World Federation of Democratic Youth

The World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) is an international youth organization, and has historically characterized itself as left-wing and anti-imperialist. WFDY was founded in London, United Kingdom in 1945 as a broad international youth movement, organized in the context of the end of World War II with the aim of uniting youth from the Allies behind an anti-fascist platform that was broadly pro-peace, anti-nuclear war, expressing friendship between youth of the capitalist and socialist nations. The WFDY Headquarters are in Budapest, Hungary. The main event of WFDY is the World Festival of Youth and Students. The last festival was held in Sochi, Russia, in October 2017. It was one of the first organizations granted general consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council. History On 10 November 1945, the World Youth Conference, organized in London, The UK, 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. Shortly after, 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.