[TITLED IN CYRILLIC: LENINGRAD ARTISTS ON THE 6TH WORLD FESTIVAL OF YOUTH AND STUDENTS MOSCOW 1957; ALBUM SKETCHES].

- Quarto, 11-5/8 inches high by 8-3/4 inches wide. Pale yellow boards backed with tan cloth, illustrated with a modern multi-colored flower on the front cover, in its original cream dust wrapper with the word "Festival" printed in several colors and languages. The dust jacket is soiled and chipped with several short tears to the edges and with small pieces out at the head and tail of the jacket. The soiled and lightly rubbed covers are very slightly bowed. 100 pages, illustrated with a full-page color frontispiece, textual illustrations and 113 illustrations in color and black & white, including a superb color double-page illustration of "The Dove of Peace" by F. Nelyubin. The pictorial endpapers are darkened and foxed and there is color offsetting to the bottom and top edges of the title page. There is some foxing and occasional offsetting throughout. Good. First edition. RARE. [We have been unable to locate any other copy].Signed "Jimmy Ernst" on the title page. The signature does not appear to be that of the son of the artist Max Ernst. Ernst's son, Jimmy, was himself an American painter.The text is in Cyrillic with an index in Cyrillic, German and English. Blurbs, on the dust jacket's inner flaps, are also printed in Cyrillic, German and English.The illustrations include a "Portrait of the Canadian Poet Joe Wallace" by I. Penteshin, a "Portrait of the Indian actor Prithvi Raj Kapoor" also by Penteshin, "A Cyprian Girl" by M. Smirnov, "A Youth from Black Africa" by Y. Podlyasky, "A German Artist at his Easel" by V. Vetrogonsky, and works by V. Efimov, S. Spitsin, I. Yackerson, V. Pirker, D. Borovsky, D. Arsenin, M. Litovchenko, etc."In the summer of 1957 in Moscow took place the VIth World Youth and Students Festival. Young men and women from all over the globe have demonstrated their ardent will for unity, their aspiration to defend peace and hapiness [sic] for all peoples. / A group of young Leningrad artists -- participants of the Festival has carried out a number of studies, sketches and drawings that are included in the present album. / The album does not pretend to give the full representation of all the events of the Festival; it is rather a fragmentary and incomplete, but exciting and sincere record about new friends, new acquaintances, about the festive Moscow. The aim of the authors of this album was to report to the audience some vivid episodes, to communicate the joyful atmosphere of the fete". -- Quoted from the dust jacket's blurb.The 6th World Festival of Youth and Students opened in Moscow on July 28, 1957. Taking place following the political changes and reforms initiated by Nikita Krushchev, known as Krushchev's Thaw, it was the first World Festival of Youth and Students held in the Soviet Union and drew over 34,000 people from 130 countries. Music and arts from around the world came to the USSR and Russian artists and performers like Russian Jazz musician Aleksey Kozlov had a chance to play with foreign musicians. A year later Van Cliburn electrified Russian audiences and judges winning the first International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow.Discouraged from attending by the US Government, which suspected the festival would become an event of Soviet propaganda, those American artists and musicians who did show up became important missionaries of capitalism, appealing to Russian youth who flooded them with questions. Harry Colman, the only American visual artist to take part was a sensation with his "action painting". While he was unable to compete with the thousands of original abstract expressionists in the US, Colman became an overnight star in the Soviet capital. His displays of work were diametrically different than the social realism of Russian artists, and were considered one of the artistic weapons of the cold war with his every brush stroke interpreted as political gesture. Colman is depicted in the book in a sketch by Vladimir Vetrogonsky.…