The Uninvited Guests

From all over the world, 10,000 delegates went to the Red-run World Youth Festival in Helsinki last week, and a terrible time was had by all.

Long before opening day, the precariously neutral Finns had warned party planners from Moscow that there was "scant domestic support" for the propaganda jamboree. Besides, the government added, theaters, stadiums and schools needed for festival functions were all under repair and would not be ready in time to accommodate the visitors. But after a little pressure from Moscow on Finnish President Urho K. Kekkonen, Helsinki's Olympic Stadium suddenly became available for the opening session. City officials offered 36 schools; ample television coverage was promised. A Cabinet statement cautioned the heavily anti-Russian country -particularly its youth organizations -that Finnish independence would be jeopardized by even the smallest "pinpricks" that would create irritation and controversy around the festival." Replied Professor of Chemistry A. I. Virtanen, head of the Finnish Academy: "The correct attitude of Finnish youth toward their uninvited guests should be: 'We do not know them.'"

Floating Hotel. In a kind of underground war against the uninvited guests, Finnish students hired away all of Helsinki's charter buses, requiring the Russians to bring in their own fleet. The students booked all the available hotel space so that the Russians, Poles and East Germans were forced to house their delegations aboard ships that had carried them to Finland. Africans from Moscow's Lumumba University traveled second-class by rail, their wallets stuffed with rubles worthless in Finland. From Britain came ban-the-bombers; Cuba dispatched Fidelistas; Guinea sent a troupe of dazzling, costumed dancers. About 100 anti-Communists had infiltrated the earnest pacifists, all-purpose beatniks, and party-liners of the 450-member U.S. group. The antiCommunists, including several from the Goldwatering Young Americans for Freedom, tried, mostly in vain, to get the floor at festival seminars. They soon found that by publishing a daily festival newspaper in three languages (French, Spanish and English), they could win a wider audience.

The main event at the festival was not on the program. On the night before the opening, in the city's main streets, crowds of Finnish teen-agers silently gathered around several buses loaded with delegates. Someone threw a stone through a bus window, someone else heaved a beer bottle, and in a flash the scene turned into a full-scale riot. White-capped police used truncheons to subdue the antiCommunists, even roughed up Police Chief Erik Gabrielson (whom they failed to recognize in a business suit). Soviet Poet Evgeny Evtushenko, a member of the Moscow delegation, was so upset by the anti-Red rioters that he rushed back to his floating hotel, the white-hulled Gruzia, and dashed off a frenzied poem called Sniveling Fascism, which he later read on Russian TV.

Excerpts:

There are no bad peoples! But without any pity I am going to tell you Without accusing the hosts That each people has its wretched creatures. I'll tell you about these skunks, Listen to me!

I knew about fascism through books and movies, And here I saw it in action. Fascism stood up in my face smelling of whisky .. . Fascism was noisily chewing gum. It was sniveling covered with pimples and tow-haired.. .

And if I had not been a Communist before, That night I would have become a Communist!

Two-Car Garage. On the second night of the festival, a crowd of 5,000 young Finns -some shouting anti-Communist slogans, some just adolescents shouting anything that came to mind -refused to disperse from the area near the Old Student House in the downtown section of the city. Finally, mounted police charged the youngsters, while other cops hurled tear-gas and wielded fire hoses. Next evening, there was a repeat bout. Total arrests in four days of riots: 140.

Moscow was furious, the Finns were defiant, and the festival had all the makings of a serious international incident. Clearly it was up to nimble neutralist President Kekkonen (who has two cars in his garage, a Cadillac and a ZIS) to say he was sorry about the whole thing. Sternly he denounced the "irresponsible behavior of youth circles in the capital." Irresponsible or not, Finnish youth had revealed the ingrained anti-Russian bitterness that lies beneath the veneer of Finnish neutrality. It is a vivid memory that many of the delegates will be taking home with them when the festival ends this week. Not that all of them are going home; 14 East German delegates saw their opportunity in Helsinki and defected to the West.

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