The Communists spent well over $100 million this past summer in their global attempt to create, and win, a new social class of "Youth." The World Youth Festival did not succeed in this, however, for as a propaganda instrument it was blunted by the independent efforts of Western student groups, and in particular by American participants working within the Festival. But the Soviet did not fail with all of the 20,000 "youth" who arrived in Vienna for 10 days of rallies, cultural events, slogans, and seminars.

With this consciously created New Class the Russians are eager to identify, and there are pretentious possibilities in their hope for the fast-stepping of the youth vanguard ("At the Revolution, I will be there"). It is difficult to think of a western parallel for this collective identification, unless it would be the unplanned social cast of the "teenager", given group status by popular song, and whose wayward extremes think they are fulfilling a public image "Get your knife, Freddy").

The importance of this cold war objective to the Russians was clear: the offstage direction by A.N. Shelepin, chief of the U.S.S.R.'s security organization, the large financial stake, and the presence in Vienna of Khrushchev's son-in-law, the editor of Isvestia. The heavy Soviet news coverage indicated the full scope of their aim to further Communist claims before, during and after the Festival. While prior festivals were blatantly offensive, this one offered the drug of "Peace and Friendship."

To show that even the slogan omitted "Freedom," counter information and sentiments were pressed upon the delegates both within and outside of the Festival. Over Vienna small planes towed signs reading Remember Hungary and Remember Tibet, and the Austrians offered free rides to see the reality of the Hungarian border's barbed wire and watch-towers. With the cooperation of the Americans, students published a seven language newspaper to present accounts ignored in the Russian reports. All over Vienna bookstores displayed books impossible to obtain in satellite countries, and "Information Booths" sought to attract the wandering delegates. And there was the atmosphere of Vienna itself, its prosperity and its feeling of being an obviously free city.

Confusion and Credential Checks

Inside the Festival it was a different picture. The only active non-Communist group to venture within was the American, and what they found was an atmosphere chiefly filled with confusion and credential checks.

Sheer physical difficulties were present in the chief Festival accommodation area--the Vienna International Fair Grounds. A fifteen minute walk in a dusty, chaotic atmosphere separated points of importance. Besides the halls taken over for an organization center, the only buildings opened for use were two widely separated restaurants, the Soviet pavilion illuminated at the top by a Red Star, and exhibition halls turned into crude barracks with composition-wood dividers.

Through the night the dormitory lights burned, and from them dead bugs fell to the three-piece mattresses below. The women were in distant tents. Married couples could assure meeting in the confusion of the following day only by arranging a time and place in advance. The ultimate result was hardly the intellectual repartee in a Vienna winecellar for which Americans had hoped.

Nor were most of the delegates entirely what had been expected. It was anticipated, of course, that some would be wide-eyed and looking for fun. "There's no good," said one American from M.I.T., "in a PhD candidate talking politics with a 16 year-old banjo player."

But the fanatic nature of some of the Communist stalwarts was surprising, especially the Iraqi and Saudi Arabian party members. Their idea of fun was to gather in the Afro-Asian restaurant every night from 11 until 3 a.m., and bind themselves together in a frenzy of red wine and an orgy porgy of "peace and friendship".

When they finally discovered that the Hungarian pins they wore were actually the symbol of refugee freedom fighters, they moved about shaking down anyone who looked like he might have been passing them out. They liked to circle into groups of 100 or so, and sing party songs while the men swayed to the music. One night when the Yale Russian chorus staged a counter amusement, they paused long enough from their shredding of copies of Amerika to express disapproval of those intrigued by the Americans.

But some crucial groups, such as the Ceylonese and French West Africans, were truly uncommitted. There were satellite representatives ready to engage in reasonable discussion, despite a careful prior selection of delegates which seemed to divide most of the European delegations into three groups--athletes, performers, and party members. And some acted as hatchet men for the Russians, the hard core East Germans for example, who were given control of the seminar programs far in advance, and the more impromptu "goon squad" tasks of removing unfriendly posters.

This handy division of labor permitted the Russians to play the two faced Janus. Their prominent role at the Festival allowed them to take credit for the existing fragments of "peace and friendship", while behind the closed door others could stoke the furnaces of power politics.

The Communist organizers also did their best to seal off potentially receptive satellite groups by housing them all over Vienna. The Hungarians, for example, were isolated on barges in the Danube, and Festival guards checked all boarders. For these groups of delegates the Communists had a grab-bag of attractions.

A description of the Festival in limited space must partially involve the Communist technique of presenting issues in Vienna: oversimplification. One surprising aspect of this was the utilization of "Fascism." The Communists use the label of "Fascism" to condemn anything they oppose, and fascist techniques to foster what they favor. A fervent Arab communist would claim that anyone in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was a fascist, while a more educated Czech communist would admit the fascists were "less than 10 per cent," but reach the same conclusion by the subtle historical error of giving them credit "as the elite who engineered the counter-revolution." When it came to proposing, the Festival rallies looked like films of Hitler's youth meetings in the 1930's with the German for peace and friendship, "Freiden und Freudschaft," replacing the "Zieg Heils."