On 10 November 1945, the World Youth Conference, organized in London, founded the World Federation of Democratic Youth. This historic conference was convened at the initiative of the World Youth Council which was formed during the Second World War to bring together the youth movements of the allied nations in an anti-fascist front. The conference was attended by over 600 delegates from 63 nations, it was at the time the largest and most diverse gathering of international youth. The conference adopted a pledge for peace. The WFDY was an indirect successor of the
World Youth Congress Movement of the 1930s, a
popular front of youth of a broad range of political tendencies, from religious to secular, liberal, socialist, and communist, which attempted to advocate a progressive programme and promote world peace. Shortly after the 1945 World Youth Conference, with the onset of the Cold War and
Winston Churchill's
Iron Curtain speech, the organization was accused by the
US State Department of being a "Moscow front". Many of the founding organizations quit, leaving mostly youth from socialist nations, national liberation movements, and communist youth. Like the
International Union of Students (IUS) and other pro-Soviet organizations, the WFDY became a target and victim of
CIA espionage as well as part of
active measures conducted by the Soviet state security. The WFDY's first General Secretary,
Alexander Shelepin, was a former leader of the
Young Communist International which had been dissolved in 1943. Shelepin had been a guerilla fighter during World War II (after his work with the WFDY, he was appointed head of Soviet State Security). Both the WFDY and IUS vocally criticized the
Marshall Plan, supported the
Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948 and the new
people's republics in eastern Europe. They opposed the
Korean War. The main event of the WFDY became the World Festival of Youth and Students, a large-scale political and cultural celebration which aimed to promote peace and friendship between the youth of the world. Most, but not all, of the early festivals were held in socialist nations in Europe. During the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s the WFDY's festivals were one of the few places where young people from the
western bloc could meet youth involved in the campaign against apartheid from
South Africa, or militant youth from Vietnam, Palestine, Cuba and other nations. Famous people who participated in festivals included
Angela Davis,
Yuri Gagarin,
Yasser Arafat,
Fidel Castro,
Vladimir Putin,
Ruth First,
Jan Myrdal and
Nelson Mandela. When the
Soviet Union and the
Eastern Bloc collapsed, the WFDY entered a crisis. With the power vacuum left by the collapse of the most important member organization, the Soviet
Komsomol, there were conflicting views of the future character of the organization. Some wanted a more apolitical structure, whereas others were more inclined to an openly leftist federation. The WFDY, however, survived this crisis, and is today an active international youth organization that holds regular activities. == Pledge ==