Did it upset the communists? As far as socialist Czechoslovakia is concerned – oh yes. And how!

Funnily enough, two books exploring this very issue were published in the Czech Republic in 2010 – Vraťte nám vlasy! ("Give us back our hair!") and Háro ("The 'do" – as in a hairdo). Both offer an interesting read about the culture of the sixties as well as the rather repressive response by the authorities, with, as their titles suggest, a particular focus on the outwards appearance and hairstyles of these nonconformist elements undermining the socialist society.

When talking about this topic in the context of socialist Czechoslovakia, you will inevitably encounter the term "mánička". It even has its own Wikipedia page. This word, a diminutive form of the female name Mary, was applied to men with long hair, usually members of the underground culture, influenced by the various movements of the sixties. Another term you might find is "pásek", a somewhat earlier subculture stemming from the fifties and taking Elvis Presley and early rock'n'roll as their chief influences, with outlandish fashion and hair styles rather than hair length being the distinguishing outward characteristic.

The period of liberalization leading up to the events of the Prague Spring did much to foster the popularity of the above, as did the visit of beatnik hero Allen Ginsberg to Prague in 1965. Long hair came to represent both an attempt to follow the western influences of the beatniks, Beatles, hippies and the like, and a form of a protest against the communist regime by adopting a nonconformist attitude. However, while many of these young men would be active dissenters opposing the regime, at the same time it was often merely an issue of fashion.

Nonetheless, the communists took this threat to the security of the state and the fabric of socialist society quite seriously. Men with long hair were inevitably painted in a bad light and associated with undesirable elements, petty criminality and disorderly conduct. The ministry of the interior and both regular and secret police maintained files on this phenomenon, including detailed maps showing the spread of this hirsute horror in Czechoslovakia.

The communist party actively campaigned against the "bad taste in the hairstyling of boys and young men" and ramped up its attempts at discrediting long hair. "Máničky" were portrayed as unmanly troublemakers, with not only criminal, but also alcoholic and homosexual tendencies. Communist party documents label them as "severely disrespectful" towards their fellow citizens, as "lacking any sort of direction in their life" or "not having any values" and "dirty, with shabby clothes and repugnant appearance".

As a sidenote, the aforementioned books include several photographs taken by the police as part of their reports, including such damning pictures as "a detail of a long haired man in conversation with a foreigner" or "a man with long hair just loafing about". It needs to be said that some of them would be genuine delinquents, although this largely applies to the earlier "pásci" rather than the "máničky" of the sixties.

The growth of these subcultures was cut short – well before the period of the so called normalization of the seventies – by operation Vlasatci ("The hairy ones") in 1966, a state-wide police action which saw 3976 young men detained and forcibly given over to hairdressers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the movement was not eradicated completely.

The public, especially the working class, was not unreceptive to the party line. A somewhat popular slogan emerged during this time, "Máš-li dlouhý vlas, nechoď mezi nás" – roughly translated as "If you are long of hair, we don't want you there", or the less wholesome cry of "Máňo, kde máš kozy?" – "Lil' Mary ('mánička' as a diminutive of Mary, see above), where's yer tits?" aimed at the seemingly womanlike long haired men.