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2 The Moscow Youth Festival
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2 THE MOSCOW YOUTH FESTIVAL . . . the World Youth Festival—a great turning point in cultural history. — , Russian Popular Culture When the Soviet Union made plans to host the Sixth World Youth Festival in Moscow, its intent was to demonstrate to the world the changes that had taken place since the death of Stalin four years earlier. Previous such festivals had been held in other countries, where they had been well managed by local communist groups and produced propaganda successes. The results of the Moscow festival, however, were quite different, and the consequences unintended. The tens of thousands of Soviet youth who attended the festival were infected with the youth styles of the West—jeans, jazz, boogie-woogie, rock and roll, and free speech— and the Soviet Union was never the same again. For two weeks in July-August , , foreign and , Soviet delegates descended on Moscow for what Max Frankel of the New York Times described as “a dizzying round of games, conferences, parties, and carnivals.”1 But also witnessing those events and observing them with interest and astonishment were the five million residents of Moscow and the thousands of other Soviet citizens who had come to the Soviet capital to see the spectacle. Also in attendance was a British delegation of more than , and about Americans of various political persuasions who had come against the misguided advice of the State Department.2 Political bias was evident in many of the events, and some of the Americans learned that not all of their conversations were faithfully translated by the Russians . Other Americans were shocked to hear vehement denunciations of the United States at meetings where it was thought Americans were not present “There is no doubt,” reported Frankel, “that the total effect of the festival pleased the Soviet Government. It has been armed with months’ worth of propaganda about the friendship and fellowship demonstrated in Moscow by the visitors.”3 . New York Times, August , . . The U.S. government appears to have changed its position by when the next World Youth Festival was held in Vienna. According to the New York Times (February , ), Gloria Steinem said that the CIA had supported a foundation, established in and where she was a full-time employee, that sent hundreds of Americans to World Youth Festivals in Vienna in and Helsinki in . . Ibid. But seeds of protest were also planted that would plague the Soviet government in future years. “There is erratic debate, polyglot conversation and heated argument everywhere,” wrote Frankel, and he compared the Moscow festival scene to Union Square, New York City’s open-air debating site, as Soviet youth surrounded foreign visitors and peppered them with questions about their home countries and lifestyles.4 It was the first unstructured contact with foreigners for what would later be called the Gorbachev generation. “After toasts and shouts of peace and friendship,” continued Frankel, “there are equally genuine demands from Soviet youths for descriptions of life in the West.”5 Much of the talk was leftist, but some Americans cited the United Nations report on the Hungarian revolution, which had been roundly denounced by the Soviets but never quoted in Moscow. Soviet Jews flocked to the Israeli delegates as well, eager to learn more about a country much maligned in the Soviet press. Flora Lewis, reporting for Life magazine, recalled that the Youth Festival, held in Warsaw, Poland, had unleashed sparks of protest in the communist world, and she wondered who was influencing whom at the Moscow Festival.6 Modern art also came to the Soviet Union by way of the festival. Young artists from all over the world had been invited to bring their works and compete for prizes, and an exhibition of their art was staged in Moscow’s Gorky Park, the first exhibition of modern “bourgeois” painting to be seen in the Soviet Union. Most Russians, however, brought up on the traditions of socialist realism, were puzzled and shocked by the discordant colors and abstract figures exhibited by the foreign artists, but others defended the new art, and some were encouraged to emulate the experimental Western paintings. “What is amazing,” wrote Frankel,“is that there should be so many defenders of the new and the radical. They speak openly and frankly in this capital which during the festival is getting its first mass demonstration of the blessings of free speech.”7 Other Western art forms—jazz, and rock and roll—also came to Moscow.“The government’s inability to regulate the musical fare...