Flowers Through Concrete: Explorations in Soviet Hippieland by Juliane Fürst

In Flowers through Concrete, Juliane Fürst describes the 'sistema' of Soviet hippies, which outlived the Western subculture that inspired it and linked like-minded people in distant cities across Soviet republics, as 'the largest and most significant network in the Soviet underground' (p. 104). Unlike the better documented dissident movement, Soviet hippies were not primarily concerned with securing future freedom by changing society. Instead, they sought to live as freely as possible in the oppressive present, creating a peaceful, petal-strewn alternative to the austere and restrictive Soviet state. According to Fürst, 'their future was now' (p. 189).