Youth Organizations as a Battlefield in the Cold War

In: Intelligence and national security, Band 18, Heft 2, S. 168-191

Abstract

In the late 1960s, it was revealed that ever since 1952 the CIA had financed & was still financing, by way of a whole series of 'screen' foundations, the overwhelming majority of youth & student organizations, not only in the US, but throughout the free world. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) as respectable as the International Union of Socialist Youth (IUSY), Pax Romana, & the World Assembly of Youth (WAY) had benefited, at various times in their history, from the generosity & 'liberalism' of the CIA. The key to understanding this paradoxical American involvement in leftist organizations lies in the Soviet Union's policy of systematically infiltrating Western civil society & international organizations. Its constant aim, relentlessly pursued & never openly avowed, was to control Western opinion & further the goals of Soviet foreign policy. By 1950 the communists had succeeded in effectively controlling all the international mass organizations. This study deals with the crucial Berlin Youth Festival of 1951 & the East-West struggle for dominance in the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) & the International Union of Students (IUS). Adapted from the source document.