 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(August 2013) |
The World Festival of Youth and Students is an international event organized by the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) and the International Union of Students after 1947.
The festival has been held occasionally since 1947, mainly in communist states, as an event of global youth solidarity for democracy and against war and imperialism. The largest festival was the 6th, held in 1957 in Moscow, when 34,000 young people from 131 countries attended the event. This festival also marked the international debut of the song "Moscow Nights", which subsequently went on to become a widely recognized Russian song. There were no festivals between 1962 and 1968, as events proposed in Algeria and then Ghana were cancelled due to coups and political turmoil in both countries. [1] Until the 19th festival in Sochi, Russia in 2017 (with 185 countries participating), [2] the largest festival by number of countries with participants was the 13th, held in 1989 in Pyongyang when 177 countries attended the event. [3]
The most recent festival took place in Sochi, Russia, from 13 to 22 October 2017.
| Edition | Year | Logo | Country | Host City | Participants | No. of countries represented | Motto |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | 1947 |  |  Czechoslovakia | Prague | 17,000 | 71 | "Youth Unite, Forward for Lasting Peace!" |
| 2nd | 1949 |  |  Hungary | Budapest | 20,000 | 82 | "Youth Unite, Forward for Lasting Peace, Democracy, National Independence and a better future for the people" |
| 3rd | 1951 |  |  East Germany | East Berlin | 26,000 | 104 | "For Peace and Friendship – Against Nuclear Weapons" |
| 4th | 1953 |  |  Romania | Bucharest | 30,000 | 111 | "No! Our generation will not serve death and destruction!." |
| 5th | 1955 |  |  Poland | Warsaw | 30,000 | 114 | "For Peace and Friendship – Against the Aggressive Imperialist Pacts" |
| 6th | 1957 |  |  Soviet Union | Moscow | 34,000 | 131 | "For Peace and Friendship" |
| 7th | 1959 |  |  Austria | Vienna | 18,000 | 112 | "For Peace and Friendship and Peaceful Coexistence" |
| 8th | 1962 |  |  Finland | Helsinki | 18,000 | 137 | "For Peace and Friendship" |
| 9th | 1968 |  |  Bulgaria | Sofia | 20,000 | 138 | "For Solidarity, Peace and Friendship" |
| 10th | 1973 |  |  East Germany | East Berlin | 25,600 | 140 | "For Anti-Imperialist Solidarity, Peace and Friendship" |
| 11th | 1978 |  |  Cuba | Havana | 18,500 | 145 | "For Anti-Imperialist Solidarity, Peace and Friendship" |
| 12th | 1985 | Soviet Union | Moscow | 26,000 | 157 | "For Anti-Imperialist Solidarity, Peace and Friendship" | |
| 13th | 1989 |  |  North Korea | Pyongyang | 22,000 | 177 | "For Anti-Imperialist Solidarity, Peace and Friendship" |
| 14th | 1997 |  | Cuba | Havana | 12,325 | 136 | "For Anti-Imperialist Solidarity, Peace and Friendship" |
| 15th | 2001 |  |  Algeria | Algiers | 6,500 | 110 | "Let’s Globalize the Struggle For Peace, Solidarity, Development, Against Imperialism" |
| 16th | 2005 |  |  Venezuela | Caracas | 17,000 | 144 | "For Peace and Solidarity, We Struggle Against Imperialism and War" |
| 17th | 2010 |  South Africa | Pretoria | 15,000 | 126 | "Let's Defeat Imperialism, for a World of Peace, Solidarity and Social Transformation!" | |
| 18th | 2013 |  |  Ecuador | Quito | 8,500 | 80 [4] | "Youth Unite Against Imperialism, for a World of Peace, Solidarity and Social Transformation!" |
| 19th | 2017 |  |  Russia | Sochi | 30,000 | 185 [5] | "For peace, solidarity and social justice, we struggle against imperialism. Honoring our past, we build the future!" |
Sochi is the largest resort city in Russia. The city is situated on the Sochi River, along the Black Sea in Southern Russia, with a population of 466,078 residents, and up to 600,000 residents in the urban area. The city covers an area of 176.77 square kilometers (68.25 sq mi), while the Greater Sochi Area covers over 3,502 square kilometers (1,352 sq mi). Sochi stretches across 145 kilometers (90 mi), and is the longest city in Europe, the fifth-largest city in the Southern Federal District, the second-largest city in Krasnodar Krai, and the sixth-largest city on the Black Sea.
The Grand Sports Arena of the Luzhniki Olympic Complex, commonly known as Luzhniki Stadium, is the national stadium of Russia, located in its capital city, Moscow. Its total seating capacity of 81,000 makes it the largest football stadium in Russia and the ninth-largest stadium in Europe. The stadium is a part of the Luzhniki Olympic Complex, and is located in Khamovniki District of the Central Administrative Okrug of Moscow city. The name Luzhniki derives from the flood meadows in the bend of Moskva River where the stadium was built, translating roughly as "The Meadows". The stadium is located at Luzhniki Street, 24, Moscow.
The Young Communist League of Canada (YCL-LJC) is a Canadian Marxist–Leninist youth organization founded in 1922. The organization is ideologically aligned with, but organizationally independent from, the Communist Party of Canada. The organization's members played a leading role in the On-to-Ottawa Trek and made up a significant portion of the Mackenzie–Papineau Battalion, which fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War.
The cinema of Russia, popularity known as Mollywood, refers to the film industry in Russia, engaged in production of motion pictures in Russian language. The popular term Mollywood is a portmanteau of "Moscow" and "Hollywood".
The 3rd World Festival of Youth and Students (WFYS) was held from 5 to 19 August 1951 in Berlin, capital city of the then German Democratic Republic, and organised by World Federation of Democratic Youth. The motto of the festival was "Peace and Friendship against Nuclear Weapons"
The International Union of Students (IUS) was a worldwide nonpartisan association of university student organizations.
Kinotavr, also known as the Sochi Open Russian Film Festival is an open film festival held in the resort city of Sochi, Russia annually in June since 1991, until it was cancelled in the wake of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Alexander Rodnyansky said: "This year the festival will not take place, it will be rescheduled for a period when we survive the current political events and can return to the cinema, including to understand what happened to the country and to all of us."
The International Association of Red Sports and Gymnastics Associations, commonly known as Red Sport International (RSI) or Sportintern was a Comintern-supported international sports organization established in July 1921. The RSI was established in an effort to form a rival organization to already existing "bourgeois" and social democratic international sporting groups. The RSI was part of a physical culture movement in Soviet Russia linked to the physical training of young people prior to their enlistment in the military. The RSI held 3 summer games and 1 winter games called "Spartakiad" in competition with the Olympic games of the International Olympic Committee before being dissolved in 1937.
The Conference of Youth and Students of Southeast Asia Fighting for Freedom and Independence, also referred to as the Southeast Asian Youth Conference, was an international youth and students event held in Calcutta, India on February 19–23, 1948. It was co-organized by the World Federation of Democratic Youth and the International Union of Students. It has often been claimed that the conference was the starting point for a series of armed communist rebellions in different Asian countries.
The 13th World Festival of Youth and Students (WFYS) was held from 1–8 July 1989 in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, and was organized by the World Federation of Democratic Youth. It was the largest international event staged in North Korea up until then.
The Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF) is an international women's rights organization. Established in 1945, it was most active during the Cold War when, according to historian Francisca de Haan, it was "the largest and probably most influential international women's organization of the post-1945 era". Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, its headquarters were moved from Berlin to Paris. In 2002, with the election of Márcia Campos as president, the office relocated to Brasília. Subsequently, in 2007 the WIDF secretariat was located in São Paulo. Since 2016, the president has been Lorena Peña of El Salvador. The WIDF's magazine, Women of the Whole World, was published in six languages: Arabic, English, French, German, Russian, and Spanish.
The World Federation of Scientific Workers (WFSW) is an international federation of scientific associations. It is an NGO in official partnership with Unesco. Its goal is to be involved internationally in all aspects of the role of science, the rights and duties of scientists and their social responsibility. According to some opinions, it was a Cold War-era communist front. The group was said to be composed by a majority of scientists who supported communism, though it, was not explicitly an admission criterion in the direct sense. The federation opposed nuclear tests conducted by any states.
Lim Su-kyung is a South Korean activist and politician. She is best known for attending the 13th World Festival of Youth and Students, held in North Korea and praising President of North Korea Kim Il Sung in 1989, without first obtaining travel permission from the South Korean government. She attended the festival representing the student organization Jeondaehyop (전대협), now known as Hanchongryun. Upon her return to South Korea, she was arrested and sentenced to twelve years in prison, later commuted to five years of which she served three.
The World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) is an international youth organization, and has historically characterized itself as left-wing and anti-imperialist. WFDY was founded in London, United Kingdom in 1945 as a broad international youth movement, organized in the context of the end of World War II with the aim of uniting youth from the Allies behind an anti-fascist platform that was broadly pro-peace, anti-nuclear war, expressing friendship between youth of the capitalist and socialist nations. The WFDY Headquarters are in Budapest, Hungary. The main event of WFDY is the World Festival of Youth and Students. The last festival was held in Sochi, Russia, in October 2017. It was one of the first organizations granted general consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council.
A communist front is a political organization identified as a front organization, allied with or under the effective control of a communist party, the Communist International or other communist organizations. It is a structure used by Communist and left-wing parties to intervene in broader political movements. They attracted politicized individuals who were not party members but who often followed the party line and were called fellow travellers.
The 12th World Festival of Youth and Students was held from 27 July to 3 August 1985 in Moscow, capital city of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The festival was attended by 26,000 people from 157 countries. The slogan of the festival was "For anti-imperialist solidarity, peace and friendship".
The 19th World Festival of Youth and Students (WFYS) was opened on October 14, 2017, in Sochi, Russia. The festival attracted 20,000 people from 180 countries. The opening ceremony of the Festival was held in the arena of the Bolshoy Ice Dome in Sochi. The official slogan of the festival is "For peace, solidarity and social justice, we are fighting against imperialism - respecting our past, we are building our future!".
Sitora Shokhinovna Alieva – film expert, director of the IFF “Faces of love” and the IIF Sochi, artistic director of the largest Russian national film festival “Kinotavr”, official delegate of Warsaw International Film Festival, lecturer at film schools and universities, juror at numerous film festivals, including Berlinale, Venice Film Festival, etc. Member of European Film Academy.
Oleg Borisovich Akkuratov is a Russian pianist, jazz improviser and singer who has amaurosis – complete blindness. He is a virtuoso performer of jazz and classical works and a laureate of the Prize of the President of the Russian Federation for young cultural workers (2019).
The World Festival of Youth is an international Youth festival which was held in Sirius, Russia, from February 29 – March 7, 2024.
| 20th century | |
|---|---|
| 21st century | |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
