The World Youth Festival as a Soviet Cultural Product during the Cold War
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21241536 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Pia Koivunen (0000-0001-6142-1595, University of Turku, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 8 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Publication date | 2020-12-30 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Quaestio Rossica (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2311-911X • E-ISSN: 2313-6871 |
| Publisher | Ural Federal University (PUBLISHER • RU) |
| DOI | 10.15826/qr.2020.5.548 |
| OpenAlex | W3116833635 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 13 |
This article discusses Soviet cultural diplomacy from the perspective of cultural production. It analyses a Soviet-sponsored international event, the World Festival of Youth and Students, as a cultural product created within the socialist system. The first festival was held in Prague in 1947, and the tradition continued throughout the Cold War period until today. Earlier scholarship has examined the festival as a propaganda tool, a forum for cross-cultural encounters, and a battlefield of the cultural Cold War between the capitalist West and the socialist East. Much has been written about individual world youth festivals and national delegations, while the design, cultural background and fundamental ideas behind the event have been much less acknowledged. By employing the concept of mega-event and comparing the festival with iconic international events, such as World’s Fairs and the Olympic Games, it discusses the festival’s composition and evolution, its reception, and how the event found its place in a world shaped by the tensions between the two social systems. It employs materials from the main organiser of the event, the World Federation of Democratic Youth, documents from the Communist Youth League (Komsomol) and the Communist Party of the USSR, and contemporary newspapers and magazines. The author argues that the USSR developed an attractive global cultural institution, which well suited the Cold War environment but was too dependent on financial support from the socialist bloc and too tied to the political agenda of the Soviet Union to become a universally accepted institution
Communism · Cultural history · Democracy · Eastern Bloc · Economic history · Institution · League · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · World War II · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · History · Law · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
World of fairs
Loose Girls’ on the Loose?
The Dove Flies East
Cultures and Societies in a Changing World
The Russians in Germany
Globalizing Sport
Soviet Soft Power in Poland. Culture and the Making of Stalin’s New Empire, 1943-1957
Theorising the role of cultural products in cultural diplomacy from a Cultural Studies perspective
Backlash of the Free World
What makes an event a mega-event? Definitions and sizes
Soviet Foreign Propaganda
The Logic of Soviet Cultural Diplomacy
The Friendship Project
| Citations per year | 0.75 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2022 - 2025 (4) |
| Highly cited | No |