ABSTRACT
This chapter explores social, political and cultural exchange among young Europeans across the East-West divide from the late Stalin period to the early Brezhnev era. The setting for the research is a Soviet-sponsored cultural celebration, the World Festival of Youth and Students (henceforth World Youth Festival), which gathered young people at biennial intervals with a view to manifesting peace and friendship. While it was the communist youth leagues, in association with the communist parties of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, that initiated, organized and controlled the youth festivals, the communist dominance did not completely determine the course and the function of the event. Young people found their own ways, both within and outside of the official festivities, to utilize the festival for their individual purposes. The study looks beyond the official propaganda and discusses the forms of informal, unofficial interaction that managed to bypass the control imposed by the socialist system. It focuses on what happened in those spaces beyond the reach of communist control.
