The Coming Youth Festival in Vienna

...Lumer wrote: "His [Mikoyan's] meeting with top labor leaders is of special importance...

...As such, it should be given the stony stare...

...In the United States, Students for Democratic Action is "neutral against" the Festival...

...we can tell them...

...Let us assume that it can happen, would happen...

...For example, one can argue as to whether the much-debated meeting between Soviet Deputy Premier Anastas I. Mikoyan and Walter Reuther, James Carey and other U.S...

...But the important question is—why, then, do the Russians seem to take such apparent risks...

...trade union or political—has announced it will boycott the meeting...

...italics mine...

...How much more self-respecting it would be if our Government were to state that unless the Soviets withdraw their May 27 ultimatum on Berlin, we will renounce "cultural" exchange agreements with Moscow...

...Whether it is a desire for tourist business and increased Iron Curtain trade or unreported Soviet pressure, the fact remains that a Communist youth conference is scheduled...

...we can argue and debate with them...

...And this, with the support of university officials, who have allowed the students time off from classes for their demonstrations...

...After all, we can show them...

...Now...

...What attitude should democratic groups and individuals take on this question...

...If young people from the democratic countries are encouraged to attend the Festival, it would give an air of respectability to an event which, if only for the memory of the Hungarian massacre two years ago, merits condemnation and boycott...

...It is clear, however, that our Government, faced with a relatively simple Soviet maneuver, finds itself quite unprepared to cope with it...

...But what do the Communists think...

...It may be that the toughest Komsomol can be pinked by a graduate student from Columbia University's Russian Institute, with who knows what aftereffects...

...This time the question is—shall young people of the democratic countries be encouraged to attend the Communistsponsored World Festival of Youth to be held in Vienna July 26 to August 4? The last festival in Moscow in the summer of 1957 was quite a performance...

...There is plausibility to such argument...

...we have smart youngsters on our side...

...their monster propaganda action in Vienna, Austria would be 'fulfilling its mission of reconciling the opposites...

...A hard look af the latest Communist propaganda effort The Coming Youth Festival in Vienna By Arnold Beichman ONCE MORE we are faced with an old tactical problem—how to react to a Soviet initiative...

...Perhaps something may be said for "people-to-people" exchanges between doctors, lawyers, farmers and economists, but the World Festival of Youth is a genuine, 100 per cent Communist propaganda effort...

...In fact, in recent days democratic student groups have organized 24hour protest strikes in the country's leading universities...

...Obviously, they expect to gain something important by sending young people from the LTSSR to Vienna...

...Is it not time to prove that anything the Communists can do, we can do better—if not in the manufacture of luniks, then certainly in the advancement of freedom's cause...

...But it cannot be denied that their participation gave the Soviet Union the kind of prestigious status it seeks, particularly in the African and Asian countries...

...The answer can be found in what the Communists themselves say...

...But official Austria, which behaved so heroically during and after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, has shown a peculiar sense of morality in this instance...

...As in all instances where the Soviet Union makes its seductive offers, the first question is—why are the Communists doing it...

...The non-Communist World Assembly of Youth (WAY) has announced that, like the democratic Austrian youth groups, it will boycott the Vienna gathering...

...The usual answer is—what can you lose by talking to the Communists...

...Every democratic youth organization in Austria—whether religious...

...what are we afraid of...

...Moscow's unvarying campaign of infiltration and subversion of free trade unions would only be aided by top-level trade union visits, and the aura of respectability which Khrushchev seeks is intended to weaken the West's resolution and resistance to Communism...

...Austrian public opinion, it should be noted, is largely opposed to the Festival...

...Given our willful capacity to believe the best of our opponents, particularly when they are young, sexy and cool, it will be worth every ruble the Kremlin plans to spend on the Festival...

...According to Frederick Brook, the Christian Science Monitor s Vienna correspondent, Austrian Foreign Minister Leopold Figl "produced the hopeful argument that by allowing the Communists to stage ARNOLD BEICHMAN is the press representative of the ICFTU at the UN...

...At first, the Government announced that the Cabinet decision on this question was unanimous...

...After all, if Western labor leaders were to go to Moscow for a friendly chat, would it not be that much easier for trade unionists from newly-liberated countries, with their floundering and ambitious economies, to accept similar Soviet invitations, particularly those trade unionists who have shown a discomforting pliancy and neutralism when confronted with Soviet infiltration tactics in their own countries...

...One may question, at the outset, the willingness of the Austrian Government to allow this Communist assembly to take place in Vienna...

...But the very occurrence of such a meeting is a significant departure from the adamant refusal of the top labor bureaucracy to have any contact whatever with anything Soviet...

...The U. S. State Department seems to be behaving rather farcically in announcing, according to the New York Times, that it is "quietly and unofficially encouraging the participation of able and thoroughly prepared American students" at the Festival...

...Boycott Vienna...

...What effect it had on youth delegates from the free world is difficult to measure...

...When it invites labor leaders like Meany to visit Moscow, the Kremlin does so because it expects tangible gains, knowing well that Meany's anti- Communism would not be tempered by seeing collective farms or visiting the Kremlin men's room with Khrushchev...

...These young people will be presented with an image of a peace-loving, wise and tolerant Soviet youth...

...It can be taken for granted that there will be few vocal admirers of Boris Pasternak among Soviet or satellite youth delegations...

...That is why the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions has opposed formal labor exchanges since the Soviet kultur drive started four years ago...

...But more recently it has become known that at least two important members of the Government, Dr...

...labor leaders was a good idea or not...

...Do we not help Communist designs in Asia and Africa that much more by the pretense that we must stimulate the "dialogue" between East and West...

...To be sure, those who attended were severely criticized by AFL-CIO President George Meany, and both Reuther and Carey subsequently proclaimed their unwavering anti-Communism and let it be known that they had used the occasion to tell Mikoyan off...

...The real answer might be for an organization like WAY to convene, even at this late date, a genuinely democratic youth Congress—right in Vienna, too...

...As Brook noted, "this is in accordance with the rather touching Austrian belief that even Lucifer could be turned into a polite drawing-room figure if only he lived in Vienna long enough...

...it seems that the Austrian Government itself feels a trifle guilty about its action and is seeking to justify it publicly...

...Of a piece with this attitude is the recent decision of the Viennese municipal authorities to give the Communist sponsors of the Festival a 20 per cent reduction in the rental rate for the city sports stadium, where the mass rallies are to occur...

...As a result, the State Department, long aware that the Festival was coming off, only lends itself to this Soviet intelligence operation...

...The Sunday Worker for February 15 had an article by Hyman Lumer entitled "An Evaluation of Mikoyan's Visit...

...What enthusiasm for "cultural" exchanges most often ignores is that Moscow gives nothing for free...

...From past Youth Festivals, and particularly the 1957 affair, we know that the greatest concentration of Soviet effort will be to bring young people from Africa and Asia to meet Soviet and satellite youth leaders disposed to talk about sputniks rather than act like beatniks...

...Heinrich Drimmel, Minister of Education, and Oskar Helmer, Minister of Interior, strongly opposed the decision...

...How one is to judge who are "thoroughly prepared" students is not stated...