Между политичното и аполитичното: младежката контракултура в комунистическа Полша
Between Political and Apolitical: Youth Counterculture in Communist Poland

Summary/Abstract: This article addresses the role of youth counterculture under Communism in Poland. More precisely, it will focus on some specific countercultural movements such as the Bikiniarze, hippies and punks in their historical context as well as briefly discuss the importance of rock music and the significance of certain fashion trends during the Communist era. Although the appearance of these countercultural youth movements after the Second World War in Poland paid tribute to transnational influences – mainly from the West despite the Cold War rift – they also possessed some explicit national characteristics which will be underlined and reflected on. Despite the fact that these countercultural move- ments had a relatively small number of adherents, they nonetheless had wider reverberations among respective generations of youth. Moreover, these countercultural movements were de facto apolitical, but since they rejected the of- ficially projected and ideologically ‘correct’ youth lifestyle they were perceived by the regime as a political threat. This article therefore argues that youth coun- terculture in Poland not only represented a mode of resistance to Communist rule by its adherents, but that its influence as a consciousness-raising phenom- enon among respective generations of youth constituted an impediment for the regime to win over the ‘hearts and minds’ of said generations.

• Details
• Contents