TY - BOOK ID - 101940334 TI - Performing Peace and Friendship : The World Youth Festivals and Soviet Cultural Diplomacy PY - 2022 SN - 3110761165 311075844X PB - München ; Wien : De Gruyter Oldenbourg, DB - UniCat KW - Cold War KW - Festivals KW - Youth and war KW - Youth KW - HISTORY / Military / Wars & Conflicts (Other). KW - Social aspects KW - History KW - Social life and customs. KW - Cold War. KW - USSR. KW - World Festival of Youth and Students. KW - cultural diplomacy. KW - Young people KW - Young persons KW - Youngsters KW - Youths KW - Age groups KW - Life cycle, Human KW - War and youth KW - War KW - Days KW - Manners and customs KW - Anniversaries KW - Fasts and feasts KW - Pageants KW - Processions KW - World politics UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:101940334 AB - 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. ER -