Anatomy of a Socialist Mega-event / World Youth Festivals as a Product of Soviet Cultural Diplomacy

World Festivals of Youth and Students are not often remembered as a serious youth activity.They are frequently pictured either as something laughable, a bizarre half-forgotten feature of the Cold War era, or as a sinister tool of Soviet power to brainwash young idealists and sway them to its side.And yet, the festival movement was a rich, multi-layered phenomenon, forged by the Cold War but worth looking at from different angles; as a space of interaction, as a social event, or as a product of Soviet cultural diplomacy.At least that is what Pia Koivunen