MA Alum Kevin Lavery Publishes Article on World Youth Congress Movement

July 09, 2021

Kevin Lavery - alum of the MA in European History, Politics, and Society program - has published an article in the journal Peace & Change. The article was based on his MA thesis and is entitled: "'Youth of the world, unite so that you may live': Youth, internationalism, and the Popular Front in the World Youth Congress Movement, 1936–1939"

Abstract and link to the full article copied below.


During the Popular Front era (1934–1939), communists and liberals participated in new arenas of ideological contact through civil society. Among these was the World Youth Congress Movement (WYCM), an organization that embodied the convergence of three powerful forces of the 1930s: youth, internationalism, and the Popular Front. Although liberal internationalists initiated the WYCM, the involvement of communists drew criticism from socialists, conservatives, and fascists. While historians have traditionally described it as a communist front, the WYCM deserves reconsideration in light of new understandings of youth activism in the 1930s. In tracing the evolution of the movement, this study illustrates how the WYCM served as a space in which liberals and communists coordinated and competed to mobilize youth in the struggle for peace and cooperation. In youth, these groups found a shared interest that allowed them to paper over their contradictions, but only as long as their higher-order interests aligned.


Lavery, KP.  ‘Youth of the world, unite so that you may live’: Youth, internationalism, and the Popular Front in the World Youth Congress Movement, 1936–1939. Peace & Change.  2021; 00: 1– 17. https://doi.org/10.1111/pech.12476