Russia attempts to host new World Festival of Youth and Students

For several days now, an e-mail has been circulating among the nearly 30,000 delegates to the 19th World Festival of Youth and Students (WFYS), claiming that the next one will be held again in Sochi in 2024, and calling on them to register now. However, the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY), the only organization with the legitimacy to issue such a call, was never consulted on the matter. It is therefore a deception that seeks to exploit the moral history of the WFDY movement for the benefit of the monopolies controlling the Russian Federation, and to distort it. It is also a means of maintaining total confusion about imperialism and the anti-imperialist struggle in a global context where a possible nuclear world war is no longer a mere rhetorical threat.

In early 2016, the General Council of the World Federation of Democratic Youth voted unanimously to hold the 19th World Festival of Youth and Students in Sochi in October 2017. For several delegations, notably from Africa, Asia and South America, it was an opportunity to show their support for the Russian Federation in a context of struggle against U.S. imperialism. For delegations from Europe and North America, but also for representatives of Communist youth organizations, it was above all the idea of celebrating the centenary of the October Revolution, and no doubt a form of pragmatism, that weighed in the balance and generated critical support for the project.

It’s important to remember that organizing such a large-scale event — undoubtedly the most important anti-imperialist youth gathering in the world — cannot be done without state support. But the number of states willing to organize such an event is becoming increasingly scarce. Russia has been canvassing certain organizations since as early as 2013 (the date of the 18th WFYS, held in Quito, Ecuador), and unveiled its project with great fanfare in 2015 at the WFDY General Assembly in Havana. As the only country in the running, and given that it was inconceivable not to celebrate the centenary of the October Revolution, we rallied behind the proposal.

While some organizations boycotted the event outright, the Young Communist League of Canada decided to participate, but to treat it differently from other years. Indeed, whereas in previous editions, the WFYS represented a structuring element for young communists, as we worked hard to bring together as many young progressives as possible to form a pan-Canadian delegation (in Quito, there were around 60 of us), for Sochi we decided instead to err on the side of caution and invite only our members and some close friends.

We foresaw a number of political problems. We were right!

As early as the 1st International Preparatory Meeting held in Caracas in June 2016, it was clear that the Russian authorities had an approach diametrically opposed to that of the World Federation of Democratic Youth, supposedly the only organization in charge of content. Where WFDY called for a primarily political festival, the Russian Federation was pushing for a completely depoliticized festival. Fortunately, this proposal was overwhelmingly defeated.

However, realizing that WFDY would stand firm and not be intimidated, the Russian authorities decided to violate the Festival’s preparatory procedures and no longer cooperate with WFDY. They drew up their own program, invited their delegates at the behest of the national preparatory committees, procrastinated until the last minute in order to allow WFDY to organize its activities, even misled various delegations by collecting participation fees in place of the Federation, and so on.

To add insult to injury, this supposedly anti-imperialist festival was subsidized by MasterCard, Rosneft and Sberbank (whose boss was guest of honour). Even more tragic, the Russian authorities accredited hundreds of Indian delegates from the ruling party, while the hundreds mobilized by the Federation’s member organizations (mass organizations of the two communist parties) didn’t even have accommodation… And what about the accreditation of young Israeli members of Netanyahu’s Likud party, while hundreds of young Palestinian activists were present on site? Similarly, while the Festival honoured the memory of the historic leader of the Polisario Front, Mohamed Abdelaziz, delegates from Western Sahara had their visas refused in mid-flight and had to return to Tindouf. Yet the Festival was well-stocked with Moroccan militants promoting their colonization of the Sahara.

So much for an anti-imperialist festival!

We can also add the intimidation of young communist organizations, who had their agitation and propaganda material destined for the Festival seized the fact that the President of WFDY had to fight to have the right to speak at the opening ceremony (and his speech was cut off by the Russian media), the struggle to have the right, one morning, to demonstrate (clandestinely) in honour of the October Revolution…

The list would be long, but what is certain is that the Sochi Festival was no World Festival of Youth and Students, despite the efforts of WFDY and its member organizations, who, despite the constraints, defied the bans and lent a political and anti-imperialist character to this complex of gatherings — for no, there was not one, but several festivals, and the WFYS was only one component. Quite often, moreover, we fell victim to the disdain of delegates who couldn’t understand such a communist presence!

Yet, far more than Putin, the existence of the World Festivals of Youth and Students is due to the young communists and the thousands of young people who, in November 1945 in London, came together to unite the younger generation under the banner of peace and the fight against the system that breeds war. Even in modern times, this movement owes its survival to Fidel himself, who in 1997 personally undertook to organize the first post-1990 festival to enable anti-imperialist forces to come together against the doxa of the time, which advocated the end of history.

Of course, over the decades, some festivals have been better organized than others, and some have even had to be cancelled (for example, the Algiers festival, which didn’t take place because of a coup d’état in the summer of 1965), while others have had to deal with complex political realities. On the other hand, none betrayed the very spirit — and therefore the hope — of the movement before Sochi.

The Russian government has spent at least 3.5 billion rubles to hijack the WFYS and use the moral support of a large number of citizens to turn it into a demonstration of global youth support for the Russian Federation, just a few months before the elections…

Postmortem, WFDY has not hesitated to denounce the dynamics of this Festival. But the Russian Federation didn’t stop there!

A few months later, various emails were sent to participants at the Sochi WFYS, with the aim of maintaining a certain network. The result: today, Russia claims to be organizing a Festival in 2024 in Sochi…

This announcement is not surprising, since it comes in the midst of NATO’s war against Russia via Ukraine. So it’s hardly surprising that the Russian government is seeking some validation from the world’s youth. On the other hand, building this initiative on the back of WFDY is unacceptable to the world’s youth.

This fosters an increasingly obvious confusion about imperialism, as if any opposition to the United States were a good thing. Imperialism is a global system based on the union of banking and industrial capital. It is not the prerogative of one country over another, but the domination and predation of capitalism at its ultimate stage over all workers.

Participating in this confusion are the so-called “Anti-Imperialist Platform”, which sees no problem in working with fascist groups in Spain whose leitmotiv is to unite republicanism and Francoism, the ruling party in Venezuela whose main concern is the illegalization of the Communist Party rather than the struggle against pro-imperialist forces, and nebulous groups in the UK and South Korea.

In such a context, it’s worth remembering that the only real anti-imperialist organizations, not “platforms”, are: the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF), the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY), the World Peace Council (WPC), the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) and the International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties (IMCWP).

So, to those young people potentially interested in the Russian “festival” planned for 2024, and who demonstrate anti-imperialist tendencies, we suggest being patient and waiting for WFDY’s official festival proposal…