Koivunen, P: Performing Peace and Friendship

Performing Peace and Friendship. The World Youth Festival and Soviet Cultural Diplomacy represents a pioneering work in Soviet and Cold War history. It is the first English-language, archival based monograph on Soviet cultural diplomacy and the Moscow 1957 World Youth Festival, one of the most frequently referred moments of Khrushchev's Thaw. Through a case-study of the World Youth Festival, the book provides new insights into the Soviet role in the cultural Cold War and offers an explanation why the USSR failed in the cultural battle against the USA and the capitalist system. Furthermore, with a detailed analysis of grass-roots interaction, it re-evaluates the agency of micro-level actors and argues that individuals had more chances for transnational contacts than previous scholarship has shown. With a transnational approach to Soviet cultural diplomacy and cultural exchange the book continues the scholarly work of Michael David-Fox, Anne E. Gorsuch, Susan Reid, Vladislav Zubok, and Rósa Magnúsdóttir.