As General Secretary of the Party, Kruschev wanted to show the World that the Soviet Union had ascended morally from its earlier Stalinist years. He wanted to prove that as a reformer of the Soviet Union, that the face of the Soviets had changed to represent the growing youth in the country who would bring their knowledge and new ideals to the Party. This represented the deconstruction of the old Colonial Soviet Union and the reformation of the party idealism. Kruschev and Komosol wanted to emulate that the Soviet Union youth were on the precipice of enacting a social revolution of sorts. However the Western media would conceive this ritual to be an act, that the youth had no say over policy from within the Party. The Moscow World Festival was an illustration of the social warfare that was being conducted by the Soviets and the West as both sides perceived this ceremonial event quite differently. There was and is very little that these two very culturally different geographical regions can understand the same way, policies meant to be executed for progress will be perceived as pugnacious and belligerent.
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[Should read Komsomol above] “Kruschev wanted to show the World that the Soviet Union had ascended morally from its earlier Stalinist years” Well, he had a few in the West convinced that he was meaning well when he told the Party Congress about the Stalinist atrocities in a secret convention, the manuscript of which somehow got leaked and eventually became known in the Soviet underground as well (initially and for many years it was known mainly outside the Iron Curtain – for all we know). But the problem with Kruschev’s stance was that a) the die-hard fanatical Stalinists (of which many exist to this day) were not at all convinced and b) those who knew or suspected or were the victims of these atrocities only knew too well that Kruschev had been a very active part and cogwheel in the Stalinist oppression apparatus and been one of Stalin’s henchmen in Ukraine etc. So from the start, although we never may have hard figures unless the KGB archives contain truthful reports not yet released, Kruschev’s attempts were blemished by him being seen (and thus mistrusted) as a turncoat both by followers and detractors alike …