between 16 and 25 years of age, and 15 people between 26 and 30 years of age; 64 were males, and 16 were females.45 Thirteen of them had been “targets of active KGB measures;” 10 were “involved in ideologically harmful actions;” 3 were indicted for criminal offences; 8 were arrested for manufacturing and selling drugs; 27 were arrested for using drugs; 15 were receiving medical treatment in mental institutions; 10 were “arrested for avoiding military service; and approximately 50% of all Ukrainian hippies did not study or work.”46 As late as April 1987, the KGB still confirmed the existence of the “hippies-pacifists” in Ukraine who called themselves “Sistema.” Overall, there were 60 hippies in the republic (mainly in Dnipropetrovsk, Lviv, Odesa, and Simferopol), and 30 in Kyiv.47
KGB reports offered the Ukrainian communist leadership a relatively thorough sociological analysis of the hippie movement and KGB active measures that were employed from 1969 to 1987 to curtail the movement in Ukraine. Based on interviews with former hippies, one such report stated:
On the one hand, there are young people, who (due to their young age) aspire to something unusual and romantic, reading a certain type of literature […] and are keen on their crazy ideas and colorful clothes […] (which allow them to stand out among their peers). On the other hand, there is another group of young people who understand very well the incompatibility of the hippies’ ideas with the Soviet system, nevertheless, joining the movement consciously. [These] people […] make money using this movement, i.e., selling clothes (“fartsuiut barakhlom”), drugs, and other things […] [they] criticize (“khaiut”) all Soviet things, calling them “sovdela” (Soviet stuff) […] [and] want to escape to the West, inciting others to do the same. […] many of them maintain connections with people living abroad, write and send letters abroad; they have relatives or friends there, or routinely establish contacts with foreigners visiting the city […] In their milieu, they propagandize “free love,” freedom of behavior and actions, parasitism and reluctance to obey (Soviet) laws and moral norms, calling this coercion […] They insist that “we have no democracy if we have only one ruling political party,” and that people should enjoy their lives instead of wasting it for the state …48
For the KGB, the major threat of the hippie movement seemed to be the politicization of Soviet youth and the emergence of political practices among them. The KGB identified this as the “institutionalization” of Soviet hippies, which was ultimately a dangerous alternative to Soviet youth institutions such as the Komsomol. KGB operatives feared the spread of this movement: the tentacles of the underground hippie clubs reached all major industrial cities. For instance, in February 1971 in Kirovohrad, local hippies organized the anti-Komsomol “Union of Free Youth” that included 20 members. They planned to organize a mass demonstration of the “free youth” of Kirovohrad, designed to mobilize young people for a collective fight for “freedom of speech, free love, and freedom of demonstrations.”49 The active measures of the local KGB office, including the infiltration of this hippie organization by KGB undercover officers, managed to prevent these activities.
The ideological justification for KGB covert operations against the youth culture were the hippies’ alleged connections to fascism and neo-fascism portrayed as an intrinsic feature that underpinned the Prague Spring. In the KGB analysis, the hippies were active collaborators of pro-fascist elements in Czechoslovakia who allegedly inspired the 1968 Prague Spring. Similar claims related to socialist Hungary, where hippie groups were arrested for allegedly collecting intelligence for one of the Western diversion spy centers. In 1971, the KGB exploited the same ideological arguments when analyzing the activities of Ukraine’s hippies who allegedly spread fascist ideas. The declarations made by Oleksandr Balykin, a student at the Mykolaiv Ship-Building Institute, about the similarities between the modern youth’s worldview and Hitler’s ideas discarding conscience, shame, and morality, served as supporting evidence for the KGB. Its analysis also included a Ukrainian hippie group from Lviv as an example of this connection, highlighting their “black ties,” crosses, and swastikas that the hippies displayed on numerous occasions publicly.50 The alleged links between the hippie and fascist ideologies gave the KGB carte blanche to act aggressively and curtail the political activism of youth in Soviet Ukraine.
Clearly, the Czech youth political activities in 1968 forced the KGB to think about the Ukrainian hippies’ political activism in similar terms. The commercialization of Soviet youth culture and disco music that became extremely popular among Soviet youth seemed innocent in comparison with political statements made by the hippies and their attempts to organize. The KGB arrested hundreds of Ukrainian imitators of American hippies and expelled them from universities and the Komsomol all over Ukraine. Ukrainian punks who were similarly portrayed as neo-Nazi presented the same threat to the Soviet system, the Soviet Ukrainian culture, and the Soviet identity of Komsomol members.
The KGB Anti-Fascist Campaign
The KGB documented two massive organized youth movements in Soviet Ukraine after Stalin, which challenged the very existence of the Komsomol, an official Soviet youth organization, and offered the venues for anti-Soviet activities in which thousands of Komsomol members participated in the 1960s–1980s. The hippie movement emerged first, followed by the punk “imitation” movement. At the beginning, the members of both movements had some cultural fixation with Western cultural products, mainly rock music and films, but by the 1980s their cultural practices evolved embracing neo-Nazi ideas, processes that were documented by the KGB. These practices became more prominent, and even radical, especially among Soviet imitators of Western punks.51 Moreover, in contrast to the Ukrainian followers of hippies who were older and more college educated, adopting American cultural practices of pacifism and non-violence, the Ukrainian punks were much younger, with only high school education, and they adopted more radical, violent, and sometimes explicitly neo-fascist models informed by the neo-fascist movements that emerged in Italy, Germany, and Britain after 1945.
In the fall of 1982, in their letters to Ukraine’s communist leaders, KGB officers persisted in their claims that Soviet Ukrainian youth exhibited clear affinity with neo-Nazi and fascist ideas. The KGB discovered numerous pictures of fascist swastika on sidewalks and the walls of public buildings and telephone booths in many Ukraine cities, including the city of Chernivtsi. In September 1982, the KGB established the identity of at least five former students of the local technical schools (all of them were between 17 and 19 years of age) who were engaged in those “neo-fascist” activities. The report stated that they all listened to American “beat-music worshipping American pop-idols,” which profoundly shaped their worldviews.52
In addition, the KGB report stressed that the Italian film San Babila—8 PM (in Italian: San Babila ore 20: un delitto inutile), a “film about the outrages of fascist youth [in Italy] [beschinstvakh fashistvuiushchei molodiozhi],” contributed to those young people’s interest in fascist ideology, symbols, and paraphernalia.53 This film was directed by Carlo Lizzani in 1976, and was included in the program of the Tenth Moscow International Film Festival in 1977. The idea of the film was inspired by violent events that took place at the Piazza San Babila in Milan in 1975. Groups of neo-fascists and anarchist communists became the protagonists for this film. Four Milanese boys were part of a neo-fascist group that subscribed to Benito Mussolini’s ideas of a new order, based on “squadrism.”54 The boys were fighting against the youth groups of communists and anarchists and frequently collided during the protests
