He told the Mirror that he took three afternoons off from talking to the crowds in Red Square to meet with the Hungarians, and that he was not much surprised to find that the whole delegation was made up of Russian and Kadar puppet-government "plants."
Unlike most of the delegates, Abrams observed that the Hungarian "youths" were generally in their late thirties. "And from the contacts I had with them," he said, "I'd conclude most were members of the Hungarian secret police and all were trusted Communists."
Two of the delegates were identified as Somogyi Berta and Jozsef Farkas. Their pictures had appeared in Lifemagazine's series on the revolution. They were depicted being shot down by rebels.
The Hungarian delegates all spread the same line concerning the revolt. They claimed that Hungary had been a land of peace and happiness before the revolt, but that spies were sent in from the West as instigators and that "weapons of murder" were shipped in by balloons."
They also passed out numerous propaganda pamphlets in several different languages. Abrams said that some of these pamphlets claimed only Fascists and criminals took part in the fighting. One claimed Hungarian youths who fled to the West are now being held prisoners; another attacked the Voice of America as the real instigator of the trouble; and still another told how "wonderful" things are now in Hungary under the Kadar puppet government.
While he found it hard to measure just how effective this propaganda was, Abrams felt that the Russians may have laid it on too thick by painting Hungary in colors so favorable to themselves. Indeed, he felt that the purpose of the whole Festival had failed for much the same reason.
Festival Evaluated
Abrams believes that the Russians had a three-fold aim in staging the Festival. First, they were trying to convince the 30,000 delegates from all over the world that Russia is a land of peace and prosperity; second, they sought to placate signs of discord among the youth of the country by distracting them with the show of the century; and third, they were making a grandstand play for favorable world-wide publicity.
But he told the Mirror that he doubted that the Reds succeeded in any of these objectives. "For one thing," he said, "they made their gimmicks too obvious. They could not keep secrets. It was obvious that all the wooden buildings of Moscow had just been given fresh paint jobs. And everywhere the youth roamed in the city, the Russians were eager to brag about it. They were proud that their town was spic-and-span for the first time in 20 years.
"There was another gimmick that was just as clear: somehow, there were almost no Red soldiers in all of Moscow during the festival. During my 19 days I saw only two guns, and only a handful of men in uniform. It became common scuttlebutt among the young delegates that all soldiers had been shipped out of town for the length of our stay.
"There were no drunks visible in Moscow during the festival. That made a good impression--but it became common knowledge that the government had passed a series of new laws to prevent heavy drinking just before the visitors arrived.
"All in all, most of the independent visitors were aware they weren't seeing the real Moscow, but rather a glossed-over, cleaned-up version. So the effort to paint Russia as the land of milk-and-honey was a failure."
Abrams also felt that the effort to placate the unrest of the young Russians had failed. He noted that the long exchanges of ideas appeared to have created greater problems for the Russian government than existed before, and that the Russian girls had been very impressed with the pretty clothes of the female delegates. He predicted a good deal of pressure, as a result of this, to have the government turn out more consumer goods and less heavy machinery and weapons.
On favorable world publicity, too, Abrams felt the Russians had failed. He noted that many foreign newspapers expressed surprise at the ignorance of the Russian people concerning the U.N. Report on Hungary. "But it takes more than this sort of festival to cover up the tragedy of Hungary," Abrams said in the Mirror. "People aren't going to forget that for a long time. And because of the Youth Festival, more of the Russians know about it now, as well as other things their own papers won't give them."