Hippies in the Baltic [Volume: 7(1988), pp. 157-176]

162
MARK YOFFE
But, as already mentioned, among the Baltic hippies there was much
self-destructiveness and, seeing no future for themselves in the surrounding
life, they had little concern for preserving their health. And, again, the
majority were very young-from 16 to about 23, and health concerns are
rare among young people. This self-destructiveness often took the form
of terrifying bravado.
In the '70s the Baltic area, because of its relative freedom and the
official rock festivals in the Baltic cities became a sort of Mecca of Soviet
hippies. They gathered there from all comers of the Soviet Union-from
Russia, Belorussia, Moldavia, Central Asia, from Ukraine and the Caucasus.
As a rule there was no place for the hippies to stay, and so they migrated
from one friend's apartment to another, establishing ever wider strings of
contacts. So gradually all three Baltic republics were united by a single
network of contacts, and a traveling hippie would, on his journey, pass
from hand to hand, naming upon his arrival, as a sort of password, the
names of the people who had sent him. Other than these names, no questions were asked. Knowing the right people inspired, as a rule, instant
confidence, which later was strengthened as the new arrival explained
his drug and musical preferences. Naming one's favorite groups, performers
and records also served as a pledge of trust and mutual understanding and
helped to define the character of a new acquaintance, his social origin and
intellectual level. If he or she were devotees of such groups as, say, SLIDE,
NAZARETH, KISS, BLACK SABBATH, then it was clear that this was a
person with simple tastes, an unrefined music lover, apparently from a
plain, proletarian environment. If you ran into a fan of such groups as
PROCOL HARUM, MOODY BLUES, JETHRO TULL, RARE BIRD,
EXAPTION, FOCUS, etc., then it was obvious the person was a romantic
intellectual.
On the basis of these sympathies and apathies mutual understanding
was developed, friendships were formed, unions of hippies from various
republics and cities. And then, when they had gone back to their respective
homes, they phoned and wrote back and forth, telling each other the musical
news and sending each other copies of new hits or mailing records for resale.
Thus often in a place like an apartment, transit points formedsomething like communes in which hippies lived. The Baltic hippies, just
like their Western cohorts, also had their share of communal life. But these
were not political communes, i.e., they were not founded on the basis
of ideas or aspirations concerning the "true communism of the young."
They were a long way from the pseudo-collectivism and Maoism of the
Western hippie communes. They caught on spontaneously, based wholly
on the desire of their young members to be together, in their own world,
fenced off from the surrounding world, where nothing was shameful, where
they understood you, where the majority of your contemporaries liked
and loved the same things that you did.