Performing Peace and Friendship : The World Youth Festivals and Soviet Cultural Diplomacy / Pia Koivunen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Koivunen, Pia, Author.

Series:

Rethinking the Cold War

Rethinking the Cold War , 2567-5311 ; 9

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cold War--Social aspects--Soviet Union.

Cold War.

Festivals--History--20th century.

Festivals.

Youth and war--History--20th century.

Youth and war.

Youth--Soviet Union--Social life and customs.

Youth.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (VIII, 303 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

München ; Wien : De Gruyter Oldenbourg, [2022]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Acknowledgements

Contents

Introduction

Part I: Selling Peace and Friendship to World Youth, 1947–56

1 Stalinist Youth Festivals, 1947–51

2 De-Stalinizing the Festival

Part II: Showcasing Khrushchev’s USSR: The Moscow 1957 Festival

3 Making of the Moscow Spectacle

4 The Long-awaited Encounter with the World

5 Boundaries of the Permissible

6 Immediate Impacts and the Legacy of the Festival

Epilogue

Abbreviations

Sources and Bibliography

Index

Notes:

This eBook is made available Open Access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 https://www.degruyter.com/dg/page/open-access-policy

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 07. Nov 2022)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9783110761160

3110761165

OCLC:

1354207992