The article by William Risch “Soviet ‘Flower Children’. Hippies and the Youth Counter-culture in 1970s L’viv” discusses the Soviet Youth and their reactions towards the many changes the communist party were trying to put on L’viv and their feelings of isolation during 1970s. Hippies were made up of the rebellious, free spirited youth, and became a large part of post-world culture. The communist party in L’viv wanted to control over all aspects of the public sphere, as a result the hippies of L’viv rebelled. The hippies acted against sociality norms and soviet ideals. Hippies were stereotyped and publicly marginalized, hippies were said to be “bowing to the west” because they adopted western cloths and music. Interestingly enough Risch points out how hippies did adopt ideas from The Communist Youth Organization, one of the major groups against hippie ideals. Although the hippies in the Soviet Union were different from their western counter parts both were made up of youth feeling isolated and had new ideals for the world.
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I agree with you that both styles of hippies had similar roots in being different in their rebelliousness. However, I think a necessary point worthy of note is that they are rather different in the magnitude in which they are allowed to act. The west was much more of an extreme than in the USSR.
I agree with your interpretation of the article, this new group of people were bowing to the west and were looking for ways to rebel against the conditions that were imposed on them, but the west was very different and much more extreme in it’s hippie style. So the hippies were different from those in the west and had less of a freedom.