Despite the "Iron Curtain" and a strict attitude to fashionable Western trends, in the Soviet Union one could meet punks, hippies, dudes and other fans of the informal style.
Informals appeared in the USSR around the end of the 40s of the last century. "Informal" comes from a combination of "informal youth associations", which were opposed to Soviet "formal" groups, for example, the Komsomol. Styles are considered the first such subculture. As a rule, these were golden youth who did not need anything, and, relatively speaking, they could only dance and look stylish.
The global subcultural boom occurs in the 1970s and 1980s. The background was the mass youth protests of 1968 in Europe and America. Young people spoke out against war and racism, for freedom of choice and human rights. In general, for love and peace in the whole world. Hippies appeared a couple of years before the mass protests. They were active participants in this struggle.
Basically, informal subcultures were grouped according to ideological positions (naturally, as opposed to the “system”), which were inseparable from musical preferences and attributes in clothing. Country, jazz, rock and roll, reggae … The musical direction corresponded to one or another subculture. There were, of course, exceptions.
No matter how the Soviet government covered the "window to the world" with an iron curtain and tried to unify the people, young people still knew about informal movements. And the most daring, those who did not agree with the imposition of demeanor and lifestyle, protested as best they could. For example, through subcultures. The youth of the USSR responded to the general world trend quite quickly. So, in the 70s in Moscow, in particular, hippies and punks existed on a par with the West.
But they did not live as well as abroad. The authorities fought against those who allowed themselves to express themselves and go against the norms, radically: regular calls to the police, compulsory treatment in mental hospitals, and so on. In addition, caring people with an active civil position through beatings tried to bring informals to “normality”.
