Only Rock-n-Roll? Rock Music, Hippies, and Urban Identities in Lviv and Wrocław, 1965–80

This paper examines the impact of the Western counterculture of the hippies on two Soviet bloc cities, Wrocław in Poland and Lviv in the western part of Soviet Ukraine. While emphasizing the impact Western rock music, hippie lifestyles, and hippie fashions had on young Wrocławians and Lvivians, it highlights different local agendas affecting these two dropout cultures. In Lviv, hippies came from a Russian-speaking milieu that was at odds with former Western Ukrainian villagers who had moved to Lviv after World War II. Lviv hippies accommodated themselves to local Ukrainians’ language and culture, as seen in the Galician Ukrainian slang Lviv hippies used to shock the wider public in the late 1970s. In Wrocław, hippies developed stronger ties with intellectuals and Roman Catholic priests. Polish media offered greater information on hippies in the West and greater dialogue on what it meant to be a hippie in socialist Poland, while Soviet media in Lviv barely mentioned Soviet hippies’ existence. Polish hippies as a rule benefited from socialist Poland’s greater engagement with the Western capitalist world. On the other hand, hippies in both Lviv and Wrocław faced similar processes of marginalization by Communist Party and state institutions, as well as by other city residents. Their creation of alternative social spaces mirrored the values and practices of Communist Youth organizations. While their knowledge of hippies in the West were limited, hippies in both Soviet bloc cities created lifestyles that closely resembled those of their counterparts in late 1960s San Francisco, the birthplace of the hippie counterculture.