First youth festival. The first world festival of youth and students in the USSR (1957)

11. 05. 2016 3 280

Interview with Lyubov Borisova, daughter of Konstantin Mikhailovich Kuzginov, Moscow artist, author of the emblem of the World Festival of Youth and Students.

The ideas of the World Festival of Youth and Students are succinctly and succinctly reflected in its symbol - the native and beloved festival camomile. It is noteworthy that it was created in the Soviet Union by the Moscow artist Konstantin Mikhailovich Kuzginov.

- Tell us how your father's idea earned worldwide recognition?

– The basis of the success that fell to the lot of my father in his work on the emblem of the VI Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow was that, as professional artist by that time he had already created a number of posters that adorned the festivals in Budapest and Berlin in 1949 and 1951. But back to 1957. An All-Union competition for the creation of the emblem of the festival was announced, in which anyone could take part. In total, about 300 sketches from all over the Union were presented. The jury immediately drew attention to my father's 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. Vasily Ardamatsky in his book “Five Petals” writes that “real art does not tolerate repetition”, so the idea associated with the image of a dove also did not become relevant. As reported then in the newspapers, the emblem won the hearts of the participants of the world youth festival. So in 1958 Congress of Vienna The World Federation of Democratic Youth announced that Konstantin Kuzginov's chamomile was taken as a permanent basis for all subsequent forums. Now the whole world knows this emblem. Today it is the starting point for the upcoming 60th anniversary of the festival of youth and students of Russia.

- And how did the festival chamomile bloom?

- In one of the interviews, my father 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. Core - Earth, and around 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." I also remember him saying that he was inspired as an athlete by the Olympic rings, a symbol of the unity of athletes all over the world. The festival chamomile is so firmly rooted in the memory of generations and the culture of the festival that today, in my opinion, it is extremely difficult to come up with something new, more capacious and concise. It is very important to preserve it, because it is the history and heritage of our country.

– You have a very interesting collection of various items with the symbols of the festival.

- Yes, dad started collecting it. Then I continued. This is a unique collection of artifacts. And it's great when everyday things are decorated with the emblem of such a bright event. In the collection, in addition to badges, postcards and stamps, you can see a cup, mugs, matchboxes, cufflinks, photo albums and much more. Thanks to antique shops and all sorts of flea markets, I still add to this collection. I think that this experience should definitely be used when organizing the upcoming festival. You always want to leave something to remember. Back in 1957, they understood that they needed their own unique symbol, in the image of which the spirit of the festival would be laid. And the involvement of modern youth in the creation of something like this, the opportunity to take the initiative, and maybe discover new talents thanks to the competition, is an absolute plus.

- And in conclusion, what would your father wish the future participants of the XIX World Festival of Youth and Students in 2017?

– I think he would be happy to know that our country will once again host this grand event, and would wish the Festival and its participants prosperity, joy, happiness, peace and friendship. There are many epithets, but the main thing is that young people should be imbued with these words and keep them in their hearts.

The festival of youth and students in 2018 will be the twentieth anniversary. The tradition of celebrating the unity of the youth of all countries of the world arose back in 1947, and since then, every few years, festival events of great political, cultural and sports significance have been held in many cities of the world.

In 2017, this grandiose international event will take place in October in the Olympic city of Sochi, but the decision on where the festival will be held in 2018 has not yet been made. The organizers of the event are the World Federation of Democratic Youth and the International Union of Students.

The festival is held irregularly, and it may turn out that the jubilee, XX Youth Festival will be held not in 2018, but later.

Story

The first World Festival of Youth and Students was held in 1947 in Prague. Twice this cultural and sports forum of left-wing youth movements - in 1957 and 1985 - met in Moscow. The corporate flower logo and the motto "For Peace and Friendship" have become symbols of the most significant events in the field of youth movement in the history of the USSR.

The main objectives of the event in the post-war years were the struggle for the political rights of youth, peace throughout the world. In general, it was characterized by an anti-imperialist orientation, propaganda of internationalism.

Every year the number of participants grew: the Moscow festival in 1957 received 34,000 people from 130 countries.

At first, the events were held every two years, but gradually the interval between them began to increase to several years. In the late 1980s, with the collapse of the USSR and the collapse of socialism in the states of Eastern Europe the festival did not take place for eight long years. However, in the mid-1990s, the festival was revived and again became a major international event.

Traditionally, the festival program includes:

• solemn parade of delegations;
• political seminars and discussions;
• conferences;
• sports competitions;
• concerts;
• contests;
• Exhibitions;
• cultural festivities.

How to get to the festival, its participants

In order to become a member, you must register on its website, be a young person from 18 to 35 years old and belong to any category:

• representatives of youth public organizations;
• creative and sports youth;
• young engineers and IT specialists;
• student government leaders;
• young scientists and university professors;
• leaders of youth organizations of political parties;
• young entrepreneurs.

Main selection criteria: active life position, participation in social and political life countries, a sense of belonging to the destinies of the world.

Volunteering

in organizing and conducting last festival Volunteers play a significant role. Thousands of volunteers strive to provide all possible assistance in different areas activities of the youth forum:

• accompanied by guests and participants of the festival;
• in holding a parade and other events;
• in catering;
• in the provision of translation services;
• in meetings and seeing off delegations;
• in ensuring the work of the media and much more.

More than 7,000 people will be involved in the work of the Sochi festival. Volunteers can be people over 18 who know at least one foreign language seeking to gain new knowledge and make new friends. Volunteers are not necessarily young people. There are so-called "silver" volunteers - people over 50 years old.

In addition to Russians, international volunteers will participate in the festival. For this, an agreement was signed between Russian volunteer centers and the UN Volunteers program.

Chronology

Year	Place
1947	Prague, Czechoslovakia
1949	Budapest, Hungary
1951	Berlin, GDR
1953	Bucharest, Romania
1955	Warsaw Poland
1957	Moscow, USSR
1959	Vienna, Austria
1962	Helsinki, Finland
1968	Sofia, Bulgaria
1973	Berlin, GDR
1978	Havana, Cuba
1985	Moscow, USSR
1989	Pyongyang, North Korea
1997	Havana, Cuba
2001	Algiers, Algiers
2005	Caracas, Venezuela
2010	Pretoria, South Africa
2013	Quito, Ecuador
2017	Sochi, Russia

A real celebration of peace, friendship and freedom, which surprised with its scale and unusually bright program, brought together more than 34,000 guests from 131 countries of the world at its venues in Moscow. It was the most memorable holiday in the history of the festival movement.

The participant of the VI World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow, who later became famous musician and jazzman Alexei Kozlov:

"The atmosphere of the festival, despite its strictly prescribed regulation, turned out to be light and unconstrained. The enthusiasm was genuine, everything was mixed up on the slogan "Peace and Friendship", music and songs specially prepared for this event sounded from the loudspeakers, such as "We are all for peace, the peoples take an oath…” or “If the boys of the whole Earth…” All of Moscow was hung with emblems, posters, slogans, images of the Dove of Peace by Pablo Picasso, garlands, illuminations. The festival consisted of a huge number of planned events of various types and simple unorganized and uncontrolled communication of people on the streets in the center of Moscow and in the areas of the hotels where the guests were settled.

Video from the opening of the 1957 World Festival of Youth and Students

The VI World Festival of Youth and Students was held in the midst of a thaw, it opened new page in the history of the country memorable dates which at that time were still riddled with echoes of the Second World War.

It was in the difficult post-war time that the history of the World Festivals of Youth and Students began - then in London in 1945 the World Conference of Democratic Youth for Peace was held for the first time, and as a result of it, the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) was created.

Solemn procession on the opening day of the VI World Festival of Youth and Students. Moscow, July 28, 1957. Photo from the archive of the festival

Later, in 1946, the 1st World Congress of Students took place in Prague, at which the International Union of Students (ISU) was created. Both organizations proclaimed as their goal the struggle for peace against fascism and colonialism, for the rights of youth and democratic reform of education. It was they who were the main organizers of the World Festivals of Youth and Students for many years.

The idea of ​​holding the first World Festival of Youth and Students in Paris was adopted at the session of the Council of the World Federation of Democratic Youth in 1946, exactly at the time when W. Churchill delivered his speech in Fulton about the beginning of the Cold War.

However, this was not accidental: it was in Czechoslovakia in 1939 that thousands of students and teachers took part in a demonstration against the occupation of the country by the troops of the Third Reich. As a result, 1850 students were arrested, 1200 of them were subsequently sent to concentration camps, and all higher educational institutions were closed.

Parade of participants of the 1st World Festival of Youth and Students in Prague in 1947

Despite massive restrictions and bans on participation in the festival for young people, more than 17 thousand representatives from 71 countries of the world took part in the I World Festival, and every year the festival gained momentum, uniting all more young people from different corners peace.

On the eve of the holiday, the delegates of the first festival helped to restore the destroyed Czechoslovak cities, the Yugoslav railway laying flowers on the graves Soviet soldiers who fell in the battles for Czechoslovakia.

On July 25, 1947, the grand opening of the festival took place at the Stragov stadium to the anthem of the Democratic Youth, written by the Soviet poet Lev Oshanin to the music of Anatoly Novikov.

At one of the concerts on the territory of the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition during the festival. Moscow, 1957

In subsequent years, festivals were held every two years in the capitals of Eastern Europe: Budapest (1949), Berlin (1951), Bucharest (1953), Warsaw (1955). At the 5th festival in Warsaw, the festival got its own slogan "For Peace and Friendship". It reflected the desire to unite all the youth organizations of the world and faith in the reconciling power of friendship that can tame any war.

In other countries, the slogan was later refined and supplemented, for example, in Sofia (IX Festival, 1968) it was: "For solidarity, peace and friendship!", "For anti-imperialist solidarity, peace and friendship!" - this was the slogan of the festivals in Berlin (X Festival, 1973), Havana (XI Festival, 1978) and Moscow (XII Festival, 1985).

Badges with emblems of the VI and VII World Festival of Youth and Students

In addition to the memorable slogan "For Peace and Friendship" on bright badges, postcards and souvenirs, the festival of 1957 remains in the memory of Moscow today - Prospekt Mira Street, named so in the year of the festival, Festivalnaya Street, along which you can drive to Friendship Park, planted specially for the 1957 festival. On the opening day of the park, more than 5,000 guests planted prepared seedlings. This joint action was repeated during the XII World Festival of Youth and Students in 1985, which was hosted by Moscow for the second time.

Joint planting of seedlings with foreign delegates at the VI World Festival of Youth and Students. Moscow, 1957

The 1957 festival gave a lot famous songs. At the closing ceremony, Vladimir Troshin and Edita Piekha performed the song "Moscow Nights" for the first time, it became a kind of anthem of the festival and thanks to it gained fame all over the world.

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 statesmen West - even Queen Elizabeth of Belgium, the politicians of Greece, Italy, Finland, France, not to mention the pro-Soviet-minded 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 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. dissident movement, a breakthrough in literature and painting - it all 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. It fell in the middle of the Khrushchev thaw and was remembered for its 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. For the festival, one hundred thousand birds were raised and the most healthy and mobile 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 had grown up behind the Iron Curtain, and the young Soviet intellectuals were shocked by the fact that foreigners do not appreciate the happiness of freely reading any authors and know nothing 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.

Ensemble "Druzhba" and Edita Piekha with the program "Songs of the peoples of the world" won 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 a calling card USSR.
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.

dedicated to the festival Feature Film"Girl with a guitar": in 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 festival delegates 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 pigeons from the Kauchuk plant, under the very sky, at the height of a ten-story city building, Komsomol members and youth of the plant equipped an excellent room for 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 for a short time, 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, she pure weren't very interested. 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. Puritan Soviet society suddenly witnessed such events that no one expected and which jarred even 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 seem to demand " iron curtain”, scandals, “communist propaganda”. And there is none of that on the streets. At the festival dancing, singing, laughing and serious conversation. The conversation people want."

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 in enterprises where it was more difficult to hide the absence of hair than just on the street, in the subway or trolley bus. 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, soaked with 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 aspired to visit first of all where foreign musicians. A huge platform was built on Pushkin Square, on which "day and evening there were concerts of the most different teams. 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 the usual 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’s what the bourgeoisie has 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 his help 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.

The publication was prepared as part of the implementation of the cultural research project under the grant of the President of the Russian Federation "Art festive decoration cities. 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 bulkiness and embellishment post-war years gave way to simple, lightweight, 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, great value acquires color, a range of pure open tones. By the end of the 1950s, the first examples of solving design complexes in spatial development, in conjunction with the urban environment and, above all, architectural ensembles. One of best examples Such an approach to decorating the city was the design of Moscow in the summer of 1957, during the days of 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.

A vivid sight was presented by the design of the Moscow boulevard ring on the theme literary works, copyright and folk tales- 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 combined 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, arches of balloons, light 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 stack 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 were installed book stalls and huge models of books with illustrations for the works of the Russian classical literature, high columns, composed 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. Structural solution installations were distinguished by simplicity and clarity, and the use of means 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 - white dove with wings outstretched 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, and the flags of the countries participating in the youth festival decorated the fountain's bowl around the perimeter. 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 visual solutions have shown the ongoing search means of expression, 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 manifestations, 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 Soviet Union and dove of peace.

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.