Counterblast at the Vienna Festival

...Some of the Austrian youths who were distributing the literature were severely beaten by the Communist "commandos...

...many had no fixed political views and were open to influence in either direction...

...Among the films shown were documentaries on the 1953 East German uprising and the Hungarian Revolution, two films based on George Orwell's novels, 1984 and Animal Farm, and Ernst Lubitsch's classic satire, Ninotchka...

...To counter them, the Federation of Austrian Youth and the Federation of Austrian Students played a key role in the major effort to weaken the impact of the Communist enterprise...

...In this they were abetted by the city's non-Communist press, which undertook what it called "Operation Silence" about the Festival: A few days before the jamboree began, all the newspapers explained editorially that they were clamping a news blackout on the event because they considered it not news but propaganda...

...A four-page newspaper, the Vienna Daily News, was issued 12 days running in seven different editions—English, German, French, Russian, Spanish, Hungarian and Czech...

...Communist supervisors were unable to keep control over all the participants from non-Communist countries...

...Boris Pasternak s Dr...

...The Socialists, whose traditional and staunch history of opposition to all forms of totalitarianism and imperialism is a matter of record, sponsored a big rally against colonialism with prominent speakers from Africa and Asia, a commemoration of the Hungarian Revolution with Anna Kethly, the Hungarian Social Democratic leader, as speaker, and a meeting on World Refugee Day (August 2) where refugees from Algeria, Spain, Hungary and Tibet (the Dalai Lama's brother) spoke...

...The Communist managers of these delegations took every precaution to insulate the latter from the seductions lurking in Vienna...

...Some success, at least, may be inferred from the fact that their living quarters were subjected to a thorough search for '"contraband" books and periodicals by Communist guards...

...The main anti-Communist information center housed an exhibition of "Young Painters of Today" and featured a "phono-bar" where jazz recordings could be heard through earphones...

...Young Socialists from the West, from the Afro-Asian countries and from Austria itself—as well as young exiles from Hungary, Spain and Algeria—performed a highly-useful function...

...Seventy-one Soviet delegates took part in the factory tour...

...Some 18,000 youths from approximately 100 countries, representing three main geographical areas—Western, Afro-Asian and Iron Curtain—participated in the Festival...

...Unfortunately, most of the young people from behind the Iron Curtain—except for the Poles, who were comparatively free and accessible—were either confined to their quarters or did not dare come...

...Democratic youths stymie Communist impact Counterblast at the Vienna Festival By Friedrich Katscher VIENNA Now THAT THE World Youth Festival, held here from July 26 to August 4, is over, it is possible to draw up a balance-sheet on it...

...Though it would be self-deception to maintain that the Communists were wholly unsuccessful, it will probably be a long time before they stage another such rally in a Western city...

...The story was told in many ways...

...Perhaps the lowest act perpetrated by the Communists was to spread word that the Austrian Government had suspended the right of political asylum for the duration of the Festival and would arrest and return any refugee...

...Or were the disruptive efforts of the many anti-Communist youth groups sufficiently successful to teach Moscow not to try such an experiment again outside the Iron Curtain...

...The vast majority of Viennese remained completely aloof from the proceedings...

...There were from eight to 12 bus trips daily to the "murder frontier," and Western and Asian delegates were duly appalled by the visible manifestations of the Iron Curtain—the barbed wire entanglements, minefields, watch-towers with searchlights and machine-guns...

...All Festival programs and attractions were regularly listed on an inside page, but cleverly interspersed with them were also listings of all the anti-Communist counter-attractions...

...They won few new adherents and undoubtedly lost some, especially among the Iron Curtain youths who had their first breath of a free society and their first glimpse of its products...

...This was the seventh such gathering, but the first held in a non-Iron Curtain city...

...The printed material in the Western languages was read by the Western and Afro-Asian participants, but it is difficult to assess the extent to which this literature reached the Iron Curtain groups...

...The newspapers, as well as books, leaflets, posters and other printed materials, were widely distributed at the more than a dozen information centers set up by anti-Communist youth groups in booths near the camps where the delegates lived, near railroad stations, and at other focal points...

...The anti-Communist literature included a beautifully illustrated booklet called Westwind, which described how young people live in the West...

...The paper also printed world news that placed the Soviet bloc in a poor light, and featured items about the dissensions and quarrels at the Festival itself...

...They were secluded like monks from any undesirable contacts with Westerners and were transported by special buses from place to place...

...Guided tours were arranged through Vienna and to factories in and out of the city...

...The Hungarians, Czechs, Rumanians and Bulgarians had been screened in such a way that they mostly included people who knew no Western language...

...and a much-sought-after magazine on modern art...

...Austrian Communist activists, though small in number, played an important role by guarding the seclusion of the Iron Curtain youths and by using violence against open opponents...

...and a German television cameraman was also beaten and his camera destroyed (but the film saved) as he recorded how the Communist camp guards violently attacked the non-Communist youths...

...Three movie houses played "motion pictures without censorship" and free of charge...

...Two days after the Festival closed, the Ministry announced that three East European youths who had come to the Festival—a Czech metal grinder, a Rumanian music student and a Hungarian music student—have asked for asylum, which was, of course, granted...

...On balance, it would seem that more was gained than lost by allowing the Communists to hold their Festival here...

...In the free atmosphere of this city...

...Many of them had their lodgings on heavily guarded ships anchored in the Danube...

...The distinctions were not so clear among the Afro-Asians...

...These movements, under the slogan, "Friendship Yes, Communism No," worked with many other groups to explain why they refused to participate in the Festival, but were eager to make contact with individual participants to tell the story of the free world...

...For the duration of the Festival, there was total silence about it in the press...

...Four free jazz concerts—advertised with the slogan, "Music Knows No Borders"—filled Vienna's largest auditorium...

...The Western group included Communists, fellow travelers, anti-Communists and indifferent people who came only to have a good time at inexpensive rates...

...Visits were also organized to the Hungarian border...

...Did their calculated risk, in sponsoring it in a nominally neutral but actually anti-Communist, pro-West city, pay off...

...And a few days after the Festival's close, the press published brief round-ups about it...

...The delegations from the Soviet-dominated countries consisted of both convinced Communists and young people eager to see something of the unknown but attractive West...

...Young Aus-trians and others speaking foreign languages were present throughout the day to answer questions about life in the West and to engage Communist and other disputants in the many lively discussions that took place...

...On balance, the latter would seem to be the case, though the Festival's propagandistic activities cannot be said to have been wholly without an effect on the delegates...

...The Vienna Daily News at once refuted this lie and quoted an official of the Austrian Ministry of Interior to the effect that "Austria is a free country and offers asylum to any political refugee...

...Zhivago and Milovan Djilas' The New Class in several languages...

...Was it a success from the point of view of its Communist organizers...