The publication was prepared as part of the implementation of the cultural research project under the grant of the President of the Russian Federation "The Art of Festive Decoration of the City. History and Modernity".
The era of the thaw showed itself in the festive decoration of the city with a number of interesting artistic phenomena. Excessive massiveness and embellishment of the post-war years gave way to simple, light, functional solutions. Ceremonial portraits are being replaced by decorative panels and thematic compositions, the images on them acquire a more conventional generalized symbolic interpretation. Eclecticism and heavy monumentality disappear, color, a range of pure open tones, acquires great importance. By the end of the 1950s, the first examples of solving design complexes in spatial development appeared, in conjunction with the urban environment and, above all, architectural ensembles. One of the best examples of this approach to decorating the city was the decoration of Moscow in the summer of 1957, during the VI World Festival of Youth and Students.
During the festival, the entire city was turned into a gigantic theater and exhibition space. Picturesque panels, three-dimensional plastic structures, transforming light-kinetic devices decorated the streets, parks and water area of Moscow.
A whole carnival train passed through Moscow, consisting of 120 mobile decorative installations, cargo platforms, multi-colored buses decorated with the festival flower, national flags, colorful ribbons and fresh flowers. This grandiose procession was opened by a motorcycle escort of standard-bearers, carrying azure silk banners with the image of white doves.
When creating the festive decoration of the city, first of all, “branded” festival symbols and emblems were used, which became the leitmotif of the design of the capital. The artist Konstantin Kuzginov designed an emblem that gained worldwide fame: a five-petalled flower - a symbol of the unity of the youth of five continents. Each continent received its own color - red, golden, blue, green and purple. About 300 sketches from all over the Union were submitted to the All-Union competition for the creation of the emblem of the festival. The jury immediately drew attention to the flower, which was simple, but at the same time unique. The fact is that the sketches sent to the competition either repeated the dove of Pablo Picasso, which was a symbol of the first youth festival, or suffered from the complexity of the drawing. The latter was unacceptable, since when the scale was changed, for example, to a badge, the emblem lost its meaning. As reported then in the newspapers, the emblem won the hearts of the participants of the world youth festival. Therefore, in 1958, the Vienna Congress of the World Federation of Democratic Youth announced that Konstantin Kuzginov's chamomile was taken as a permanent basis for all subsequent forums. In an interview, Kuzginov said: “I asked myself: what is a festival? And he answered like this - youth, friendship, peace and life. What more precisely can symbolize all this? Working on sketches of the emblem, I was in the country when flowers were blooming everywhere. The association was born quickly and surprisingly simply. Flower. The core is the globe, and around are 5 petals-continents. The petals frame the blue ball of the Earth, on which the motto of the festival is written: "For Peace and Friendship."
The artists and architects paid special attention to the design of celebration centers - the Luzhniki stadium, VDNKh, the Dynamo stadium, the TsPKiO im. Gorky, squares and embankments. By that time, the trend of external expensive embellishment had already come to naught, new lightweight metal structures, thin shell coatings made of synthetic materials, openwork volumes and planes appeared. All of them have found the widest and most diverse application in decorating the festival capital.
The design of the Moscow boulevard ring on the theme of literary works, author's and folk tales was a striking sight - a lot of carved along the contour, skillfully painted structures, picturesque panels and volumetric decorative installations placed along the pedestrian part of the boulevards.
During the Festival, Manezhnaya Square turned into a kind of "ballroom" and at the same time into a gallery where enlarged copies of drawings by Boris Prorokov and posters on anti-war topics were exhibited. The building of the Moskva Hotel was decorated with a giant decorative panel depicting a woman in a Russian costume holding bread and salt (artist Chingiz Akhmarov).
Architecture of small forms played an important role in the design of city highways. Decorated lanterns united the composition of the festive decoration with rhythmic repetitions and emphasized the perspective of the streets receding into the distance or the closed space of the squares. Numerous stalls, kiosks, tents selling festival souvenirs and carnival attributes entered it as bright colorful spots. Such design was actively included in the spatial solution of highways, organizing it in a new way and bringing it closer to a human scale. Garlands of greenery, balloon arches, illuminated ceilings highlighted the festive zones, which were distinguished by a special richness of decor.
Tverskoy Boulevard was decorated on the theme "Tales of the Peoples of the World" (artists S. Amursky, E. Bragin, I. Derviz, I. Egorkina, I. Lavrova, V. Nikitin). Decorative installations, located on the lawns of the boulevard, illustrated the plots of Russian, French, Chinese fairy tales. Other characters are located on the arches thrown across the alleys of the boulevard.
The Miracle Town, designed by the artist Ida Egorkina on one of the sites on Tverskoy Boulevard, reproduced magical castles from Chinese, Indian and European fairy tales.
"Russian Literature" became the theme of the decoration of the neighboring Suvorovsky Boulevard, it was even called "Book Boulevard" during the festival. At the very beginning, at the Nikitsky Gate, a huge stele in the form of a pile of books was installed, next to it was a panel-diptych "The Tale of Igor's Campaign" (artists A.L. Orlovsky, M.A. Velizheva, E.G. Kozakova). Along the boulevard there were book stalls and huge models of books with illustrations for works of Russian classical literature, high columns made of many volumes (artist G. Tkachev).
Near the university building on the high bank of the Moskva River, a composition by the architect-artist Igor Pokrovsky "The Torch of the Festival" was installed. The constructive solution of the installation was distinguished by simplicity and clarity, and the use of pictorial metaphor made it possible to create an expressive image: the flame of a high torch, as it were, turned into a symbol of peace - a white dove with outstretched wings in flight.
Arbat Square was decorated with an electric fountain designed by architect Nikolai Latyshev (designer T. Komissarov, artists V. Konovalov, T. Mikhailov). A dynamic light cascade of electric light bulbs was crowned with a decorative figure of a dove of peace, the fountain's bowl around the perimeter was decorated with flags of the countries participating in the youth festival. Then it was an innovative solution, which, however, did not receive further development. Only today the idea of an electric fountain as an element of the festive decoration of the city has experienced a rebirth.
Designed by the architect Vadim Makarevich, the design of the Belorussky Station Square was based on the color contrast of the flagpoles, rhythmically located along the perimeter of the square. Masts with multi-colored ribbons and panels converged towards the center - to a dove holding a flower in its beak. Against the background of the dove, the figures of a young man and a girl stood out, greeting the participants of the holiday. The picture is clickable.
The illumination of the Central Telegraph played with the symbols of the Festival - a large festival chamomile and a hand clutching a burning torch in the central part and many small silhouettes of a dove of peace on the side facades.
On the streets of festival Moscow, there were also naturalistic panels made in the old traditions, outdated garlands and patterns, posters with stenciled faces. But the best pictorial solutions showed the ongoing search for expressive means, the interest of artists in the synthesis of decorative elements with architecture.
The festive decoration of Moscow during the days of the Festival transformed the whole city. Trucks and cars painted in the five colors of the festival moved along the streets. Many streets these days have acquired festival names - Peace Street, Friendship Street, Happiness Street, Fifteen Republics Street. Some of them have remained in the urban toponymy.
During demonstrations, mass meetings and sports competitions over the squares and streets of Moscow, in the light of searchlights, huge images of the festival chamomile, the emblem of the Soviet Union and the dove of peace hovered suspended from balloons.
In conclusion, I will show a selection of sketches of the festive decoration of Moscow for the VI World Festival of Youth and Students. Many of them have not been implemented.
Original taken from mgsupgs at the 1957 Festival
VI World Festival of Youth and Students - a festival that opened on July 28, 1957 in Moscow,
I, personally, didn’t even find it in the project, but in the next 85 years I raked in full measure.
Someday I'll post a photo ... "Yankees get out of Grenada-Commies out of Afghanistan" ... They covered them from cameras with posters ..
And the guests of that festival were 34,000 people from 131 countries of the world. The slogan of the festival is "For Peace and Friendship".
The festival has been in preparation for two years. It was an action planned by the authorities to "liberate" the people from the Stalinist ideology. Abroad arrived in shock: the iron curtain is opening! The idea of the Moscow festival was supported by many Western statesmen - even Queen Elizabeth of Belgium, the politicians of Greece, Italy, Finland, France, not to mention the pro-Soviet presidents of Egypt, Indonesia, Syria, the leaders of Afghanistan, Burma, Nepal and Ceylon.
Thanks to the festival, the Druzhba park in Khimki, the Tourist hotel complex, the stadium in Luzhniki and Ikarus buses appeared in the capital. The first cars GAZ-21 "Volga" and the first "rafik" - the minibus RAF-10 "Festival" were produced for the event. The Kremlin, guarded from enemies and friends day and night, became completely free for visits, youth balls were arranged in the Faceted Chamber. The Central Park of Culture and Leisure named after Gorky suddenly canceled the entrance fee.
The festival consisted of a huge number of planned events and unorganized and uncontrolled communication of people. Black Africa was in special favor. Journalists rushed to the black envoys of Ghana, Ethiopia, Liberia (then these countries had just liberated themselves from colonial dependence), and Moscow girls hurried to them “in an international impulse”. The Arabs were also singled out, since Egypt had just gained national freedom after the war.
Thanks to the festival, KVN arose, transforming from a specially invented program “An Evening of Merry Questions” by the TV editorial “Festivalnaya”. They discussed about the recently banned Impressionists, about Churlionis, Hemingway and Remarque, Yesenin and Zoshchenko, about Ilya Glazunov, who was coming into fashion with his illustrations for the works of Dostoevsky, not entirely desirable in the USSR.The festival turned the views of Soviet people on fashion, behavior, lifestyle and accelerated the course of change.Khrushchev's "thaw", the dissident movement, a breakthrough in literature and painting - all this began shortly after the festival.
The symbol of the youth forum, which was attended by delegates from the leftist youth organizations of the world, was the Dove of Peace, invented by Pablo Picasso. The festival has become in every sense a significant and explosive event for boys and girls - and the most massive in its history. He fell in the middle of the Khrushchev thaw and was remembered for his openness. The foreigners who arrived freely communicated with Muscovites, this was not pursued. The Moscow Kremlin and Gorky Park were opened for free visiting. More than eight hundred events were held during the two festival weeks.
At the opening ceremony in Luzhniki, 3,200 athletes performed a dance and sports number, and 25,000 pigeons were released from the eastern stand.
In Moscow, amateur pigeons were specially exempted from work. One hundred thousand birds were raised for the festival and the most healthy and mobile birds were selected.
In the main event - the rally "For Peace and Friendship!" half a million people participated in Manezhnaya Square and adjacent streets.
For two weeks there was mass fraternization in the streets and parks. Pre-scheduled regulations were violated, events dragged on past midnight and smoothly flowed into festivities until dawn.
Those who knew languages rejoiced at the opportunity to show off their erudition and talk about the recently banned Impressionists, Hemingway and Remarque. The guests were shocked by the erudition of the interlocutors who grew up behind the Iron Curtain, and young Soviet intellectuals were shocked by the fact that foreigners do not appreciate the happiness of freely reading any authors and do not know anything about them.
Someone got by with a minimum of words. A year later, a lot of dark-skinned children appeared in Moscow, who were called just that: "children of the festival." Their mothers were not sent to the camps "for having an affair with a foreigner", as would have happened not so long ago.
The ensemble "Druzhba" and Edita Piekha with the program "Songs of the Peoples of the World" won a gold medal and the title of laureates of the festival. The song "Moscow Evenings" performed at the closing ceremony, performed by Vladimir Troshin and Edita Piekha, became the hallmark of the USSR for a long time.
Fashion for jeans, sneakers, rock and roll and badminton began to spread in the country. Musical super hits “Rock around the clock”, “Hymn of Democratic Youth”, “If the guys of the whole Earth…” and others became popular.
The film “Girl with a Guitar” is dedicated to the festival: in the music store, where the saleswoman Tanya Fedosova (Spanish: Lyudmila Gurchenko) works, preparations are underway for the festival, and at the end of the film, the delegates of the festival perform at a concert in the store (Tanya also performs with some of them) . Other films dedicated to the festival are Sailor from the Comet, Chain Reaction, Road to Paradise.
"Spark", 1957, No. 1, January.
“The year 1957 has come, the year of the festival. Let's take a look at what will happen in Moscow at the VI World Festival of Youth and Students for Peace and Friendship, and visit those who are preparing for the holiday today .... There are not many pigeons in our photo. But this is just a rehearsal. You see the pigeons from the “Kauchuk” plant, under the very sky, at the height of a ten-story city building, the Komsomol members and the youth of the plant equipped an excellent room for the birds with central heating and hot water.”
The festival consisted of a huge number of planned events and simple unorganized and uncontrolled communication of people. During the day and in the evening the delegations were busy at meetings and speeches. But late in the evening and at night, free communication began. Naturally, the authorities tried to establish control over the contacts, but they did not have enough hands, as the followers turned out to be a drop in the ocean. The weather was excellent, and crowds of people literally flooded the main highways. To better see what was happening, people climbed onto the ledges and roofs of houses. From the influx of curious people, the roof of the Shcherbakov department store, located on Kolkhoznaya Square, at the corner of Sretenka and Garden Ring, collapsed. After that, the department store was repaired for a long time, opened briefly, and then demolished. At night, people “gathered in the center of Moscow, on the roadway of Gorky Street, near the Moscow City Council, on Pushkinskaya Square, on Marx Avenue.
Disputes arose at every turn and for any reason, except, perhaps, politics. Firstly, they were afraid, and most importantly, they were not very interested in her in her pure form. However, in fact, any disputes had a political character, whether it was literature, painting, fashion, not to mention music, especially jazz. They discussed the Impressionists, who until recently were forbidden in our country, Ciurlionis, Hemingway and Remarque, Yesenin and Zoshchenko, about Ilya Glazunov, who was becoming fashionable, with his illustrations for the works of Dostoevsky, not entirely desirable in the USSR. In fact, these were not so much disputes as the first attempts to freely express their opinions to others and defend them. I remember how on bright nights crowds of people stood on the pavement of Gorky Street, in the center of each of them several people were discussing something heatedly. The rest, having surrounded them in a dense ring, listened, gathering their wits, getting used to this very process - a free exchange of opinions. These were the first lessons of democracy, the first experience of getting rid of fear, the first, completely new experiences of uncontrolled communication.
During the festival, a kind of sexual revolution took place in Moscow. Young people, and especially girls, seem to have broken the chain. The puritanical Soviet society suddenly witnessed such events that no one expected and which even jarred me, then an ardent supporter of free sex. I was struck by the forms and scale of what was happening. There are several reasons at work here. Beautiful warm weather, general euphoria of freedom, friendship and love, craving for foreigners and, most importantly, the accumulated protest against all this puritanical pedagogy, deceitful and unnatural.
By night, when it was getting dark, crowds of girls from all over Moscow made their way to the places where foreign delegations lived. These were student hostels and hotels on the outskirts of the city. One of these typical places was the hotel complex "Tourist", built for VDNKh. At that time it was the edge of Moscow, then there were collective farm fields. It was impossible for the girls to break into the buildings, since everything was cordoned off by security officers and vigilantes. But no one could forbid foreign guests to leave the hotels.
"Spark", 1957, No. 33 August.
“... A big and free conversation is going on today at the festival. And it was this frank, friendly exchange of opinions that confused some of the bourgeois journalists who came to the festival. Their newspapers, apparently, demand an "iron curtain", scandals, "communist propaganda". And there is none of that on the streets. At the festival there are dancing, singing, laughter and a big serious conversation. The conversation people need."
Events developed with the greatest possible speed. No courtship, no false coquetry. The newly formed couples retired into the darkness, into the fields, into the bushes, knowing exactly what they would do immediately. They didn't go particularly far, so the space around them was quite densely filled, but in the dark it didn't matter. The image of a mysterious, shy and chaste Russian girl-Komsomol member not only collapsed, but rather enriched with some new, unexpected feature - reckless, desperate debauchery.
The reaction of the units of the moral and ideological order was not long in coming. Flying squads on trucks were urgently organized, equipped with lighting fixtures, scissors and hairdressing machines. When trucks with vigilantes, according to the raid plan, unexpectedly left for the fields and turned on all the headlights and lamps, then the true scale of what was happening loomed. They did not touch the foreigners, they dealt only with the girls, and since there were too many of them, the combatants had no time to find out their identity, or even to simply detain them. Some of the hair of the caught lovers of night adventures was cut off, such a “clearing” was made, after which the girl had only one thing left - to cut her hair bald. Immediately after the festival, the residents of Moscow showed a particularly keen interest in girls who wore a tightly tied scarf on their heads ... Many dramas happened in families, in educational institutions and at enterprises, where it was more difficult to hide the absence of hair than just on the street, in the subway or trolleybus. It turned out to be even more difficult to hide the babies that appeared nine months later, often not like their own mother either in skin color or in the shape of their eyes.
International friendship knew no bounds, and when the wave of enthusiasm subsided, on the sand, wet from girlish tears, numerous “children of the festival” remained like nimble crabs - it was tight with contraceptives in the Land of Soviets.
In a summary statistical extract prepared for the leadership of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs. It recorded the birth of 531 post-festival children (of all races). For five million (then) Moscow - vanishingly small.
Naturally, I wanted to go first of all to places where foreign musicians performed. A huge platform was built on Pushkin Square, on which “day and evening there were concerts of various groups. It was there that I first saw an English skiffle ensemble, and, in my opinion, led by Lonnie Donigan himself. The impression was rather strange. Elderly and very young people played together, using, along with ordinary acoustic guitars, various household and improvised items such as double bass cans, washboards, pots, etc. In the Soviet press, there was a reaction to this genre in the form of statements like: “Here are the bourgeois what they have come to, they play on washboards. But then everything fell silent, since the roots of the "skiffle" are folk, and folklore in the USSR was sacred.
The most fashionable and hard-to-reach at the festival were jazz concerts. There was a special stir around them, fueled by the authorities, who tried to somehow classify them by distributing passes among the Komsomol activists. It took a lot of dexterity to get into such concerts.
PS. In 1985, Moscow again hosted participants and guests of the Youth Festival, already the twelfth. The festival became one of the first high-profile international actions of the perestroika era. With its help, the Soviet authorities hoped to change for the better the gloomy image of the USSR - the "Evil Empire". A lot of money was spent on the event. Moscow was cleared of unfriendly elements, roads and streets were put in order. But they tried to keep the guests of the festival away from the Muscovites: only people who had passed the Komsomol and party checks were allowed to communicate with the guests. That unity, which was in 1957 during the first Moscow festival, no longer happened.
In the summer of 1957, a truly grandiose, landmark cultural event in the life of the country took place in the Soviet Union. The VI World Festival of Youth and Students, which opened on July 28, 1957 in Moscow, made a real sensation in the minds of the Soviet people and was a milestone for the Soviet mass culture of subsequent years. This festival has become the most massive and memorable event of the “Khrushchev thaw” era. 34,000 delegates from 131 countries of the world arrived in a country closed to foreigners. Never before has a mass international cultural event of this magnitude been held in the Soviet Union. We can safely say that after this festival the country has become different: more integrated and open to the world.
The country prepared thoroughly for this event: in honor of the festival, new hotel complexes and parks were built in Moscow, a sports complex was erected in Luzhniki, where the grandiose opening ceremony of the festival took place. Mira Avenue was named so in connection with the festival. It was during the days of the youth festival that the Volga GAZ-21 cars, the festival series of RAF-10 minibuses - the so-called "rafiks", and the unforgettable "" - new comfortable city buses, first appeared on the streets of the capital.
The famous drawing by Pablo Picasso has become the symbol of this significant youth festival. In this regard, thousands of birds were released in Moscow - pigeons literally filled the streets of the capital. The emblem of the festival was a flower with five petals, symbolizing the five continents, and the core of the festival flower was a globe with the slogan "For Peace and Friendship".
A lot of new things entered Soviet life after the unforgettable youth forum of 1957: appeared in the USSR, young people began to dress differently - the fashion for jeans and sneakers spread, "" appeared, badminton came into fashion and much more. Within the framework of this festival, one of the festival competitions was born, which later became the most popular television game in the USSR. And the song "Moscow Evenings", performed at the closing ceremony of the festival, became the hallmark of the Soviet Union for many years.
On the opening day of the festival, it seemed that the whole city came out to look at this colorful spectacle - the festival participants drove to the Luzhniki stadium in open, festively painted cars and an incredible number of people greeted them along the roads. The opening ceremony itself at Luzhniki was simply enchanting: a grandiose parade with the flags of the participating countries was held at the stadium, and a beautiful culmination of the ceremony was the release of a huge number of white doves into the sky.
The spirit of informal communication and openness reigned these days in Moscow. Foreigners who arrived in the capital could freely visit the Kremlin, Gorky Park and other sights of the city. Young people freely communicated, discussed, sang and listened to music together, talked about everything that worried them. During the days of the festival, about a thousand events were held - concerts, sports competitions, meetings, discussions and performances were very interesting and lively. In those days, bright and talented people from all over the world, writers and journalists, athletes, musicians and actors came to the Soviet Union. Among the young participants of the festival was one of the outstanding writers of our time - Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who later wrote an essay about his stay in the USSR.
The festive festival summer of 1957 gave impetus to a new breakthrough in music, painting and literature, and changed the way of life of millions of Soviet people. The festival opened the "iron curtain" that divided the world, people became closer and more understandable to each other. It was a real unity of people from different countries, different skin colors, speaking different languages. The ideas of peace, friendship and solidarity have become close to young people of all continents - and this is the most important result of this significant festival.
The symbol of the youth forum was the Dove of Peace, invented by Pablo Picasso. The Druzhba park, the Ukraine hotel, and the Luzhniki stadium were opened for the festival in Moscow. Hungarian Ikarus buses first appeared in the capital, and the first GAZ-21 Volga cars were produced. The Moscow Kremlin was opened for free visiting.
Moscow literally buzzed. The main influx of people concentrated in the center, on the streets of Gorky, on Pushkin Square, Marx Avenue, the Garden Ring. The youth talked, sang songs, listened to jazz, discussed about the recently banned Impressionists, about Hemingway and Remarque, Yesenin and Zoshchenko, about everything that excited young minds.
For the first time in many years, the "iron curtain" was opened, dividing the world into two camps. For the Soviet people, the 6th World Festival turned their views on fashion, behavior, lifestyle, accelerating the course of change. Khrushchev's "thaw", the dissident movement, a breakthrough in literature and painting - all this began precisely in the festival whirlwind.
For the residents of Moscow, it was a real shock, everything that they saw and felt turned out to be so unexpected. Now it is even useless to try to explain to people of new generations what was behind the word "foreigner" then.
Constant propaganda aimed at instilling hatred for everything foreign led to the fact that this very word evoked a mixed feeling of fear and admiration in the Soviet citizen. During the day and in the evening the delegations were busy at meetings and speeches. But late in the evening and at night, free communication began. Naturally, the authorities tried to establish control over the contacts, but they did not have enough hands.
During the festival, a kind of sexual revolution took place in Moscow. Young people, and especially girls, seem to have broken the chain.
Puritan Soviet society suddenly witnessed such events that no one expected. I was struck by the forms and scale of what was happening. By night, when it was getting dark, crowds of girls from all over Moscow made their way to the places where foreign delegations lived.
These were student hostels and hotels on the outskirts of the city. It was impossible for the girls to break into the buildings, since everything was cordoned off by the police and combatants. But no one could forbid foreign guests to leave the hotels. No courtship, no false coquetry. The newly formed couples retired into the darkness, into the fields, into the bushes, knowing exactly what they would do immediately.
The image of a mysterious, shy and chaste Russian girl-Komsomol member did not just collapse, but rather was enriched by some new, unexpected feature - reckless, desperate debauchery.
The reaction of the units of the moral and ideological order was not long in coming. Flying squads were urgently organized, equipped with lighting fixtures, scissors and hairdressing machines.
They did not touch the foreigners, they dealt only with the girls, and since there were too many of them, the combatants had no time to find out their identity, or even to simply detain them. Some of the hair of the caught lovers of night adventures was cut off, such a “clearing” was made, after which the girl had only one thing left - to cut her hair bald. Immediately after the festival, the residents of Moscow showed a particularly keen interest in girls who wore a tightly tied scarf on their heads ...
Crowds of foreigners wandering around the city from morning to night provoked a burst of activity among the black market traders.
They bought “green” from foreign guests a little more expensive than at the official rate (then in the USSR, the ratio was 4 rubles for 10 dollars by will), and then they sold it on the black market with a 10-fold profit. It was during the VI World Festival of Youth that the future "pillars" of the illegal foreign exchange market Rokotov, Faibyshenko, Yakovlev began their activities, the high-profile case of which in 1961 ended in a death sentence.
Many dramas took place in families, in educational institutions and in enterprises, where it was more difficult to hide the absence of hair than just on the street, in the subway or trolleybus.
And in the spring of the next, 1958, Moscow was covered by a “black wave”. In the capital's maternity hospitals, dark-skinned babies appeared one after another. It did not take long to find the reason for such a demographic phenomenon, and therefore a new term appeared in the language - “children of the festival”.
For the youth forum, the factories sewed women's scarves, dresses and skirts in mass batches, decorated with the emblem of the festival - a stylized flower with five multi-colored petals.
Such clothes were in great demand in those days in the USSR.
During the days of the holiday, the Soviet "leading authorities" allowed an unprecedented "action of freethinking." An exhibition of abstract artists was arranged in Gorky Park, including the famous Jackson Pollock, the leader of the American Expressionists.
At the music competition, which was part of the festival program, the song "Moscow Evenings" was performed for the first time. The future "hit of all times and peoples" was performed by singer Vladimir Troshin.
http://www.liveinternet.ru/
This postcard of that year is kept in my collection. Interestingly, the flags of the USA and Cuba on the ball are located side by side. Who could have imagined then that in 5 years there would be a Caribbean crisis and the world would be on the eve of a world war, and in 58 years these countries would restore their diplomacy. relationship...
Our flag is next to the UK flag. I was born in August 57th. Interestingly, in 55 years, part of my life will be connected with this country...
In the summer of 1957 Muscovites experienced a real culture shock. Living behind the Iron Curtain, the youth of the capital got the opportunity to freely communicate with their foreign peers, which had far-reaching consequences.
Atmosphere of openness
1957 turned out to be an extremely eventful year for our country. He was noted for testing an intercontinental ballistic missile and launching the Lenin nuclear icebreaker, launching the first artificial satellite into Earth's orbit and sending the first living being, Laika, into space. In the same year, passenger air communication between London and Moscow was opened, and, finally, the Soviet capital hosted the VI World Festival of Youth and Students.
The festival made a real sensation in the Soviet society closed from the outside world: the capital of the USSR had never seen such an influx of foreigners. 34,000 delegates from 131 countries of the world arrived in Moscow. Many witnesses of the events are nostalgic for these bright and eventful days. Despite the ideological background of the festival, representatives of different cultures and political affiliations could freely communicate there. To make the leisure of international youth more comfortable, the Moscow authorities made free access to the Kremlin and Gorky Park.
For the movement of foreign delegations, open trucks were allocated, from which guests could calmly observe the life of the capital, and the townspeople - for foreigners. However, already on the first day of the festival, cars attacked by sociable Muscovites stopped for a long time on the road, because of which the participants were massively late for the grand opening of the forum in Luzhniki.
During the two weeks of the festival, more than eight hundred events were held, but young people were not limited by the official regulations and continued to communicate even late at night. The capital was buzzing all day long, - eyewitnesses of the events recall. Late in the evening, guests of the capital and Muscovites concentrated in the center - on Pushkinskaya Square, the roadway of Gorky Street (modern Tverskaya) and on Marx Avenue (now Mokhovaya Street, Okhotny Ryad and Teatralny Proezd). The youth sang songs, listened to jazz, and discussed forbidden topics, in particular, about avant-garde art.
Symbols of the past
City services were preparing for the influx of foreigners in advance and the capital, according to the recollections of eyewitnesses, noticeably changed. Outlandish at that time Hungarian “ikaruses” appeared on the streets put in order, the domestic auto industry also tried, which released the new Volga (GAZ-21) and the Festival minibus (RAF-10). By the beginning of the events, the Luzhniki stadium and the Ukraine hotel were completed.
Until now, Muscovites are reminded of this event by city toponymy: Prospekt Mira, Festivalnaya Street, Druzhba Park. The latter was created specifically for the festival by young specialists - graduates of the Moscow Architectural Institute.
During the days of the festival, for the first time on Soviet television, the program “Evening of Merry Questions” (abbreviated as VVV) appeared. True, it was aired only three times. Four years later, the author's team of VVV will create a new product that has become a television brand for many decades - the KVN program.
Two years after the youth forum, the Moscow Film Festival was resumed, where Soviet viewers got a unique opportunity to get acquainted with the latest world cinema, including Western cinema, which is practically unknown in the country.
In 1955, for the Spartakiad of the Peoples of the RSFSR, poet Mikhail Matusovsky and composer Vasily Solovyov-Sedym wrote the song “Moscow Nights”, but Muscovites liked the work so much that they decided to make it the official song of the VI Festival of Youth and Students. It not only became one of the musical symbols of the capital, but also the most recognizable Soviet melody by foreigners.
Communication with benefits
Among the delegations that visited the USSR was the American one, which, at the height of the Cold War, was riveted, perhaps, the closest attention of the public. Experts say that it was then that in the Soviet Union they first learned about rock and roll, jeans and flared skirts.
Acquaintance at the festival with American culture was further developed: two years later the American National Exhibition arrived in the capital, which, according to the plan of the organizers, was to stun the Soviet people, deprived of many elementary things. It was from 1959 that the Pepsi-Cola drink became widespread in the USSR.
But back to the festival. For the youth forum, the Soviet light industry produced batches of clothing with festival symbols. Cherished scarves or T-shirts, decorated with a stylized flower with five multi-colored petals, sold like hot cakes. There wasn't enough for everyone. Then the black marketeers surfaced, offering the coveted goods at exorbitant prices.
However, not only Soviet citizens, but also crowds of foreigners walking along the Moscow streets became a target for speculators of all stripes. The most salable commodity was American dollars, which the black marketers bought from foreigners a little higher than the official rate, set at 4 rubles for 10 dollars. But they resold their “greens” to their fellow citizens with a 10-fold markup.
It was during the Moscow festival that the stormy activity of the future bigwigs of the country's illegal foreign exchange market began - Rokotov, Yakovlev and Faibyshenko, a high-profile trial of which in 1961 ended with a death sentence.
"Children of the Festival"
For Soviet society, squeezed by the framework of ideological control in matters of sexual behavior, the festival became a kind of marker of sexual emancipation. Eyewitnesses recall how crowds of girls from all over Moscow flocked to the outskirts of the city to the hostels where the delegates lived. It was impossible to get inside the buildings, which were vigilantly guarded by the police, but no one forbade the guests to go out into the street. And then, without any preludes, the international couples retired into the darkness (fortunately the weather allowed) to indulge in forbidden pleasures.
However, the ideological bodies, which considered it their duty to monitor the moral character of Soviet citizens, very quickly organized flying squads. And so, armed with powerful lanterns, scissors and hairdressing machines, the guardians of morality looked for lovers, and lovers of night adventures caught on the spot of the “crime” cut off part of the hair on their heads.
The girl with a bald "clearing" on her head had no choice but to shave her head. The inhabitants of the capital then disapprovingly looked at the young representatives of the weaker sex, who wore a tightly tied scarf on their heads.
And 9 months after the youth holiday, the phrase “children of the festival” firmly entered the Soviet everyday life. Many argued that in Moscow at that time there was a "colored baby boom". The famous jazz saxophonist Alexei Kozlov, recalling the atmosphere of emancipation that prevailed in the summer of 1957 in Moscow, noted that immigrants from African countries were of particular interest to girls in the capital.
Historian Natalya Krylova is not inclined to exaggerate the scale of the birth rate of mestizos. They were small, she said. According to a summary statistical extract prepared for the leadership of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, after the festival, the birth of 531 children of mixed races was recorded. For the five millionth Moscow, this was negligible.
To freedom
The main result of the VI World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow was, albeit partial, but still the opening of the "Iron Curtain" and the subsequent warming of the social climate in the country. Soviet people took a different look at fashion, manners and lifestyle. In the 60s, the dissident movement declared itself in full voice, bold breakthroughs were made in literature, art, music and cinema.
The festival itself pleased and surprised visitors with richness and variety of events. Thus, 125 films from 30 countries were shown at the Udarnik cinema, most of which would have been classified by censors as banned films yesterday. An exhibition of abstract artists was held in Gorky Park with the participation of Jackson Pollock, who did not fit into the canons of socialist realism promoted in the USSR at all.
In 1985, the twelfth Festival of Youth and Students returned to Moscow. He became one of the symbols of the upcoming perestroika. The Soviet authorities hoped that the festival would be able to dispel the negative image of the USSR abroad. The capital was then thoroughly cleansed of unfriendly elements, but at the same time, the rest of Muscovites were protected from close contact with foreign guests. Only persons who had passed a strict ideological selection were allowed to communicate. Many then noticed that there was no such unity of youth as in 1957 in pre-perestroika Moscow.
