boy of the brigade, to perform a violent and demonstrative act against a randomly chosen communist boy, in order to redeem his “honor.” So one night at the Piazza San Babila, the boys met a couple of lovers, dressed in red (they were believed to be communists). The group’s state of madness drove the boys to chase the lovers and stab them. Franco was shocked and ran away from home, denouncing the assault to the police.
The KGB officer realized that the young Ukrainian imitators of Italian neo-fascism were especially influenced by the images of fashionable outfits and behavioral patterns of the young neo-fascist heroes from this Italian film.55 At home the young men listened to forbidden rock music broadcast by foreign radio stations, organized their meetings at a Chernivtsi downtown café, and publicly denounced the Soviet system and politics.56 Two of them, the leaders of that group, openly discussed the potential replacement of the Soviet political system that, in their view, was absolutely necessary, and a transfer of political power to a “military regime” that would manage the state through the fascist methods of political governing. The police discovered that these individuals displayed large images of a swastika in public. They were also suspected of another transgression: on 10 May 1981 someone burned the Soviet state banner, hanging on the façade of a public building in downtown Chernivtsi.57
Moreover, these individuals argued that the Soviet political system must be replaced by the strong authoritarian power of the fascist state because the Soviet state was nothing less than a “mafia state” and the rule of the Soviet Communist Party was a “mafia rule.” The police also learned that these references were widespread, and young neo-fascists embraced this terminology in all major Ukrainian cities. The depositions of those who were arrested were consistent, emphasizing the significant influence of the Italian film on them.58
The KGB Campaign against the Punks
In Soviet Ukraine, the KGB campaign against young neo-fascists converged with the old ideological campaign against the corrupt influences of Western popular music. This campaign was conceived in the 1960s as a struggle against the “beat music” of the Beatles and Rolling Stones and their hippie imitators, being reconceptualised as a campaign against “fascist punks” and reaching its peak in 1980–1981. To some extent, this campaign was a reaction to information published in Soviet central periodicals, where British punks were presented as neo-fascists and “skinheads.” In this light, the connection between Western music, the punk movement, and fascist symbols established by the KGB became more transparent. They all were to be prohibited from mass consumption in the Soviet Union.
According to Soviet music critics, the description of punks as fascists offered in Soviet periodicals confused and disoriented thousands of communist ideologists in provincial cities of Soviet Ukraine:
The only thing anyone knew about punks was that they were “fascists” because that’s how our British-based correspondents had described them for us. Several angry feature articles appeared in the summer and fall of 1977 with lurid descriptions of their unsavoury appearance and disgraceful manners, including one that quoted sympathetically a diatribe from the Daily Telegraph. To illustrate all this, a few photos of “monsters” with swastikas were printed … The image of punks as Nazis was established very effectively, and in our country, as you should understand, the swastika will never receive a positive reaction, even purely for shock value.59
Indeed, Soviet propagandists shaped the views of KGB officials and Komsomol activists who believed that punks and fascists were the same. All Komsomol functionaries and those who ran discotheques in Soviet Ukraine received a special notice warning against the punk ideology. The warning included Russian translations of phrases employed by British punks. This information was reprinted in many publications by Ukrainian journalists who covered this anti-punk campaign. In their texts, they quoted the punk slogans: “Live only for today! Do not think about tomorrow! Do not give a damn about all these spiritual crutches of religion, utopia, and politics! Forget about this. Enjoy your day. You are young, and do not be in a hurry to become a new young corpse” [sic!]. Unfailingly, they emphasized the anti-human essence of “fascist punk music” that allegedly embodied “bestial cynicism and meanness,” undermining the Soviet youth’s moral principles.60
The first public scandal that involved both “fascist music” and the display of fascist symbols took place in the city of Dnipropetrovsk in the fall of 1982. The city police arrested two college students, Ihor Keivan and Oleksandr Plastun who owned record collections of Western music and whose public behavior was described as “neo-Nazi.” These students were dressed in T-shirts with the images of American and Australian rock bands “Kiss” and “AC/DC,” which attracted the attention of policemen who interpreted these images as “fascist.” After Keivan’s and Plastun’s arrest, their “fascist” record collections were confiscated, and the information about these students’ anti-Soviet behavior was sent to their colleges.
In December of 1982, the entire city of Dnipropetrovsk and the Dnipropetrovsk oblast were shaken by police raids and searches, part of the anti-fascist and anti-punk campaign. The Dnipropetrovsk City Party Committee approached Nadezhda A. Sarana, an experienced Communist and a member of the anti-fascist resistance group during the Second World War, and asked her to write a letter about the dangers of the local fascist punks’ fashion statements. On 22 December 1982, the communist functionaries staged an open public meeting with participation of all communist and Komsomol activists in Dnipropetrovsk’s downtown. During this event, they publicly endorsed Sarana’s letter against the punks and declared war against the punk movement in Soviet Ukraine. Under KGB pressure, local ideologists organized a show trial of Keivan, Plastun, and another young punk, Vadym Shmeliov, that was held in January of 1983. All three were expelled from the Komsomol and their colleges. KGB officers were outraged when they learned that Keivan and Plastun interpreted this punishment as a violation of their human rights. This case established the precedent and routine practices of Komsomol cells in the region to purge those members who were suspected of enthusiasm for the forbidden music.61
This anti-punk campaign especially affected the Ukrainian fans of heavy metal music.62 In 1983, the Dnipropetrovsk police arrested ten students from a local vocational school on charges of “hooliganism.” The police discovered images of the Nazi era and of the American Ku Klux Klan in their possession. As it turned out, Serhii Onushev, Oleksandr Rvachenko, and their friends made white robes and put the letters KKK on them, impersonating their membership in this American organization.63 Serhii Onushev was identified as the leader of this group, who listened to the tapes that included the music of the bands that “belonged to the pro-fascist movement—Kiss, Nazareth, AC/DC, and Black Sabbath.”64 Local ideologists established a direct connection between this music and the fascist inclinations of Onushev’s group. According to them, the musicians of Kiss represented a group of four hooligans, who chose SS and Nazi symbols as the emblems of their band, tearing apart live chickens and vomiting during their performances. They emphasized that, for Soviet students, they had become idols and “trendsetters” in popular culture, inspiring young Soviet people to commit inhuman fascist acts.65
The case of Dmitrii Frolin, a student of the Department of Philology at Dnipropetrovsk University, became another sensational case that attracted the attention of local journalists. As a result of the anti-punk and anti-fascist campaign,
