Flowers Through Concrete - Explorations in Soviet Hippieland

In the face of disapproval and repression Soviet hippies created a version of Western counterculture, skilfully adapting to, manipulating, and shaping their late socialist environment. This book explores their lives and thoughts.

List of contents

• Introduction


• Part I: Short course in the History of the Soviet Hippie Movement and Its Sistema


• 1: Origins


• 2: Consolidation


• 3: Maturity


• 4: Ritualization


• Part II: How Soviet Hippies and Late Socialism Made Each Other


• 5: Ideology


• 6: Kaif


• 7: Materiality


• 8: Madness


• 9: Gerla


• Epilogue

About the author

Juliane Fürst co-heads the Department of Communism and Society at the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History (ZZF) in Potsdam. She is the author of Stalin's Last Generation: Soviet Post-War Youth and the Emergence of Mature Socialism (2010) and co-editor of the Cambridge History of Communism (2017) and Dropping out of Socialism: Alternative Cultures and Lifestyles in the Soviet Bloc (2016).

Summary

In the face of disapproval and repression Soviet hippies created a version of Western counterculture, skilfully adapting to, manipulating, and shaping their late socialist environment. This book explores their lives and thoughts.

Additional text

This is a highly imaginative and wonderfully original study of what happened when flower power collided with Brezhnev-era officialdom, exploring how hippies carved out a space of freedom that many would not have imagined possible, given the repressive and ideological power of the party-state

Product details

• Authors: Furst , Juliane (Head of Department of Communism an Furst, Juliane Fürst
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.12.2020
• EAN: 9780198788324
• ISBN: 978-0-19-878832-4
• No. of pages: 496
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Contemporary history (1945 to 1989); Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000, European History, HISTORY / Europe / General, Later 20th century c 1950 to c 1999, Socialism & left-of-centre democratic ideologies, Left-of-centre democratic ideologies, c 1945 to c 2000 (Post-war period)