GLIMPSES of how Canada worked: a writer's memoir.

13. An international festival

THE VIITH WORLD FESTIVAL OF DEMOCRATIC YOUTH (WFDY) held in Vienna July 26 to August 4 of 1959 got a lot of press all over the world. (I wrote at least 40,000 words for various audiences and publications.) It was front-page news partly because the first six festivals were held inside the Soviet bloc, and partly because the Cold War was heating up and "the West" was paranoid about communism and everything related to it.

As I began university in 1954 my Father reminisced a lot about his student days at Warsaw Polytechnic around 1930. Politics mattered a lot in country located between Bolshevism to the east and Nazism to the west. Poles worried about fifth columnists sent in by both sides.

I asked Dad how such agents could damage a democracy as old and stubborn as Poland's. (His generation was the first to be educated in Polish in 125 years because of "partitions" in the 18th Century.) He said they would work slowly, patiently, at undermining the faith of the people in lawful institutions such as police and security agents, the post office and other means of communications, educators at all levels. Their tactics would eventually make the people fearful and even suspicious of each other.

Are you, dear reader, keeping track thoughtfully of what's happening in Canada, the U.S., the world these days?

People say "the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991". All its Five Year Plans had failed, and in order to survive Russia desperately needed financial support and good will from "the West". So the ruling Politburo wrote a radically new script: Mikhail Gorbachev, a faithful Communist Party member but without a hint of murder or intrigue in his file, was fast-tracked to become General Secretary in 1985. He and his wife Raisa delighted the West with charming behaviour and quickly earned all the support Russia needed.

Only in countries which had become its satellites because of WWII were people not seduced. However, they were too small  to be important in the minds of the big players on the world stage.  

In 1955, Austrians had been brave enough to vote out of office the communist government the Allies imposed on them while wrapping up WWII in Europe. The departing communists made Austria's democratically-elected government promise that they would be strictly neutral. When the Kremlin decided to hold its first youth festival outside the Soviet bloc in Vienna, Austria could not refuse.

The Kremlin wasn't pleased when, in 1956, Hungary had tried to escape communist domination by outright rebellion; it was brutally repressed. In 1959, all Austrians were walking on eggs.

I write here about the festival because my work as an observer had unpleasant consequences for me on both sides of the Iron Curtain in '59, and in Canada later. It also fixed forever my belief that communism is supreme master of manipulation but our comfortable free minds in the West can't tell when we're being manipulated. Not wanting to frighten us, our governments merely react to communist tactics and hope for the best.

Radio Free Europe asked Pax Romana's Thom Kerstiens to assemble a polyglot team of young women and men to go to Vienna as WFDY observers. RFE would pay all the bills. There were 21 of us, speaking more than a dozen languages. We were instructed to connect with delegations in those language groups and find out details about them, especially where their funds came from. RFE did not believe the organizers' claims that the students themselves raised all the money they needed.

All official documents for our group were delivered quickly, except one -- my application for accreditation as an observer. It was rejected by the International Preparatory Commission of WFDY without explanation. ICMICA, the alumni parallel of Thom's office, had a permanent observer at the United Nations, an American named Ed Kirchner, who somehow got me registered and approved within a couple of weeks.