Toomitsu says the Soviet hippies were all about "...remaining true to your ideals, values and practicing kindness and love towards each other - which was already a very different emotional stance from the mainstream society. Plus having a sense of participation in the western pop culture and/or spiritual quests. (The Soviet Union was an atheist state.) Not participating in [a] society that seems to be based on lies and pretentious social roles."
The hippies called the network "sistema" or the system. The film shows them getting together to lay back, listen to some tunes, and get high. LSD was uncommon, but Astmatol, a cigarette with the wacky tobacky combination described in the Soviet Encyclopedia, made into tea, brought welcome hallucinations to numb lives, just as it did to teens in America. "The unifying feature of the movement which hasn't lost its importance," says ascetic Aare Loit-Babai is, lighting up, early in the film, "is the non-violent attitude." These hippies sought "kaif," essentially the same expansion of the senses that their young counterparts in the West sought. On a visit to Viking, "a legendary hippie in Tallinn," Loit-Babai voices over an animation of his Astmatol high, in one of the highlights of the film.
But everything changed on June 1, 1971 in Moscow, when a "Union-wide" gathering of hippies convened outside the US Embassy under the pretext of protesting the American war in Viet Nam. Though the Soviet government had given permission to gather and protest, for reasons not fully explained in the film, authorities got spooked by the outburst of loud but non-violent behavior of the placard-bearing protesters and shove came to Pushkin Street; hippies were roughed up and arrested; many were kicked out of school, lost jobs, and at least one student leapt out a window.
Terje Toomitsu told me that this was a crucial pivot point for Soviet hippies:
There was a short period of time when the hippie movement became [politicized], and this changed the fate of the movement, pushing it deep underground, making it more radical, drug infused, and distant from any desire for political involvement. I think this is very important to understand and it largely explains the 'escapist' drive amongst the hippies during the 1970s.
The hippies had been given permission to demonstrate, so maybe it was the truly American audacity of free expression and the implicit middle finger to authority of happy hippiedom that Soviet officials caught wind of that irked them into action. Or maybe the put-down was CIA-agitated; another chance for Americans to show the world how the Soviets handle freedom.
Nevertheless, throughout the USSR, "socialism with a human face" inched forward toward a centrism, which was meant to be a kind of compromise with the authoritarianism. In short, a chance to purchase more Western goods, more Big Macs, and stuff made in Chinese sweatshops, like Nike shoes and iMacs. In 1989, even Berlin Wall chunks were sold as keychains in department stores. Americans now have their own centrism to worry about -- two parties, one vision, and the "lesser-of-two-evils" voting is largely a case of trying to figure out which one of the two will f*ck us less for the next four years. And we, too, have long lines for socialist handouts. Sigh.
The multi-award winning film continues to make the rounds of small (mostly fringe) festivals. It's quirky, but, as Toomitsu has pointed out, it's also an especially interesting document for those with a cultural anthropology bent. You can view Soviet Hippies at Vimeo on-demand for a few bucks. Those interested in more information on the background of the film-making, as well as aspects of Toomitsu's academic inquiry with the project, can view her TED Talk. Here is a generous sampling of the music soundtrack featured in the film.
First appeared in Counterpunch on January 19, 2020.
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