Nicholas Rutter

On thirteen summers between 1947 and 1989, the Soviet-sponsored World Youth Festival presented a Cold War microcosm to the world press. Delegates from over 100 countries participated in over 100 daily events. No diachronic history of the Festival movement has been published since 1991, nor have any shorter works appeared on theSecond Festival in Budapest (1949), the first of the Cold War era. Drawing onarchives from seven countriesand interviews with former planners and delegates, my book presents atransnational, bifocalhistory of the Festivals from top and bottom, as officials observed them and delegates experienced them. As a CEU fellow I will refine the manuscript with help from the Open Society Archive and Hungarian National Archive, and will vet my conclusions with help from CEU colleagues.