Changing Soviet Priorities

...The Moscow festival served a positive propaganda purpose: It showed many neutrals a respectable Russia, free of the Stalinist past...

...They hung around in small groups, running back and forth, waiting for something to happen...

...The organizers of the festival must admit it has been a total failure," he said...

...While many of the meetings and seminars were half deserted, the "Free Tribunes" always drew large crowds...

...Some stories have it that the festivals will be replaced altogether by combined festival-forums, such as the one held in Moscow in 1961 for hard-line delegates, in preparation for Helsinki...

...The first sign of change came in 1955, the year of the "Geneva spirit," which was marked at the Warsaw Festival by a slight moderation of the anti-Western line...

...They took a further step toward respectability in choosing neutral Austria for the site of the 1959 festival...

...At a stormy meeting in Santiago, Chile, where the Chinese, backed by the radical Latin American Communist parties, urged that the 1962 festival be held in Havana, the Russians insisted on another neutral country, Finland-closer to Russia than Austria and, they hoped, more susceptible to Soviet pressure...

...The majority watched in cold silence, particularly when the colorful opening day parade marched past, 10,000 strong...

...The Union of Socialist Youth challenged the festival with its own exhibit, and its slogan: "Democratic Socialism is a Better Alternative...

...Beginning the night before the festival opened and continuing for four nights, crowds of young Finns gathered along the broad Mannerheim Street in the center of Helsinki...

...Final figures claim 13,560, including the 2,200 Finns...

...Their fare home was paid by the anti-Communist International Union of Socialist Youth...

...None of this helped to create a gay atmosphere, but even without the local reaction, which made the headlines, the disappointments and the series of mishaps within the festival itself would have been enough to spoil any Communist gathering...

...But in these same years the neutrals have tended to develop a more sophisticated approach to world politics, and the West has begun to counter Soviet moves with imaginative ploys of its own...

...Just before the opening, 15,000-18,000 were expected...

...Many delegates complained bitterly about these conditions, several even charging the festival's organizers with racial discrimination...

...Of the 500 handpicked East Germans who were permitted to come, an estimated 40 defected...

...Several Western groups also held seminars before and after the festival in Copenhagen and Oslo and offered summer travel grants for trips in Western Europe, all primarily for young people from the underdeveloped areas...

...They are still important, but the first-rate policymakers assigned to woo them have been transferred to areas which at present seem more vital-space, arms, testing, Berlin and, behind them all, the pressing problems of Russia's domestic economy...

...Once the festival was thrust upon them, the Finns-except for the local Communists, who constitute about one-fourth of the electorate and supplied some 2,200 delegates-greeted it in one of two characteristic moods...

...The leader of the Indonesian youth delegation left, charging that the program was "entirely under Soviet influence...

...We'll put you on the list of speakers...

...The "correct techniques" included destroying the old image of Stalinist Russia, closed and hostile to all outsiders...

...Original plans had called for over 20,000 delegates...

...The Russians anticipated difficulties from opposition groups and a free press, but again they felt that the prestige to be gained among the neutrals by moving to a nonbloc country was worth the risks...

...He has offered bread, sometimes in the form of grants of free food, or medicine, or an ego-boosting presidential helicopter, more often in the form of trade and long-term loans...

...In addition, most of the Asian, African and Latin American delegations were smaller than had been expected...

...The flexibility of his appeal, the swiftness with which he moved, and his initial successes impressed the uncommitted nations and startled the unprepared West...

...Khrushchev has succeeded in banishing the Stalinist image of Russia, and the new image is fairly well accepted...

...The festival organizers, who were paying the transportation costs of many of the delegates, promptly withdrew the return tickets of these Ceylonese...

...Soviet leaders apparently believed this outweighed the disadvantages of exposing young Muscovites to foreign ideas and information...

...For almost two years, the National Union of Finnish Students and the Finnish Government resisted Soviet demands, protesting that their country's neutrality would be violated if the festival were held there...

...This catalogue of Communist slip-ups and Western countermoves clearly adds up to something less than a Soviet success...

...It has failed to promote good will, friendship and peace, among the delegates of African birth who came direct from Africa and elsewhere...

...others soon joined them...

...The Government then stepped in and made certain that space would be available...

...and Nkrumah, at the last moment, decided that his 75 Young Pioneers were needed at home...

...Finnish youth groups made it very clear that they welcomed foreign guests and objected only to the Communist festival which had been forced upon them...

...What do they take us for, morons...

...As these reactions to the initial Soviet moves have been set up in the neutral and Western world, Khrushchev has not worked out counter-moves...

...But the discussions were far from free, and when frustrated non-Communist speakers finally forced their way past procedural difficulties to the floor, angry debates developed...

...No one can tell how many committed Communists left the festival disenchanted, or how many neutrals left still neutral, or attracted or repelled by Communism...

...The most recent circus, the Eighth World Youth Festival, held in Helsinki last month, revealed many of them in public...

...You're number 63.' Then they reach number 42 and adjourn...

...One key is the amount of money estimated to have been spent on the Helsinki festival: $25 million compared with the $100 million spent at Vienna...

...A daily newspaper, the Helsinki Youth News, was published in English, French and Spanish...

...The most startling instance was the scheduling of the first Soviet atmospheric test the day before the festival was to observe "Hiroshima Day," with condemnation of American testing and praise of Russia's "peaceful policy...

...The 44 non-Communist members of the 101-man Ceylonese delegation withdrew, explaining that they wished publicly to "draw the attention of the world to how the organizers of the festival, taking advantage of young people's genuine desire for peace and friendship throughout the world, utilize the occasion to put through the Communist line and make it look far more representative than it really is...

...But because of the delays and lack of cooperation, delegations were scattered and treated as national groups, and there was less opportunity for mingling on an informal basis than at previous festivals...

...Some of the Asian and African delegations were housed 20 miles from town, and bus transportation to various festival activities was inadequate...

...Moscow has neither the time nor the money these days to spend on secondary issues-and that is what the youth festival and, in a sense, the neutrals seem to have become...

...The adroitness that characterized his policy at the start seems to have vanished...

...And they know that the old formulas of peace and friendship and anti-colonialism are not enough to insure a successful festival...

...Despite all their arrangements, however, things went wrong from the start...

...In its place a new image was created: one of a strong, modern, efficient industrial power which supports the underdeveloped countries on the issue most important to them-their struggle against colonialism-and which offers a far better and faster model for economic and social development than the capitalist West...

...An estimated 60 per cent of the delegates were Communists when they came to Helsinki...

...They were not organized...

...They maintained a number of attractive nonfestival centers, scheduled lectures, dances, jazz concerts, and exhibited their own youth activities...

...In a significant break with Stalinist tradition, he discarded the old view of neutrals as "pawns of the imperialists" and adopted the attitude that "he who is not against us may, if we employ the correct techniques, eventually turn out to be with us...

...Khrushchev's policy for the underdeveloped areas was new and dramatic when he introduced it in 1955...

...Another popular alternative to festival activities was "Young America Presents," an exhibit financed by several private American foundations...

...He has also organized circuses, traveling in both directions: visits by Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov, tours by Russian acrobats and the Bolshoi Ballet...

...thought this was to be a free forum where I could express my views...

...The crowds were dispersed only by mounted police swinging rubber clubs and, on the third and fourth nights, by tear gas, in a display of force the likes of which Helsinki has not seen since the War...

...In almost every delegation from a neutral country there was a core of party people, chosen from among students in Eastern Europe, or by Soviet Embassies which gave travel grants to young people of their choosing in countries, such as Somalia, where representative youth groups declined to come...

...this time, it was hoped that Nkrumah and, possibly, Nasser had changed their minds...

...All of this was dramatized at the Helsinki festival...

...Before long there were a few fistfights between anti-Communist and pro-Communist Finnish students, and as the red festival buses with Moscow license plates drove by, the young Finns started to throw stones and bottles at them...

...it reported debates and defections, and provided a healthy antidote to the festival line...

...The violence was criticized by the Union of Finnish Students, and by the press...

...They know now, after several years of varied efforts, that no amount of aid for the Aswan Dam will prevent Nasser's keeping Egyptian Communists in jail as long as he likes...

...I demand the right to speak!' 'Of course,' they tell you, 'this is a free forum...

...Soviet policy-makers have probably included the festival experience in their growing file...

...The formal Communist evaluation of the festival will probably not be made public, but there have been rumors that 37-year-old "youth leader" Jiri Pelikan, head of the IUS since 1953, may be on the way out...

...In creating this fresh image of a bountiful Russia with an unbeatable technique available to all young countries, the Premier invented new institutions and refurbished old ones...

...A Moroccan student explained how speeches were controlled: "If you want to make a speech, you submit it to the Preparatory Committee, and they check it out-to see if it isn't 'too long.' If it fits the line, you're put on the list...

...But the true Khrushchev touch came at the 1957 Youth Festival, when the city of Moscow was opened wide to 35,000 participants in the first large-scale attempt to impress and win the friendship of young people from Asia and Africa...

...Their mood was contagious...

...Now, the world has changed...

...Suppose you get very angry and shout...

...By April 1962, Soviet pressure had forced the Helsinki Government to adopt an attitude of "let's be good hosts...

...Nevertheless, the impression created both in Helsinki and outside was far from the atmosphere of sweetness and light that successful international Communist gatherings produce...

...But the Student Union still refused to participate, and a groundswell of popular "passive resistance" hindered the preparations of the Communistcontrolled International Preparatory Committee...

...Such blatant disregard for neutral sensibilities suggests, as it did at the time of the Belgrade Conference, that the neutrals have moved down on the Soviet foreign policy priority list...

...HELSINKI YOUTH FESTIVAL AS A BAROMETER Changing Soviet Priorities By Madeleine G. Kalb Helsinki Premier Khrushchev's sevenyear-old policy of wooing the world's neutrals with bread and circuses seems to have run into difficulties in the past year...

...If you're too neutral, and you don't attack the West enough, they try to cut out the more moderate parts, and convince you to make a few additions, to make it "more interesting.' Suppose you refuse to change it...

...This would mean a return to the preKhrushchev type of festival...

...But of the 500 Egyptian delegates expected, only a 55-man group, apparently anti Nasser, showed up...

...So unaccustomed was the quiet capital to this sort of outburst that two over-zealous policemen beat up an indignant citizen who did not move off the street fast enough, only to discover later that he was their police chief, in mufti...

...Khrushchev himself has sold the peace and friendship line in colorful personal tours...

...and free junkets in the Soviet bloc for trade-union organizers, parliamentarians and students...

...A few boys started to shout anti-festival slogans: "Communists, go home...

...Until he took charge, the biennial youth festivals had been closed affairs, held within the bloc, attended by the faithful and dedicated to a hoarse repetition of the violent anti-American Soviet line...

...The buses were rerouted, and festival organizers kept delegates out of the center of town in the evenings...

...Free Finland...

...The chairman of the 10-man Uganda delegation quit after two days...

...While the Communist organizers were playing well above par, various Western groups were responding to the challenge in a somewhat more imaginative and better organized fashion...

...Madeleine G. Kalb, who for the past two years has lived in Moscow, attended the Helsinki Festival...

...The organizers of the festival, the Communist-run International Union of Students (IUS) and the World Federation of Democratic Youth, spent three rather than the customary two years preparing for the event...

...Khrushchev has made the neutral countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America a chief focus of his propaganda and his foreign policy...

...A minority expressed their anger in violence...

...There is talk, too, that the next festival may be moved back inside the bloc, to Sofia or Havana...

...In 1959, the neutrals' big three, Nehru, Nasser and Nkrumah, had boycotted the festival...

...that honoring S?©kou Tour?© with a Lenin Peace Prize did not prevent his dismissing a Soviet Ambassador for "meddling in Guinea's internal affairs" (nor did the Prize prevent Nkrumah's decision to forbid Ghana's Young Pioneers to attend the youth festival...

...They also thought it would be an admission of failure to move back into the bloc...