World Youth Festival Directorate Presented Projects Dedicated to 80th Anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War at “Shared Memory” International Forum
On March 26, Saint Petersburg hosted the “Shared Memory – Heritage for the Younger Generation: The Great Victory as a Unifying Factor in the Modern History of Nations” conference as part of the “Shared Memory” International Forum. The event was timed to coincide with the 80th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War.
Valery Danilov, Head of the International Cooperation Division (CIS, Europe, and America) at the World Youth Festival Directorate, took part in the conference. He presented the Directorate’s key areas of work, International Friendship Clubs, and educational programmesat Year-Round Youth Educational Centers, as well as projects dedicated to the 80th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War. One of them is a thematic blog tour for international bloggers, scheduled to take place in May 2025. The tour will feature four thematic routes, with participants visiting Moscow, Saint Petersburg, the Moscow, Leningrad, Tula, and Volgograd Regions, as well as Karelia.
The speaker emphasized that today, 90 International Friendship Clubs across Russia are organizing dozens of events commemorating key events of the Great Patriotic War, withforeign partner organizations initiating thematic campaigns and activities. For example, in February, Prague hosted the “Stalingrad Ribbon” campaign, while young people from France and Serbia took part in the “Siege Bread” memorial event.
The event brought together representatives from CIS countries, including Russia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan.
The event organizers included the Saint Petersburg and Northwestern Russia branch of the Humanitarian Association of Turkmens of the World, the “Mekan” Turkmen Cultural Centre in Saint Petersburg, with support from the Saint Petersburg Committee on Interethnic Relations and Migration Policy, the Saint Petersburg Committee for External Relations, the Saint Petersburg House of Nationalities, the Russian Ethnographic Museum, the Elena Obraztsova Cultural Center, the State Memorial Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad, and the World Youth Festival Directorate.
Overview:
The World Youth Festival took place on March 1–7, 2024 in Sirius, according to the Decree of Russian President Vladimir Putin on the development of international youth cooperation. TheWYF-2024 brought together 20,000 young leaders from 190 countries.
On the instructions of the President of the Russian Federation, the WYF will be held in Russia on a regular basis – once in six years. Also, every six years 10,000 young people from all over the world will get together at the World Youth Festival Forum, and in between, international themed assemblies for 2,000 participants will be held under the auspices of the WYF. The first Assembly is scheduled to take place in September 2025 in Nizhny Novgorod. Festival events of various formats will be held in Russia annually.
According to the instructions of the President of the Russian Federation on the preservation and development of the Festival legacy, the World Youth Festival Directorate continues the work aimed at strengthening international youth cooperation.