(EST PUB DATE) THE CLANDESTINE SERVICE HISTORICAL SERIES COVERT ACTION OPERATIONS SOVIET RUSSIA DIVISION 1950 - 1968

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 01144178
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 28, 2022
• Document Release Date: September 19, 2018
• Case Number: F-2018-00871
• Publication Date: December 1, 1972

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CIA HISTORICAL STAFF
The Clandestine Service
Historical Series
COVERT ACTION OPERATIONS
SOVIET RUSSIA DIVISION
1950 - 1968
ST:let
CI Internal Use Only
Access Controlled by DDP
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SeAfet
CS'HP 335
Controlled by: SB
December 1972
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B. Reward anciFurther Planning
1. Moscow Youth Festival, 1957
The foresight and planning that initiated
these activities was handsomely rewarded in the sum-
mer of 1957 through the involvement
in the Moscow Youth Festival. This event, whose
significance at the time could be equated to that
of KhruShchev's secret speech in its impact on the
outlook of .the younger generation of Soviet citizens,
was probably the most wide open mass encounter be-
tween the youth of the West and the youth of the
Soviet Bloc in history. The most important
involved was the 'Yale Russian Chorus, -a group
of students from Yale University, most of whom had
some facility in the Russian language and several
of whom had outstanding competence. It would be
misleading, however, to attribute the impact of
Western youth
to the chorus
What happened
on its Soviet counterpart primarily
project
was largely spontaneous, and to a
considerable degree that spontaneity was responsible
for the significance of the Western impact.
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The Khrushchev speech and the Polish and
Hungarian events of 1956 had made a deep impression
on youth all over Europe and the United States. The
hope for genuinely peaceful coexistence and for the
beginning, at least, of the end to Colluaunist tyranny
gave the Festival participants an almost evangelistic
spirit. The ignorance and the curiosity of Soviet
participants about the outside world and apparently
a lack of foresight on the part of Soviet security
and party officials resulted in a laxity of controls
and a consequent openness and genuiness of communica-
tion that, with thepossible exception of the events
of the summer of 1959, were unique in Soviet history
since the 1920's.
Copies of,the United Nations (UN) report on
Hungary, for example, were brought in by Western
participants and read to large crowds at the Festival.
One member of the Yale Russian Chorus read parts of
the report from the steps of Lenin's mausoleum in Red
Square. These portions of the report were trans-
lated into Russian by other members of the Yale
Chorus who were scattered throughout the crowd. Al-
though that was perhaps the high point in agitational
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activity, numerous contacts were made with the
then nascent Soviet dissident group by members o
the Yale Chorus. These provided the first links
the movement which in later years was to achieve
recognition throughout the world for its criticism
of the Soviet system and the willingness of its
members to sacrifice themselves for the cause.
The debriefings of members of the Yale
Chorus and other assets upon their return from
Moscow stimulated great enthusiasm for this kind
of approach and greatly accelerated the development
of operations aimed at exploiting similar opopportuni-
ties in the future and at taking the fullest advan-
tage of the increasing accessibility of Soviet
targets on a person-to-person basis.
2-7-959 Program
ese influences were strongly reflected
in the SR operat nal program for FY 1959, drawn up
early in 1958:
SR PP [CA] operatibis during the
past year have the genera objective
of promoting evolutionary c nges within
the USSR. With this broad mi ion SR
concentrated increasingly on the evelop-
ment of operations not requiring m s
media, designed to hit limited targe
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