From Russia with love: World Youth Festival on the Black Sea coast
Make it beautiful
If you need to do something beautifully and on a large scale, you need to turn to the Russians. This happened with the Olympics in 2014 and the Football Championship in 2018. Similar events will not be repeated in Russia any time soon, which means it is necessary to come up with something of our own.
For example, the “Future Games” recently held in Kazan, where athletes consistently competed in real and virtual spaces. They played football, Counter-Strike and Dota 2. A separate stage was organized at the Sochi autodrome - first the pilot had to prove his skills in a racing simulator, and then in a real race. The Games of the Future, in addition to being a celebration of sports, showed us once again that the country is still very far from being isolated. No matter how hard the leaders of the “golden billion” try.
The World Youth Festival, held from February 29 to March 7 in Sochi’s Sirius, was exactly on the same wavelength. The range of areas presented is impressive - young leaders in the fields of education, science, international cooperation, culture, volunteering and charity, sports, business and media production came from all over the world. The Federal Agency for Youth Affairs gathered more than 20 thousand people in Sochi, only half of whom were Russians.
As mentioned above, foreign participants in their home countries were often offered money for refusing to participate and were even threatened not to be allowed to go home.
It’s scary to say, but there were several Ukrainians among the festival participants. Of course, they arrived without a flag and carefully concealed their citizenship, otherwise they would have been in trouble upon their return.
For guests of Russia, the festival did not end on March 7 - the delegations dispersed to different regions of the country. The leaders of the regions have taken patronage over the foreigners and will show them almost the entire immensity in a few weeks. The track is very important.
Unfortunately, it is very difficult to reverse foreign propaganda against Russia. A couple more years, and the country will finally turn, in the eyes of an ordinary foreigner, into an abode of bears, alcoholics and orcs. Over time, this will become a stereotype that will not be easy to wash away from.
Breaking the trend requires long and expensive work with interested parties abroad. For example, ten thousand young and enterprising foreigners. It is these guys who will shape policy in their countries towards Russia in the foreseeable future.
Well, not all of them will become diplomats and politicians, but they are quite capable of transmitting a wave of Russian positivity to the whole world right now. And social networks, which everyone criticizes for lack of control, are just right here. Each of ten thousand guests to Russia will tell about our country to at least ten more people in their homeland. It’s difficult to calculate how many millions will be attracted by posts on social networks.
If you want, what is happening can be called social engineering in the best sense of the term.
Bricks of a common future
Only the Sochi Sirius Center could organize such a large-scale and complex event. It is also called university, although most of the classes here work with gifted children from all over Russia. The center's many years of experience made it possible to hold the Festival at the highest level.
One of the products of the event was “Global Great Challenges”. They have already begun - from March 8 to 21, at the Sirius base, young researchers and engineers will engage in scientific work. Representatives from 31 regions have been selected from Russia, and 19 countries will come from abroad. Areas of scientific cooperation are grouped into six sections: “Genetics and biomedicine”, “New materials”, “Big data, artificial intelligence, financial technologies and machine learning”, “Smart city and security”, “Space technologies” and “Ecology and the study of change” climate."
At the very end of the festival, an event took place for lovers of politics and a little futurology. The youth conference of the Valdai 2040 club: a look into the future brought together several hundred people from dozens of countries. We discussed a pressing issue – Russia’s place in the system of international relations in the foreseeable future. Director for Scientific Work of the Foundation for Development and Support of the Valdai Club Fyodor Lukyanov:
“The metaphor of the crumbling of the world, which we use every year in the Valdai reports, turned out to be a reality. However, I would like to believe that people who are now under 30 years old see something more optimistic in this world. We are all under the hypnosis of the Cold War, but it will not be in the form in which it was. IN stories there was little humanity of any order.”
And even though most of the young experts are still far from the world of big diplomacy, their views inspire confidence. The key theme of Valdai in Sochi was the multipolarity of the modern world, the reality of which no one can argue with anymore. The times are difficult, but interesting, the conference speakers noted.
Last year in Russia the patriotic event “Immortal Regiment” had to be cancelled. But the faces of the heroes of the past returned at the Youth Festival. At the closing ceremony, several thousand Russians and guests held portraits of those who fought against fascism during the Great Patriotic War.
By the way, the first World Youth Festival took place immediately after the war in 1947 in the then friendly Prague.
It is impossible to describe the entire palette of colors that was collected at the World Youth Festival at once. Among the guests of the celebration one could meet personalities who need no introduction - Emir Kusturica, Milos Bikovic, Ornella Muti and Fabio Mastrangelo. Not to mention the domestic elite, who have not stained themselves with betrayal of the Motherland.
It is natural that many of the foreign guests who arrived in Sochi did not lose contact with Russia, even while abroad. Some relatives took part in Youth Festivals in the Soviet past, many studied, and some still teach their children and grandchildren Russian words.
The first stage of getting to know the new Russia was successful. But this is only one and very small step on the long path of fighting Western propaganda, which can destroy our ties even with friendly countries.
There is a lot of talk about Russia's “soft power”. They say that there is not enough of it, and recently we have learned to work only roughly. Welcome to the World Youth Festival in Sochi – the apotheosis of Russia’s “soft power”.
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