The Moscow World Youth Forum of 1961: An American Friend's Experience of Quaker and Soviet Peacemaking

The Moscow World Youth Forum of 1961: An American Friend's Experience of Quaker and Soviet Peacemaking Irwin Abrams* In 1992 I returned to a very different Moscow than I had visited over three decades before as an observer sent by the American Friends Service Committee to attend the World Youth Forum of 1961. Now in the august halls ofthe Academy of Science I participated in an international seminar ofscholars who were considering "The History ofRussian Peacemaking." We heard much about Tolstoy and the Tolstoyans, about the Doukhobors, the Russian Mennonites and the Russian peace movement before World War I. In one session peace activists from different organizations, including critics ofcurrent government policies, described their own peacemaking efforts. My own paper, quoting largely from my reports to the AFSC, dealt with the encounter between Soviet peacemaking and Quaker peacemaking. I omit here the introductory sections on Quaker relations with Russia and the Soviet Union, which have been well described in such writings as those of Anna Brinton, John Forbes, Ruth A. Fry, John Ormerod Greenwood, Francesca Wilson, and especially Richenda C. Scott. To provide the setting for the events of 1960-61, it is enough to point out that during the Cold War the AFSC sought in a number ofways to reduce the tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States. Beginning in 1949 the AFSC published a series of five brochures proposing American support for arms reduction, the banning ofnuclear tests and the strengthening ofthe United Nations. The report Speak Truth to Power, based upon Quaker pacifism, urged that the United States seek its national security through nonviolent means. There were goodwill visits to the Soviet Union ofBritish Friends in 195 1 (reported by Kathleen Lonsdale and Paul Cadbury) and American Friends in 1955 (described in Meeting the Russians). At the United Nations the Quaker Mission, composed ofFriends from different countries, conducted quiet lobbying and practiced unofficial diplomacy. The AFSC organized pioneering exchanges ofSoviet and American scientists and educators and included Soviet consultants andparticipants in the Quaker ongoing confer- *Irwin Abrams is Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at Antioch University . This article is adapted from the paper presented at the International Seminar: "The History of Russian Peacemaking," Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Science, Moscow, 21-27 September 1992. He is especially grateful for the assistance of Jack Sutlers, AFSC Archivist. 1 32 Quaker History enees for diplomats and international seminars of youth leaders. Soviet participation in such programs was negotiated with various governmental offices in Moscow: the Foreign Ministry for Soviet diplomats to attend the annual conferences held in Garens, Switzerland; the Ministry of Education for the educational exchanges; and for youth projects the Soviet Committee ofYouth Organizations (CYO), a subordinate body to the Komsomol (the Communist Youth League).1 The AFSC and the CYO The CYO took a prominent part in the mass international youth festivals sponsored by the Soviet-controlled World Federation ofDemocratic Youth and the International Union ofStudents. While the avowedpurpose ofthese biannual festivals, held in capital cities ofthe Soviet bloc, was to promote peace, friendship and international understanding among the youth ofthe world, the primary objective clearly was to gain sympathy and support for the Soviet Union from young people, especially those from Asia and Africa. In the effort to recruit participation from non-Communists, the organizers portrayed the festivals as simply an important meeting-place for youth of all lands, playing down their political character. The delegations attending from non-Communist countries were often, but not always, organized by Communist and Communist-front groups. The major youth organizations ofwestern Europe did not attend, nor did the Americans. The East European Student and Youth Service inNew York published abooklet on the Moscow Youth Festival of 1957, entitledCourtship ofYoungMinds. When the CYO urged the AFSC to send representatives to the festivals, the Quaker committee hesitated but finally agreed, since the only way to arrange for Soviet participation in AFSC youth projects was in cooperation with the CYO. Both British and American Friends committees sent observers to the Moscow festival in 1957 and to the Vienna festival in 1959, the first one held outside the Soviet bloc. The Quaker participants were very uncomfortable with the...