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The Quest for Socialist Utopia: The Ethiopian Student Movement, c. 19601974. By Bahru Zewde. Rochester, NY: James Currey, 2014. Pp. xvi, 299; glossary, bibliography, index. $90.00.
The present work is a major contribution to the modern intellectual and political history of Ethiopia. Using an impressive range of sources and engaging a broad scholarly literature related to student radicalism, on the one hand, and the Ethiopian student movement and 1974 revolution, on the other, Bahru Zewde has produced a masterful and nuanced account of the origins, personalities, organizations, internecine debates, and tragic fates of the young intellectuals and activists who organized and led student opposition to the imperial regime. It is in some respects a sequel to the author's earlier Pioneers of Change, which examined the flourishing intellectual scene of the early twentieth century.1
The introduction offers a systematic survey of the existing literature on student protest, Ethiopian and otherwise, with a focused critical response to Messay Kebede's recent Radicalism and Cultural Dislocation in Ethiopia, which treats that country's student movement from a different disciplinary perspective.2 Bahru contends that Messay is insufficiently attentive to the underlying structural or material causes of student discontent, overly invested in the Christian-centric Greater Ethiopia paradigm, and exceptionalist and presentist in his treatment of Ethiopian Marxism (pp. 7-9). These points are developed to varying degrees throughout the work. The introduction is followed by seven chapters and a summative conclusion. The first two chapters map the historical context. Chapter 1 offers a wide-ranging comparative...