including the appointment of "liberal" rabbinic judges (dayanim) onto the Sanhedrin who took a hands-off approach generally to policing religious norms. However, not all of the Berkowitz-era policies were left-friendly; the clique and its grip on national political bodies passed or enforced a raft of anti-union and anti-strike legislation, and the national government took a selective look at safety and workplace regulations. Hostility to trade unionism was tied to both the Berkowitz clique's moderately liberal, elite backgrounds but also the trauma of the brutal fighting in the Year of Blood: the Socialist Front of Yisrael, among whom the vast majority of labor groups supported or joined, engaged in a violent wartime campaign of summary executions, killing of prisoners, wholesale destruction of towns, and other atrocities. Historians estimate 8,000-15,000 noncombatant Yisraelis were killed in areas under the SFY's control.
Asher Berkowitz served as president and a de facto "second founding father" of the country throughout the 1950s; he won re-election in 1956 with 72% of the vote, the highest ever recorded. He retired in 1960 after his political opposition started a rumor campaign that he would establish a presidential dictatorship. That year, his Vice-President and top political ally, Aaron Barkan, won the "third" Berkowitz term, and the policies generally continued as they were.
1960s
However, the 1960s would serve as a challenge to Berkowitz clique rule: both the right and left would chip away at its dominance. The far left, impatient with the social legislation passed in the preceding decade, agitated to pass a more ambitious left-wing agenda, including legalizing trade unions, implementing a more systemic workplace safety regulations, slapping import taxes on foreign goods, empowering the government to nationalize or take a guiding role in "essential industries," and reorient Yisraeli foreign policy more firmly towards the Republican Bloc. On the right, as well, a decade and more of losing and being out of power, combined with anger over the wave of policies that they saw as weakening and "ruining" Yisrael, the Conservatives focused on building a electoral strategy.
The postwar spike in support for the Con-Libs had cooled by 1960, though Barkan won his election comfortably over a backbencher Knesset Conservative. Right-wing media, funded by wealthy supporters of the party, had sprung up and won adherents among conservative-leaning constituencies, and the 1950s mass migration had died down, with many precincts and cities' political demographics stable and known. As the memory of the Year of Blood faded further away, corruption and malfeasance of the current government captured the public's attention. At least two of Barkan's Cabinet ministers were found to be misusing public resources and resigned after the resulting outcry; business owners protested the increasing taxation and regulatory burdens, and a banking crisis in 1963 caused a mild recession, putting workers out of their jobs. The Conservatives and an allied right-wing party won big success in the 1962 Knesset midterm elections, driving down the Con-Libs from a supermajority to just a majority.
The 1964 general election was the first competitive presidential election since 1940. Nosson Zadlec, a youthful 45-year-old governor of the populous Central District, an ethnic Ostrozavan Jew, and war hero, won the Conservative nomination, and gave Barkan a run for his money. Polling was still in its early years, but even pollsters for the Con-Libs found an anxious electorate eager for change. Zadlec defeated Barkan, the incumbent, winning an Electoral Vote of 113 to Barkan's 73 - a decisive victory. Zadlec carried his own Central District (the only time a Conservative has done so), along with the Western, Yerushalayim, and Northern Districts, while Barkan carried the Dervaylik, Southern, Eastern, and Yarden Special Districts. Zadlec also beat Barkan 53%-47% in the popular vote.
Despite the Zadlec victory (alongside a thin Conservative flag coalition in the Knesset), the country's political trajectory largely stayed center-left. The Zadlec administration and his friendly Knesset found themselves stymied by a resistant Con-Lib-appointed civil service and bureaucracy; President Zadlec's attempt at reforming the civil service to more easily fire those appointees led to public outcry and a political retreat. Also, most of his administration ended up being a wartime government: the Fourth (and last) West Scipian War broke out when the Sydalenes under an Invictist Chancellor invaded from the north, throwing the country into war. After fending off a war of survival and an entrenched establishment staffed by his political opponents, new issues cropped up that plagued the Zadlec administration. The prospect of a peace process offered by a dovish Sydalene leader divided his Conservatives; the Yisraeli Christians, energized by the recent war that saw an opportunity to overthrow the Yisraeli state and accept Fabrian rule, initiated a terror campaign, and left-wing social radicals sparked a series of (illegal) labor strikes and violent riots to effect change in the face of impassable politics.
A rising star of the left, and an internal opponent to the Berkowitz clique inside the Con-Lib party, was Boaz Benayoun. He challenged and won his party's nomination, promising a raft of liberalizing reforms and change unheard of in Yisraeli politics except from the left-fringe. With a surge of energy from his left-wing base, and a political center tired of a president at war with the bureaucracy and seemingly unable to re-establish peace and stability, Benayoun beat Zadlec in the 1968 election by a narrow 97-94 in the Electoral College (though losing the popular vote by a narrow 49.6%-50.4%), with Benayoun flipping the electorally behemoth of the Central District into his column but losing the less-valuable Eastern District in return.
<--Benayoun & late 60s -->
1970s
Law
The law in Yisrael had been weaponized by the Autocracy into a extension of the state and the Supreme Autocrat's will. Upon his overthrow and a restoration of the constitutional order, Yisraeli law and political structures underwent a significant shift to avoid such a political epoch again.
Political structures
The nature of the head of state was reorganized from the Arthuristan-style parliamentary model with a Prime Minister into a moderately-powerful but checked presidency. An electoral college was formed to indirectly decide the president. Most pressingly, the new restored Royal Government dismantled many of the tools of oppression used by the Autocracy, including restricting the Monarchy's executive power, dissolving the Royal Yisraeli Secret Service into its successor agencies the Royal Yisraeli Intelligence Service and Royal Yisraeli Security Service, as well as repealing a raft of 1940s-era laws on treason, national security, and so-called "political crimes."
A number of public policy, economic, taxation, regulatory, and judicial powers were devolved to the Districts. The first years of the post-Year of Blood rebuilding focused on building a federalist structure to separate and divide political power and shift away from an unitary structure from the early constitutional- and Autocracy-eras.
Legal and judicial reforms
The legal system shifted from the inquisitorial system (adopted by Azoulay from the Latin legal model) to a more familiar rabbinic adversarial system. The Sanhedrin was empowered to act affirmatively as a form of judicial review on the executive and legislature, creating a true Arthuristan-inspired "separation of powers" model to prevent democratic backsliding in the future.
In 1956, the Knesset passed a new act on the courts that established a state "legal aid" office for criminal defendants in all jurisdictions. As a reaction to Autocracy-era and post-1952 bureaucratic corruption or malfeasance, Knesset passed the Private Counter-Corruption Judicial Act in 1958 and expanded in 1965 to allow private citizens, meeting a high legal threshold, to petition a higher District or Federal court to investigate and enforce a writ of mandamus against a presumptively corrupt government officer to follow their legal duty(ies) (if failing to do so), or cease illegal actions. This "cause of action" previously to the 1958 Act was only enabled by a court or other government officers. The bureaucratic culture at the time was fairly insular and self-reinforcing, and many officials were loathe to take action against colleagues even in the face of suspected or documented abuses. After this Act, there was a raft of mandamus writ petitions, and the Royal Bureau of Federal Courts recorded in 1980 that between 1958 and 1979, over a thousand unelected government officials from the local to Federal level were successfully compelled to obey the writs. Many of these officials were later removed or convicted of public malfeasance (especially between 1964-1968, when the Zadlec administration used this tactic to help (unsuccessfully) lessen bureaucratic resistance to its agenda).
In a landmark Sanhedrin case in 1966 (Campaign for Human Stewardship of the Earth v. Royal Government of Yisrael), left-wing legal advocates responding to the emerging environmental movement successfully convinced the liberal-dominated supreme court to adopt a private cause of action to compel the government to respond to public policy lack of action, with the Sanhedrin finding that there is a halachic requirement for humankind to responsibly steward the environment and nature, that this is an area of government interest, and that if the Knesset was not undertaking such regulation, then the Knesset was legally obligated to respond to private lawsuits to do so. The following years of environmental legislative-making contributed to the short era of the Late Sixties crisis that followed after Benayoun's election in 1968. This precedent was overruled in a controversial 1981 case whereas the conservative and pro-business Schwartz administration, after taking office in 1976, working resiliently to swing the Sanhedrin's majority to the right, and after doing so in 1980, quickly had allies bring the case to accomplish the goal.