Hippies in the Soviet Union
Completed research project
This project was devoted to a thorough exploration of the history of the hippie movement in the Soviet Union from the late sixties onwards. It payed particular attention to the place of hippies as an outsider community in the larger context of late socialism and argues that the relationship between non-conformist youth and Soviet system was hostile, yet also symbiotic. It was a predominantly oral-history project, which compliments over a hundred interviews with Soviet hippies with a variety of textual and visual sources, including KGB and party documents, personal archives, film and photographs.
The project has been advanced in tandem with a number of related projects, financed by the British Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), including ‘Around 1968’ and ‘Dropping out of Socialism’.
Results of the project:
The creation and curating of an exhibition at the Wende Museum in Los Angeles under the title 'Socialist Flower Power' in the summer of 2018 and in the co-production of a documentary film by Estonian director Terje Toomistu ‘Soviet Hippies’. Completion with the publication of a monograph titled ‘Flowers through Concrete: Explorations in the Soviet Hippieland’ (published 2021 by Oxford University Press).
Dr. Juliane Fürst
Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History
Am Neuen Markt 1
14467 Potsdam
Office: Am Neuen Markt 9d, room 1.01
Phone: 0331/74510-117
Fax: 0331/74510-143
Email: fuerst [at] zzf-potsdam.de