The Study Of The 1957 World Youth Festival

The World Festival of Youth and Students regularly organized by the World Federation of Democratic Youth and the International Union of Students starts in 1947 It is a large-scale international recreation activity.The main purpose of the festival was to connect youths all over the world to promote friendship and peace between different countries.However,from the beginning,it was involved in the vortex of the Cold War and unconsciously became a tool for the Soviet cultural cold war.Among these previously held festivals,the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students conducted in Moscow in 1957 is one with the most participants,the largest scale and the most far-reaching influence.Employing the decrypted English archives,this dissertation takes the cultural cold war as a starting point to describe the World Festival of Youth and Students in 1957 in detail,and to explain its historical significance from the perspective of the West(the Soviet Union’s opponent).The main body of this dissertation is divided into three parts.The first part introduces the reasons for the Soviet Union’s bid for the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students and the preparations it made for the event.In the mid-1950 s,the ideological struggle between the western and the eastern camps was extremely fierce.After Khrushchev came to power,he promoted the adjustment and reform of domestic and foreign policies of the Soviet Union.These promotions brought new opportunities for the country to develop.Therefore,it decided to hold the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students to show its accomplishments in the process of constructing socialism and to achieve its political and diplomatic goals.In order to ensure the success of the festival,the Soviet Union carried out preparatory work with the support of the whole country and formulated a plan to publicize it widely.But its preparation for the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students has aroused vigilance and covert resistance of the Western World.The second part discusses the prosperous surface of the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students and the various discordant sounds underneath.On the one hand,under the careful preparation and organization of the Soviet(the sponsor),the festival was grand in scale and wonderful in activities in that the Soviet Union aimed to show a vibrant and prosperous socialism model to the world,which brought the Soviet great image upgrading in the eyes of Asian,African,Latin American countries,and even the Western World.The participation of thousands of foreign youths and students,on theother hand,disrupted the original plan of the Soviet Union and challenged the orthodox route of this country.There were much discord and extremely fierce struggle behind the prosperous surface of the festival.The arrangement of the sponsor and the performance of various delegations became a microcosm of the international situation at that time.The third part illustrates the consequence and influence of the 1957 World Festival of Youth and Students.This festival is a public display of the Soviet Union’s national strength and social development road.The domestic people and foreign guests have a clearer and more sensitive understanding of the Soviet Union’s socialist system and social development level.The overall effect can be described as a mixed feeling.As a fierce confrontation between the Eastern and Western cultural cold wars in the 1950 s,the degree to which participants from various countries(regions)are affected depends on the cold war camp ownership,economic and social development level,historical and cultural background,among which the gap in economical strength is particularly critical.As a typical event of Cultural Cold War,the 1957 World Festival of Youth and Students left not only precious historical memory to the world,but also profound enlightenment to later generations.That is to say,the essence of the Cultural Cold War is to compete for the hearts of people,and it is "a war for the hearts of people",In addition,it’s to some extent a competition of economical strength between eastern and western world.The key to winning of hearts of people is strong national strength and ability to give people excellent life instead of ostensible hospitality and luxury.