Performing Peace and Friendship: The World Youth Festivals and Soviet Cultural Diplomacy

Pia Koivunen

Open Access Published by De Gruyter Oldenbourg 2022

Performing Peace and Friendship

The World Youth Festivals and Soviet Cultural Diplomacy

Pia Koivunen

Volume 9 in the series Rethinking the Cold War

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110761160

Overview
Contents

About this book

Open Access

Performing Peace and Friendship tells the story of how the Soviet Union succeeded in utilizing the World Festival of Youth and Students in its cultural diplomacy from late Stalinism through the early Khrushchev period. Pia Koivunen discusses the evolution of the youth gathering into a Soviet cultural product starting from the first festival held in Prague in 1947 and ending with the Moscow 1957 gathering, the latter becoming one of the most frequently referred moments of Khrushchev’s Thaw. By combining both institutional and grass-roots’ perspectives, the book widens our understanding of what Soviet cultural diplomacy was in practice, re-evaluates the agency of young people and provides new insights into the Soviet role in the cultural Cold War. Koivunen argues that rather than simply being orchestrated rallies by the Kremlin bureaucrats, the World Youth Festivals also became significant spaces of transnational encounters for young people, who found ways to employ the event for overcoming the various restrictions and boundaries of the Cold War world.

Author / Editor information

Pia Koivunen, University of Turku, Finland.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	I
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	V
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	VII
Introduction Open Access Download PDF	1
Part I: Selling Peace and Friendship to World Youth, 1947–56
1 Stalinist Youth Festivals, 1947–51 Open Access Download PDF	21
2 De-Stalinizing the Festival Open Access Download PDF	62
Part II: Showcasing Khrushchev’s USSR: The Moscow 1957 Festival
3 Making of the Moscow Spectacle Open Access Download PDF	97
4 The Long-awaited Encounter with the World Open Access Download PDF	136
5 Boundaries of the Permissible Open Access Download PDF	183
6 Immediate Impacts and the Legacy of the Festival Open Access Download PDF	225
Epilogue Open Access Download PDF	261
Abbreviations Open Access Download PDF	271
Sources and Bibliography Open Access Download PDF	273
Index Open Access Download PDF	295

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter Oldenbourg
Audience: Academics in the field of contemporary history, sociology, political science, Cold War and Soviet Union history.
Pages
- Front matter: 8
- Main content: 303
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 20
- Tables: 7
Keywords: Cold War; USSR; cultural diplomacy; World Festival of Youth and Students.

eBook

Published: November 7, 2022
ISBN: 9783110761160

Hardcover

Published: November 7, 2022
ISBN: 9783110758443