Nato’s power, the USA’s hegemony and what remains of the British empire are all in irreversible decline. A new world is coming into being and there is no room for imperialists in it. This is the context in which the World Youth Festival 2024 took place in Sochi – and why it provoked such a hysterical response from Guy Adams of the fascist-loving Daily Mail.
Origins of the World Youth Festival
The festival was originally named the World Festival of Youth and Students. The WFYS was founded in 1947, just after the second world war, at a time when it was becoming clear to many progressive people that the imperialists were taking over from Nazi Germany and continuing to wage a covert war against the USSR.
Many declassified documents have since proved this irrevocably, with notable examples being Britain’s ‘Operation Unthinkable’ and the US’s ‘Operation Cartel’, later renamed ‘Project Aerodynamic’.
That the desires of the imperialists manifested themselves in a so-called ‘cold war’ (characterised by low intensity operations and subterfuge) rather than an all-out open confrontation was a testament to the power of the Soviet Union – that it could win a war against Nazi Germany and most of Europe and still be strong enough to keep the Anglo-American imperialists at bay.
It was also a testament to the Soviet Union’s aversion to war. Indeed, according to its last leader Michael Gorbachev, the USSR was such a peace loving nation that it dissolved itself and handed itself over to the imperialists on a silver platter in order to avoid ever having to go to war again.
With the power of hindsight it is clear that the hot war could not be avoided by surrendering the Soviet Union. In fact, it was precisely the power of the Soviet Union that had prevented another hot war from engulfing Soviet territory. This correct understanding of imperialism had always been promoted by the Soviet Communist party under the leadership of VI Lenin and Josef Stalin, but was buried by the revisionists when Nikita Khrushchev came to power.
Indeed, Khrushchev was so sure there was a way to ‘get along with’ the west that he tried to join Nato in 1954 – the same year he transferred Crimea from the Russian to the Ukrainian SSR.
The legacy of the revisionist Soviet leaders who followed Stalin, from Khrushchev to Gorbachev, was the weakness of a crippled post-Soviet Russia, the massive economic devastation of the 1990s, which has been called an “economic genocide”, the stoking of fascistic and terroristic nationalisms surrounding and directed at Russia, the Nato expansion to encircle Russia … and, of course, the current war in Ukraine.
It is no wonder that the pundits of the ‘collective west’ like to compare President Vladimir Putin with Josef Stalin now that Russia has finally stood up to imperialism.
The aim of the WFYS was to bring together young adults from all over the world to promote solidarity and democracy and to oppose war and imperialism. Popular mottos from across the years included “For peace and friendship – Against the aggressive imperialist pacts”, “For peace and friendship and peaceful coexistence” and “For anti-imperialist solidarity, peace and friendship”.
The festival was held every few years and hosted by the following countries: Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany, Romania, Poland, the USSR, Austria and Finland. From 1962 to 1968, the festival was postponed owing to political turmoil in the designated host countries – ie, because Algeria and Ghana had to fight the French and the British respectively for their independence. After 1968, the previously biennial event was held roughly every five years, hosted by Bulgaria, East Germany, Cuba, the USSR and the DPRK.
The dissolution of the USSR at the hands of Gorbachev led to a longer break than usual, until the mantle was taken up by Cuba in 1997. Since then, the festival has been held in Algeria, Venezuela, South Africa, Ecuador and Russia. The largest iteration of the event in its history was the 2017 festival in Sochi, in which 30,000 participants from 185 countries took part.
The most recent festival of March 2024, again hosted in Sochi, happened for the first time under a new name – the World Youth Festival. The organisation and funding for the event were handled by the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs – Rosmolodezh – as well as by the federal territory of Sirius. It had the backing of numerous giant state enterprises such as Rosatom, Roscosmos, Rostelcom, Rosneft, Gazprom and Sberbank.
According to official sources, the event hosted 20,000 participants from 190 countries. Including all the local participants, volunteers and workers behind the scenes, it was temporary home to some 90,000 people.
World Youth Festival 2024 and its ideological significance
In the current climate, the imperialists are trying to rewrite history in order to hide their role in creating Nazi Germany, to hide the indispensable help their corporations gave to the Nazi Reich, and to hide the great sacrifice and glorious victories of the Soviet people who defeated them.
The current climate of anti-Russian hysteria, when even Russian tennis players have their flags replaced by white rectangles at international events, Russian athletes, musicians, dancers and others are banned from participating in global events, Russian culture is being banned, statues of Russians are being torn down, streets named after Russians are being renamed – and in Ukraine even Russian books are being burned … has all been nurtured and promoted by imperialist politicians, media and secret services.
The global russophobic campaign being conducted by the imperialists is reminiscent of Nazi Germany, and western corporate media are fully complicit in promoting and prettifying it.
It was in this climate that Russia opened its arms to the world – including to citizens of the imperialist heartlands – and showed them its generous hospitality. In doing so, it provided an example to the world of standing by its values and applying them in practice.
The imperialists like to pretend to hold such ‘universal’ and ‘humanitarian’ values, but in practice they have utter contempt for the masses of humanity. This is just one of the reasons why Russia is gaining so many fans in the west, where growing numbers of people are seeing through the lies of the mainstream media.
Evidence of this could even be found in the comments section under a recent Daily Mail article by Guy Adams, under the snappy heading: ‘Putin’s British useful idiots: This week an adoring crowd of over 20,000 hand-picked young delegates hailed the Russian despot at Nuremberg-style rally. Shockingly, several came from the UK. What are they thinking – and what poison might they spread?’
Interestingly, the most popular comments underneath this hit-piece included the following:
- It would be naive not to think of there being some UK citizens supporting Putin. – Hugofirst of Bournemouth, UK (46 likes, 3 dislikes).
- The vast majority of the world’s nations and populations are NOT against or boycotting Russia. – Luigi Peach from Brooklyn, UK (204 likes, 67 dislikes).
- Disinformation – the sinister new term for information which deviates from the line our rulers want us to believe. – Petrovicz from Manchester, UK (97 likes, 11 dislikes).
- I’m more concerned about our politicians and billionaires conspiring at Davos. – Bootie bear from Newcastle upon Tyne, UK (122 likes, 20 dislikes).
- What kind of poison will they spread? Probably the antidote to the poison you spread. Why are people not allowed to have a different point of view without being ridiculed and insulted? – monimadness from No Limits City, South Korea (187 likes, 51 dislikes).
- Because British society has been irreparably broken. Young people will look to stable cultures elsewhere where you can have an intelligent conversation without falling foul of wokery! – TheSport from Mayfield, UK (86 likes, 10 dislikes).
This gulf between what Guy Adams writes and what his readers think is revealing. When one of the delegates asked Adams about this he responded by branding his dissenting readers “anonymous trolls”.
The plain truth is that, despite the concerted efforts of ‘journalists’ like Adams, and despite the vast resources at the disposal of the mainstream media corporations, all of which aim to keep workers’ minds safely trammeled by bourgeois newspeak, many Britons are beginning to wake up to the fact that they are being lied to.
Ironically (given zionism’s track record as the ideological inheritor of nazism), the Times of Israel has chronicled how the Daily Mail and other mainstream media in Britain supported the growth of fascism in Europe in the years leading up to WW2. That being so, one might suppose that if Russia were holding Nuremberg-style rallies, the Daily Mail would be all in favour …
The neo-Nazi regime in Kiev, over which the Daily Mail waxes lyrical, has declared WW2 genocide perpetrators and Nazi collaborators like Stepan Bandera to be national heroes and is bringing up its children to revere them as such.
It takes a very special kind of ‘useful idiot’ to praise the Kiev regime as a democracy while condemning Russia as fascist – and to do so in the pages of the Daily Mail of all places. We can only assume Mr Adams is as unaware of this irony as he is of European history generally.
We note in this context that the imperialist countries do everything possible to prevent their citizens from accessing Russian media and culture. RT and Sputnik news have both been banned across the European Union, Great Britain and North America. Russian sources don’t appear in internet search results in the west, even if the information or event one is interested in took place in or involves Russia.
For this reason, it is very difficult for western workers to access the truth about the war in Ukraine, or to get any reliable information on any aspect of Russian contemporary or historical life. By contrast, Russia has imposed no such censorship: Russian citizens have free access to both local and western sources.
Economic significance
The economic warfare between the imperialist camp and Russia was initiated by the west back in 2014 – a punitive response to the decision by Crimea’s people to return to Russia rather than remain subject to the puppet fascist proxy regime in Kiev after the Maidan coup. The EU ban on imports of Russian iron and steel is one of several measures that dates back to that time.
The World Youth Festival took place at a time when Russia and the western powers had been embroiled in open warfare in Ukraine for two years. By this time the imperialists had done everything they could to sanction, sabotage and economically isolate Russia.
They blew up the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, they nationalised Russian state enterprise subsidiaries in Europe, they threatened third countries to try to stop them doing business with Russia, they tried to impose an international price cap on oil to reduce Russia’s revenues, they banned Russia from using the Swift banking system, and they froze $300bn worth of Russian state assets abroad.
But even after they had exhausted all the economic tools at their disposal in the hope of bringing the Russian economy to its knees, the successful hosting of 2024’s World Youth Festival merely showcased their failure.
The festival showed the world that Russia has the money and resources to host such an event. None of the participants had to pay for accommodation or food during their stay, meaning that there was no need for them to spend any money in Russia. Furthermore, thousands of participants even had their flights paid for from all parts of the world.
The food was delicious, the catering was superb, the rooms were spacious and comfortable, and the city was clean and beautiful. The huge cost of this festival shows on one hand how much Russia values the event and its noble aims, but on the other hand it shows how well the Russian economy is doing despite the imperialists’ crazed onslaught.
Diplomatic significance
Another objective of the imperialists was to diplomatically isolate Russia. The USA’s agents have long been pressuring the representatives of other countries to vote against Russia at the United Nations and to condemn ‘Russian aggression’. Nato countries have used all media dominance to create a synchronised echo chamber, drilling their Goebbelsian lies into every worker’s head, and injecting a default russophobia into every sphere of political, economic and social life.
So many enterprises and institutions linked to western monopoly capital have gone out of their way to condemn Russia since 2022, to silence any voice that questions the imperialist narrative, to plaster Ukrainian flags all over their marketing and products, to raise money for Ukraine through public collections, and to help create a general atmosphere of fear in which there has been no room for individuals to support Russia or even to put forward any view short of the extremist pro-Ukrainian fanaticism demanded by the lords of finance capital.
But the festival proved that Russia is not isolated despite the relentless information war being waged by the west. It showed that, on the contrary, the world is full of friends of Russia. A competitive selection process chose 20,000 people from 190 countries (that’s 190 delegations with an average size of 105 people) but the number of applicants – ie, young people who wanted to visit Russia – was vastly greater.
To give an idea of the scale, out of 160 British applicants only ten were chosen. The majority of countries, representing the vast majority of the global population, were happy to have their delegations attending the festival, and in many cases encouraged young leaders to attend.
Military significance
The hosting of the festival on the shores of the Black Sea while the war in Ukraine was ongoing demonstrated both that Russia is confident in its intelligence and defence capabilities and that the participants were confident in Russia. To boost this confidence even further, high officials such as President Vladimir Putin, former president Dmitry Medvedev, foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, and Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov were all present at the festival.
The Ukrainian army released a video directly threatening all foreign participants in the festival, which ended with the words: “After Russia we will come for each of you.” During the last two years of war several incursions have taken place into Russian territory and several terrorist attacks have been carried out by Ukraine on Russian territory such as the Crimean Bridge attack and the assassinations of Daria Dugina and Vladlen Tatarsky. Despite this, the festival took place with no sign of tension or fear.
The World Youth Festival 2024 was a clear demonstration of the fact that the imperialists have failed in their ideological, economic, diplomatic and military objectives. There are telling signs that Russia is returning to a foreign policy more akin to that of the Stalin era than of the post-Stalin era. Russia has reassured the world that it can play a leading role in the struggle against imperialism – a historical mission bestowed upon the Russian people that deserves the support of the workers of the world.
Impotent imperialists seek reprisals against those who tell the truth
On 15 February 2024, the American delegation to the festival held a press conference at the United Nations building in New York, which was sponsored by the Russian mission to the UN. The panel of speakers included Caleb Maupin of the Centre for Political Innovation, Chris Helali of the Party of Communists USA, and Elizabeth Pekin of the American Student Union.
The speakers made a strong case in support of Russia’s just war in Ukraine, explaining why they felt it was important to attend the festival and why there should be no reprisals against any young American for attending. This was particularly important in light of the prosecution already being pursued against members of the Uhuru movement in the USA for the ‘crime’ of having visited Russia and spoken in its defence.
Attacks against free speech, dissenting opinion and independent journalism that isn’t in line with the official narrative are now commonplace in the west. The case of Julian Assange is well known, but there are hundreds if not thousands of lesser known examples.
The Spanish journalist Pablo Gonzalez who was detained without trial in Poland for the ‘crime’ of reporting form the ground in Donbass, British journalist Graham Philips who has been sanctioned for the same ‘crime’, and the US commentator Gonzalo Lira who died in Ukrainian custody after being detained for speaking out against the Kiev regime are just a few of many examples.
The intertwining of the bourgeois state and the corporate media makes it difficult to tell western journalists from spies. A recent case in Britain is that of Paul Mason, who embarked on a holy crusade with British ‘intelligence’ against anti-imperialist independent media the Grayzone. This type of collusion goes back a long time. The name George Orwell is well known, but few people know that he was a British intelligence asset working for Britain’s anti-communist ‘Information Research Department’.
Meanwhile, notwithstanding the Daily Mail’s boundless hatred of everything that stands in the way of Anglo-American imperialism, hatchet-man Guy Adams was unable to find anything substantive to report against Russia, the festival or its participants.
In his frustration and impotence, he dedicated two-thirds of his article simply to doxing the members of the British delegation one by one, exposing as much personal information about them as he could, with the goal of causing them as many problems as possible in their personal and professional lives.
At time of writing, one member of the British delegation has lost their job as a result of Adams’ article. This is an example of how repression operates via the corporate media, which have the power to ruin people’s lives not as a result of their quest to get at the truth, but because of their monopoly over the official narrative and the pressure they bring to bear over employers and institutions as a result.
And yet despite all this ceaseless propaganda, the comments under Adams’ article demonstrate that many readers sympathise with the delegates. There is a growing consensus that the delegates should have been free to attend the festival without being smeared and doxed by the press on their return.
Letter to the world from a British delegate
One British delegate eloquently summed up their thoughts about the Mail’s hatchet piece in an open letter:
Dear people of the world and dear Britons
A certain tabloid news outlet has decided to menacingly dox every member of the British delegation to the World Youth Festival 2024 in Russia.
First of all, I would like to apologise to my fellow British friends, whose reputations have been unfairly damaged. Some of us have already experienced problems with work and study. So much for freedom of movement and speech, which were supposedly a core value of our country (as we can see – no longer).
The World Youth Festival was by far the greatest event for young people in the world. I know no other country capable of unifying such different cultures, races and traditions into one big and friendly multicultural family. The amount of handshakes with people from different countries of the world, the sheer emotions these few days brought me – are priceless.
But perhaps the most important point of the festival would be that it was absolutely non-political. We got together, nothing was forced upon us, no politicians forced their agenda on us, we were absolutely free to roam or go where we wanted to and enjoy our time in one of the safest, nicest places in Russia (and, I dare say, the world).
The aforementioned article described the festival as a ‘Nazi-like parade in the style of Hitler’s Nuremberg rally’ but kindly omits the fact that their own news outlet was proudly supportive of Hitler in the 1930s, as was the British royal family.
Comparing the Russian people and the festival to Nazis is not only a sign of total stupidity and ignorance, it also shows the shallow, disrespectful and primitively aggressive level that the official British narrative has fallen to.
I feel ashamed of my country and its way of dealing with its own young people, who dared to challenge the official narrative.
I pray that in Britain there are many people who will not trust this slimy evil propaganda reporting and I feel that it is important for them to know the truth: the British mainstream media lies to you and paints us in the worst possible colours. Their agenda is to pose Russia as our enemy: the Russian people – wild and uncivilised; the Britons coming to Russia – useful idiots.
This is complete calumny: we stand against this agenda and will do everything in our power to ensure that the British people will know the truth and will not be fed this pile of lies daily.
You do not deserve to be lied to.
