The Creation of the World Assembly of Youth

Abstract

During 1949 tensions had increased between East and West and also within the communist movement. The year saw the definite division of Germany into two states. The Soviet Union acquired the atomic bomb. It created Comecon in January; the West created NATO in April and began to discuss the Schuman Plan for economic integration. West Germany took part in these discussions, and even its rearmament and integration into a West European army was being considered. This possibility terrified the Russians and made them unleash a massive campaign against German rearmament. The successful defiance of Yugoslavia alarmed them also, and 1949 saw the beginning of a still further tightening of ideological discipline by the purging of a whole swathe of old communist politicians whom Stalin suspected of harbouring subversive sympathies with Tito. The West, too, tried to eradicate subversives — genuine or suspected communists — as McCarthyism got under way. The war in Indochina continued; and on 1 October Mao Tse Tung proclaimed the Communist People’s Republic of China.