Research Catalog

Title

Flowers through concrete : explorations in Soviet hippieland / Juliane Fürst.

Author

Furst, Juliane, 1973-

Publication

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2021.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xvi, 477 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

"Flowers through Concrete: Explorations in Soviet Hippieland takes the reader on a journey into the lives and thoughts of Soviet hippies. In the face of disapproval and repression, they created a version of Western counterculture, skillfully adapting to, manipulating, and shaping their late socialist environment. Flowers through Concrete takes its readers into the underground hippieland and beyond, situating the world of hippies firmly in late Soviet reality and offering both an unusual history of the last Soviet decades as well as a case study of transnational youth culture and East-West globalization. Flowers through Concrete is based on over a hundred interviews, declassified documents, and private archives hidden for many decades. It tells the almost forgotten story of how hippie communities sprang up across the Soviet Union in the late-60s, often under the tutelage of the rebellious offspring of privileged households at the heart of the Soviet establishment. It charts how these communities linked up to create an impressive network with elaborate customs and rituals, ensuring its survival for more than two decades. Flowers through Concrete recounts not only a compelling story of survival against the odds - hippies who were harassed by police, shorn of their hair by civilian guards, and confined in psychiatric hospitals by doctors who believed non-conformism was a symptom of schizophrenia - but also advances a surprising argument. It suggests that the land of Soviet hippies and the world of late socialism were not entirely incompatible, but in fact meshed surprisingly well. Ultimately, it was not the KGB but the arrival of capitalism in the 1990s that ended the Soviet hippie sistema."--

Subject

• 1953-1991
• Hippies > Soviet Union > History
• Counterculture > Soviet Union > History
• Civilization > Western influences
• Counterculture
• Hippies
• Soviet Union > Civilization > Western influences
• Soviet Union > History > 1953-1985
• Soviet Union > History > 1985-1991
• Soviet Union

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Short course in the history of the Soviet hippie movement and its sistema -- Origins -- Consolidation -- Maturity -- Ritualization -- How Soviet hippies and late socialism made each other -- Ideology -- Kaif -- Materiality -- Madness -- Gerla.

Call Number

JFE 21-4500

ISBN

• 0198788320
• 9780198788324

OCLC

1181838010

Author

Furst, Juliane, 1973- author.

Title

Flowers through concrete : explorations in Soviet hippieland / Juliane Fürst.

Publisher

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2021.

Edition

First edition.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Chronological Term

1953-1991

Research Call Number

JFE 21-4500