I think the word Beatnik was derived from Sputnik — the first earth satellite launched by Russia in 1957. Sputnik’s surprise launch shocked the Western World almost as much as 9/11 and caused a lot of people to question the validity of American military, poltical, and academic excellence.
Since the “Beats” were already accustomed to hanging out in coffee houses and poetry bars with the Bohemians questioning everything in contemporary culture, they quickly latched on to the idea of how great the Soviet Union was and how lame the US was. It was a natural progression.
I was in school at UC Berkeley at the time. We paid little attention to the Bohemians, and less to the Beats, looking upon them as oddities. But, then came the Hippies, as the Viet Nam War heated up, and they overwhelmed the culture.
As the Draft became an inconvenient fact of life, more and more young folks decided to attend college and to apply for student deferments. College was expensive — even in those years — and students from the eastern US flocked to Caliifornia (where in-state tuition was incredibly cheap) to wait for their state’s residence.
They had to live there for a year before they could get into school at the in-state price, and they basically had nothing to do, except cause trouble, while they waited to be admitted.
One of their favorite targets was the newly elected Governor Reagan and the Board of Regents of the University of California. They launched the Free Speech Movement, followed by the Filthy Speech Movement, follwed by the bra-less movement, followed by the braless in a sheer blouse movement, followed by the nude movement. And on, and on, and on.
Somewhere I recall that the term "hippie" was a beatnik who shot up and kept his/her/it's hips raised when shooting up as to expedite the heroin's impact.
Actually the early beatniks got their start in the 40s, very close to the end of WW2. Although the “nik” part of their name is attributed to Sputnik, the “beat” portion of it was introduced prior to the launch of Sputnik.
Notice that the Beatniks hung out in very specific coffee houses in SOHO and in Frisco. These were gathering places where they exchanged ideas, wrote or read their “poetry”; mostly to people who weren’t listening to them.
Overall, the Beatniks were a largely laughable movement that only enthralled some of the media and Hollyweird. Bits and pieces of some of the more “acceptable” philosophies of the Beatniks can be found in a number of different entertainment items of the day including “West Side Story” and “Dobie Gillis” with the character Maynard G. Krebs (played by Bob Denver of Gilligan fame!).
It wasn’t until the influence of the Beatniks was picked up by the hippies that the movement got more traction than it should. The rest is truly history.
Sputnik and the USSR had nothing to do with the word. NIK is a Yiddish diminutive modifier suffix that has its roots in Slavic Russia. It was brought here by Russian Jews in the 1800s.