Soviet Peace Committee

a permanent elected body of representatives of Soviet public opinion that leads the peace movement in the USSR. The Committee was established in August 1949 in Moscow at the First All-Union Conference of the Partisans of Peace. The directing body is the Presidium. The president of the committee, which has 360 members, is the Academician E. K. Federov (since March 1979). Several commissions work under the committee.

The committee coordinates the work of peace committees in the Union republics, oblast administrative centers, and major cities of the USSR. Its major function is to help lead the struggle to realize the peace program developed at the Twenty-fifth Congress of the CPSU. The committee organizes peace days, as well as weeks and months of special observances in support of disarmament, European security, and the solidarity of peoples struggling aginst colonialism, imperialist aggression, and racism. The committee carried out campaigns to collect signatures for the Stockholm Peace Appeal Against Atomic Warfare in 1950 and for the appeal of the World Peace Council for the signing of a peace pact among the five major world powers in 1951. The committee also held a session in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Soviet government’s Decree on Peace of 1917 and organized special activities in connection with the 100th anniversary of Lenin’s birth and the 50th anniversary of the creation of the USSR. Since 1952, in response to an appeal by the World Peace Council, the Soviet Peace Committee has organized anniversary celebrations of major cultural events. Members of the committee attended the World Peace Congress held in Moscow in 1973. In 1978 the committee took part in a worldwide campaign for disarmament and against the production of new types and systems of arms, primarily against the production of the N-bomb. In the same year the committee organized the celebration of Peace Day (September 1) and marked the Week of Action in support of disarmament (October 24–31) announced by the United Nations and the World Peace Council. The committee also organized more than 30 international meetings devoted to the problems of disarmament, national-liberation movements, and human rights.

The Soviet Peace Committee works closely with the World Peace Council and maintains ties with peace organizations in 118 countries. The official publication of the committee is the monthly bulletin Vek XX i mir (The 20th Century and Peace), which since 1967 has come out in English, French, Spanish, and German, as well as Russian. In 1974 the committee was awarded the Order of Friendship of Peoples.