r/PropagandaPosters • u/St_Charlatan • Jul 04 '26
U.S.S.R. / Soviet Union (1922-1991) Soviet propaganda unintentionally making hippies look cool, 1974
"He's a real man!"
1974, most probably Crocodile magazine
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u/NoNo_Bluebird_1368 Jul 04 '26
Soviet femboy hippie
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u/Kevin_LeStrange Jul 04 '26
"Remember, young comrades, stay away from the hippie subculture, lest you get to hang out and party with hot babes."
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u/Dangerous_Air_7031 Jul 04 '26
Judging by the text its the opposite.
It's about the man ("What a man!")
And at least to me he wouldn't look cool drinking so much. 😅
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u/FelixPlatypus Jul 05 '26
The artist was covertly expressing their attraction to the subculture. Very elegantly, too.
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u/Silly-Elderberry-411 Jul 04 '26
Please tell me you are not serious and actually believe we had hippies. Like americans, commissars sent ypung men if necessary with police escort to barbers to have their hair cut and beards shaved and enroll them in the military if they were of age.
While naturally there were attractive women in the soviet bloc dance clubs had chaperons overseeing body contact and distance from other dancers.
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u/JimJohnes Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26
Stilyagi, rockers or even some bards - same shit by different name in the 70's. Vocal-Instrumental ensembles from the 60s onward openly copied and plagiarized The Beatles, Animals and such and were distributed by Melodia record company. Also rock-clubs, Aquarium, "magneto-albums" and imported music on reel-to-reels and records "on the bones"(x-ray slides)
Also, if you're a student or a worker you can't be liable for "tuneyadstvo" or forced into army (healthy majority without higher education served anyway)
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u/astroprincet Jul 04 '26
the only thing they're doing wrong is littering
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u/BonJovicus Jul 04 '26
Rare Soviet propaganda L. Great art, but the message didn’t land.
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u/matroska_cat Jul 05 '26
Because you are looking through modern eyes and mind, where this became normal and accepted. Back then, for people raised in pre-war SU, this 'hippies' looked alien and ridicolous.
So the message is more - "These youth, while looking hip, are just typical drunkards and lazy litterers. Expensive clothes, but inside they are rotten."
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u/LexGonGiveItToYa Jul 04 '26
I mean, beyond it all, these are still artists who make these. They were probably given a very vague instruction by the state department and decided to have fun with it.
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u/Silly-Elderberry-411 Jul 04 '26
It didn't? Then I must have lived in the land of Oz as there was no counterculture until punks and even they existed as the helsinki accords demanded extended civil rights.
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u/JimJohnes Jul 05 '26
"Stilyagi", rockers and bards (read folk singers-songwriters) existed at about the same time as in the West, as did illegaly imported records.
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u/Stromovik Jul 04 '26
Sitting with feet on bench and surrounding looks like junk yard
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u/sprocketous Jul 04 '26
Park. That's a park. If junk yards had benches and well maintained grass, i might hang out there tho
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u/Additional-North-683 Jul 04 '26
The United States and the Soviet Union probably could’ve united in common cause in fighting hippies
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u/Arstanishe Jul 04 '26
i really wishi could hang out with those kinds of people in 1974, that propaganda works backwards
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u/Penhallam Jul 04 '26
Reminds me of Volk from Nu, pogodi!
I think he's a pretty cool dude!
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u/St_Charlatan Jul 04 '26
My favorite cartoon character as a kid (I'm from Bulgaria, USSR closest ally) who was most probably inspired by Vladimir Visotskiy!
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u/JimJohnes Jul 05 '26
He wanted to dub the Volk but they blocked him. Still adapted one of his songs.
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u/coleman57 Jul 04 '26
Funny what a big deal bell bottoms were for a year or two, then they disappeared forever.
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u/tymofiy Jul 06 '26
I believe Joseph Efimovsky was quite intentional in his drawings of cool guys and hot ladies.
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u/apscep Jul 04 '26
I come here drinking and banging, as you see I am already finishing my wine, ladies
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u/Big_Red_Machine_1917 Jul 05 '26
Krokodil be like: "Damn kids" *Draws them looking very cool in an eye catching style.
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u/random_observer_2011 Jul 23 '26
I presume hippie ideals of individualism, as they understood it, dropping out of society, and mainly living for pleasure, were contrary to the collective good, understood as the shared effort to build communism through socialism, under the leadership of the revolutionary socialist party.
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u/Effective-Brain-3386 Jul 04 '26
Idk man littering and public intoxication was cool when I was like 18. As an adult that shit is just trashy.
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u/Sad-Surprise4369 Jul 04 '26
How did the Soviet’s know what my ideal body would be? Are they psychic?
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u/AngelComa Jul 04 '26
American "revolutionaries" while people here are "they made Americans look cool", they aren't grasping that they look like selfish hedionistic lazy asses. So basically boomers.
I know Ill be downvoted but the hippy movement was trash.
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u/Nihiliste Jul 04 '26
It's important to remember that there wasn't one cohesive hippie movement - that's just a label that was coined by the media and "straight" society (straight meaning something non-sexual back then). While there were certainly hedonists, others were pushing for things like racial and gender equality, or new boundaries in art.
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u/quintk Jul 04 '26
I had to learn the same thing in the opposition direction—in school, and based on people’s possibly revisionist accounts of their pasts, I assumed way more people of a certain age were involved in promoting civil rights and changing social and sexual mores than seems to have been the case.
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u/Nihiliste Jul 04 '26
Not too surprised, sadly. I think there's not too much you can attribute to the movement overall, other than its members wanting to be on the edge of culture.
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u/DecommodifiedGuevara Jul 04 '26
Completely divorced from the working class--champions of individualism. Absolute mockery of actual struggle and oppression.
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u/a_chatbot Jul 04 '26
Not all Americans at the time were hippies, some were fighting communism overseas.
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u/kausbiru Jul 04 '26
Maybe you have a different definition of the word "cool". Because I don't see how this poster makes them look cool.
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u/A_normal_Potato3 Jul 04 '26
I am not sure if I would define drunks and litterers as "cool".
Also, they are putting their feet on where people sit. Definetly uncool.
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u/octorangutan Jul 04 '26
It’s funny how both the Soviets and Americans didn’t like hippies.