Talk:World Festival of Youth and Students

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Terminology

1.Why the reverts against the self-description of the WFDY as "anti-imperialist and left-wing?" The WFDY defines itself this way, on its own homepage www.wfdy.org/welcome.

2. The Eastern Bloc countries (USSR, GDR, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Cuba, North Korea) in which 11 of the 16 festivals was held were clearly communist (dictatorships ruled by stalinist or leninist parties) at the time the festival was held there. Czechoslovakia was admittedly a special case, as the Communist take-over there was not completed until after the games were held. In any event, why the reluctance to admit that most of the festivals were held in socialist AND communist countries? "Most were held in Communist countries" is accurate, but to be inclusive, we can add socialist to the mix.

3. "Eastern Bloc" or "Soviet Bloc" are also the predominant terms for the Warsaw pact members. Check it out on google. Socialist Bloc gets only 82000, Communist Block 300000, and Eastern Bloc and Soviet Bloc each more than 1000000 hits. Eastern Bloc is the name of the Wikipedia article, so I changed Socialist Bloc to that.

I see someone trying to whitewash things here.

Roland1989 22:27, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

It is not a whitewash. First of all concerning nr. 1, i was unaware of the text at wfdy.org. Also it puzzles me. Generally it has historically been WFDY policy to present itself as a broad youth movement, and not specifically communist, socialist, marxist, etc. Although WFDY and the festivals have been dominated with communist or communist-aligned organizations, this has never been an exclusive rule. Regarding nr. 2 and 3, there have been quite extensive discussions elsewhere on wikipedia concerning which would be the correct wording. In strict sense, "communist state" is a contradiction in it self (as a communist society, as per lenin, is a state-less society). All the states that have been ruled by state-bearing communist parties have identified themselves as socialist states (in the sense that they have a socialist economic system). With similar logic it ought to be Socialist Bloc. Moreover, Eastern Bloc is not really a universally fitting term. In what way is Russia east, for say, people in Japan? --Soman 22:57, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't mean to attack your integrity here. Regarding #1 - maybe they thought they would be more successful if they appealed more openly to their core constituency?

Regarding #2: True, most communist parties called themselves socialist. But just because they defined themselves this way, does not mean that we are also obligated to do so. It is clear that there was a big difference between the socialism practiced in the USSR, PRC, GDR, Cuba, etc. and the democratic socialism and social democracy practiced in western Europe. In general, the term communist has been applied to the ideology of a party, or to both the economic and political systems of a country, while socialism applies only to economic policies (or the ideology of a party favoring these policies). Thus, all communist countries are socialist, but not all socialist ones are communist. I think the distinction can be determined by asking the following questions about a country or party: 1) was socialism seen as merely a waypoint on the road to true communism? Did the party have communism as its ultimate goal? 2) was the country a single-party dictatorship of the proletariat, in which the party had a monopoly on power? (or, if talking about a party, did it seek to attain such a role?) 3) did the party follow a marxist-leninist, maoist, and/or stalinist ideology? If the answers to these questions are yes, then the country can be characterized as communist (i.e. a dictatorial state ruled by a party following a communist ideology), and not democratic socialist/social democratic. While a communist state is indeed an oxymoron within marxist-leninst theory, the fact that "socialist" states on the road to communism turned out to be dictatorships with large states is a failure within that theory that its proponents have to deal with, not one that its critics have to explain.

Regarding #3: The term "Eastern Bloc", while it is not geographically universal, is, for the most part, accurate. Most of the Warsaw Pact members and their allies were located to the East of the NATO members and their allies. While the Korea/Japan area raises exceptions to this generalization, this are just that - small exceptions to a term that otherwise describes things pretty well. In addition, the term "Socialist Bloc" can be misleading. Many important self-described socialist countries (assuming we ignore the above debate on whether they were socialist or communist) were not members of the Eastern Bloc, as they were not Warsaw pact members and were even hostile to the USSR. Yugoslavia, Albania and the PRC come to mind. Furthermore, Eastern Bloc is by far the most widely used term and is also the name of the wikipedia article. So while Eastern Bloc isn't 100% accurate, it is by far more widely accepted than Socialist Bloc. Actually, an even more accurate term would be "Soviet Bloc", but the Wikipedia uses "Eastern Bloc", so maybe we should stick with that. Roland1989 01:33, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with you and agree with Soman. However, I'll not revert your edits, instead, I remove this controversial inf., all the more, that it is not essential for the article. Links to countries are present - click and see, who are they. Cmapm 02:03, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Seems fair and accurate to me. Roland1989 16:10, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Re #1, I'd find two probabler guesses. WFDY was essentially born in the context of cold war, and in the current situation the project of building "broad" (often implying apolitical, except for anti-imperialist) youth alliance is not so useful. A second guess could be that the webmaster simply acted without proper consultations. --Soman 18:00, 24 March 2006 (UTC)