Organizations

Communist-backed "world federations" billed themselves as voluntary associations of national delegations. Such delegations were far easier to build in eastern bloc countries, where Communist Party "social organizations" monopolized civic life, than in non-communist democracies, where federation heads faced a difficult choice: Support the USSR and be derided as fronts in the Western press, or pursue legitimacy as a representative NGO at the cost of consensus.

Events outside the eastern bloc was one way for the fronts to demonstrate their political-ideological independence.