The Soviet Youth Program: Regimentation and Rebellion [Reprint 2014 ed.] 9780674494022, 9780674494015

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RUSSIAN

RESEARCH

CENTER

STUDIES

· 49

T H E SOVIET YOUTH PROGRAM

THE SOVIET YOUTH PROGRAM REGIMENTATION AND

Allen

REBELLION

Kassof

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

PRESS

Cambridge, Massachusetts 1 9

6 5

© Copyright 1965 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved

Distributed in Great Britain by Oxford University Press, London

This volume was prepared in part under a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. That Corporation is not, however, the author, owner, publisher or proprietor of this publication and is not to be understood as approving by virtue of its grant any of the statements made or views expressed therein. Translations from The Current Digest of the Soviet Press, published weekly at Columbia University by the Joint Committee on Slavic Studies, appointed by the American Council of Learned Societies and Social Science Research Council, are used by permission; copyright 1936, 1957, 1960, 1961, 1962. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 65-11594 Printed in the United States of America

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The generous assistance of the Russian Research Center, Harvard University, and of the Center of International Studies, Princeton University, in the preparation of this book is gratefully recorded here. Professor Barrington Moore, Jr., offered encouragement and sound advice from the very beginning. Professor Charles Page provided indispensable editorial first-aid as well as stimulating ideas. These institutions and individuals deserve far more in return than I have been able to deliver, but even this product would have been impossible without their kind and patient guidance. The less tangible but equally great debts owed to Arianne, Andrea, Arlen, Anita, and to my parents cannot adequately be repaid in print, but it is a pleasure to try. A. K.

Berne, Switzerland July 1964

Contents 1.

Introduction

1

2.

The Historical B a c k g r o u n d

10

3.

T r a i n i n g the Soviet C h i l d

22

4.

The Y o u t h O r g a n i z a t i o n s T o d a y : Structure a n d Membership

48

5.

The Y o u t h P r o g r a m in A c t i o n

76

6.

The Costs of O v e r c o n t r o l

120

7.

The C a s e of the Idlers

144

8.

Conclusion

171

Notes

189

Index

203

THE SOVIET YOUTH PROGRAM

1 Introduction Μ ORE than 53 million children and young adults in the Soviet Union are members of the Communist youth organizations. The Komsomol (Kommunisticheskii Soiuz Molodezhi), or Young Communist League, claims an enrollment of 19.4 million among citizens from fourteen to twenty-eight years of age. The Pioneers, a junior organization for children from ten to fourteen, lists 20 million in its ranks. And the recently re-established Octobrists, a division of the Pioneers for the seven-through-nine age group, now brings an additional 14.5 million within the scope of the youth program. Before many years virtually every Soviet subject over the age of six will be an active member or graduate of the youth program. Behind these staggering membership statistics (the Soviet youth organizations are exceeded in size only by their Chinese Communist imitators and rivals) lies the dramatic story of the Soviet attempt to mold the members of successive generations of young people into loyal and conforming adults in a totalitarian social order. Like so many episodes in the Soviet experience, it combines the highest aspirations of Utopian social planners and the well-intended efforts of practical men with awesome examples of mass exploitation and assaults on individual freedom. The youth program has played a significant part in creating an able, skilled, highly educated population; but it has also contributed to

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the intellectual and moral paralysis that was and is the legacy of Stalinism. The story of the youth program is an important one not only because it tells us something about how the Soviet social system and the people of the Soviet Union came to be as they are, but because what is happening today in the youth program — what it is doing or failing to do to the new generation — will determine in part what tomorrow's adults will be like and the kind of society they will populate. What is the youth program? No single formula suffices to describe it, for the program must be viewed as the Soviet response, conditioned by Bolshevik ideology, to a variety of problems — political, social, economic, and educational. The program therefore serves several overlapping and sometimes conflicting purposes. The most obvious (though not necessarily the most important) role of the youth program is as a political instrument to enhance the centralized control by a small elite over the masses. In the Soviet Union, spokesmen for the regime are fond of the ritual reference to younger generations as "our future" ( a cliche, let it be noted, that is invoked by politicians and orators elsewhere). Yet behind the bold slogans about how millions of young people joyfully follow the banner of the Communist Party, it is not difficult to discern an uneasiness and even a fundamental pessimism (perhaps characteristic of established dictatorships) that the new generation, if left free to choose its own path, will go astray. Thus, in seeking to harness the energies and loyalties of the young exclusively to its own ends, the Soviet regime long ago gave monopoly status to its official youth organizations and smashed voluntary movements on the grounds that they were traitorous. Indeed, political exploitation of youth is a familiar feature of modern totalitarianism wherever it appears. Reflections of the Soviet model can now be found from North Korea to East Germany, and both

INTRODUCTION

3

Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany had youth programs whose similarities to the Soviet effort surely are more than coincidental. A second purpose of the youth program is connected with Soviet attempts to cope with the crisis of economic and social modernization. The decision at the end of the 1920s in favor of forced-draft industrialization of a relatively underdeveloped agrarian economy imposed a formidable task of revolutionizing life patterns. For a time there was no choice but to work with existing adult resources. But the outcome of plans for the future obviously would depend in large measure upon the successful transformation of peasant sons and daughters into reliable members of an industrial labor force. Naturally the schools would be called upon to make the central contribution to the mastery of skills and the diffusion of technical knowledge. But the Soviet planners also faced the more challenging problem of how to create those deeply rooted attitudes that would make future citizens not only able, but eager and willing to assume the burdens and hardships of industrial development and the expansion of Soviet power. To achieve this it was considered essential to build into the rising generations the requisite psychological patterns and motivations and to create a social and moral code whose imperatives would foster the desired behavior. An intensive program, which followed the Soviet child into the classroom, play group, family, apartment house, and hostel, developed under the aegis of the youth organizations. A third purpose of the youth program is to assist in the creation of the man of the future to fit the good society. No less is intended than a thoroughgoing revolution of the human personality. The New Soviet Man, as the model came to be called, was to emerge after the final liberation of the psyche from the shackles of feudalism and capitalism. Fearless, highly cultured, supercompetent, he would build and live under communism. Whether the concept of the New

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Soviet Man in any way resembles the lofty Marxian vision of humanity unchained, or is an entirely ersatz and unimaginative creation of Soviet socialist realism, may be debated. No doubt for some true believers the image is authentic. But it cannot be denied that the New Soviet Man formula has been crudely exploited to disguise the elite's wish to attach individuals to the official values of the system and to shame nonconformists with the charge that they are morally inferior. In any event, the necessity of working with children during their formative years was clear enough, and the youth program became heavily implicated in this task. A fourth purpose of the youth program is best understood in a comparative context, as the Soviet response to a problem of all societies that have felt the effects of modernization. In such societies, the twin processes of urbanization and industrialization have eroded the traditional foundations of youth training and the preparation of new generations for participation in adult life. Families, kinship groups, and local communities tend to give way to new and more specialized institutions such as the school, adolescent peer group or gang, youth movements and organizations. Under conditions of rapid social change, there is always a likelihood of unanticipated shifts in the attitudes and behavior of new generations. In pluralistic societies this potential either is not perceived as threatening or meets with such a variety of reactions that only rarely is there a conscious, sustained reaction to it. The Soviet leadership, however, regards the possibility of spontaneous, unguided change from generation to generation as subversive to its ambitious plans for the society as well as to its own political hegemony. Accordingly, the Soviet regime has tried to formalize all arrangements connected with the rearing and training of the young. Thus, one purpose of the youth program can be described as social control through institutional management. The importance of this last point cannot be overempha-

INTRODUCTION

5

sized. Even in the so-called welfare states of the West, where the trend toward centralization has gone rather far, nothing resembling the Soviet approach to youth can be found. These societies have no total youth programs, but conglomerations of the fragmentary and often contradictory efforts of social organizations, service agencies, private camps, scout groups, and the like. When the state is involved, usually it is in a passive role. And, as in America, if the educational system is turning out a generation of conformists, as observers like David Riesman and William Whyte maintain, then it is hardly because of the kind of planned effort that we see at work in the Soviet Union. For the Soviet youth program, even though it does not always accomplish its purposes, colors and conditions the entire atmosphere in which young people grow to maturity. The Komsomol and Pioneers are not social clubs or recreational organizations that a child enters and leaves at will. They are agencies of party and state that influence every Soviet child. They have extraordinarily important business to perform, and their penetration of life areas traditionally preserved as informal or private in societies of the West is partly what makes the term, Soviet totalitarianism, not a shibboleth, but a fact of daily life for millions. These four principal purposes of the youth program — political control, social transformation, psychological reconstruction, and the formalization of youth institutions — to some extent reinforce one another as they find concrete expression in the policies and activities of the Komsomol and Pioneer organizations. For example, the capacity of the organizations to capture an audience for their efforts at social and psychological transformation depends in part on the political power that they wield on behalf of the party; while the degree to which youth institutions are successfully formalized has implications for how effectively that power can be applied.

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In actual practice, however, the coexistence of these purposes under the same organizational roof is far from smooth. There is a conflict between the essentially revolutionary implications of social and psychological reconstruction, on one side, and, on the other, the conservative quality of efforts to use the program for political surveillance and as a focal point for promoting stability in the transition from youth to adulthood. The resulting tensions give the youth program a pervading schizophrenic quality that frequently leads to breakdowns at critical points. During the history of the Soviet Union, the emphasis has tended to shift in a conservative direction, but even today the conflict is far from resolved and is reflected in the many ambiguities in Soviet discussions about the proper business of the youth program. As a general rule, even during the liberal moods of the regime, when a choice has had to be made it has been in favor of repression at the cost of persuasion or education, rigid political orthodoxy against the slightest possibility of experimental risk, absolute control from above rather than the serious cultivation of grass-roots support. For this reason it is tempting to dismiss the youth program as only one more repressive weapon in the police-state arsenal. But to do so would be to underestimate its importance in the Soviet Union and to mislead ourselves about the very real complexities of life in an authoritarian order. It may be that the youth program once was envisaged as a temporary measure that would no longer be required with the maturation of the Soviet system. If so, there is no evidence that responsible officials now subscribe to such a belief. The Komsomol and Pioneers seek with each passing year to secure a firmer hold over Soviet youth, both through an expansion of membership and a widening scope of activities. The factors responsible for the initiation and development of the youth program are still present in the Soviet situation: the ideological conviction that an omnis-

INTRODUCTION

7

cient elite can and must oversee the fate of the masses; the continuing drive for rapid economic growth; and the determination to create New Soviet Men. In certain respects the USSR has been remarkably successful in attaining the goals that the youth organizations are intended to promote. No sober observer of Soviet affairs can doubt the general effectiveness of political controls or the relative stability of the social system. Current production statistics, as well as an impressive array of technological feats in space and other areas, are ample testimony to Soviet economic progress. Why, instead of relaxing its youth program, does the Soviet regime insist on intensifying its work among the new generations? The youth program is perennial because the functions it fulfills are permanent; even in the best army, the task of training recruits is never finished. Moreover, in spite of official statements to the contrary, history is not necessarily on the side of the Soviet rulers, for development of the Soviet socioeconomic program breeds new and unanticipated problems. The parent who helps his child to walk may soon discover him walking in the wrong direction. Indeed, it has been argued that the Soviet system is doomed because, in the process of educating its youth, it has created an unintentional thirst for freedom. Probably this prognosis rests less upon solid evidence than upon the wishful and naive assumption that knowledge somehow automatically produces a desire for democratic institutions. Yet it is the case that the transformation of Soviet life for which the youth program has been partially responsible has created new conditions that are inimical to the interests of the regime, even if they do not lead to pressures in favor of democracy as we understand it. Thus, a major problem facing the ruling elite in the USSR is how to divert or contain this potential without at the same time destroying the collective fund of energy and creativity upon which planned

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social development depends. Therein also lies the dilemma of the youth program. Beginning as an agency of revolution, it has come to play an increasingly important role as defender of the established order. Barring fundamental changes on the Soviet scene, the youth organizations and the program they embody will remain enduring features of the system. Even in a subject area seemingly as specialized as the Soviet youth program, the broad range of materials involved and the possibility of considering them from different viewpoints require some selectivity in coverage. Fortunately, Western scholarship on the Soviet Union has already produced two major essays on the Komsomol as a political institution that make it possible to pursue other tasks of description and analysis: Merle Fainsod's chapter on the Komsomol in How Russia Is Ruled (Cambridge, Mass., 1953 and 1963) and Ralph T. Fisher, Jr.'s Pattern for Soviet Youth — A Study of the Congresses of the Komsomol, 1918-1954 (New York, 1959). Unlike these earlier works, my study is concerned only incidentally with the higher politics of the youth program and not at all with the cast of individuals who have held the top posts. Instead, it deals with the content of the youth program and the techniques through which it is carried out at the level of the rank-and-file membership. Moreover, since there is no need to repeat the historical accounts already available, this study is restricted (save for the brief summary chapter on historical developments) to the recent and contemporary period — approximately since 1950, but occasionally utilizing materials from the earlier postwar years. This choice of period, it should be noted, is by no means arbitrary. By the 1950s the Soviet system as a whole had achieved a degree of stability in which patterns already in evidence during the late 1930s, but interrupted by the war,

INTRODUCTION

9

had become fully institutionalized. With the immediate tasks of postwar reconstruction behind them, the youth organizations assumed a long-range viewpoint that, except for some surprisingly superficial adjustments after Stalin's death (surprising, that is, in comparison with the profound impact of the political succession on many other areas of Soviet life), remains in effect today. This is by no means to suggest that the youth program is unchanging — only that the marked continuity it has maintained during the period under discussion makes it possible to regard it as an historical entity.

2 The Historical Background A T the time of their coup d'etat in November 1917, the Bolsheviks did not have a youth organization. Lenin's insistence that the party, in preparing for revolution, be a tight-knit, clandestine organization precluded the establishment of auxiliary units; either one was a Bolshevik or not, and identification with an age, sex, or nationality group was held to be irrelevant. Moreover, since Bolshevik membership was very small, the creation of subgroups within the party would not have been a realistic possibility. Finally, so many of the leading revolutionary activists were themselves young men or women that a special youth section would have been superfluous. Accession to power, however, required an effective youth policy. Not only would it be desirable to rally the loyalty of young persons to the Bolshevik cause, but the existence of neutralist or antiregime youth groups was viewed as threatening to a tenure that was at best uncertain. The beginning of the Civil War and foreign intervention heightened the sense of urgency. In contrast with the "hard" policies followed later, the initial steps taken by the Bolsheviks were mild. Tactical considerations were important, and great care was taken not to frighten off or to alienate neutralists and lukewarm sympathizers. The first problem was how to deal with a number of youth groups that had formed spontaneously

THE

HISTORICAL

BACKGROUND

11

after the March Revolution. Sparked by the interest of young urban workers, several social and cultural associations had been organized, for the most part proletarian in orientation but essentially apolitical and devoted to the improvement of educational and recreational facilities for the new generation of industrial workers. Bolshevik pressures against these groups combined infiltration and propaganda; young Bolsheviks moved in to take over leading posts, and the party itself held out dazzling promises of improved economic conditions in order to enlist the support of the uncommitted. 1 The Komsomol was founded officially in October 1918, when its First Congress was convened. Bolshevik influence there, thanks to efficient and coordinated organizational work supported by the regime, was considerable though by no means complete. Debate was later to be replaced by the single party line, but at the First Congress an atmosphere of relatively free discussion prevailed.2 It was even possible for some dissenting delegates to question the wisdom of calling the new organization "communist" on the grounds that it would frighten away the uncommitted, but partisans of the regime successfully insisted on inserting the description. This was a significant step along the path that soon brought the Komsomol directly under the domination of the party. That the party did not assert its full authority from the outset probably can be attributed to the insecurity of its own position in the early years and to the decision to obtain control within the Komsomol before stepping in openly.3 During the Civil War, the tempo of establishing party control was increased. At a 1919 meeting of the plenum of the Komsomol's Central Committee, officers requested more direct intervention by the party at national and local levels. At the same time, party influence was enhanced by a provision that all party members under twenty years of age hold simultaneous membership in the Komsomol.

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It was not until the inauguration of the New Economic Policy in 1921 that the party began to deal on its own terms with the Komsomol. The need to garner all possible support during the military emergency of the Civil War made the regime dependent upon the Komsomol for a part of its military manpower, and care was taken not to press too hard on this major source of support. With the restoration of peace, however, a frontal attack was launched on the vestiges of the Komsomol's independence. Komsomol patriotism was declared to be an official sin, and "loyalty to the Komsomol in and by itself had become taboo: there could be . . . no loyalty but that to the Communist Party." 4 If independent-minded young activists were disheartened by the party's insistence on pre-eminence, then the advent of the New Economic Policy, with its retreat from efforts to establish communism immediately, was an even more severe blow to morale in the Komsomol — it fostered widespread disillusionment and a serious attrition of membership. The revolutionary elan of Civil War days was dissipated in the humdrum tasks of economic restoration during the NEP. The party no longer was searching for military or political leaders, but wanted trained, reliable followers who could carry out orders. In short, the authority of an established regime was being asserted, and young people were admonished to conduct themselves accordingly. The party did not want partners — least of all, youthful enthusiasts whose very idealism might be embarrassing in the emerging realpolitik of party operations. During the NEP, the complex factional struggles within the party that saw the emergence of Stalin as victor were projected into the Komsomol's affairs, as partisans of opposing camps sought to capture the organization for their own purposes. The details of this period are of considerable interest to chroniclers of the party's activities. For present purposes it is sufficient to note that, by the end of the NEP, Stalin

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and his apparatchiki were as firmly in control of the Komsomol as they were of the party, and that the subjugation of the Komsomol to the interests of the party was well on the way to completion. The beginning of the five-year plans and of the collectivization of agriculture, in 1928 and 1930, marked for the Komsomol an end to the doldrums of the NEP. The visionary proportions of the new program of economic expansion and the conviction of many that a new society was being created in Russia had a salutary effect on Komsomol spirits. A quasimilitary atmosphere recalled the enthusiasm of earlier days. The efforts of the Komsomol —for example, in mobilizing labor resources — were prodigious, and there is every reason to believe that the sacrifices made by many members were motivated by a genuine devotion to the cause. Later Soviet histories of the organization were to point to the 1930s as heroic years in the Komsomol record. Refugee accounts make it amply evident that the victims of Komsomol zeal (such as the peasants upon whom the Komsomol helped to impose collectivization) recall the period with something less than enthusiasm. But from the regime's point of view, the Komsomol's contribution was a major one. The burst of high spirits that accompanied the initial stages of economic expansion would have been difficult to maintain even under optimum conditions. In addition, the decision to continue the course of industrial growth beyond the initial five-year plan and at the expense of comforts already promised, as well as the restrictions and dreariness of life under Stalin, soon began to erode the faith of many Komsomol members. Participation, less and less spontaneous, now had to be encouraged by strenuous tactics of persuasion and coercion. In the meantime, the burgeoning bureaucratization of the Komsomol's hierarchy — paralleling developments in the party and the state administration — deprived the rank and file of all save token role in running their affairs.

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In spite of its elaborate facade of democracy and autonomy, the Komsomol under Stalin had no possibility of formulating its own policy and only parroted orders transmitted along the chain of command. Since 1936 there have been few major changes either in internal organization of the Komsomol or in the principles and practice of party-Komsomol relations. Administrative details have been amended from time to time, but usually only to handle some immediate problem or to reinforce the party's iron grip. The party has been altogether successful in its efforts. There is no effective or even token resistance to its control, and no rivals to the official youth organizations. As we shall see in Chapter Four, on Komsomol organization today, this situation still obtains. The present Soviet leadership has accepted with eagerness this legacy of the Stalinist past. While the regime was consolidating its control over the Komsomol, the organization itself underwent a profound change in character. As the last vestiges of political independence disappeared, the Komsomol was transformed from a training unit for future leaders into a vast school for the entire new generation — a school in which children, adolescents, and young adults were to learn the values of the new society. The timing of this change, which was virtually completed by 1936, is closely related to a parallel revolution in official psychological doctrine between 1930 and 1936.5 Following a strong prerevolutionary tradition, and bolstered by interpretations of Marxism, Soviet psychology during the 1920s was strongly behavioristic in orientation. Little emphasis was placed on the role of consciousness — man, it was argued, does not make himself, but is the product of the sociohistorical environment. The individual's behavior is determined by his surroundings. (These assumptions, it should be noted, are not necessarily pessimistic or fatalistic in their implica-

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tions. The reasoning behind them also holds forth the possibility that human psychology may be favorably altered by reconstructing the society in which it is formed. And the Marxist "discovery" of the laws of society made that reconstruction viable.) It is not difficult to see why such psychological views should have been acceptable to the Soviet regime, at least for a time. Until a socialist society had been established, the entire range of antisocial behavior, such as crime, egoism, pessimism, hostility to the new order, and a variety of bourgeois convictions, could be blamed on the heritage of the prerevolutionary society and on the "remnants of capitalism" in the years right after the Revolution. During the First Five-Year Plan, however, it soon became clear that the optimistic assumptions about changing human nature in a socialist society could not so readily be put into action. Indeed, in industry and agriculture, radical experimentation soon gave way to a return of traditional carrotand-stick incentives, patterned directly after the despised capitalist model and in many respects far exceeding it. By 1936 it was announced that socialism had been created in the USSR; yet the psyche of the Soviet citizen remained stubbornly unrevolutionized. Now it was no longer possible to maintain, without considerable embarrassment or open admission of failure, that social ills were products of the new social structure. Accordingly, beginning in 1930, under the pressure of official intervention in psychological theory and research, the role of consciousness was assigned an increasingly important place in Soviet conceptions of man. The change was dramatic. Where before the individual's delinquency could be attributed to society, now he was held responsible for his own actions. If he committed a crime or beat his children or complained of his lot or worked with insufficient enthusiasm or studied poorly, then by definition he was slothful, weak-willed, or motivated by consciously evil intentions. In the new society the individual could offer

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no excuses. The New Soviet Man was, like his bourgeois predecessor, a product of society —but his new consciousness made him responsible for improving himself and contributing unstintingly to the common good. As the Komsomol grew less political, it thus became increasingly pedagogical. The "new consciousness" could not be taken for granted, but had to be formed and hammered into shape. Organized efforts in the schools were called for, but massive facilities over and above the formal curriculum were needed. The youth organizations were the obvious choice. With the completion of the psychological revolution in 1936, then, the youth organizations had been transformed from an exclusive avant-garde of young revolutionary activists into mass organizations with an educational program. These changes were also reflected in membership policies and in the size of the membership. After the Revolution and during the Civil War, Komsomol members had constituted a militant elite corps among youth. Admission to membership reflected this exclusiveness, for only those whose loyalty was beyond question and who were willing to devote their utmost energy to the Komsomol could be enrolled. Recommendations from party members were required for admission. Applicants from the former "exploited classes" — workers and poor peasants — were welcomed, while those from the "hostile classes" were either entirely excluded or could be admitted only after a period of rigorous probation. At the same time, no provision was made for the masses of young people who did not aspire to membership or did not qualify; nor did the regime allow the formation of any "intermediate" organization for eligible non-Komsomol youth. These restrictive practices were reflected in numbers: a year after its founding, in October 1919, the Komsomol's rolls included only 96,000 members, and the 1.5 million mark was not reached until the middle of 1925.® As the First FiveYear Plan (and the shift in psychological theory) got under

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way, a change toward a less restrictive membership policy was inaugurated and Komsomol growth accelerated. By 1934, during the Second Five-Year Plan, the figure stood at 4.5 million; in 1940, at 10 million.7 The disillusionment in Komsomol ranks during the NEP, and periodic purges during the 1930s, helped to bring about occasional precipitous drops in membership, and the curve of growth is broken by a number of deep valleys. Nevertheless, the general trend has been upwards. Though it is difficult to say precisely when the Komsomol ceased to be an elite group and became a mass organization, the loosening of admission requirements announced at the 1936 congress (when restrictions based on class origins were dropped) signaled official recognition of changes that had been in the making for some years and that were to become permanent after 1936. The change in membership policy thus coincided with the introduction of the Komsomols new emphasis on pedagogical functions. The development of the youth program was interrupted by World War II, when all Komsomol resources were thrown behind the military effort. At home the Komsomol assisted in production drives; behind enemy lines it organized partisan and guerrilla warfare. With much of the youthful population in the armed forces, the Komsomol served as an important link in the party chain of command among military personnel. By 1945, an estimated 15 million youth (one half of those eligible by age) were enrolled. This increase in membership was encouraged by a further easing of standards, as well as an upsurge of patriotic sentiment during the battle for national survival. With the return of peace, however, and the restoration of Stalinist repression and excesses, enthusiasm waned. By 1949, membership figures had dropped back to 9.2 million, approximating the prewar peak in 1939.8 During the early postwar years, the youth program was devoted largely to the immediate task of reconstructing the war-damaged economy. But more recently, beginning with

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the 1949 congress of the Komsomol, the training functions of the youth program once again have become pre-eminent and the guiding policies set down over two decades ago, in 1936, have been stabilized. By 1958, in large part as the result of a vigorous recruitment campaign, enrollment soared to 18.5 million, and the latest figure, given at the 1962 congress, is 19.4 million.9 I have already suggested that the youth program is now taking an essentially conservative role, even though it has not altogether abandoned its radical functions and still retains much of its revolutionary rhetoric. The image of a corps of young militants, though still purveyed half-heartedly in the youth press and elsewhere, has given way to the workaday tasks of the Soviet system. No longer are there capitalists to be destroyed, kulaks whose holdings must be confiscated in the name of progress, foreign invaders to be driven from home soil. Although from time to time the Komsomol calls upon its members to attack the ghosts of the old bourgeoisie (conveniently represented in the form of "survivals of capitalism" in the outlook of backward citizens) or assists in hate campaigns against the "dark forces of imperialism," the primary emphasis is on far more prosaic matters: the preservation of political orthodoxy and ideological purity; the maintenance of adequate levels of motivation in school and on the job; the improvement of technical skills and labor productivity; the allocation of labor by draft when other incentives fail; the suppression and control of antisocial conduct; the supervision of leisure and recreation under conditions of growing urbanism and a woeful lack of private freetime facilities. It was also suggested that the youth program serves in an equally important repressive capacity. Backed by the full power and authority of the party, it effectively blocks the formation of independent youth groups that might challenge the official outlook. Indeed, the entire history of the youth

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program can be viewed as a series of attempts to deprive new generations of self-expression, while creating the appearance of enthusiastic support for the system and its leaders. Thus does the regime forestall the potentially explosive issues that would arise if young persons could speak in their own voices and act on their own behalf. This strategy was important during the consolidation of the regime's power in earlier years, but it is no less so now. As illustrated by student reaction to the Soviet intervention in Hungary in 1956, there is the danger that some individuals will question particular policies and even basic philosophy. The regime, of course, wishes to prevent doubt and disaffection. But since it can never be entirely successful in doing so, it also curtails free discussion of sensitive issues and blocks the coalescence of disenchantment in independent youth movements. The penetration of the iron curtain since Stalin's death has increasingly exposed Soviet youth to the outside world, and the youth program has had to increase its vigilance accordingly. Indeed, this may account for the seeming paradox that, while liberalization in Soviet society has taken place in many areas under Khrushchev, the Komsomol has retained most of its Stalinist features. Perhaps the many dangers inherent in any process of liberalization (dangers, that is, to the maintenance of an authoritarian system) prompt the leaders to hold on to compensatory resources. Moreover, if the Soviet leadership is aware of how important it is to influence young people during their impressionable years, then it also must be acutely conscious of the possibility that the same people can be profoundly affected by "alien" currents. Whereas the older generations that came to maturity under Stalin tend to be very cautious in their interpretations of liberalization (and thankful for small improvements), the rising generation, for whom the mass terror and the realities of forced-labor camps are not personal memories, is prepared to demand far more and to be less inhibited by anxieties and

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calculations of risk. Whether a conservative and repressive youth program is really the most effective answer to the regime's anxieties is another question; but the motivations for it seem clear enough. The record of the Pioneers may be treated quite briefly since, as the junior counterpart of the Komsomol, it does not have a separate history. In 1922, the Young Pioneer organization was established under Komsomol direction, to work among younger children. The Pioneers assumed particular importance with the introduction of the youth program's new educational orientation in 1936 and today is the more influential of the two organizations, at least with respect to the proportion of the population that it reaches. Membership in the Pioneers is virtually universal within its age group — the Komsomol's policy is somewhat more restrictive. In principle, the Komsomol accepts for membership only "outstanding" representatives of Soviet youth (although its liberal membership practices and the drive to enlist as many recruits as possible suggest that this rule is not always taken seriously). Probably the difference will be further reduced in the coming years, but in the meantime the Pioneer organization has the edge on membership, despite the narrower age range from which it draws. Unlike the Komsomol, whose membership includes students, professionals, workers of all categories, peasants, and military personnel, the Pioneers enrolls schoolchildren only. Its activities, therefore, are closely integrated with those of the educational system, provide the principal context for extracurricular and out-of-school programs, and constitute a major item in classrom work itself. When the Pioneer program was first established, it included junior cells for children of preschool age. Known as the Octobrists, these units were never extensively developed and disappeared on the eve of World War II. In 1957, how-

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ever, it was announced that they would be revived, once more under the auspices of the Pioneers, but now for children in the first three grades of school (the seven-through-nine age group) rather than for preschool children. 10 It is more accurate to describe the new Octobrists as a category than as a third formal unit in the youth program. That is, it is not a self-standing organization, but a device to formalize early preparation for Pioneer membership — preparation that formerly was carried out in the classroom without benefit of the Octobrist designation. Although the political history of the Pioneers is part of the larger Komsomol story, and the programmatic content of its activities is parallel to that of the senior organization, the Pioneers is more than a miniature replica of the older group. The differences in the age levels involved, as well as the fact that the Komsomol includes a more varied membership, lead to significant variations between the two organizations in style and method and may even be the cause of some discontinuities in impact on individuals who have been members of both. Such, in outline, is the history of the youth program and the atmosphere in which it operates today. In spite of many changes since its early days, the program's raison d'etre remains unaltered: to control the behavior of the new generations.

3 Training the Soviet Child THE Komsomol and Pioneers are instruments for training and governing the new generations. What kind of "product" does the youth program try to turn out, and what principles and techniques are employed? The Soviet child is subjected to a variety of influences — in the family, peer group, and informal setting of the neighborhood or community — in addition to those of the school and the youth program. A complete picture of his path to adulthood would necessarily consider this total environment. The account in this chapter, however, concerns the official psychological doctrines that guide the work of the youth program. The influence of these doctrines is so pervasive that they must be the starting point for any analysis of youth training in the USSR today. The new Octobrist or Pioneer, beginning a membership in the youth organizations that may last into his late twenties, faces a program whose planners have definite ideas about what they want. Their operational principles are revealed on a large scale by textbooks and manuals for teachers, Komsomol-Pioneer workers, and parents. Although this literature has some of the virtues of simplicity, its level of sophistication leaves much to be desired. Soviet scholarship in the social sciences is governed by stringently applied political-ideological criteria: it is only a slight exaggeration to say that, even in the post-Stalin era, the regime provides its scholars in the social sciences with formalized conclusions and then re-

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quires them to tailor their statements accordingly.1 The consequences of this interference are unfortunate, for in pedagogical psychology (where the Soviet principles of child training are enumerated) what passes for science is all too often little more than a combination of ideologically motivated interpretations wrapped in the cloak of a scholarly vocabulary. One high official in the Russian Republic Academy of Pedagogical Sciences told me during an interview that he and many of his colleagues regard the authors of pedagogical-psychological textbooks and manuals as "not very bright fellows" (though he added that he had no quarrel in principle with their views of training children). That there should be a paucity of good works in this field when the USSR lavishes so much attention on its educational system suggests that political meddling may be a more convincing explanation than the low intelligence of authors in accounting for this deficiency; in any event, such an admission coming from a high Soviet official confirms the poor state of the science. This point is made so that the reader will not be surprised by the simple-mindedness of some of the writings quoted here, nor confuse poor quality with lack of importance. Regardless of quality, what they contain has the force of official policy in guiding the work of the youth program. GROWING UP IN THE BEST OF WORLDS

Soviet pedagogical writings for teachers, youth workers, and parents invariably begin with sweeping claims about the advantages enjoyed by youth in the USSR, coupled with invidious comparisons of the conditions faced by youth in bourgeois nations.2 To some extent this merely parrots a conventional theme of general Soviet propaganda, but it also is seriously intended to convince young citizens that they live in the best of all possible worlds. Growing up in Soviet society is depicted as extraordinarily natural and untroubled.3

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The emotional storm and stress of maturation, in the Soviet view, has been left behind with the other miseries of life under capitalism. Bourgeois writers, the argument goes, when they describe adolescence as turbulent and disturbed, are ignorant of the accomplishments of Communism in the Soviet Union — or are paid apologists for capitalist ruling circles.4 It is the class nature of capitalism, say the Russians, which explains not only the unhappy situation of young people, but the ugliness of life in general under that system. The profound conflicts and contradictions of an exploitative order are manifested in the stunted personalities and pathological world views of the young. Above all, the children of the working masses are systematically deprived of fundamental human rights to education, secure employment, leisure and recreation, political participation — that is, of all the important opportunities for personal and cultural development. By example and circumstance, children living under capitalism are forced to think only of individual and selfish aims, and they fail to develop the capacity to act for the general welfare, let alone to conceive of it. Reform, moreover, is impossible: only the advent of the proletarian revolution can strike at the heart of the problem, for "the capitalist structure, with its craving for profits, its uncompassionate exploitation, misanthropy, and violations of the rights of man, inculcates individualistic and egoistic characteristics . . . The adolescent is not alienated from society, but [more accurately] society forces him into a world of subjective experience and loneliness. It is not nature which causes youth to cry out in protest, but the unsuitability of life and ignorance of how it might be changed." 5 The victory of Communism in the Soviet Union, accordingly, is credited with creating the superior conditions that Soviet youth now enjoys. (When cases of disillusionment, emotional disturbance, adolescent misbehavior, or other forms of bourgeois tendencies are acknowledged to

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exist in the Soviet Union, they are attributed to survivals [perezhitki] of the capitalist ethos in a small minority of backward citizens or to the pernicious influence of Western propaganda.6) In sum, Soviet youth is depicted by the pedagogical psychologists as growing up in a near-perfect society. The power of this imagery to affect the world view of Soviet children and its effectiveness in fostering a general receptivity to the influences of the youth program should not be taken lightly; nor should the image of perfection be dismissed as merely a Soviet version of the patriotic and civic training that takes place in all nations. In a system where, even under the relatively liberal moments of postStalin rule, there is still nothing approaching humility, perspective, or humor in the official national self-presentation (and certainly no coherent tradition of criticism, dissent, or a free flow of information from abroad), the incessantly repeated message that they live in the best of all worlds is bound to leave a mark on young and impressionable minds. This image, moreover, is purveyed not only in the youth program, but in the classroom, in the mass media, in literature and art, on every ceremonial occasion, in street banners and wall newspapers, in group meetings, in entertainment and recreation. It is no routine or symbolic obeisance to flag and nation, but an absolutist creed. The image is combined with the assertion that the blessings of Soviet life, including those enjoyed by the new generations, have been made possible only by the application of the master science of society, Marxism, and thus it lays claim to an ultimate truth that only the uninformed, the venal, or the enemies of science, progress, and humanity can reject. As in the case of some theological systems, it is all-encompassing and thus especially effective in the indoctrination of a captive audience. The usefulness to an authoritarian regime of this kind of indoctrination is obvious. Those who truly believe that they

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live in ideal circumstances are not likely to challenge the elite that has brought about the social revolution or to press for fundamental changes. And it provides the leadership with a built-in defense against charges that life is too hard: things are worse elsewhere. But total indoctrination is hard to come by, as the Soviet experience has made clear on numerous occasions. The official creed is eroded by the inevitable contradictions between its depictions and the realities of daily life, which no amount of verbiage can hide when the gaps are too great. Its effectiveness is sometimes endangered by the fact that, however tight the controls may be, a trickle of information about life in the outside world usually is available. As Western visitors to the Soviet Union can testify, indoctrination has severely limited and distorted the perspective of the Soviet citizen, but it has certainly not destroyed his curiosity and, indeed, has created a hunger for glimpses of the non-Soviet world that have not been filtered through the screen of official interpretation and censorship. The significance of the youth program's message that Soviet young people are growing up in the best society is, then, double-edged. To the extent that it is accepted and believed, it establishes a receptivity toward the program as a whole and makes less likely the growth or expression of doubt and discontent. But its uncritical acceptance by impressionable children also creates a brittleness in the face of potentially disillusioning influences and prepares the way for a long, hard fall from certainty and conviction; the result may be the setting in of caution and cynicism, which may lead to wholesale rejection of related indoctrinational work and a resistance even to the quite unexceptionable claims of the government upon the loyalties of its subjects. While some process of disillusionment is no doubt a feature of growing up in any society (reality, after all, is always at odds with the ideal), the shock is likely to be especially great for those Soviet youngsters who, for whatever reasons, do

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not remain totally enveloped in the protective insulation of true belief. This situation is at the root of some serious problems in Soviet society today and will be discussed at length in Chapter Seven. NATIONAL CHARACTER AND PROBLEMS OF INDUSTRIALIZATION

If the claims that Soviet society has achieved such an ideal condition are doubtful, then the assertion that the atmosphere in which Soviet children grow to maturity is somehow "natural" is altogether misleading. It suggests official approval of a highly permissive or even laissez-faire approach to child training when, in fact, "Spartan" would be a more appropriate term. The spirit of the official view of child training is summed up in this injunction: "It is necessary to begin training [the personality] from the earliest possible age. In life, strong nerves are required." 7 Turning out fit and able members of Soviet society is called a task (zadacha) or struggle (borba), demanding the constant, active, and purposeful intervention of parents, school personnel, and the youth organizations. The child must be surrounded by carefully calculated influences in accordance with longrange, effective plans. The child who is treated in a spontaneous manner will be an inadequate adult. A child is the raw material for the new citizen; if he is to become an adult with true Soviet characteristics, then his unlimited potential needs to be guided at each stage of his development.8 Soviet pedagogical psychologists (and the youth program's practitioners) see character training as a kind of war between adults and children. (In many ways, to be sure, training is inherently a profound struggle between adults and children. But there is a difference between a struggle in this highly figurative sense and the Soviet assumption that effective training comes only through conscious, activist efforts to form the individual in accordance with a preconceived pattern.) That educationalists should hold this

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view may come from the gap between the ideal type of personality posited by the regime and the characterological resources with which it has had to work in the creation of a burgeoning industrial order. Social scientists understand that there is a close relationship between the successful development of an industrial economy and the basic motivational patterns of the populace involved. For example, the effective operation of the modern industrial enterprise (whether under capitalism or some other economic system) rests upon an adequate level of labor commitment 9 and upon the presence in the working population of such traits as punctuality, persistence, neatness, and striving. At supervisory, managerial, and entrepreneurial levels, the requirements may be still more complex and rigorous. But our knowledge of the traditional Great Russian personality reveals a serious discrepancy between its modal patterns and these functional requirements of an industrial economy. One observer of Russian national character, Henry Dicks, describes the typical Great Russian as notably lacking in the "whole complex connected with the acquisition and husbanding of property: methodical orderliness, neatness, punctuality and regularity of procedure, habit and protocol." 10 Similar findings are reported by the clinical investigations of the Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System, which emphasized the "nonstriving quality of the Russian" and his "dependence and noninstrumentality." 11 Why the historical and social factors that gave rise to industrial man in societies of the West should have by-passed Russian and other societies need not concern us here. Whatever the cause, the result is that the Soviet system, in its program of rapid industrialization, has required a substitute. It might even be said that the conception of the New Soviet Man is a Communist version of the less explicit Protestant

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Ethic — although Soviet spokesmen could hardly be expected to subscribe to this alien comparison. In any event, the urgency of the task as defined by the political leadership, combined with its perception of the obduracy of the population with which it has had to work, partly accounts for the extraordinary vigor we see in the youth program's training efforts. In technical terms, the problem faced by Soviet planners has been identified as an aspect of "institutionally generated noncongruence" — that is, a situation in which "there arise institutional changes so marked that society's relatively well established and internally stable modal personality types experience serious strain in meeting the new role demands made upon them." 12 Or, to put the point more simply, the Soviet leadership has had to devise ways of transforming a population, whose habits and outlook were appropriate in a rural society, into a trained industrial labor force. (This, of course, is the problem referred to in Chapter One, where I pointed out that one major purpose of the youth program has been to effect a psychological transformation among the new generations in order to fit them for life in an industrial order.) It is possible then to appreciate the Soviet conception of training as a process in which children must be pushed, even forced, into the "right" developmental paths and why agencies outside the family are expected to intervene to an unusual degree. The single dominant theme of the Soviet pedagogical literature addresses itself precisely to this issue, returning repeatedly to the question of how best to internalize in the young that complex of traits which will give rise to a capacity and a desire for technically rational, self-sacrificing labor — in short, to the question of how to get citizens to work willingly, hard, and efficiently. Thus it is said: "For us, labor is one of the highest moral qualities and virtues. We should shape the active member of the collective of toilers, and

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only the person who is a laboring person, who makes the goal of his life labor for the good of the motherland, can be such a member." 13 Perhaps for the same reason, the Soviet approach to child and youth training is marked by an almost total instrumentality concerning the question of individual adjustment and emotional development. A good life adjustment is defined as one in which the individual makes an effective contribution toward the system's production goals, faithfully completes his work assignments, and is overwhelmingly loyal to the party and the state. The youth program is only minimally concerned with personal adjustment in the sense of dealing with individual well-being or emotional satisfaction. The inner psychic life of the child is considered peripheral, merely an adjunct to successful performance in school or on the job. Emotions are regarded with some suspicion, as evils that may distract from achievement and that should be forced into the background unless they can be harnessed in the form of enthusiasm for job and system. (This orientation, as we shall see, contributes to the wooden quality of many aspects of the youth program's work. A typical complaint against Komsomol administrators is that they alienate many members by disregarding the subtle and important dimensions of the inner life or, when they do try to take them into consideration, tend to be superficial and — to use the Soviet term — "divorced from life.") It is almost as though the Soviet ideal of the good citizen were a cheerful robot working unremittingly at whatever task he is assigned, accepting without complaint such rewards as he may be given. There is considerable accuracy in this image, but it is important to understand that the emphasis is on seZ/-discipline. The New Soviet Man ideally has a will of steel; he is master of the environment as well as of his own emotions: "Acquaintance with our best disciplined young men and women . . . [reveals that they are] well

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ordered. It is obvious that they can control themselves, be responsible for their actions. Their speech, actions, motions, are reserved. . . . What we call the culturedness of the . . . [young person] turns out upon analysis to be primarily self-control: the suppression of all that is superfluous, unnecessary, and harmful." 14 Children should be taught the "ability to direct their attitudes, to inculcate self-control in their behavior, and at the same time to suppress certain features of emotionality that are natural to youth." 16 For example, while such personal attributes as cheerfulness are viewed as positive, they are acceptable only when associated with the instrumental needs of Communist society: Our youth . . . are full of cheerfulness and optimism. Their optimism has its roots in the fact that they see the enormous successes of our country in building communism, and recognize themselves . . . as participants in its construction. This optimism has its effect on the social attitudes of our young men and women . . . which helps in overcoming personal difficulties. . . . [The exemplary youth] never complains, his spirit never flags. In his presence you feel yourself to be strong and certain. In addition, he has a deep character, understands human grief, but always hopes and believes that it is possible to pass through woe and to overcome difficulty. One should not confuse this type of cheerfulness with [mere] merriness.16 An emphasis on work, self-discipline, and control over harmful or distracting inner emotions therefore constitutes the core of the youth program's strategy (as revealed in the supporting pedagogical literature) in its efforts to overcome traditional patterns of Russian national character and to replace them with the attributes of the New Soviet Man. The application of this strategy is influenced, in turn, by Soviet conceptions of psychological development and interpretations of morality.

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THE SOVIET VIEW OF DEVELOPMENT

Unlike psychological theories currently popular in the West (notably, the several versions of Freudianism) that stress the overwhelming importance of the earliest years in basic personality formation, the official Soviet doctrine regards the developmental process as one in which influences during more advanced stages of maturation are only slightly less critical in determining adult behavior. The significance of this assumption for the youth program is very great indeed. It means that the organizations are thought to be working with members — from the seven-year-old Octobrist to the twenty-eight-year-old Komsomol youth — whose personalities are malleable and therefore profoundly affected by exposure to the youth program. Moreover, individual or inherited differences are held to be far less important in influencing behavior than is the vigorous and planned application of the society's training resources: The more the individual is guided in his activities by high social motives, the greater will be his stimulus to work and therefore the better, the more successfully, will his capacities develop. One must never define limits to this development. Everything depends on the conditions of life, on the nature of upbringing. Each child is always capable of becoming better, more complete, than he is at any given moment; he can know more than he does know. The task of upbringing consists of developing the child to master knowledge, to become an educated, enlightened, active participant in societal life, a creator of new material and spiritual worth, in accord with his capacities. . . . Everything depends, in how the potential of development is used, upon the conditions in which children grow up. Hereditary inclinations in no way limit the entire process of the child's development and the development of his particular capacities.17 Such a view of the greater importance of environment is shared by many Western social scientists, at least in part. But note how, in Soviet writings, the scientific issue takes

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on political significance — in this case, concern over the inculcation of antireligious and antinationalistic sentiment. The same author writes: Biological heredity cannot have any effect on the development of a person's world view or on the working out within him of views and convictions. The surrounding environment, the goaldirectedness of upbringing, the normal development of the child — this is what plays the decisive role, and no biological inclinations inherited from parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents can influence the working out of the person's world view. If a person is contaminated with religious or nationalistic prejudices, no surgical operation will relieve him of them. Only by means of acting upon the consciousness, only by goal-directed education, can the brain of man be freed from harmful prejudices and superstitions.18 Special characteristics of the different age periods are recognized, of course, as is the necessity to adjust training procedures to the requirements of each. A brief account of these stages of development will further illuminate the Soviet view. The first period of life, designated in Soviet writings as the "nursery age," is from birth to three years. Although children in this group are too young to be of direct concern to the youth organizations, many Soviet agencies publish brochures and guides for parents on how to prepare their children for a positive life in Soviet society. There was a period in Soviet history, before the mid-thirties, when a serious effort was carried out to de-emphasize and even to undermine the family's part in child rearing in favor of a system of state institutions; but with the end of the attack against the family and the official legitimation of its primacy in infant and child care, outside agencies now play only an indirect role. This change has done little, however, to remove the insistence that parents do not "own" their children but are acting as representatives of society in caring for them. The next age group, from three to seven years, is called

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the "preschool age," and already those qualities of personality that later should be nurtured into positive traits in the youth program are said to appear. Parents and nursery personnel are urged to look for signs of striving and achievement in the children even at this early age: "In the preschool age, we observe the development of features of the will. Such signs of willed action as persistence, the overcoming of these or those simple difficulties . . . can be observed early." 1 9 Soviet children enter school and become Octobrists at seven years and, from then until twelve, they are in the "younger school age," experiencing their first intensive contact with teachers and youth workers. At this stage they are considered sufficiently developed physically and mentally to undergo quite rigorous training in preparation for the Communist life. Children must rapidly acquire not only the basic skills and knowledge demanded by the school curriculum, but the personal and social orientations of the Soviet citizen. In particular, the powerful influence of the peer group, or collective, is brought into play: "In the younger school age the social interests of the children are formed and the demand for social activities appropriate [to their age] appears. Already in the younger grades of the school, children dream of entering the Pioneers. Friendship and comradeship among children are spread and strengthened. All this creates new grounds for the social-political and moral education of children, and for the formation of the children's collective." 20 This period is succeeded by the "middle school age," bracketing the years from twelve to fifteen — the stage of transition, according to Soviet theory, from childhood to adulthood. The . . . characteristics of the psychology of this transitional stage consist in the fact that it is the psychology of the part-child,

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part-adult. The adolescent, just as the child, grows physically and mentally . . . but still is not aware of the extent of his strength. . . . He can no longer live by those illusions by which the child lives; already he has different interests. . . . The adolescent attempts to appear more mature than he really is; he is likely to imagine himself to be more adult than child [and] . . . considers himself to be more knowledgeable than he really is. Personal upsets during this period of development, as noted earlier, are attributed not to faults in the larger society or to any turbulence inherent in maturation, but to the failure of the individual to subject himself fully to the will of the collective: "In this age group, one can frequently observe manifestations of a lack of discipline, but it would be a most vulgar error to attribute these phenomena to inevitable facts of the adolescent period. . . . Actually, such occurrences take place only when the adolescent feels himself to be alone and does not take part in the activity and life of the collective." 21 Adolescents, moreover, are said to have reached the stage of political awareness and to be fully capable of understanding their responsibilities to the system. Note again the emphasis on the morality-in-labor theme: "The attention and interest of our children is centered on what is taking place in the Soviet Union, what our nation is concerned with, to what its creative and laboring energies are being directed by the Communist Party. They want to be participants in socialist construction, skilled workers, builders of machines. They are vitally interested in the fate of our nation, they strive to be patriots and defenders of the motherland, . . . [they] react vitally to all the societal undertakings going on in our country." 22 The senior age category is the "older school group," including those from fourteen or fifteen through seventeen or eighteen. The end product of Communist upbringing is now in evidence, and the new adult is prepared to assume a serious occupational role or to continue his formal educa-

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tion in the service of the motherland. The depth and scope of Communist orientation is realized: The older school age is sometimes called the world-view age. There is a great deal of truth in this. . . . The inculcation of a dialectical-materialistic world view in students of the older age category assumes particular significance. In this period, the students master a comparatively large body of knowledge, which is the basis for the inculcation of a scientific, Communist world view; a heightening of interest appears in them with respect to theoretical questions and the explanation of complex phenomena of society and of nature. There grows more and more an interest in science and in their socialist state.23 Development of the individual in the older school age marks the turning point between preparation and full adult participation: it is expected that education and training will be applied without delay to productive tasks lest society's investment be wasted. TRAINING GOALS AND PROCEDURES

In each developmental stage, the goal of training is to establish "one of the forms of societal consciousness, which constitutes the aggregation of the rules and norms of group life, the behavior of people, and the determination of their responsibilities towards one another and towards society." 24 This Soviet definition of the essence of moral training is not radically different from conventional Western conceptions. But the Soviet version is distinguished by its insistence that the highest form (and, in the Soviet Union, the only legitimate form) of morality is Communist morality — which assumes that the true moral state can be achieved only if the individual suppresses his egoistic tendencies in favor of a willingness to work for the common good as defined by the arbiters of social life (that is, by the leaders of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union). Communist morality imposes upon each Soviet citizen

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fundamental obligations in attitude and behavior. He must be a patriot who exhibits ceaseless devotion to the motherland and "to the cause of communism; hatred towards the enemies of the people and a readiness to give one's life for the freedom and independence of the nation."25 He should display a profound respect for socialist property as the "holy and inviolable basis of the material well-being of the toilers" and do all in his power to increase the public wealth "by his own personal labor," for "labor in the USSR is the responsibility of each able-bodied citizen, . . . a matter of valor, honor and heroism, . . . one of the highest moral values." 26 Communist morality, further, includes the obligation to adhere to the principles of socialist humanism in the form of "comradely assistance to one another, solicitude for the weak, the ill and for children." 27 But socialist humanism does not tolerate any softness that might subvert the needs of state or party; comradely solicitude must always bow before the primacy of loyalty to the political leaders. Thus: "From the beginning [children] should be made aware that not all people, even though they may have fallen upon misfortune, are deserving of sympathy. The criminal who is suffering a merited punishment imposed upon him by organs of the state cannot call forth pity and sympathy. Similarly not every person — even though he may be close to us — is deserving of our solicitude. Pavlik Morozov undertook a struggle against his father when he unmasked the latters hostile work." 28 Pavlik Morozov was a twelve-year-old informer who, during the enforced collectivization of agriculture, reported his father to the authorities for allegedly hostile acts against the state. When the father was shot for his crimes, villagers avenged the elder Morozov's death by killing Pavlik. The Morozov case received wide publicity, and Pavlik was held up by the party as a martyred hero who had sacrified family loyalties in the cause of Communism. His deed is still recounted in children's books

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and in the pages of Pioneer-Komsomol histories. Soviet children, to be sure, are no longer encouraged to resist family authority as a general principle. But Morozovism is still cited as a positive virtue and an example to Soviet children of what they should do in similar circumstances. Other components of Communist morality similarly are calculated to promote selfless labor and absolute loyalty. Honor, for example, refers to the willingness to suppress individualistic tendencies in favor of group (ultimately, of party and state) demands. Manliness consists of those qualities of bravery and fearlessness that equip the person to stay at an assigned task no matter what obstacles or dangers he may face. Physical well-being and preparedness also are moral obligations of the Soviet citizen, for he is responsible, as a Communist, for performing his job with energy and enthusiasm. In sum, the child who is raised in the spirit of Communist morality will, as an adult, make the maximum contribution to the society's political and economic success. Again, work and technical proficiency are paramount: "Socialist industry and agriculture, developing on a base of advanced technology, demands of each person in the city and in the countryside a high cultural level, a well-rounded training, a knowledge of the scientific bases of production, abilities and habits [conducive] to the operation of complex machines and assemblies, and the development of creative technical and organizational initiative. The higher the stage of socialist society, the more critical becomes the question of the preparation of wellrounded people." 29 Finally, the model towards which all Soviet children should strive in raising their moral level is that of the party member: "The Rules of the CPSU, in which the responsibilities of the Party member are set forth, have great significance in the education of the rising generation. These responsibilities are the moral norms of the best Soviet citizens and should constitute the foundation of inculcating

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morality in the Soviet school, family, and in the Komsomol and Pioneers. The Party obliges each of its members to set an example in labor, to master the technology of ones occupation, to strengthen socialist property by all possible » 3η means. iU Like the Soviet views on the goals of training, the procedures that are prescribed will probably strike the Western reader as vastly oversimple and even naive — but, again, we are concerned here with their importance for the youth program rather than with their scientific adequacy or elegance of expression. Three psychic factors, we are told, govern behavior: "The behavior of the person as a whole, and his separate acts, are determined by (1) views and convictions, which indicate to the person how he should behave in one or another situation, (2) feelings and inclinations, or temperament, which sometimes prompt a person to behave in contradiction to his views and convictions and, finally, (3) those habits which may have been formed earlier, and which guide the actions of an individual in a particular direction."31 These categories may appear to resemble the superego, id, and ego concepts of Freudian psychology, but the resemblance is only superficial. Soviet psychology de-emphasizes unconscious elements in motivation, tending to regard the individual as fully aware of the sources and consequences of his behavior and, accordingly, responsible for directing his behavior to conform with the demands of Communist morality. In some instances, however, outside intervention is required to assist in reaching consistently acceptable behavior. Of the three principal sources of behavior, views and convictions are said to be most readily amenable to modification. For example, when teachers and youth-organization leaders tell the child that all labor in the Soviet Union, no matter how hard or mundane, is honorable, this implants a view or conviction. More difficult, according to the Soviet

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theory, is the task of forming and modifying habits and temperament to support such officially approved views: "The ideal of the Soviet man is a Communist orientation in all of his behavior, that is, when feelings, temperament, and habit are regulated by Communist views and convictions, by a Communist world view. This leads to the necessity of systematic work upon the formation of the will and the character of Soviet children." 32 In line with the assumption that basic personality is highly malleable, even after the early years of life, it is claimed that temperament can and, if necessary, should be modified to mesh with the requirements of a Communist outlook. Representatives of all four temperamental types (phlegmatic, choleric, sanguine, melancholic — credit for this classification is assigned to Pavlov, but the reader may recognize the ghost of Hippocrates) can be adjusted in appropriate ways. Sanguine individuals are described as approaching all activity with gusto and enthusiasm, but likely to give up in the face of difficulties; they should be given extra practice in performing tasks that demand patience and persistence. The phlegmatic personality needs to be stirred to action at every opportunity lest he fail to devote ample energy to the tasks of Communist construction. The choleric type requires encouragement in self-control and will power; while the melancholic individual must be exposed to demanding situations so that he may overcome deficiencies in bravery and self-confidence. If views, habits, and temperament are the immediate determining elements in behavior, then another triumvirate of factors lies behind their formation: imitation, participation, and group pressure. Through imitation, children learn appropriate patterns of behavior and assimilate the values connected with them. By observing their parents, teachers, youth-organization workers, and older children, they learn the importance of Communist behavior. Adults should take

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special care in the presence of children to act as positive models. (These points are spelled out not to dwell on the obvious, but to reproduce for the reader as faithfully as possible the spirit and language of the guiding materials employed in the youth program. That they are somewhat reminiscent of the — by now quite ancient — ideas of such pioneers as Gabriel Tarde, James M. Baldwin, and E. A. Ross only underlines the underdeveloped state of Soviet pedagogical psychology.) Particularly during the adolescent years, when the likelihood of imitating peers is greatest, misbehaving youngsters should be subjected to immediate corrective measures so that they do not exert a negative influence on their friends and classmates.33 Participation is stressed in connection with fostering positive attitudes toward work. Children should be given regular work assignments at the earliest possible age. At home, preschool children must be encouraged to participate in household tasks, while in the early school grades they are drawn into the spirit of work and cooperation by assisting in cleaning and repair jobs. In both cases adults should verify fulfillment of the assignments, explaining to the children the social as well as the personal importance of labor. Older children are given increasingly demanding tasks through the youth organizations — for example, a summer stint on a collective farm or periodic participation in an urban tree-planting brigade.34 Only by actually working is it possible to appreciate the significance of work. Indeed, the personality itself develops primarily through work. "Work is the basic route in the formation of the personality. All sides of the human personality develop in work. Knowledge and habits play a role in one measure or another in any work. Without knowledge and habits no work is possible. The person's capacities are developed, his character is formed, in the process of work activity." 35 Group pressure, however, is by far the most important

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influence in training the child and therefore merits a more detailed exposition. The peer group — or, to use the Soviet term, the collective — is the setting for group pressure. The Large Soviet Encyclopedia defines the collective as "a joining of people who are linked together by common work, general interest, and goals. (A collective of workers in a factory, a collective of employees of an institute, a collective of scientific workers at a higher educational institution, a collective of the students of a school.)"36 The task of the collective is to instill in Soviet citizens habits of collectivism — that is, to discourage "egoistic striving" and to foster an acceptance of group control over values, attitudes, and behavior,37 not only during the formative years but throughout adult life as well. Students of other societies, especially the United States, may find this a familiar theme. For example, Talcott Parsons has described the adolescent peer group in American society as a most powerful agency of social control and the source of an important, and somewhat deviant, subcultural influence.38 David Riesman, in The Lonely Crowd, writes of the pressures in American life toward the development of so-called other-directed personalities, who pick up subtle clues from their peer groups concerning acceptable and unacceptable standards of behavior. These parallels are highly suggestive, but they should not be exaggerated. Whereas commentators on American manners and mores proceed with at least the intention of neutral detachment (though implicitly and, at times explicitly, with a suggestion of regret over the developments), the Soviet pedagogical psychologists and youth planners applaud the collective as an altogether desirable institution, welcome it as reflecting the victory of group primacy over selfish, bourgeois social relations, and prescribe measures for strengthening its moral suasion over members. Moreover, if adolescent peer groups in America sometimes appear to be the instruments of a

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kind of junior tyranny over the adult world, the Soviet view is that the collective is essential in order to bring adult influence and authority to bear in the rearing of good Communists. Soviet use of the collective involves the mobilization of natural pressures toward conformity in face-to-face groups, placing them under the guidance of the teacher or youthorganization worker. The technique is to channel spontaneous friendship groupings (or to create a group if necessary) into formal or semiformal collectives of classmates or fellow Pioneer-Komsomol members in the primary organization. The leader can then observe and guide the behavior of the group and of its members. "The formation of the children's collective must not be laissez-faire; the educator should direct the organization of the collective as well as its daily life. However absurd and monstrous the theory of noninterference by adults in the life of children may be . . . the survivals of this theory still occasionally continue to bring great harm to our children." 39 Effective direction of the youth collective is said to require great skill and subtlety on the part of the leader lest individuals become aware and resentful of these outside manipulations.40 In the ideal collective, members are led to believe that their activities are spontaneous. However, should their behavior stray from the mark, overt intervention is not only permissible, but mandatory. The experienced adult leader should avoid heavy-handedness and should try to forestall difficulties by maneuvering the children's own peer leaders to his side at the beginning. Since the usefulness of the collective in training depends upon an adequate level of group solidarity, a delicate balance must be struck between regulation and spontaneity. A group in which informal ties and personal loyalties are very strong may undermine adult authority. Friendship for the sake of friendship, outside the needs of the collective, is discouraged.

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"Feelings of friendship sometimes assume undesirable forms when, as in some cases . . . [young people] begin to oppose their particular morality of friendship' to the general principles and rules of behavior . . . failing to understand that the duty of student and friend demands that one bring to the attention of the teacher and class the undesirable behavior of one's own comrade." 41 For the same reason, the emergence of independent or influential natural peer leaders is not favored, while youthful leaders who are willing to cooperate with adults and who are amenable to their suggestions are welcomed as "active and conscious" representatives of genuine, Soviet collectivism. The collective's internal solidarity should not be allowed to interfere with the members' feelings of identification with more inclusive groups in Soviet society or with the principle that each collective is a building block in the total order in which ultimate allegiance is owed to the Communist Party. Ordinary pressures of group opinion on an informal level naturally play a major part in governing the life of the collective, but they are reinforced through the prescribed institutionalization of shaming procedures, which require members to discuss one another's departures from group standards. Violations of Soviet principles, ranging from genuinely delinquent acts through insufficient enthusiasm for work to unbecoming tastes (such as fondness for jazz or indecorous dress), are reviewed by the collective. In the case of relatively minor infractions, the offender is approached by his comrades and warned in a friendly manner to mend his ways. Major or repeated misbehavior calls for the entire collective (Pioneer or Komsomol organization) to meet formally, usually with the accused present, to discuss his case and to mete out punishment. Another common practice is to shame the guilty individual by posting his name in a public place (a Pioneer or Komsomol wall newspaper or an outdoor bulletin board) along with an account of his shortcomings. The

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ultimate sanction is expulsion from the Pioneers or Komsomol, a step that marks the offender as unworthy of the friendship of his comrades. If members are reluctant to deal harshly with a fallen comrade, the adult leader steps in — and he is urged not to be soft or sentimental: "The method of persuasion is a basic one in the inculcation of discipline, but it does not exclude and, on the contrary, presupposes . . . the method of compulsion with respect to the unconvinced minority."42 The exploitation of the youth collective in training young Soviet citizens has an immediate purpose, to exert official influence over behavior, and is also part of the long-range strategy to implant in Soviet children a permanent, deeply rooted susceptibility to shaming; shaming and public pressure are widely employed in Soviet social control. "In socialist society, the social opinion of the collective, its approval or disapproval, has great significance in the life of each of its members. Social opinion is a powerful factor which impels each citizen to watch himself and his behavior, and to correct his shortcomings. If such is the role of the collective in the lives of adults, then it has special significance in the life and the development of the child."43 Reliance upon the collective as an instrument of training and control and the vigorous measures invoked to enhance its effectiveness can be better appreciated by referring once again to the question of modal characterological traits in the Russian population. The Harvard Project's clinical findings are illuminating here as well. They show strong psychic needs among Great Russians for "intensive face-to-face relationships" and indicate that Russians are "generally unthreatened by mutual dependence in the peer group." 44 In this respect, traditional Russian cultural patterns probably enhance the acceptance of the collective by Soviet citizens. At the same time, other patterns may encourage resistance to the use of shaming procedures. While Russians " welcomed

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others into their lives,' . . . [they] were not tensely anxious about the opinions of others once established. . . . The Russian is little shamed by performance failures [and] . . . might be expected to be fairly immune to the pressure of shame which the regime imposes on him." 45 The use of the collective in the youth program and elsewhere, then, appears to be an attempt by the regime to exploit supporting predispositions and, simultaneously, to erode resistances to shaming procedures and replace them with psychological qualities more conducive to effective manipulation. Implanting such a susceptibility to social pressures through the collective, when it is successful, places at the disposal of the regime a most powerful weapon of control, sociologically far more efficient than open coercion. The collective, precisely because it regiments informal relationships that are inherently difficult to reach through formal political mechanisms, turns natural group pressures toward conformity to the service of state and party. It must not be thought that Soviet discussions of the collective deal only with its repressive functions. On the contrary, a great deal is said about the importance of friendship, the desirability of assisting comrades who are experiencing family troubles, the virtues of helping fellow students in their studies, and the like. Yet upon examination these more humane aspects of the collective (which are held to be original Communist contributions to the improvement of the human condition) turn out to be no different from the minimal and commonly understood standards of decent social relations held by ordinary Americans or Europeans — and no doubt by ordinary Russians as well — in the absence of formal pressures. Even so, Soviet writings consistently suggest that the Communist man has a near monopoly on virtue. For example, press reports of heroic acts (saving a child from drowning) often say that only a collective-oriented Communist could have performed them and that, in capitalist society, no one

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would dream of risking himself to help the victim of misfortune. In this way, the collective's claim to control private life is further legitimized through the implication that standards of kindness and mutual concern would suffer in its absence. This exposition of Soviet assumptions concerning youth training is not intended to provide a comprehensive review of Soviet psychology or pedagogy, but a capsule view of those aspects that are important in the youth program. Several basic themes have been stressed, following the emphasis in the Soviet literature: the claim that Soviet youth lives in the best of all societies; the call for programmatic, activist, manipulative, and coercive techniques; the essential malleability of the basic personality until quite late in maturation; the ideal of producing adults who are politically loyal, who possess technical skills, and who exhibit motivational qualities conducive to hard, persistent labor; the exploitation of peer groups both for purposes of immediate control and for implanting a susceptibility to officially inspired social pressures, especially shame. All of this is reflected in the youth program. The Komsomol and Pioneers are the "leading collectives" for children and young people; the youth organizations, it is assumed, are working with individuals whose personalities and outlook will be profoundly affected by their participation; the program emphasizes the use of pressure and coercion; and the principal goal of the Pioneers and the Komsomol is defined as turning out loyal citizens who will perform herculean tasks for the economy, follow orders unquestioningly, and submerge their personal identities in the larger social order directed by the leaders of the Communist Party.

4 The Youth Organizations Today: Structure and Membership THE basic membership unit of the youth organizations is the local cell (or primary organization), to be found in schools, universities, factories, institutes, military units, and state and collective farms. This is where the rank-and-file member comes into contact with the youth program. To him, no doubt, the higher politics of this program appear remote; nevertheless, they have a decisive influence on his day-today experiences in the Komsomol or Pioneers. It is therefore helpful to have a general view of the formal structure of the youth organizations and of the arrangements by which highlevel policy decisions are transmitted and enforced. THE KOMSOMOL

Control by the party. In its quest for legitimation, Soviet totalitarianism seeks wherever possible to create an image of popular support. The impression that an entire people stands behind the regime and its policies is assiduously cultivated. The youth organizations are not exceptions: the Komsomol is depicted as a multi-million army of enthusiastic and dedicated believers in party and system, totally committed to the Communist blueprint for the future: "All that is rich and happy in our lives, youth owes to the great Communist Party which has opened broad, bright horizons be-

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fore us, taught us to struggle and to win, to work with inspiration, to live honorably and wonderfully. This great Party has inspired our lives with the great, immortal ideas of communism. We are proud that, under the leadership of the glorious Communist Party, the finest and most just society in all the world is being built by the hands of a heroic people." 1 With more than nineteen million members, the Komsomol does indeed resemble an army in size. But the official assertion that it is an autonomous organization of Soviet youth, spontaneously rallying around the party, is not supported by the evidence. In pluralistic societies, the term "youth organization" brings to mind a voluntary association of members with common interests and shared goals — a description that should not be applied to the Komsomol. Its existence depends not upon massive popular support, but upon the power and authority of the Communist Party. The Komsomol is the antithesis of a youth movement. It is an organization sponsored by the party precisely in order to monopolize the field and to forestall the emergence of what are viewed as authentic youth movements in democratic societies. This characteristic of the Komsomol is of fundamental importance in evaluating its role in the Soviet system and in attempting to account for its successes and failures. Just as the party brooks no competitors in the political arena, so too the planning and conduct of youth affairs are reserved absolutely to the Komsomol and its affiliated organizations. Backed by the entire array of the party's resources of persuasion and coercion, the Komsomol is able to operate without competition from organized rivals. Moreover, the surveillance that is exercised over all public and semipublic activities in the USSR has made it virtually impossible for illegitimate or clandestine youth groups to operate. Certainly the Soviet press indicates the existence of no such groups, and refugee sources could cite none.

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Even in the absence of organized challenges to its position, the Komsomol jealously guards its prerogatives as the party's representative among youth. The following incident, reported in the Soviet press a few years ago, may strike the Western reader as farcical, but it was regarded by the Soviet authorities with the utmost gravity, and similar examples are by no means uncommon. A group of Komsomol members in Tashkent, bored and dissatisfied with the activities of their local cell, agreed to band together informally to do good deeds in the community. They planned to aid the ill, do shopping for elderly citizens, run errands for busy mothers, and combat hooliganism and delinquency. Their activities were above reproach (the Komsomol itself is formally charged to organize such activities), but the youngsters unwittingly gave the impression of having formed a new, independent youth club not under the Komsomol's control. When news of this group of boys and girls reached the authorities, it was concluded that a subversive political ring, perhaps even engaged in espionage, had been uncovered. The members were arrested and interrogated by the Tashkent procurator (prosecutor) and released only after it became clear that the charges were unfounded. Informed of these events, all-union Komsomol officials reacted angrily; but their wrath was directed only in part at the heavy-handed methods of the Tashkent procurator. The main target of the attack was the local Komsomol organization, which was severely reprimanded for its scandalous lack of vigilance in allowing a voluntary group to form in the first place.2 No doubt the Tashkent incident was to some extent a consequence of overzealousness among local authorities, but their behavior was entirely consistent with party policy. A challenge to the Komsomol's authority is counted as a challenge to the party itself. This does not mean, however, that the Komsomol is permitted to act autonomously. No secret is made of the Komsomol's place as servant to the party. In-

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deed, it is announced openly in the preamble to the Komsomol rules: The Komsomol is the active assistant and reserve of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The VLKSM [Komsomol] helps the Party to bring up youth in the spirit of communism, to draw it into the practical construction of the new society, to prepare a generation of well-rounded people who will live, work, and direct societal affairs under communism. The VLKSM works under the direction of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The strength of the Komsomol lies in the CPSU's direction, in the ideological conviction and devotion to the cause of the Party. The Komsomol learns under the Party to live, to work, to struggle, and to win, in a Leninist way. The Komsomol sees the entire sense of its activity in the realization of the great program of the construction of the communist society that was adopted at the XXII Congress of the CPSU.3 It is instructive to compare this statement, adopted in 1962, with the corresponding section of the Komsomol rules that had been in effect after 1954. Despite suggestions that the 1962 revisions were a step towards democratization under the slogan of "liquidating the cult of personality," in the form of increased autonomy for the Komsomol, the principles of party-Komsomol relationships remained substantially unaltered. Here is the earlier form: "The VLKSM is joined to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and is its reserve and assistant. The Komsomol is called upon to assist the Communist Party . . . in the realization of its aims. . . . The VLKSM demands from its members a persistent and ceaseless struggle for the realization of the decisions of the Communist Party and of the Soviet government." 4 The change, then, was in wording, not in political principle. The party's control over the Komsomol does not depend merely upon such declarations of intent, but also upon a variety of concrete measures. The ruling organ of the Komsomol, its all-union Central Committee, is "directly subordinate to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of

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the Soviet Union" and the "work of local organizations is directed and controlled by the corresponding republican, provincial, city, and regional Party organizations."5 By placing key party personnel in commanding positions in the Komsomol, the party effectively saturates the organization with its own men. The highest office in the Komsomol, the first secretaryship of the Central Committee, traditionally is held by a member of the party's Central Committee, and his election to that post is, in effect, a party assignment. The present incumbent, S. P. Pavlov, is a full member of the party Central Committee. (His two immediate predecessors, Semichastnyi and Shelepin, also members of the party Central Committee, were both placed in charge of the KGB after completing their assignments in the Komsomol. It seems significant that running the youth organizations and the secret police require similar talents.) The party's control is further enhanced by the provision that, while rank-and-file members of the Komsomol must leave the organization at the age of twenty-eight, no such limit applies to any officeholder. This allows experienced party functionaries to retain their positions in the Komsomol long after they have passed the normal age limit. Indeed, in all save local organizations, only party members are eligible to hold office in the Komsomol. (Until 1958, the maximum age for the general membership was twenty-six, while officers could stay in the organization for only one additional year. Current regulations require rank-and-file members to leave at twenty-eight, but there is no longer an upper age limit for officers. Apparently the presence of large numbers of overage officers, in obvious disregard of the Komsomol rules, had been a source of embarrassment.) The disproportionately large number of party members and old officers in the hierarchy is a fact hardly consistent with the claim that the Komsomol represents Soviet youth. An analysis of the records of the two most recent congresses

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of the all-union Komsomol, in 1958 and 1962, is highly revealing. At the 1958 session, 59 percent of the 1,236 delegates attending were candidate or full members of the party, while 52 percent were older than twenty-six years (at that time, the conventional age limit set by the rules) and 14 percent were over thirty years of age.6 At the 1962 congress, 59 percent of the 3,878 delegates were candidate or full members of the party, and 14 percent were over twenty-eight years (the upper age limit currently in effect for the general membership ) J At the two congresses, then, the percentage holding party membership was about the same, despite a roughly threefold increase in the number of delegates. This in itself says a great deal about the prevalence of party members not only in the top echelons of die Komsomol hierarchy, but also in the intermediate ranks that had to be tapped in enlarging the roster. As for the decline in the proportion of over-age delegates, this was partly accounted for by the artificial device of raising the upper age limit. Taking into account the threefold increase, the fact that there were still 14 percent over twenty-eight may well represent no significant change in the age composition of the upper and middle ranks of the Komsomol. In spite of many references in the intervening years to the desirability of making the Komsomol more autonomous and representative, there seems to have been no substantial change in the practice of filling leading ranks with older functionaries and party members. Formal structure. The formal structure of the Komsomol is modeled after that of the party. It is managed from above in the name of democratic centralism, a principle defined in the following terms: (a) the election of all directing bodies of the Komsomol from lower to higher; (b) periodic accountability of Komsomol bodies [secretariats, bureaus, commissions, and the like] to their Komsomol organizations [membership units] and higher standing bodies;

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(c) strict Komsomol discipline and the subordination of the minority to the majority; (d) the absolutely binding character of the decisions of higher Komsomol bodies upon lower ones.8 In practice, centralism has largely overwhelmed democracy, for the provisions concerning elections and accountability, as well as majority rule, have been routinely disregarded. Policy decisions are made and orders issued at the highest echelons; membership units are expected to act unquestioningly in fulfilling directives that have been transmitted downwards through a hierarchy of paid, full-time Komsomol workers. The Komsomol's formal organizational chart resembles a pyramid in which each higher level of authority is elected by the one immediately beneath. At the base are the primary organizations, or local membership cells, with their millions of members. Above them are the city or district organizations, consisting of delegates nominally elected by members of the primary organizations and meeting in periodic sessions. They, in turn, choose representatives to conferences at the provincial or territorial levels or to the union republic congresses. At the apex of the pyramid is the all-union congress of the Komsomol, composed of delegates from the provincial and territorial conferences and the union republic congresses. At each congress or conference level, the delegates appoint a Komsomol committee to conduct business between their own relatively less frequent meetings. (The maximum prescribed intervals are four years for the all-union congresses, two years — in some cases four — for the conferences of provinces and territories or the congresses of union republics.) The committee in turn, establishes a regular staff of secretariats, bureaus, and commissions to conduct the Komsomol's affairs on a daily basis. The latter constitute the Komsomol bureaucracy, or apparat. In local organizations the apparatchiki usually are part-time workers who serve in the

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Komsomol without compensation while attending school or holding a job. At the intermediate and top levels, they are paid professionals whose career is the Komsomol and many of whom aspire to become apparatchiki in the party. That the apparatchiki are no random cross-section of simple worker and peasant youths, but a special elite within the larger membership, is indicated by their educational backgrounds. In 1962, one third of the raikom (district) secretaries were graduates of higher educational institutions (up from one fifth in 1958), while 80 percent of secretaries of obkoms and kraikoms (provincial organizations) and of the all-union Central Committee also had a higher education.9 (Compare these figures with 2.5 percent of the Soviet population age fifteen and older having a higher education as of 1959. 10 ) What has happened historically, in a process mirroring developments within the party, is that the apparat has taken over the Komsomol. According to the rules, authority resides in the conferences and congresses — ultimately, with the general membership. In principle, the apparat carries out the orders of the membership and is responsible to it. But as the apparat gained in importance and power under Stalin, conferences and congresses were relegated to the status of show pieces and, indeed, for many years failed to meet at the specified intervals. Since 1954, these meetings have taken place with the regularity called for in the rules, no doubt reflecting Khrushchev's desire to restore at least the appearance of legality and to do away with some of the most visible manifestations of arbitrariness. Even when congresses and conferences do meet, they do not formulate or debate policy, but lend formal approval to actions already initiated by the top leadership. Discussion follows the lines set forth by higher authorities and voting is unanimous. We have already seen how unrepresentative of the general membership the all-union congress delegations are, taking as one indication their top-heavy age distribution

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and the unusually large portion of party members. The occupational composition of the delegations is, perhaps, even more revealing. At the 1962 session, the largest single category — 22 percent — was made up not of student, worker, or peasant youths, but of apparatchiki, including "489 secretaries of regional, city, and territorial Committees, 77 Komsorgs [Komsomol organizers] of territorial production administrations, 289 workers of oblast, krai, republican, and central organs of the VLKSM." 11 The functionaries, then, have an extraordinarily large influence in the legislative bodies whose servants they are supposed to be. In practice, the Komsomol bureaucracy is not accountable to the membership, but to its own higher levels and to the Communist Party. To be sure, such an imbalance of power is not unusual in political parties and other hierarchical organizations, even in democratic societies. But in the Komsomol there simply are no opportunities for organized revolt by segments of the membership and, perhaps more important, no competing organizations in which dissidents might express opposition. Even in local units, democratic representation is largely a myth. While first secretaries of city or district Komsomol organizations are supposed to be elected by conference delegates from the primary organizations, in fact they normally are appointed and removed by higher officials. For example, in 1957 alone, 272 of them were removed from city and district posts for various reasons by direct action of the all-union Komsomol.12 It is only in the primary organizations, and there by no means always, that genuine elections typically are held, at least to the extent that the membership can veto organization-sponsored candidates. It is significant in this connection, however, that a new provision in the 1962 rules, specifying secret balloting at intermediate and higher levels, prohibits secret balloting in primary organizations. Since elections above the primary organizations are usually pro

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forma, single-slate affairs (involving a carefully screened electorate of Komsomol devotees), it costs the Komsomol nothing to maintain the appearance of democratic procedure. But in the primary organizations, where there is a danger that ordinary members may organize to impede an officially sponsored or approved candidate, the insistence upon open balloting discourages potential troublemakers by identifying them for possible retaliatory action. Even were the rules faithfully followed, and representative bodies truly representative, the long intervals between conferences and congresses, as well as the fact that their sessions last only a few days, would pose serious difficulties for the general membership in maintaining a firm hand in the Komsomol. Moreover, as we have seen, the authoritarian nature of the Komsomol bureaucracy and the limited significance of elections make the officials quite unresponsive to pressures from the membership. Indeed, very few ordinary members participate even in the lowest-level conferences — a situation admitted by the Central Committee itself.13 Why, then, if they bear so little relation to actual practice, should the superficial formalities of democratic procedure be stressed in the Komsomol's public pronouncements? And why do conferences and congresses meet at all when the Komsomol probably could function just as well without them? The democratic forms and the appearance of democratic procedure are useful to the Komsomol in a number of ways. They provide grounds for the claim that the Komsomol is a representative organization of Soviet youth. The provisions of the rules, examined without reference to the realities of power within the organization, appear to be fair and democratic; like the Soviet constitution, the document is by no means unconvincing to the uninformed. And certainly an open admission that its youth organizations' claims to being democratic are false can hardly be expected to come from a regime which insists that it has created the world's first

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workers' state. Similarly, the Komsomols pretense that it is an autonomous organization (in spite of its admitted subordination to the party) can be "proved" simply by turning to the appropriate section of the rules. It is unlikely that these claims are accepted uncritically by all members; the very insistence with which they are put forth is perhaps sufficient to provoke some doubts. But democracy, after all, is an elastic concept, and no doubt there are many believers who see in the elaborate, formal provisions for member participation and representation a full vindication of the claims. Nor should it be forgotten that this image of a democratic and autonomous youth organization is intended for consumption abroad as well as within the borders of the Soviet Union. A regular feature of the allunion congresses is the appearance at one or more sessions of representatives of foreign Communist youth organizations, from the Soviet bloc and elsewhere, who convey greetings from their constituents and heap praise upon the Komsomol as an inspiring example for Communist youth the world over. The congresses and conferences of the Komsomol also serve as important links in the chain of command along which policy decisions and directives are made known to those in subordinate positions and to the general membership. In spite of the absence of free discussion, the meetings provide a convenient stage for publicizing the youth program and for dramatic, ritualistic reaffirmations of the dedication of Soviet youth to the Communist Party and to its leaders. Conferences and congresses are major public "events," which receive wide coverage in the general press as well as in youth newspapers and publications. They lend an atmosphere of importance and dignity to Komsomol affairs. The all-union congress is treated as an occasion for national celebration, during which politicians and elder statesmen address youth with inspirational messages. The meetings also serve, though in a less obvious way, as

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important safety valves for the release of accumulated tensions within the organization and provide the chiefs at various levels of the apparatus with an added measure of control over their subordinates. Failures and shortcomings in Komsomol work are brought to light in speeches, and blame is laid at the feet of selected individuals and organizations. This cultivates the impression that something is constantly "being done" to improve the Komsomol and provides the members with approved targets for their hostilities in the form of officials who have fallen from favor or who can be identified with an unpopular line, thereby diverting attention from potential dissatisfactions with the Komsomol program itself. Publicized purges of the apparat also give warning to those who stray from close adherence to orders or whose work has not been satisfactory to be more cautious in the future. Finally, congresses and conferences serve as rewards to faithful workers and exemplary members from industry, agriculture, and the schools by giving them expense-paid trips to the big city, honoring them with an appearance on the rostrum, and publicizing their virtues in newspaper articles and photographs. While stressing the overwhelming power of the Komsomol bureaucracy and the exercise of absolute authority by a handful of party lieutenants, it is well to remember that, even in an army, there are many informal devices available to those in the lower ranks to make their wishes felt. Certainly this is true as well in the Komsomol, where ordinary members sometimes can bait an official by uniting to accuse him (in a carefully worded letter to a Komsomol newspaper, say, or in anonymous complaints to his superiors) of real or supposed derelictions of duty. A more widespread, and perhaps more effective, measure against the bureaucracy is a kind of passive resistance to the local leadership (if not, indeed, to the entire program), which takes the form of a quiet evasion of membership responsibilities when the individual thinks

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he can get away with it. Or members can get back at officers by playing their own game: displaying a meticulous conformity to the letter of the rules, with an utter contempt for their intent. Such practices, especially if they assume epidemic proportions, may give the leadership second thoughts about particular policies and decisions, even though it is not duty-bound to heed rumblings of discontent from the membership. These and similar methods provide the rank and file with a measure of protection against utter arbitrariness from above, but surely they are not adequate substitutes for the democratic principles proclaimed and disregarded by the Komsomol. We see from time to time critical letters in Kom~ somolskaia pravda, but there is no way of knowing how many remain unpublished or what happens to their authors. The bold member who registers a complaint about an officer or staff worker may well win his case, but if he fails he runs the risk of reprisals and cannot seek aid from a competing organization. Criticisms of individuals and shortcomings in the organization are never permitted to grow into attacks against the program as such or against the political assumptions on which it rests. At best, then, efforts to resist are likely to be meaningful only locally and irregularly. Passive resistance, troublesome though it may be to the higher-ups, ultimately is no match for the thoroughgoing system of surveillance and control that prevents dissident members from making common cause. I noted earlier that the Komsomol seems not to have been caught up significantly in the patchwork process of liberalization that has taken place under Khrushchev. It was suggested that a likely reason for the Komsomol's backwardness is the concern that concessions to a younger generation, less fearful and less reserved than its thoroughly terrorized predecessors, might lead to an unmanageable situation. Nevertheless, there were frequent allusions at the most re-

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cent (1962) all-union congress to the desirability of deStalinizing the Komsomol, and they are worth considering for clues they may contain to future trends and policies. In view of the Komsomol's long tradition of calling for increased democracy within the organization even while forbidding it, there is no reason to take these proclamations as signifying anything more than they have in the past. But this time, at least, some concrete measures have been promised. In his speech on the 1962 amendments in the rules, 14 V. A. Saiushev, of the Komsomol's Central Committee, pointed out that the revised version not only "guarantees" the right of each member to participate in the discussion of all questions (as it had before) but now also allows him to introduce resolutions, to express his opinion on resolutions before they are adopted, and personally to appear at meetings of committees and bureaus at which his activities are being discussed. Furthermore, Saiushev declared, the revised rules require that committees and bureaus issue periodic accounts (to whom, it is not specified) concerning their work and their fulfillment of directives of higher organs, as well as on their disposition of critical comments and recommendations made by Komsomol members; that questions of removing an official are to be decided at general meetings of the corresponding committee; that primary organizations may remove an officer by a two-thirds vote of those attending a meeting; and that the membership may vote to penalize an officer or staff member for dereliction of duty. Finally, Saiushev declared, the new rules require that half the members of each elected body be replaced at every election (that is, an elected official may hold office for no more than two consecutive terms), except that any individual with an extraordinary record of service or a special skill is exempted from this limitation and anyone may return to office after an absence of one term. Perhaps the most significant thing about these promises is the extent to which they confirm how badly abused the

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democratic formalities must have been in the past. They are depicted as revolutionary innovations when, in fact, they are only small steps toward a situation that the Komsomol claims has always existed. What they may actually mean for the future is difficult to say; at best they are ambiguously framed, and we know that far more specific legislation has been held in contempt by the very Komsomol politicians who drafted it. Moreover, the provisions are still new and have been tested in practice only briefly. It could be argued that the changes in the rules should be taken at face value and that if they are scrupulously observed they will constitute a genuine liberalization of the organization. This may be, but it does not necessarily follow that even a faithful regard for the new rules will yield such a result. An equally plausible interpretation is that the new provisions are not at all intended to give a louder voice to the rank and file, but to tighten controls over the apparat in order to make it more efficient in carrying out policy and to routinize the elimination of incompetents. If this can be accomplished under the guise of grass-roots support, all the better for the Komsomol's image. Indeed, it can be argued that the Soviet leadership never objects to democratic forms per se (and may even prefer them) provided they do not interfere with the actual use of power. Perhaps, in the final analysis, judgments about whether the Komsomol is being liberalized should rest not so much upon evidence of changes in the internal routines as upon the more important question of whether Soviet youth is granted greater freedom of choice in joining or not joining and whether it will be given the opportunity to establish its own independent organizations. For as long as there is only the official youth program, the details of its administration are of secondary importance. Still we should not dismiss the recent gestures as necessarily empty — probably they do signify less than they appear to,

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but it would not be the first time since Stalin's death that we have been surprised by unlikely developments. Membership. Who are the Komsomol's members, and how are they selected? "Any young person of the Soviet land who recognizes the Rules of the VLKSM, who actively takes part in the construction of Communism, who works in one of the Komsomol organizations, who fulfills the decisions of the Komsomol and who pays membership dues, can be a member of the VLKSM." 16 The Komsomol has been growing rapidly. In the decade between 1949 and 1958, its membership doubled. Yet it has by no means exhausted its potential, for large numbers of youths eligible by age are not yet included in its ranks. The 1962 membership figure (based on the fifteen to twenty-eight age group — lowering the minimum to fourteen should result in a sizable increase when the statistics are next announced) stood at over 19 million, but this is still far from representing universal membership among the age groups covered by the Komsomol; the membership rolls could perhaps be doubled. 16 In absolute numbers, Komsomol membership can be expected to remain stable or even to decrease in the next decade, as a consequence of the abnormally small age group now approaching Komsomol age. This is the group affected most seriously by the lowered birth and increased mortality rates associated with World War II. But the percentage of age-eligible youth enrolled probably will continue to rise. Of course it must be understood that the Komsomol influences all youth, for even nonmembers are drawn into the youth program not only because of earlier experiences in the Pioneers (where membership is more nearly universal) but because the broad scope of Komsomol activities and its decisive control over the extracurricular activities of the schools, youth publications, organized recreation, and the like, goes

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far beyond its own membership. Moreover, the current policy is to close the gap, to increase the proportion of members among Soviet youth.17 By broadening its coverage, the Komsomol will draw an ever-increasing precentage of the young population into direct affiliation. The sheer quantitative impact of this practice is very great, and it seems likely that, before long, the overwhelming majority of Soviet adults will have spent at least a few years in the Komsomol as well as in the Pioneers and Octobrists. Komsomol members are supposedly chosen for their outstanding patriotism, leadership, and activism. Although there is at least token adherence to such a selective principle, current policy is largely aimed at drawing into the ranks the maximum number of members. While once a candidate's qualifications were closely scrutinized, requirements now are so minimal that virtually anyone who wishes to be a member can meet them, and cases are reported in which entire school classes are enrolled en masse as they come of age.18 Behind this practice lies the present conception of the youth program's role in society. As an extracurricular method of schooling for the entire young generation, it is intended to include as many individuals as possible. This policy has had a number of serious unintended consequences, notably the lowering of morale of some of the potentially more enthusiastic members, who object to having their ardor diluted by large numbers of apathetic and indifferent peers; the implications of this development are discussed in Chapter Six. The Komsomol's millions of members are joined in a sprawling giant of an organization, which penetrates every corner of the land. By 1958, there were 383,694 primary organizations with an average membership of 48.19 (Specific figures for later years are not available, but the wording of official sources suggests that both the total number of cells as well as the average size of each have increased.) At least some of the primary organizations are themselves major sub-

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bureaucracies within the national and regional bodies. Although it did not give total figures, the mandate commission's report to the Fourteenth Congress in 1962 noted that primary organizations with 50 to 100 members had increased, since 1958, by 3,923; those with 100 to 200 members had increased by 3,422; and those with 300 members or more had increased "by almost 30 percent." 20 The complexities of coordination, management, and morale at the regional and allunion levels, then, are also present to some extent at the level of the primary organizations. It might be expected that the necessarily increased resort to bureaucratic procedures in some localities further aggravates problems already arising from the huge size of the national membership. THE PIONEERS

Twenty million Soviet children now wear the red tie that signifies membership in the Pioneers. In this children's organization, according to official claims, "millions of Soviet people go through the primary school of Communist upbringing, become integrated into societal life, and prepare to become active builders of Communism."21 Each level of the Komsomol hierarchy devotes special offices and sections to the planning, coordination, and execution of the Pioneer program. Party control over this younger age group, therefore, is channeled through the senior organization. No less than the Komsomol, the Pioneer organization serves the Soviet regime as a principal instrument of youth policy. Together with the Komsomol, a wide range of other party and state agencies are involved in formulating and carrying out the junior program. By far the most important is the school system, with its complex of agencies and bodies, since all Pioneers are school-age children.22 There exists in effect a double chain of command: one through the Komsomol, another through the educational administration. Since classroom work — where the basic aspects of the Pioneer program

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are carried out — lies within the jurisdiction of the educational authorities, their decisions are generally decisive. From all appearances, the existence of this double chain of command involves no major conflicts, and educationalists and Komsomol officers work together harmoniously. If direct responsibility for the Pioneers rests with the Komsomol and the educational system, then almost every other Soviet agency whose affairs touch on the training of new generations has at least a consultative or advisory voice. This coordinated nexus of concern, even though it does not work as smoothly as the organizational charts would suggest, is one of the powerful means at the disposal of the Soviet regime for facing its youth within a united front. A partial list of the cooperating agencies may suggest the inclusiveness of the program's intent. Among them are: the Committee for Physical Culture and Sport under the Council of Ministers of the USSR; the Ministry of Transport and Communication; the Ministry of Culture; the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the RSFSR; the trade unions; the Chief Political Administration for Komsomol Work in the Soviet Army and Navy; the Soviet Red Cross and Red Crescent Society; the Editorial Committee of Radio and Television Broadcasting for Children and Youth under the Council of Ministers of the USSR; the Moscow State Central Puppet Theater; the Ministry of Agriculture; the Children's Publishing House; the Section for International Children's Organizations of the Committee of Youth Organizations of the USSR; the Young Naturalists' Stations; the Ministry of Trade; the Administration for Educational and Mass-Cultural Work of the Chief Administration of Labor Reserves; the Union of Soviet Composers; the Central Children's Theater. All of these are represented, together with the Komsomol and the Ministry of Education, in the Central Council of the all-union Pioneer organization. The latter is the directing organ of the Pioneers and is, in turn, under the direction of the Central Committee of the Komsomol.23

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Membership units. The basic membership unit of the Pioneers, analagous to the Komsomol's primary organization, is the link (zveno), customarily consisting of from five to twelve children in a school classroom. Large classes may be divided into several links to maximize individual work.24 Members of the link are classmates and so spend their schooldays together; in addition, they meet formally as Pioneers each week or ten days during the year.25 From among their number, Pioneers in each link elect a leader (vozhatyi) on the basis of his merits as an "authoritative" Pioneer, scholastic achievement, and organizing ability. Specialized adult personnel do not work directly with the link; instead, the classroom teacher guides the link as part of her routine activities. Links ordinarily are combined to form a detachment (otriad) that includes all the children in a single school grade. This system of separate detachments is intended to assure that the younger and older Pioneers will participate in activities appropriate to their ages. Although each detachment is therefore identical with the membership of a school grade, efforts are made to emphasize to the children that the Pioneer organization is distinct from the school curriculum as such and that affiliation is a special honor that requires excellent deportment and devotion. Within the detachment, children elect a council of from three to five persons (in detachments having fewer than ten members, as in a small rural school, they elect a single president), selected for their exemplary performance as Pioneers and students. They lead the group's activities under adult supervision and serve as a board of review for Pioneers who are judged to be falling short of the detachment's plans or standards. As in the link, the teachers have direct responsibility for supervision, but substantial use is made of outside specialists assigned by the Pioneer organization as well as of older Komsomol members from the upper grades of the same school or from a Komsomol organization in that area that has been assigned "patron-

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age" over one or more school units. These adult workers (vozhatye-Komsomoltsy) are chosen for their ability to work with children and, unless they are on the paid staff of the Pioneer organization, normally work as volunteers without pay. The several detachments of a school are combined to form the all-school brigade (druzhina). A brigade council of from three to fifteen members, depending on the size of the school, is elected by all the Pioneers; it, in turn, elects a president. Members of the council are older Pioneers, preparing for membership in the Komsomol, who organize Pioneer activities for the entire school under the direction of the senior Pioneer leader (starshii Oozhatyi), the teachers, and the school director. According to Soviet sources, these organizational arrangements are quite flexible, and school personnel are allowed considerable latitude in adapting them to local situations. In this respect, at least, the extraordinary rigidity that characterizes the Komsomol's arrangements does not apply to the Pioneers. The adult leaders of the Pioneers and, in particular, the senior leader are considered to be vital links betwen the Komsomol and the school Pioneer program. As a minimum, senior leaders must have completed a secondary education, and those with some pedagogical training are preferred.2® Every effort is made to place qualified Komsomol personnel in these posts. If an outside speciahst is not available from the local Komsomol organization, a teacher who holds membership in the Komsomol may be appointed. In some rural areas, however, where Komsomol membership tends to be sparse, a senior leader may be selected from among "representatives of the rural intelligentsia who have the requisite education and the desire to work with the Pioneers." 27 (The fact that it is sometimes necessary to resort to this device to staff the Pioneer program in the countryside is a significant piece of evidence that the Komsomol has some troubles in

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recruitment.) On the other hand, in very large urban schools, the post of senior leader sometimes is occupied by a full-time, salaried professional. However the senior leader is selected, he shares with the school director the main responsibility for carrying out the Pioneer program. He is expected to be fully familiar with the nature of the curriculum as well as with the goals and techniques of Pioneer work. For the sake of continuity and quality, the senior leader is supposed to remain in one school for a minimum of two or three years. In practice, however, a one-year assignment appears to be more typical,28 especially if the leader holds regular employment elsewhere. In recent years, the party has attempted to improve both the caliber and the supply of senior Pioneer leaders by providing special training, and the Komsomol continues to give informal training to its members who are assigned to work as leaders. The growing importance of the Pioneer organization in the schools has also led to the establishment of special courses in the teaching curriculum. Membership. Children from ten through fourteen years of age are eligible for membership in the Pioneers. (A youngster who does not join the Komsomol at fifteen may remain in the Pioneers for an additional year or two, at the discretion of the senior Pioneer leader.) If, as we have seen, the Komsomol is well on the way to becoming an all-inclusive organization for older youths, then the Pioneer organization is that already. The remaining differences in membership policies of the senior and the junior organizations are partly the result of an early decision to make the Pioneers a universal organization, partly the result of the different settings in which the two organizations operate. Unlike the Komsomol, the Pioneer organization was never conceived as an elite group. It is true that, in the 1920s, entrance was sometimes barred or made difficult for children of parents belonging to the so-called exploiting classes (along with many

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similar disadvantages these young people suffered in education, employment, and civil rights), but the positive criteria of political activism and ideological commitment, so heavily stressed in the early selection of Komsomol members, could hardly be applied so rigorously to the younger children. Moreover, the fact that the Pioneer program includes only children of school age promotes broader membership. The close association between the school curriculum and Pioneer activities makes it natural for students to accept Pioneer membership as a routine aspect of being in school; the Komsomol organizations, operating in such age-heterogeneous settings as factories, do not enjoy similar advantages in recruitment. Finally, the Pioneer program itself is partly responsible for its probable greater appeal. While its goals are certainly as serious as those of the senior organization, the burdens imposed on the membership necessarily are less onerous and the activities calculated to appeal to the interests of children. Its role as a provider of play and games and recreational facilities — even though combined with an ultimately political purpose — may account for its popularity in contrast with the perennial problems of discontent and passive resistance in the Komsomol. Other activities. While the Pioneer program is based largely in the school, it extends to the nonacademic life of the members. A network of facilities, in which other party and government agencies participate, is intended to engage the time and interest of each Pioneer every day of the year, in and out of school. For children from seven through fifteen, an elaborate system of summer camps is available under Komsomol and Pioneer supervision. The camps are supported financially by the trade unions on local, regional, and republic levels, operating with the assistance of educational authorities and personnel.29 All four groups — Komsomol, Pioneers, trade

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unions, and educational authorities — plan the camp program. Camp directors are chosen by the responsible tradeunion representative from among individuals made available by the educational authorities, while the senior Pioneer leader is selected by the trade union and the regional Komsomol committee. Other camp personnel are similarly provided.30 In the camp, the Pioneers are organized after the pattern prevailing in the schools. Brigades, detachments, and links are formed early in the session, and councils and leaders are appointed or elected. Because of the age span involved in the camps, two programs usually operate simultaneously: one for children to the age of nine, the other for older campers. Not all Pioneers are able to attend summer camps, for lack of adequate facilities has been a long-standing problem. Even so, the total enrollment is very large: in 1962, 4 million children were reported to have spent at least part of the summer in camps away from home.31 The fact that the camps require parents to pay may dissuade some from sending their children, but Soviet officials who were questioned on this point say that a sliding scale of fees allows even the poorest parents to send their children to the camps under the auspices of their trade union. For the Pioneers who do not attend the regular camps, some day camps in the city are available. Their activities are more limited, but they do provide some continuity in the Pioneer program during the summer months for children who might otherwise be left out.32 In 1962, 730,000 children were enrolled in city day camps.33 Available on a more limited basis than either the regular or the day camps — though they seem to be coming increasingly into favor — are work programs for city children on collective and state farms. Pioneers of one or more city schools are invited to spend part of their summer assisting in the harvest or in general farm labor. They may receive

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token payment for their work, or their Pioneer organization may be presented with a gift, such as a radio for the classroom. Of course this program involves older Pioneers who are ready for the heavy work required. The purpose of the program is both educational and economic, for while the work camps are avowedly instructive in intent, they sometimes serve to ease agricultural labor shortages at peak periods. A high-placed Pioneer official in Moscow told me in 1960 that collective farms sometimes requested help, but that the primarily educational function of the work camps was generally preserved. The camping program, which also includes at least a few specialized facilities offering concentrated experience in mountain climbing, sailing, "arctic living," 34 and mathematics, is prodigious, at least on paper. But the still grave material shortages in the USSR prevent the full realization of these ambitious plans. Even in the city day camps, space problems hinder the expansion of local facilities. Apartment administrations are supposed to allocate 2 percent of building space for Pioneer activities, but Soviet reports indicate that the norm is consistently disregarded in the face of unsatisfied demands for apartment occupancy.35 The Pioneer program must compete with other needs for the expansion of recreational and leisure facilities, and it is unlikely that its problems will be substantially alleviated until a general improvement in living standards takes place. Some of the school facilities operate on a year-round basis. Most important are the Pioneer palaces and Pioneer houses, which serve schools in the surrounding area. They offer a variety of educational and recreational activities as supplements to the school program. The Moscow and Leningrad palaces are examples of superior facilities that the Pioneer organization would like to make available to all children when resources permit, and they serve in the meantime as models for further development. On an unannounced visit

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to the Leningrad installation in 1960, I was able to see a typical day's activities and was impressed both by the quality and range of the program, as well as with its great potentiality if and when it becomes available to large numbers of children away from these showcase centers. A full professional staff, assisted by volunteers, worked with small groups of children in a most attractive and ample setting on such diverse activities as handicrafts, a geology hobby circle, folk and ballroom dancing, lectures on atomic energy, storytelling, calisthenics, and mathematical study. The Pioneer program on a national basis is still very far from affording such opportunities, but the examples of Moscow and Leningrad are reminders of the power of the youth organizations, when they intelligently combine activities of natural interest to children with a consistent and pervasive political creed, to capture the loyalties of the new generation. Moreover, the general shortage of privately owned or controlled facilities allows the regime to funnel the attention and energy of the young into these officially sponsored and planned settings. It is no wonder that youth officials keep pointing to the desirability of rapid expansion of these important facilities. Other year-round installations are fewer in number, but illustrate once more the youth program's efforts, especially at the Pioneer level, to provide a varied and all-encompassing range of activities for all children. There are young technologists' stations and young naturalists' stations (where Pioneers receive instruction in the sciences and where they may conduct their own experiments), special Pioneer houses devoted exclusively to art instruction, and even some children's railroads (where children operate realistic half-scale railroads under minimal adult supervision and, as one Pioneer official explained to me, "learn to know the importance of good work habits, coordinated effort, and punctuality in any job or profession"). There are other facilities which, although they do not come under the direct supervision of the Pioneer

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organization, nevertheless contribute to the work of the youth program. Parks, theaters for children, and the like, may be included here. Indeed, there is virtually no organized activity for children in the USSR that is not a part of the official network of planning and coordination. While an account of the activities that take place within the organizations is reserved for later chapters, these details of the formal structure of the Komsomol and the Pioneers suggest the extensiveness of what might be called the "bureaucratization of childhood" in contemporary Soviet society. No doubt this reflects in part a tendency in all modern industrial societies to extend the organizational-administrative ethos to child rearing. The very existence of a school system, with its process of grading and promotion, its universalistic standards, and its role in "sorting" children into established occupational paths, is a fact of overwhelming importance in such societies. Moreover, the nature of urban life itself (consider, for one, the problem of limited space) seems to promote an increasing dependency on organized recreational facilities; it not only enmeshes children in formal structures manned by professional adult workers, but imposes on them the necessity of learning how to live, to compete, and to survive in a kind of bureaucratic game played out at their own level. Although it may be overly sentimental to argue that childhood has come to an end in these circumstances, at least one can say that it has been fundamentally altered, and not only in the Soviet union. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that the Soviet case is one of the superbureaucratization of childhood, an extreme exaggeration and thus qualitatively different from the situation in other industrial societies; after all, the youth program is based on very specific and calculated purposes. And this raises some intriguing questions about the kinds of human beings such a system is likely to turn out. Does it, in fact,

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foster the emergence of good bureaucrats in a highly organized society? Or does it, perhaps, provoke counterproductive effects through its attempts to monopolize youthful interests and to routinize spontaneity in the name of political omniscience? These are among the larger, and most difficult, sociological questions suggested by the organizational details of the youth program, and they will be explored soon. But first let us examine the inner workings of the youth program.

5 The Youth Program in Action THE all-embracing nature of totalitarian social and political institutions sometimes gives one the impression that they are more successful than they may be in fact. To be sure, intensive planning and the highly effective concentration of power in the Soviet Union are major and real accomplishments of the Communist regime. But they are partly offset by malfunctioning, indifference, resistance, and ordinary ignorance: the best intentions frequently are lost between the drawing boards in Moscow and the chores of actual life. There is a good reason to pursue the implications of this general observation for the youth program before turning to an account of how the organizations operate at the membership level. It is often assumed in the West that the Communist Party and the Soviet government have somehow discovered mysterious and demoniac techniques to control and indoctrinate a captive populace. (Witness, for example, the view that brainwashing is a special Communist invention and that it works with almost magical effect.) This misapprehension is furthered by the Russians' claims that their youth program is something radically new, that their children are raised in a unique environment, and that feats such as the conquest of space could have come only from the supercompetence and supertraining of the New Soviet Man. Both assumption and claim are inaccurate: anyone who looks to

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the youth program for major innovations in the socialization of human beings is bound to be disappointed. This assertion may appear to contradict my earlier discussion of the nature of the Soviet youth program, but the paradox is only apparent. Special features of the program are, first, its extreme politicization of institutional arrangements, which, in other types of societies, traditionally have been beyond the realm of governmental concern; and, second, its set of well-articulated ideologies, both in the political sense and insofar as it involves fairly definite assumptions concerning the rearing of good Communists. But if one examines the actual behavior of the Pioneers and the Komsomol, then it is soon evident that the activities making up the youth program are, with few exceptions, quite ordinary; they would be familiar to any American who has attended a public school or belonged to a Boy Scout troop. The American Boy Scout handbook devotes many pages to knot tying and camping skills, for instance, and an analogous handbook for Soviet Pioneers contains similar sections.1 The knots, tents, and campfire instructions are identical. The difference is in context: the Pioneer is told endlessly that, by learning these skills, he becomes a more useful builder of Communism. (The civic theme is by no means absent from the Scout literature, but there it is largely implicit.) Moreover, youth-organization personnel, it seems evident, are often in the dark about just how to attain the high goals established for the program. There is firm (and mandatory) uniformity on questions of principle, but the certainty with which the pedagogical psychologists and others have drawn their blueprints for the new generations contrasts sharply with the almost total lack of systematic attention to the question of making these plans operational. Two Soviet authorities have noted the absence of theoretical work in this area, 2 and a careful study of youth-organization handbooks and manuals reveals little applied ingenuity. Slogans and

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reaffirmations of principle abound, but descriptions of what concrete activities are needed to bring them to life are few. This is not to say that the program is necessarily wanting in effectiveness, but that the presumed connections between announced goals and actual techniques more often than not take the form of vague and not very useful generalizations. One incident I know of illustrates the point: A young Soviet teacher who was assigned to work with a new Octobrist group wrote to an American relative asking for books on games and activities for children. Now such books are readily available in the Soviet Union, but it is significant that the youth program is neither so perfected nor "closed" that an Octobrist worker should not think of seeking advice from a bourgeois source. In spite of the displeasure with which officials would probably regard such a request were they to learn of it (Soviet handbooks are, by definition, superior), the incident suggests that youth personnel are not provided with so complete a set of instructions as one might suspect. The youth program employs no special alchemy, for the simple reason that it has none. And yet, if the individual features of the youth program do not represent innovations in socialization, the program taken as a whole is another matter. I have already cited its politicization and ideological bases as distinguishing features. To these must be added two more characteristics: its seriousness of intent and the psychological atmosphere it creates. Both facets will become evident in the following description of the youth program in action. THE JUNIOR PROGRAM

Rites de passage. Entry into the Pioneers, after three years of preparation in the Octobrist groups, is marked by a solemn ceremony signifying to the Soviet child that he is joining the ranks of older Communist patriots. Marching in procession behind the flag of his newly organized detachment, and in

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the presence of older Pioneers, Komsomol members from the upper grades, teachers, leaders, and parents, he takes the pledge of the Soviet Young Pioneer: I, a Young Pioneer of the Soviet Union, solemnly promise in the presence of my comrades — to warmly love my Soviet motherland — to live, to study, and to struggle as Lenin willed and as the Communist Party teaches.3 Then he promises to obey the "Rules for Pioneers": The Pioneer loves his motherland and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He prepares himself for membership in the Komsomol. The Pioneer reveres the memory of those who have given their lives in the struggle for the freedom and the well-being of the Soviet motherland. The Pioneer is friendly with the children of all the countries of the world. The Pioneer studies diligently and is disciplined and courteous. The Pioneer loves to work and to conserve the national wealth. The Pioneer is a good comrade, who is solicitous of younger children and who helps older people. The Pioneer grows up to be bold and does not fear difficulties. The Pioneer tells the truth and guards the honor of his detachment. The Pioneer strengthens himself and does physical exercises every day. The Pioneer loves nature; he is a defender of planted areas, of useful birds and animals. The Pioneer is an example for all children. From the first grade of school, at age seven, the child is prepared in the Octobrists for the moment when h e will enter the Pioneers three years later. His teachers tell him about the Pioneers, the good and exciting times he will have as a member, the honorable and heroic deeds of Pioneers during the Great Patriotic (Second World) War. H e practices the pledge and the rules. Classroom teachers, assisted by senior Pioneer leaders, present dramatic stories about good Pioneer

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behavior and explain why all children should take them to heart. Exemplary Pioneers from the higher grades visit the new members in their classrooms, and representatives of the city or district Komsomol organizations deliver messages describing the importance of the youth organizations and their special place in Soviet life. During the second half of the schoolyear before initiation into the Pioneers, the prospective members undergo weekly orientation sessions with the teachers. The initiation takes place in a holiday atmosphere. Parents are urged to celebrate the child's coming of age by an exchange of gifts and a party at home where relatives and older children tell the youngsters about their own Pioneer and Komsomol days. Above all, the Pioneer initiation is intended to symbolize the child's entry into Communist society: No one is surprised when the eyes of the already grey-haired man warm to the memory of those far off days when he pronounced the words, "I, a Young Pioneer . . ." Life has already left not a few memorable notches on his heart, but among them this occasion will not be lost. It will be remembered that he became a participant in the lofty cause for which older Komsomol members and Communists struggle . . . and when the future man will have grown up, he will regard his entry into the Pioneers as the source of his social biography.4 Whenever appropriate facilities are available, a suitable location is used to reinforce the mystique of the initiation proceedings. "The meetings at which the new Pioneers take the solemn oath are held not only in schools, but also in museums where there are relics of the Revolution; at monuments in memory of V. I. Lenin, in memory of the Civil War and the Great Patriotic War. Parents, Old Bolsheviks, Heroes of the Soviet Union, distinguished persons from factories, plants, and collective farms, are invited to attend." In the prewar days, as we know from interview materials, a child's initiation into the Pioneers (even more so, into the

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Komsomol) was as likely to be a source of strain and sorrow as of joy for the parents. Numerous instances are cited in the accounts of former Soviet citizens of parents who, because of political hostility toward the regime or general antipathy toward the system, objected to their children's joining a youth organization. Open expression of their sentiments could cause an unpleasant, even dangerous, situation in the household, with children caught between family loyalties and strong outside pressures. Many parents learned to hide their feelings in order to avoid trouble for the children. Nevertheless, one of the reasons most frequently cited by respondents for refusing or resisting membership was their awareness of parental disapproval, openly or indirectly expressed. That this no longer seems to be the case — and that Soviet children and their parents now regard the Pioneer organization with, at worst, indifference — testifies perhaps as well as anything else to the thorough institutionalization of the youth program. The current generation of parents is itself a product of the Soviet system. Building the collective. The teachers and the Pioneer leaders are jointly responsible for binding together the new members into a smoothly functioning collective. Perhaps the most serious challenge with which these people must cope at the outset stems from a feature of the program cited earlier: the dilemma of how to maintain firm control by adults without undermining the children's spontaneous interest in the Pioneer groups. While the proper balance between control and spontaneity is simple enough to state in principle, actual attempts to create it seem to leave youthorganization workers greatly confused. On the one hand, they are told that "anarchy" (that is, incomplete adult control) is a serious sin; on the other, they learn that samodemtelnost (literally, self-activity, but better translated as participant activity) is essential in effective child training and group organization. To judge from the frequent complaints con-

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cerning "violations of samodeiatelnost," it appears that Pioneer personnel lean toward more, rather than less, control in their efforts to strike a balance. As I suggested in the discussion of the collective in Chapter Three, this problem is partly solved by a careful selection of peer leaders by the adults. The formation of the collective begins with the election of officers only after the adults have explained to the new Pioneers the type of person who is acceptable for an "authoritative" position. During the first weeks of the schoolyear, teachers and leaders carefully observe the students in the classroom and at play in order to single out and recommend for election those children who seem best suited to assist them in the collective. If it should turn out that the children select the wrong leaders, there is resort to the simple expedient of calling new elections until the proper slate is finally in office.8 Choosing the best peer leaders is only the beginning, for Pioneer workers must now try to develop in the children an awareness of what it means to be a member of a Soviet youth collective. Children should learn: The ability to accept the general goal of class activities as one's own and the habit of regarding one's own work in the class as a part of the group effort. — Habits and abilities to act cooperatively, to share responsibility, to help one another. — An interest in the affairs of others, an ability to share the joy in a comrade's success and to maintain a critical attitude towards his work; to compare one's own results with those of others.® Three techniques are applied to meet these goals: informal indoctrination sessions in which teachers, leaders, and older Pioneers speak; simple stories assigned to the children, illustrating the traits of model Pioneers; and, most important, meetings held soon after initiation, devoted to the themes of friendship, comradeship, and collective life.

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A model meeting for this purpose has been described. On this occasion older Pioneers invited new members to hear them discuss friendship. The meeting began precisely at the planned hour. The members of the Council of the Brigade directed a campfire session. One of them led the procession, others told about friendship in the Pioneer detachments, others gave exhibitions [on the theme of friendship]. The campfire meeting was festive and merry. All the Pioneers took part in it. The holiday atmosphere, the brightly blazing fire, the warm words of greeting to the student guests [Komsomol members from the local university], the stories which the older Pioneers told about how they were helped by friendship in study, in work, and at play, an exhibition of the work of the Pioneer detachments, the reading of letters [on the theme of friendship] from Chinese Pioneers and the discussion of a reply to them — all of this created an exciting, bold impression among the students, strengthened their friendship, andfirmedup their collective. . . . Pioneers made speeches about how the detachments helped one another in their work, and how the Pioneers increased their friendship with one another.7 The campfire meeting continued with one student showing photographs he had taken. Satirical materials selected from the wall newspaper of an older class showed the new members how some students were criticized for "manifestations of egoism, uncomradely acts, whispering and cheating. A few students recognized themselves in these satires, but laughed along with the others." 8 Next there were games in which everyone participated, and the meeting ended with the singing of favorite Pioneer songs. Declaring the gathering a success, the authors of the description attribute its effectiveness to the fact that "in order to demonstrate the idea of friendship at the meeting, the most varied techniques were employed: the device of emotional influence; the meeting with Komsomol students; praise for outstanding detachments and individual Pioneers; criticism of the insufficiencies of certain students; the use of music, games, and the like."9

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During the meeting, teachers and leaders interfered as little as possible, to impress the new members with the idea that the collective makes its own decisions. On several occasions, however, it was necessary to step in when the meeting did not proceed according to plan. While the new Pioneers are being formally introduced to collective life during their first weeks of membership, older Pioneers in the council of the brigade plan activities for each school quarter under the direct supervision of adult personnel. The adults work out the plan at a series of meetings among the teachers, leaders, the school director, and representatives of the local Komsomol city or district committee, the last acting under instruction from the parallel party unit. After determining the general nature and goals of the year's work, the adults call together the council members to tell them of the themes and activities for the ensuing period. The adults and the Pioneers then draw up detailed plans for projects, dividing responsibility for their fulfillment among the various detachments and links. The latter, in turn, distribute assignments to individual Pioneers. (It is no coincidence that the Pioneers work according to a plan that resembles Soviet economic plans in both spirit and language. The Pioneer plan is intended to illustrate to the children the value of rational calculation and to make members understand that the fulfillment of all assignments, no matter how trivial, will be verified by an appropriate committee. The similarity to economic planning is deliberately used as an educational device.) In the case of the Pioneer brigade whose campfire meeting was described above, the first school quarter was devoted to systematic work on the themes of collectivism and friendship. Each link leader was given responsibility for "establishing active friendship among the members of the link." [One] link read the letter by Ν. K. Krupskaia [Lenin's wife], "On the Friendship and Comradeship of Pioneers." The Pioneers

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expressed their thoughts that genuine friendship obliges one to tell the truth about the negative behavior as well as the positive aspects of a comrade's behavior. The link decided to help its members to correct their shortcomings, and to raise the level of schoolwork. Ira —the leader of the link — promised to help Vania P. in preparing her lessons, since the latter often received . . . [poor grades]. After this meeting, a session was held for parents at which the class director . . . raised before them the question of friendship and cooperation among the children, in order that the parents might help, and not hinder.10 While the goal of establishing the collective is approached partly through such direct techniques as those described here (particularly for new members at the beginning of the schoolyear), the process of maintaining the collective is regarded as unending, both in the Komsomol and the Pioneers. And whatever the activities may be, it is considered essential that each member participate, whatever his level of skill or interest. Although individual differences, in principle, are taken into account in handing out assignments, no one can be left out — even if he wishes to be — for that would lead "inevitably" to the growth of unhealthy, egoistic tendencies and to antisocial attitudes and habits. It is extraordinarily difficult for an outsider to evaluate accurately the atmosphere of the Pioneer collective or to assess its effectiveness and impact on Soviet children. There can be no doubt that the efforts to establish "totalistic" collectives are absolutely serious. Yet in spite of the manipulative techniques described in the Pioneer handbooks, I am inclined to doubt that the typical situation is quite so Machiavellian as it appears to be. For one thing, the harsher measures are addressed primarily to teachers and Pioneer workers who are experiencing more than ordinary difficulties in forming a collective. Second, the tone of the literature — even when it is prescribing these techniques — gives the impression (and it is consistent with my own observations of

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Soviet classrooms) that relations between pupils and their teachers are generally warm and friendly, if not as "democratic" as in American schools. There is an important difference between following the orders of a classroom martinet and obeying because of affectionate respect and a desire to please. The adults' tendency toward overcontrol perhaps stems more from a ritualistic adherence to official formulas than from personally authoritarian orientations toward the children. (Relations between Komsomol officials and rankand-file members in the senior program are another story, as we shall see.) Still, the manipulation of the peer group is a basic principle of youth work, and its application raises some interesting questions about the values and attitudes it creates in members of the Pioneer collective. Some studies of American children and adolescents,11 for example, reveal that the most popular peer-group members tend to embody values of the so-called youth culture — that is, an emphasis on fun, being a "regular guy," and generally opposing or denying the more serious concerns of the adult world. 12 Assuming that there is at least a general similarity between adolescent patterns in these two industrial societies, we may speculate that one great strength of the youth program — from the point of view of a regime that stresses achievement and performance — is that it takes up so much of the children's time and energy in organized, official activities that it discourages the development of a youth culture. Certainly the theorists of the program do not think in such terms, but in effect the program is impeding — at a critical stage of the training process — the coalescence of the semideviant patterns associated with modern youth cultures. This is altogether consistent with the heavy emphasis on teaching children to be serious and responsible and with the insistence that optimism is not to be confused with mere merriness. At the same time, there is some evidence (see Chapters Seven and Eight) that this ap-

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proach is not uniformly successful and that, at least in some instances, the very fact of massive adult supervision has the unintended consequence of solidifying adolescent groups against outside leadership whenever there is a lapse in close supervision. Nevertheless, if the youth collectives in the Pioneers and the Komsomol are at all effective, they are a major source of conformity in Soviet society. And the content of the youth program again reveals how greatly the regime is concerned not merely with external political conformity, but with establishing a narrow range of tastes, manners, and morals that may in the long run be more important in determining the nature of the society. For the youth collectives are quite democratic in a negative sense — in that they intentionally cut down and level the development and expression of individuality and idiosyncracy. Surely they are not the sole or even most important source of conformity (consider, for example, the impact of centrally controlled production of art and literature and, in general, the totalitarian mass culture), but they do occupy an especially strategic position because they operate on a personal level and because they transform the abstract question of obeying official norms into issues of friendship and emotional security. Political indoctrination. Among the high-priority assignments of the youth organizations is extensive political indoctrination. It is worth stressing again that the youth organizations rely upon intensity and persistence in communicating their political messages, rather than upon new or exotic techniques. But it is readily apparent that the intensity itself is so great as to be qualitatively different from conventional "civic" training and that, in this respect, the Soviet Union ranks fairly high among modern dictatorships in the sheer amount of attention devoted to the political training of the new generations. The approach to political indoctrination, although resting

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upon a set of common themes that pervades the entire program, is adjusted according to the age group involved. For the youngest Pioneers, picture and story books provide simple and attractive Soviet versions of history, emphasizing comparisons between the dark, prerevolutionary times and the achievements of the Soviet state and the Communist Party. At meetings of links and detachments, Pioneer workers enlarge upon these books and pamphlet materials, often using prepared talks from leaders' manuals. One such talk, for example, devoted to the patriotic responsibilities of Pioneers, begins Well, here we are at our meeting — let's begin our discussion. We are going to talk about how a young Leninist Pioneer should be. We have a favorite Pioneer song, which you have sung many times: "Get ready for the road For the long years. Take an example from the Communists Work, and study And live for the nation, For the Soviet nation, Pioneer." Have you ever thought about these remarkable words? Have you ever thought about the fine life, so full of nobleness, to which they call you? There is no greater happiness for us, the Soviet people, than to go along the road of the Party of Communists. For you, the rising generation, this road begins with the Pioneer pledge.13 For older Pioneers and members of the Komsomol, systematic use is made of the Soviet mass media as a basis for discussions and reports on political and ideological topics. One member of the council of the brigade, working under the senior leader, is responsible for seeing that each member of the upper-grade detachments regularly reads the national Pioneer (or Komsomol) newspaper and listens to news broadcasts in order that the "members know about the most

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important domestic and international political events of the USSR." 14 At meetings devoted to political information, leaders question the members on what they have read or heard to see whether they understand the material and make the "correct" interpretations. These meetings also provide opportunities for discussions about the advantages of growing up and living in the Soviet Union, for recitals of songs and poems about the motherland, and for reports by members on their research projects on the lives of heroic Komsomol and party members of the past. Participation by the Pioneers in "lifelike" situations is regarded as essential in reinforcing what they have learned from books and in discussions, for "Communist views and convictions" should be rooted in concrete experience. "Participant activity [samodeiatelnost] in the Pioneers . . . exists in order that the loftiest social-political ideas should enter into the life of the student, seizing his emotions, making these ideas close and live for him, [making them] enter into his moral behavior." 15 In one Pioneer brigade, for example, members in every detachment were given an assignment to collect relics of the revolutionary past and to discuss their political and patriotic significance before turning them over to local museums for safekeeping and display. In this way, it was pointed out, they would become acquainted with the "heroism and romanticism" of the Soviet period.16 Excursions to historical buildings, monuments, and battlefields are another common practice in Komsomol and Pioneer indoctrination, as are visits from Old Bolsheviks and war veterans who describe their personal experiences in revolution and war. Until 1953 a large part of the indoctrinational work was aimed at the personal glorification of Stalin and emphasized his great love for children. The unexpected severity of the deStalinization campaign beginning in 1956 occasioned considerable embarrassment and bewilderment and left youth workers with large quantities of outdated program literature.

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In May 1956, a Pioneer worker at a Moscow school told me, that, until new books could be printed, she and her colleagues were under instructions to have the Pioneers pencil out references to Stalin in the old books and pamphlets and to substitute, wherever applicable, the phrase, "the Soviet people." Thus, she explained, "Stalin's victory" in the Great Patriotic War would be changed to "the victory of the Soviet people." I was also told that the shift in the imagery concerning Stalin had profoundly upset and confused the children, for what they had learned only a short while before as absolute and unalterable truth now was held up to derision. This episode, incidentally, underlines one of the dangers inherent in other aspects of totalitarian political indoctrination and, while the immediate consequences of that crisis of confidence have now been outwardly smoothed over, it and similar contradictions may leave permanent scars. The celebrated young poet, Yevgenyi Yevtushenko, has written eloquently in his autobiography of how the desanctification of Stalin caused an emotional and political trauma for many of the most thoughtful people in his generation.17 The particular content of the indoctrinational message varies from time to time in accordance with the official Soviet line, for the youth program is concerned with current agitation as well as with general belief. Discussions at youth-organization meetings reflect this. For example, if the party is carrying on a national campaign to increase corn yields or to change the pattern of agricultural management, then the Pioneers and members of the Komsomol (even if they live in the city) will hear about the campaign and learn how they can make a contribution toward the realization of the party's goals. An extraordinary amount of attention is devoted to instilling a negative image of the West, especially of the United States. While the severity of the attack depends to some extent on the state of the cold war at a given time, a hard core

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of anti-Western themes is an enduring feature of indoctrination in the youth organizations. Invidious comparisons are drawn between the Soviet Union and the bourgeois world with respect to economic progress, cultural level, the treatment of ethnic minorities, policy toward colonial areas, and so forth. A frequent practice is to require that Komsomol and Pioneer members prepare projects, such as collecting news clippings for scrapbooks, to compare what the Communists have done for Soviet children with the suffering experienced by the exploited masses of the non-Soviet world. Once, during a visit to a Soviet classroom, a group of Pioneers proudly showed me (before they realized I was an American) a prize poster drawn by a member of their link depicting a shabbily clothed newsboy against a background of New York City skyscrapers. It contained the following caption: " Ί could not study, so I sold newspapers.' Study is an unattainable dream for children living in the capitalist countries of the world. In such large countries as England, France, and America, one must pay tuition fees for an education, and therefore almost no new schools are ever built. In Africa, in the southern region of the Sudan, only one out of every 2,000 children attends a school. In Indonesia, altogether 3,000,000 children do not go to school." The Pioneers explained to me that their senior leader had gleaned this information from a recent issue of Pionerskaia pravda and suggested that they make a poster. In addition to political indoctrination in the usual sense, the youth program is greatly involved in the propagation of the Marxist-Leninist world view and with the inculcation of antireligious sentiment. While the burden of such instruction is borne by the school curriculum, the youth organizations assist by providing extracurricular study sessions and circles (kruzhki) of amateur technologists and young naturalists, in which Pioneers and Komsomol members are supposed to apply scientific principles to laboratory and field situations.

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Although the main purpose of these groups is to afford supplementary training in the development of work habits and skills, they also serve as vehicles of indoctrination. For example, in the circles of young naturalists, Pioneers and Komsomol members conduct and record simple experiments in plant growth, genetics, and the like, then give reports in which they explain how their experimental methods support a materiahst world outlook and help to refute religious superstitions and prejudices. Striving, achievement, performance. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the youth program is its extraordinary emphasis on the inculcation of work and achievement values. Even a cursory examination of the official literature reveals that more discussion and exhortation are devoted to this than to any other topic. And there is no doubt that the distribution of time and resources in the youth program itself closely follows this emphasis. Among Pioneers and schoolage members of the Komsomol, the youth program is enlisted to encourage high-level classroom and study performance — both as an end in itself, to promote that mastery of knowledge required by an advanced industrial system, and in order to instill habits and attitudes conducive to persistent labor. In the school, the youth organizations encourage scholastic excellence by enlisting the collective to provide mutual assistance in study and serve as a source of organized peer pressure toward serious work. Pioneers serve as an example of organization and accuracy in their study; they are not late and do not fail to do their assignments; they are always attentive during lessons, do all lessons, and observe strictly the rules for students. The Pioneer not only studies well, but behaves himself in an exemplary manner, and struggles decisively against the smallest infraction of discipline during lessons, against carelessness, against the laziness of other students, against cheating and poor behavior unworthy of Soviet students. In the solidary Pioneer collective, each student's successful

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study creates joy and pride in the entire collective. Poor performance and the [unacceptable] behavior of certain students is regarded by the collective as an affront to its honor. . . . Laziness, lack of discipline, on the part of individual students meets with a stern judgment from the collective.18 Since all Soviet students are assumed to be capable of meeting the scholastic demands made upon them, a failure or a low grade is interpreted as evidence of disinterest, laziness, or poor work habits — all corrigible by the benign efforts of teachers and the youth organizations. One contribution of the youth organizations in this connection is the practice of assigning a superior student, as part of the "societal work" required by membership, to assist a lagging comrade in his studies. This is said not only to assist the poor student, but to develop in the superior student a sense of personal responsibility for raising the performance level of his collective and to train him to act in the same spirit later in life when the question is not one of grades but of improving his collective's production record in the factory or office. (This mutual assistance should not be confused with the practice — long since discarded in the Soviet educational system — of letting the best students help the entire class, for example, on a collective examination. Each student is responsible for his own work, and the youth organizations provide assistance only in study and preparation.) The student who is assigned as a tutor, therefore, must report to the entire collective on the progress of his charge, for he gives assistance as a representative of the entire collective, not as an individual. In the case of "undisciplined students," those whose behavior is unacceptable or whose low grades result from indifference or laziness, the teacher uses the collective to mobilize pressures toward effecting a change in attitude. Such cases are discussed at open meetings, where the recalcitrant Pioneer or Komsomol member is warned that his comrades will not tolerate unworthy behavior. Shaming is

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emphasized as a device to promote conformity with group standards. Offenders are criticized at meetings of the cell or link, and their names sometimes are posted in the wall newspaper for all to see. In exceptionally serious cases they are deprived of the right to participate in group activities until they demonstrate repentance. If these techniques fail, youthorganization leaders may invoke more stringent measures. Some Pioneer units are reported to have had considerable success in working together with the families of poorly motivated students in order to carry the pressure of shame into the home. The case is cited of a Pioneer girl who was receiving consistently low grades because she did not think that schoolwork was "sufficiently interesting or important." Her Pioneer collective, on the advice of the senior leader, sent a letter to her brother, a serviceman, asking him to criticize his sister for this indifference. His reply to the collective — read at an open meeting — scolded his sister for her poor performance and reminded her that, if he had a military obligation to the motherland and to the Communist Party, then she too had a patriotic duty to study hard and well in preparation for adult citizenship.19 This stress on educational achievement is not primarily a question of knowledge for its own sake; on the contrary, it aims at the creation of the technical competence necessary in the industrial world. Its instrumental nature is made amply evident by the lessons taught in the Pioneers and the Komsomol. A major theme is that basic aphorism of modern industrial society: time and knowledge are money (or, perhaps more appropriately in the Soviet context, socialist wealth). Just as the twin concepts of efficiency and productivity have been infused with the force of categorical imperatives in the classical capitalist society, so too they occupy a central place in the morality taught to Soviet youth. A sampling of topics discussed at typical Komsomol and Pioneer meetings, as described in the official literature, illustrates this emphasis:

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Knowledge is strength. Knowledge is as important as a rifle in battle. Study is your job. Learn how to study. If you lose an hour, you will not make up the time in a whole year. The price of a minute. Save each minute.20 The Komsomol and the Pioneers attempt to foster such values through activities designed to make members more conscious of their work habits and time budgets. In one school Komsomol organization, members were required to keep detailed diaries throughout the year and periodically to turn over their records to a committee of Komsomol "rationalizers," who checked them for evidence of wasted or inefficiently used time. Then, in personal consultations with committee members or at open meetings, each record would be reviewed and recommendations offered for improvements. The persuasive force of the collective was brought to bear: "In a class where each student feels his firm, unbreakable link with the collective, feels his responsibility towards it, . . . the force of the student collective headed by the Komsomol will help to instill a conscious attitude toward lessons, will create a proper style of work among the students, and will inculcate the habit of systematic labor." 21 The youthorganization workers regularly remind the students that their studies are important primarily as a prelude to holding a job in the adult world of work, and that the ultimate test of the individual is his willingness and ability to put his knowledge to practical use in the service of the socialist motherland. The realm of work and labor is depicted as romantic and exciting. Each job, however mean or unrewarding it may appear to be, is glorious if it contributes to the Soviet cause. Thus, for example, a meeting on the theme "The Kalinin Railroad." Its main goal was to inculcate a feeling of Soviet patriotism and to give the children a sense of the heroism and romanticism

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of work and to arouse a serious interest in the productive occupations of their parents. During the preparation for the meeting, the detachment went on a trip to the Golytsino depot. There, the children became acquainted with the facilities and the operations of the section. . . . At the meeting, one Pioneer's father, the chief of a railroad station, spoke. Reminding the Pioneers that our country is a major rail power, he told about our outstanding rail network, operating ceaselessly winter and summer, and about its great significance during wartime. Then, citing examples of the creative labor of outstanding workers and innovators of rail transport, he showed what fascinating possibilities lie before our young people in working on the railroads of our motherland. In conclusion, he called upon the Pioneers to help the railroads.22 Another method used to familiarize children with the workaday world is to take them on group visits to industrial and agricultural enterprises. The excursions and tours are a long-standing item in the Komsomol-Pioneer training repertory, but have been especially employed in recent years in connection with efforts to bring practical, on-the-job experience closer to the schools. Indeed, the Komsomol's Central Committee has instructed Komsomol and Pioneer units to establish permanent relationships with one or more industrial enterprises or collective farms. 23 One of the experiences under this plan is described as follows: Although [these particular] Pioneers have often passed through the [factory] gate, each time they feel a festive excitement. . . . These ten-to-twelve-year-old children are going to the factory where their fathers, brothers, and mothers work. The children also have serious business here. Enriching the knowledge that they have received during school lessons, they are becoming acquainted with the productive process, and sometimes even stand at a machine getting practice. Now the Pioneer detachment has come, not for an excursion [as in the past] but for the purpose of participating side by side

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with the workers in socially useful tasks. In the Red Corners of the shops, Pioneer flags, horns, drums, children's libraries, diaries, and albums have appeared. And many of the factory's Komsomol members have begun to wear red Pioneer neckties. They are Pioneer leaders. . . . The Pioneers will see at closer range the life of the workers' collective, will understand the meaning of such words as socialist competition, work enthusiasm, plan fulfillment; they will discover by whose energies our country is being enriched.24 Full participation in factory life represents an ideal that the youth program for junior participants will probably not attain. It requires time and facilities that most factory directors are unwilling or unable to provide. Nevertheless, that they should be so urged does reveal how much importance is attached to the idea that good work habits and correct attitudes are best instilled through practical participation. Even without the factory and farm program, the youth organizations already make substantial provisions for participation in the form of "socially useful" labor projects. These projects take the form of assignments in which members are supposed to learn the value of hard and efficient work. A project may involve merely a token amount of work, such as preparing a brief article for the wall newspaper, or a more serious assignment, such as a summer's service on a nearby collective farm. Projects are designed to give the individual Pioneer or Komsomol member responsibility for its completion and, whenever possible, should involve hard physical labor. This system of work assignments is thought to create an appreciation for the significance of labor in the construction of the Communist order, to instill a respect for physical property, and to nurture positive psychological qualities: "Work itself serves as the finest means to inculcate a love of work, to overcome inertia, passivity and manifestations of laziness." 25 Further, "The well thought-out organization of socially useful labor for Pioneers is a fine school for

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the breeding of moral qualities. In the process of socially useful labor, children gain practical mastery of that which is most important in the Soviet man: the ability to subordinate personal interests to the cause." 26 Some of the simpler projects are organized in the school or the Pioneer camp — such assignments as cleaning laboratory equipment or tending flower and vegetable gardens. More ambitious undertakings are arranged by youth-organization officials in conjunction with various local agencies, as when a factory director requests assistance from the youth organizations in carrying out a scrap-metal drive, or Pioneers are assigned to assist invalids or wounded war veterans. Every work project is supposed to be a concrete, practical lesson in Communist morality and should be combined with informal talks by leaders on the value of work, how future performance can be improved, and how the individual Pioneer needs to learn better cooperation. The technological and other study circles serve similar aims, although they are geared as well to the teaching and mastery of specific skills. They cover a variety of interests and include circles for young chemists, physicists, biologists, mathematicians, electricians, and automobile and tractor mechanics. The following principle underlies these groups: Technical activity helps the Pioneers to deepen and to strengthen their knowledge of the basis of such sciences as mathematics, physics, chemistry, and allows them to carry these into practice. The young technologist learns that without elementary mathematical calculations, for example, it is impossible to build even the simplest model. . . . Children's technology . . . plays an important part in preparing the children in constructive and technological habits. It helps the school to fulfill the task of preparing the students for future practical activity.27 The foregoing depiction of Komsomol and Pioneer work among school-age children indicates the general approach

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of the youth program at the junior level. A complete and detailed inventory — ranging from the way the youngsters parade on holidays to the words of the songs they sing at meetings — would assume encyclopedic proportions and add little to our knowledge of how the youth program works. As I have argued, the specific activities organized under the program are far less important than are the general patterns into which they are combined, the assumptions that underlie their application, and the consistency with which they are employed. It is also important to remember that the Soviet child is exposed to this intensive program for at least five of what Soviet psychologists consider to be his most impressionable years; if one also includes the earlier, preparatory experiences in the Octobrists, then the total length of participation in the junior program is eight years. After completing the Pioneer-Komsomol school program, many youngsters end their formal affiliation, even though the youth organizations continue to exercise considerable influence through officially sponsored activities that include nonmembers. But increasing proportions of young citizens keep their membership and go on to the senior program of the Komsomol. THE SENIOR PROGRAM

Although there is substantial continuity between the programs for school-age and older members of the youth organizations, the emphasis in the senior program shifts from longrange training goals to more immediate concerns with regulating the activities of the young and exercising control over their political attitudes. The general psychological assumptions of the program are, to be sure, the same for both age groups, but the senior program is more specialized and imposes greater demands upon its members. In effect, there are three senior programs: one for the students of universities and other higher educational institutions; a second for young

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employees and workers on farms, in factories, and in other enterprises and organizations; and a third for military personnel of Komsomol age. Each is adapted to the special requirements of its membership. The Komsomol in higher educational institutions. Virtually every student in Soviet higher educational institutions is a member of the Komsomol; for all practical purposes, affiliation with the organization is a prerequisite both for admission and for continued study. Not only is a recommendation from the Komsomol required of applicants, but once they are admitted the Komsomol exercises enormous power over the determination of their continued good standing, their chances of completing their education, their vacation activities, and the kinds of career opportunities available upon graduation. Generally speaking, the range of themes in Komsomol work at institutions of higher learning is similar to that in the junior program, with appropriate adjustments made for an older and better-educated membership. Patriotism, political orthodoxy, social responsibility, and instrumental orientations toward work and study, self-discipline, subordination to the collective, and other principles of Communist morality continue to be stressed. The kinds of meetings and activities described in the previous section remain as staples of the training effort, although the fun and games atmosphere of earlier years is largely replaced by a more serious and demanding approach to the task of producing new Soviet men and women. Outside specialists and "agitators," assigned by the higher Komsomol organs on a full-time basis, conduct compulsory sessions that feature moralistic lectures and political materials. At one institute, Komsomol meetings for a typical semester included such themes as "How to raise the quality of students' work"; "Our strength is in the collective"; "Are there philistines among us?"; "Science demands great passion and extreme effort from man." 28 The use of the collective as a major instrument of social

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control and enforced conformity is handled in much the same spirit as in the junior program. A t the same institute, Meetings on the theme, "Are there philistines among us?" were carried on in many of the departments. . . . Here, some of the Komsomol members would be strongly reprimanded for unconscientious attitudes toward their studies, for dishonorably giving up on some [Komsomol] assignments or projects, for having an un-Komsomol-like attitude toward others. For example, there was a company of several persons who opposed themselves to the collective. Together, these students cut lectures, did not hand in their assignments on time, did not pay attention to the criticism of their comrades. At the meeting, the collective indicated to these students the unworthiness of their behavior and made them confess their errors.29 A former student at Moscow University, who left the Soviet Union in 1957, described to me the role of the Komsomol in political surveillance at that institution: Another thing is political pressure. In other words, if you are guilty of a deviation or error or whatever it is, or saying something wrong, then the place you would be taken to for account would be the Komsomol. First to the bureau and, if it's very serious, and if you're about to be expelled, they will put you before the Komsomol meeting. [Question: Who would send you? Who would say that there was some trouble, a member of the Komsomol or a professor?] Professors wouldn't know anything about it. There's no contact, not much social contact between the students and professors. It would be another member of the Komsomol, another student, an orthodox fellow student who believes that you are doing something wrong. Not only in a political sense but also, let us say, for drunkenness, for hooliganism, for making the life of your fellow students in the dormitory impossible. The first instance, the first place you will be called for account would be the Komsomol bureau, and then the Komsomol meeting of the year [that is, the university class]. Especially in the nontechnical courses of study (but ultimately in all areas of scholarship), the very nature of the educational enterprise — even in a totalitarian society — in-

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volves the necessity of granting to students a certain minimum of intellectual autonomy; this of course poses a constant threat to the regime's capacity to enforce conformity in the realm of ideas. Moreover, since graduates of the universities and other educational institutions are likely to occupy the more important posts and jobs in the system, it is not surprising that the political views of students should be regarded as rather sensitive matters and an area of particular concern. This concern is reflected, first of all, in the policy that the maximum number of students be included in the Komsomol. The proportion of Komsomol membership at higher educational institutions, as has been pointed out, is virtually 100 percent, an enrollment proportion unmatched in the other divisions of the senior program. The rigidity of organization and the direct participation of relevant units of the Communist Party in the educational and surveillance process are also indicative of the importance attached to maintaining political and ideological orthodoxy. An extensive division of labor among professional Komsomol workers and officials and the assignment of specially trained, salaried personnel to carry out the program of indoctrination further lessen the likelihood that any student will escape the influence of the Komsomol. According to one official source, "The Komsomol gives great assistance to the Party and to the faculty of higher educational institutions in political-educational work among the students. This work is one of the most important tasks of the higher schools, which turn out specialists for a variety of sectors of communist construction — directors of production, political organizers, and educators of the toilers."30 The basis for political indoctrination in the Komsomol is the study of works by Marx and Lenin, official Soviet interpretations of them, and their application to the current party line. Although required courses in political subjects are included in the curricula for students in all faculties, the

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principal educational function of the Komsomol is to reinforce classroom teaching through compulsory extracurricular reading, lectures, seminars, and study groups. At the same time, these Komsomol-sponsored sessions provide an excellent opportunity to check on students' political attitudes by requiring members to participate in small groups where their comments can be closely evaluated. This is one of the considerations behind the insistence that Komsomol "seminars are one of the most effective means of mastery by the students of revolutionary theory, of the active formation of the world view of youth. The seminars are the place for creative discussions, in which all of the members must participate." 31 Against those whose participation is grudging, or whose political views are questionable, group pressures are invoked: "The task of the Komsomol group is to influence backward individuals by methods of social pressure." 32 [In preparing for a Komsomol seminar on the] work of V. I. Lenin . . . the students study materials on the activity of the Communist and workers' parties. . . . The collective did not permit a single instance of poor preparation or a refusal to answer in the seminar escape its attention. The group organizers provided an example of the creative study of Marxism-Leninism. They participated actively in the discussion of questions posed by the teachers, supplemented the answers of their comrades, and made note of the insufficiencies of these answers, creating in the seminar an atmosphere of principled criticism and self-criticism.33 As for students who are reluctant to cooperate, "The Komsomol organization carries on a ruthless struggle against such attitudes towards the study of Marxist-Leninist theory, considering such loafing and refusal to answer at the seminar as a manifestation of political illiteracy, unworthy of a Komsomol member. In the majority of groups, such behavior is subjected to a harsh judgment by the collective. . . . [There are] special meetings at which all cases of violations of discipline and poor preparation for the seminar are discussed." 34

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In addition to general indoctrination in Marxism-Leninism, the Komsomol undertakes to acquaint students with official views on current matters and to remind them that their studies are a privilege they must repay by assisting in the realization of the party's policies. Special efforts are made to associate ideological training with the student's particular course of study. For example, geography students at Moscow University are required to attend lectures, sponsored by the Komsomol, on the problem of materialism and idealism in geographical science; physics students participate in Komsomol meetings devoted to such topics as "a critique of idealism in contemporary physics" and "the materialistic treatment of space and time." 35 Moreover, the Komsomol does not restrict its indoctrination program to classroom or working hours, but follows students into the dormitories with supplementary lectures on political topics, held periodically in student meeting rooms. Because the youth program is committed to the principle of "participant activity" as the best means of transforming views and convictions into thoroughly internalized attitudes, the Komsomol demands direct participation by members in political-education projects, "which broadens their political horizon, teaches them responsibility before the collective, and develops organizational habits in them." 36 To this end, members are assigned a variety of compulsory activities, the most important of which is lecturing at public evening courses, at factories and enterprises, and in hometowns or villages during vacation periods. Themes for the lectures are determined by Komsomol and party officials, who also participate in editing and censoring the texts prepared by students. Other typical Komsomol assignments include work details at the school or university, summer work at a factory, and leading a Pioneer detachment. Dormitory life and personal conduct away from the classroom receive special attention from the Komsomol. Since all

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behavior is interpreted as fundamentally political in its consequences, student attitudes toward family life, sex, and morality come within the province of Komsomol surveillance. Subjects such as "love and marriage in the socialist society" are pursued at Komsomol dormitory meetings, and the organization dispenses advice on such matters as family relationships and the proper use of leisure time. The extent and nature of the Komsomol's role in social life at Moscow University is suggested by the former student and Komsomol member whose remarks on political control were quoted above: And then there's the unbearable interference with the intimate aspects of life. Particularly in the case of girls, but also in the case of boys, when, well, someone was known for sleeping around, in the dormitory or even outside, in extreme form, well, someone would be called to account and put before the meeting. These are things people are interested to find out all about, and at the meeting they would say, "Tell us how you do it?" Usual curiosity. These are the things which usually start out of normal jealousy. Mostly the girls, of course, would get jealous and report to the Komsomol and the thing would be checked, and of course it would happen in eight cases out of ten that they would tell her to go to hell. But in two cases they would find out that the boy is leading a very free life. And then the thing would start. There is the famous case of Z., who was a very brilliant translator at the Institute for Foreign Languages. He was a very brilliant translator and made very good money and a pleasant looking young man and then they apprehended him not exactly in the act, but almost, and then he was dragged before the Komsomol meeting and told to account for his behavior. It turned out that he had promised to something like six or seven girls in his own class (it was his bad mistake) that he was going to marry them and slept with them under this pretense. You see, this was a huge tragedy. He was kicked out of the Institute and out of the Komsomol. But this is a thing which is tremendously resented. The point is that the unpleasantness of it, if someone reports you, and then they start asking questions, even if nothing happens, these questions are awfully awkward to answer sometimes, particularly if people are very young. [Question: Was interference

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in private life by the Komsomol at Moscow University a widespread practice?] It was widespread enough, particularly for those people who lived a marginal existence, not really being loyal inside and knowing that there will be enough grudges against them if someone wants to collect all these grudges and present a case. It was far safer for those people not to make dates at the university, but to make dates outside. This is one particular aspect of life which everyone is interested in tremendously — who sleeps with whom, why and how and when. And that provides the Komsomol with a lot of incentive to start that type of thing. This function of the Komsomol in safeguarding dormitory morality is also reported in the youth press, though in far less graphic language. In sum, the Komsomol at institutions of higher education is the regime's principal instrument for the promotion of adherence to official norms — social, political, ideological, and moral — among the student population. It is especially concerned with preventing the kind of "individualism" that might lead to attitudes outside the range of official approval and seeks so to enmesh the individual in a carefully regulated group life that escape becomes most difficult. The following description of how one Komsomol group was formed over the years exemplifies the Komsomol's aim: During our first days at the Institute, our group was poorly organized and unfriendly. The students, who had come from different corners of the country, knew one another but little. . . . Each one thought only of himself. . . . At a Komsomol meeting, discussing the plan of work, we decided to run an evening of leisure. In the program were included a speech, individual performances, and dances. Five Komsomol members undertook the preparation. The speech was entirely unsuccessful. The individual performances were even less well received: two students gave recitals, two played musical numbers. . . . It was uninteresting. . . . The excitement started only when there was a contest for the best hopak dance, in which everyone — without exception — had to

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participate. By the end of the evening, the kids were already enthusiastically discussing plans for the following evening of leisure. Many fine suggestions were made. For the new evening, fifteen people were called upon to participate in the preparation. Since that time we began to go to the theater, movies, concerts, to exchange opinions on books that we read — collectively. When the teacher of Marxism-Leninism talked about the revolutionary movement . . . we conducted a collective tour to the Historical Museum. More than three years have passed. . . . It is impossible to remember without a smile our inept plans before the organization of the first meeting. . . . Now we discuss all the events in the life of the group at the Komsomol meetings. The students boldly criticize one another, and no one is insulted.37 The Komsomol in industry and agriculture. The work of the Komsomol in industry and agriculture is designed to encourage the fulfillment and overfulfillment of economic plans. As in the case of the organizations for school-age children and university students, Komsomol units in economic enterprises and on collective and state farms are devoted, in principle, to controlling the young person's whole behavior and political outlook by the manipulation of group pressure. But in practice the efforts of the Komsomol with young members of the labor force are so overwhelmingly taken up with immediate problems of production that the broader training tasks of the youth program are all but displaced. The Komsomol organizations of industrial enterprises, construction, and transportation, called upon to educate worker youth in the spirit of communism, should play a large role in the fulfillment of their [work] tasks. To assure highly productive labor from each young man and woman worker, to assure that they struggle actively for the fulfillment of production plans, increase the pace of production, effect a lowering of costs, observe the strictest economy of raw materials and supplies, further the introduction of new, more complete, and progressive methods of work — such is the task of the Komsomol organizations of enterprises. . . .

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Above all, the first and most important question of Komsomol committee work should be a constant concern that each young worker fulfill and overfulfill work norms. The Komsomol organization should follow how young workers perform, take a constant interest in their attitudes toward work, their labor discipline. . . . The Komsomol organization should also see to it that each young worker feels a responsibility for his work, for the fulfillment of his production assignment, for his debt to the motherland, to the people. The Komsomol should be concerned with the creation for youth of all the conditions essential to the fulfillment of work norms.38 As this mandate suggests, the role of the Komsomol in industry (and on farms) is little different from the one played by the labor unions, party organizations, and, indeed, by management itself; like them, the Komsomol is committed to encouraging workers toward ever greater production accomplishments, while blocking or displacing the potential capacity of workers to organize against management and the plan. What distinguishes the Komsomol from these other agencies is the fact that it "specializes" in young workers and serves as an additional source of pressure to exploit their labor effectively. The Komsomol's activities among young workers and peasants fall into five principal categories: education, socialist competition, surveillance, checking on management, and labor recruitment. In each of these areas the Komsomol's goal is the stimulation of higher production. Most of the examples offered here are taken from industrial enterprises, but they can apply as well to farms. Education in the Komsomol's program for working youth includes political indoctrination, but it plays a less important part than it does in the programs for school and university youth. Concern with production leaves less time for political work; moreover, the preservation of ideological orthodoxy among workers is considered not to be so urgent as among groups whose education may introduce them to potentially

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dangerous ideas. To be sure, whatever political work is carried on is quite seriously intended, but it is more likely to consist of having a Komsomol leader read a newspaper story aloud at lunchtime than to involve highly theoretical lectures. The other aspects of Komsomol educational activities in the enterprise are addressed directly to the work process. One involves the assimilation of young workers, especially those who are employed for the first time, to the atmosphere and routine of the industrial plant; the other is the sponsorship of specialized technical training to raise occupational performance. The problem of introducing new workers to their jobs is present to some degree in all industrial societies. The separation of the work role from many other routine social relationships and the relatively long periods of dependency and training before adult work participation create a sometimes sharp discontinuity. The Soviet case is further complicated by the recent rural origins of a large portion of the labor force, although this is a factor of decreasing importance, and by the rapidity of industrialization. As we have seen, the youth program attempts to reduce the consequences of this discontinuity by its stress on production and technological values during the schoolyears, but even the most intensive in-school training cannot eliminate the problem altogether, given the nature of the modern industrial order. For this reason, the Komsomol has a most important contribution to make in easing the new worker into his first job experience. However, the Komsomol does not seem to exploit this potential to any great extent. Press reports and other sources give the impression that Komsomol organizations in industry — and in agriculture — are weak links in the youth program. The difficulty appears to stem from a shortsighted concern with the immediate problems of production and discipline at the cost of possibly rich, longer-range contributions that the Komsomol might make in this area, and it is compounded by

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the fact that factories and farms are less favorable settings for Komsomol work than are the schools and universities. In any event, since the gap between blueprint and realization is especially large in this aspect of the youth program, Soviet descriptions of what the Komsomol is supposed to do in industry and agriculture should be regarded more as statements of intention than as records of accomplishment. The Komsomol is supposed to serve as an intermediary between the new worker and the impersonality of the work situation, especially in larger enterprises. The Komsomol is said to afford opportunities for young workers to associate with their peers in various organized activities and to provide a sense of personal contact and solidarity with other young workers in the plant, both on and away from the job. The Komsomol is also charged with the responsibility of creating in workers an appreciation for their contribution to the overall productive process, in order to counteract the fragmentation and extreme specialization of the modern enterprise. Through lectures, tours to other parts of the plant, meetings and leisure activities, the young worker is supposed to develop an awareness of the finished product, its importance in the national economy and in the development of Communism so that he may raise his level of "economic consciousness." 39 Moreover, the Komsomol is supposed to acquaint its members with the traditions and history of their enterprise by organizing projects to study factory archives and to encourage young workers to emulate the "revolutionary contributions" of their predecessors. Away from work, the Komsomol is officially responsible for providing leisure-time activities, for regulating living conditions in workers' dormitories, and for representing the interests of young workers in securing from management adequate living facilities. Here, as might be expected, the Komsomol faces serious obstacles even in the best circumstances, for, as in the case of labor unions, it has no substantial power

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to affect management policies; the result is that the Komsomol actually does very little to protect its members. At best, the official role of the Komsomol in upgrading the condition of young workers seems to be largely ignored in favor of more traditional practices of "initiating" the new worker. Komsomol officials have bitterly complained that in many enterprises there is a well-enforced custom whereby the novice worker uses his first pay envelope to buy drinks for the foreman and his fellow workers in the shop, while the Komsomol stands by helplessly.40 The Komsomol apparently is more successful in its promotion of technical education among young workers, since there is always the prospect of improving one's occupational standing. It encourages them to enroll in courses offered at enterprises under Komsomol auspices or at local evening schools, and arranges meetings and conferences where outstanding workers are supposed to share their knowledge, experience, and enthusiasm with their younger colleagues. Socialist competition organized by the Komsomol is, again, little different from the competitive devices fostered by management, the unions, and the party itself. It is a technique of raising productivity through contests within or between enterprises. While the Komsomol concentrates its efforts on the younger workers, inevitably it draws in others as well. The all-union Komsomol uses new economic plans, patriotic holidays, or major political events to announce national competitions among young workers in one or more sectors of the economy. Typically, these announcements call for higher goals and are followed by intensive campaigns in the youth press reporting extraordinary accomplishments and exhorting all to emulate them. There is evidence that at least some of the records are trumped up by the authorities in order to raise output norms,41 but no doubt some are genuine. A major campaign in the late 1950s in connection with corn production, for example, was handled in this fashion:

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The Central Committee of the Komsomol, in conjunction with the Ministry of Agriculture, has summed up the results of the all-union socialist competition of Komsomol members and youth for the cultivation of the highest corn yields in 1957, in which more than 100,000 . . . took part. For large corn harvests, more than 100 primary organizations, about 2,000 links [a collective-farm work group] and corn harvesters have . . . received awards. [The announcement then lists in detail the records of outstanding farms and Komsomol organizations.] According great importance to the participation of youth in the cultivation of corn, the Komsomol Central Committee has obliged all raikoms, obkoms, and kraikoms of the Komsomol and the Komsomol Central Committees of the union republics to secure the active participation of all rural Komsomol organizations, and of all youth. . . . Komsomol organizations are now obliged during the winter to conduct instruction for youth in the agronomy of corn cultivation; to conduct major work in publicizing and propagandizing the experience of outstanding links . . . to organize meetings between youth and the best links, brigades, and chairmen of collective farms, and also to arrange visits by young people with outstanding masters in order that they may become familiar with their experience on the spot.42 Similar competitions are organized in industry. For example, the Komsomol organized a contest between a Leningrad and a Moscow factory to see which one could overfulfill its production quota in honor of a forthcoming congress of the all-union Komsomol, and the outstanding worker at one factory "promised not to rest" until she had taught her coworkers everything she had learned on the job.43 More generally, bulletin boards, oral reports and meetings, and reports in the local and national press praise those who succeed in socialist competition and shame poor performance, indifference, or laziness. The surveillance functions of the Komsomol in industry and agriculture stem from the quite reasonable assumption that the life of the worker away from his job has important

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effects upon his labor performance. According to the official literature of the youth program, the ideal Komsomol organizer or officer knows each member of his unit so well that he can serve as a kind of informal personnel expert for the plant management. In practice, however, Komsomol officials are enmeshed in the details of organizational work and the number of young people they must cope with is large; realization of this task, therefore, seems to be the exception rather than the rule. Usually the Komsomol manages to take up only extreme cases, such as chronic drunkenness or hooliganism among young workers, and then not always with success. Nevertheless, the omnipresence of the Komsomol organization, reinforced by the insistence that the youth program has the right to go into anything from an unhappy love affair to poor manners on streetcars, 44 probably does have some effect on the private lives of members and other young workers. While Komsomol organizations are categorically forbidden to interfere in enterprise policymaking, they do play an important part in checking on management, supplementing other agencies of state and party control in factories and on farms. One formal channel of Komsomol activity is based on an arrangement that permits local organizations to bring before the relevant party unit or ministerial organ questions of inefficiency and waste; however, Komsomol officers are reported to resort to this practice only rarely, 45 probably because they are reluctant to become involved in the complexities of interbureaucratic disputes. A more frequently employed device consists of the "light cavalry raids," unannounced inspection tours by Komsomol teams designed to combat cheating and waste. Although the raids are not directed exclusively against management (workers themselves sometimes are the targets) management is held responsible for the elimination of production inefficiencies. A manager or foreman who refuses to cooperate with the Komsomol, or who

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is discovered to b e engaged in an illegal activity, runs the risk of being reported to higher authorities or having his delinquency publicized and criticized in the Komsomol press. Komsomol raids are now a quite widespread practice in the Soviet economy and seem to be highly valued as a deterrent to corruption as well as to ordinary inefficiency. A recent report from the Soviet press provides an example of such use of the Komsomol organization on collective farms in the Krasnodar territory: In Pavlovskaia District many young patriots have participated in the Komsomol's raids for the protection of the people's wealth. The Young Communists S. Anapchenko, A. Rudenko, V. Morozov, and many others on the Russia Collective Farm have shown vigilance, initiative, and resourcefulness in the protection of the harvest. Komsomol members on the Kirov Collective Farm, Korenovskaia District, working jointly with Communists, have organized posts and motor patrol groups for the protection of the harvest. Petty thieves have not been brought into court. The Young Communists have photographed them and posted their photos with the caption: "Here they are, the pilferers of collective farm wealth!" They have become the subject for discussion at meetings and in wall newspapers. Many of those who have found themselves in the "pillory," as the collective fanners themselves aptly call it, begged with tears in their eyes that the photos be taken down and promised to work honestly. But the Komsomol patrols have apprehended not only petty thieves. They have also caught some inveterate crooks. For example, one night a certain Ignaty Shcherbak was caught in the act of committing a crime. He was living luxuriously, had his own private car, slept during the day, and stole collective-farm goods at night. When Shcherbak was apprehended, 300 kg. of stolen corn ears were found in his car. At the request of the . . . residents, the swindler was arrested and tried and his car confiscated. The Komsomol patrols helped the Kirov Collective Farm not only to raise but also to defend a rich harvest. . . . The application of the new law on intensifying the struggle against swindlers, loafers, and antisocial and parasitic elements must be combined with an increase in vigilance and with a strengthening of the protection of public wealth. The Komsomol

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committees of state and collective farms can and must play a great role here. The Komsomol committees of collective and state farms and enterprises must make wide use of such tested forms of Komsomol and youth participation in the protection of public wealth as Komsomol posts, Komsomol patrol groups for the protection of the fields, and Komsomol "light cavalry" raids.46 Clearly, Komsomol raids and patrols are not always greeted with enthusiasm by farm and factory managers, for while the Komsomol's efforts to reduce worker inefficiency may be welcome, the managers are often embarrassed when they themselves are implicated. It is no surprise that they do not always cooperate with the Komsomol when their own interests are at stake. A typical complaint by Komsomol officials against management is that "it happens, unfortunately, that the observations of the raiders . . . cause displeasure in some careless business executives . . . The first reaction of such an executive to the remarks of the Komsomol members is, 'It's not your affair, kids.'" 47 The life of the Komsomol organizer is not always an easy one. The Komsomol makes a further important economic contribution through its involvement in labor recruitment. The youth organizations have a long history of labor conscription and assignment, dating back to the emergency measures of the Civil War and the gigantic construction projects of the First Five-Year Plan in the early 1930s. Today their contribution in this respect is less dramatic, but no less essential. Labor recruitment takes two forms. One is the short-term provision of manpower for temporary tasks, such as assisting in a harvest or completing a major building project on schedule. Students or young workers employed elsewhere are asked to volunteer as part of their Komsomol duty or are assigned to labor projects, usually during vacation periods or on holidays. Sometimes they may be transferred from their regular jobs or studies if the need is especially great. For example, Komsomol organizations of union republics occasionally are asked to provide a quota of workers where help

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is badly needed. Thus, the Komsomol of Lithuania in 1957 "sent its finest sons to labor in Moscow on the construction of the new Lenin Stadium . . . [and] to the construction of the Kuibyshev hydroelectric facility." 48 Customarily the temporary workers serve without extra pay. The other form of labor recruitment is far more ambitious, for it involves the wholesale transfer, on a long-term basis, of young labor armies to distant corners of the country. The most impressive recent recruitment effort began in the late 1950s in connection with plans to develop new industries in the east and north and, in agriculture, the recently abandoned "new-lands program." These projects involved moving hundreds of thousands of young people to live and work in undeveloped areas under relatively primitive conditions. The all-union Komsomol was called upon to enlist the workers and to ensure that they remained on the job. The enormous scope of these efforts was first revealed in a speech by Khrushchev who announced that, by early 1958, the Komsomol had managed to send almost a third of a million young people to industrial and construction projects in Siberia, the Far East, Kazakhstan, and the north, while equal numbers were recruited for agricultural labor in the virgin lands.49 The prodigious nature of the programs is suggested by the following excerpts from an official discussion of some of the problems involved in transporting, organizing, and settling so many young workers. Moved by patriotic enthusiasm, young people who have finished secondary educational institutions, demobilized servicemen, and workers and employees are willingly going to Siberia and the Far East. In the years 1956-1959 alone, more than 400,000 persons moved to Siberia. The territorial redistribution of the population in favor of the eastern regions reflects the enormous growth of production forces in Siberia and the Far East. In the course of implementation of the majestic plan for industrial construction, the number of workers and employees (excluding collective farmers) in Siberia and the Far East will almost double over 1958, according to our calculations. . . .

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Many young people are now going to Siberian areas for urgent construction projects of the seven-year plan. These are for the most part secondary-school graduates and demobilized servicemen, as well as young workers and employees of the central and western regions of the country. As experience has shown, the practice of sending to the east entire collectives that have already become united by their previous work, studies, or military service has justified itself most of all. . . . It would be quite practical to send young people who do not have production experience and qualifications from among those who have finished general schools not directly to enterprises and construction projects, but to technical vocational courses, or to schools, with the intention that after acquiring certain skills they be assigned to production work in entire collectives. The production training of these young people, in our opinion, should take place in the area of their future work.50 The extensive use of the Komsomol for this particular purpose is closely related to the dilemma faced by the youth program in trying to carry out its larger task of instilling Soviet values in the new generations. In its role as an allpurpose institution, inevitably the program runs into serious difficulties. It cannot be at once a trusted spiritual mentor, a guide to moral standards, a police agency, an inspiration to ever greater achievement, a pacesetter in aesthetics, an enforcer of cultural tastes, an arbiter of human relations, and a hiring boss; at the very best it must slight some of these functions in the pursuit of others. Certainly the Komsomol's activities in industry and agriculture are indicative of the kind of choice that is usually made: the surrender of the broader conception of the youth program's role in the construction of a new social order in favor of the more prosaic tasks of manning an economy. Whatever the shortcomings of the Komsomol's work with students, they are compounded in industry and agriculture by the almost exclusive attention to control and exploitation, and by the absence of serious efforts to cope with the more profound question of the inner life of a new generation. The Komsomol in the military. Komsomol work in military

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units follows the general patterns already described for the other senior programs. Its two principal purposes are political indoctrination of young military personnel in all ranks and assistance in maintaining military discipline. The Komsomol is subordinate to military commanders and party political workers, who use the Komsomol organizations as supplementary agencies for surveillance and control.51 There is also the DOSAAF, or the Voluntary Society for Assistance to the Army, Air Force, and Navy. This is a paramilitary organization for civilian youth, administered in cooperation with the Komsomol and stressing rugged physical training, weapon practice, and miltary preparedness. Its purpose is to stimulate interest in the military and to serve as a reserve force in the event of war or civilian emergency. It also aids in maintaining and improving the physical health of Soviet youth.52 This chapter has depicted the fundamental concern of the youth program with inculcating in the new generations a pattern of conformity to the plans of the Soviet political leadership. In one sense, this is what the youth program is all about. But, in addition to the general emphasis on conformity present in all aspects of its work, the Komsomol is more directly involved in controlling the informal behavior of young people in public — through the recently established device of roving street patrols. While manifestly criminal acts are within the province of the usual legal and police agencies, the Komsomol since 1955 has assumed the responsibility of assisting in the suppression of minor infractions, including rowdyism and hooliganism. Older members of the Komsomol are assigned to patrol the city in teams, keeping an eye on known trouble spots and either handling misbehavior by young people on the spot or turning the offenders over to the militia for punishment. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of these Komsomol pa-

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trols lies in their attacks on displays of unconventional tastes and manners. A celebrated example of the zealousness of some of these patrols came to light in 1961, in the resort city of Sochi, through letters of complaint to Komsomolskaia pravda. One of them reported: "Komsomol street patrols were literally hunting down young men wearing brightly colored shirts and young women wearing slacks. They ripped or slashed the shirts. The same fate befell the slacks. Black shirts also invited persecution, on the grounds that 'Blackshirts' used to exist. The method of knocking in someone's teeth is not, in my opinion, the best educational method. To tear and ruin clothing, even though it may seem funny, is inappropriate and illegal, and to chop off a girl's hair (such incidents happened in Sochi) is sheer violence." 53 Questioned about these strongarm methods, the secretary of the Sochi Komsomol committee replied, "If I saw you walking about in a brightly colored shirt in the evening, I myself would have been the first to slash it." And, the other secretaries added, "When you chop wood, the chips fly!" This and similar incidents (including in some cases attempts by the Komsomol to censor dance music in restaurants 54) have led to cautions to the patrols about going too far. But the system of patrols, in spite of serious abuses of power in some localities, seems to have proven itself sufficiently useful to become a permanent feature of the Komsomol's varied tasks. The roving patrols are symbolic of the extreme politicization of social control embodied in the youth program.

6 The Costs of Overcontrol IT is inconceivable that any undertaking as large and complex as the Soviet youth program should operate precisely according to plan. Indeed, by selective reporting from Soviet sources, it is possible to catalogue such an enormous list of blunders and shortcomings as to create the unwarranted impression that the program is a total failure. No useful purpose can be served by a compilation of that kind. Nevertheless, one is faced with the problem of how to account for the great volume of critical comments that appear regularly in the Soviet press and other official sources and then to uncover the patterns of stress and strain from which such criticisms arise. One must seek to answer these questions before undertaking a more general evaluation of the effectiveness of the youth program. One of the ironies of the youth program is that some of its most serious weaknesses stem from the very strategy designed to strengthen the hold of the Komsomol and the Pioneers over Soviet youth. Both organizations, but especially the Komsomol, suffer from the unintended consequences of maintaining a mass and expanding membership and from extraordinarily excessive bureaucratization. PROBLEMS OF MEMBERSHIP AND RECRUITMENT

One reason for creating a mass membership, of course, is to influence the largest possible number of young citizens. A

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more subtle but equally important consideration stems from the party's refusal to tolerate the development of youth movements that might come to exercise an independent influence. The tactic has been to inflate the ranks to such an extent that belonging to the youth organizations carries no special status or privileges. In its early days the Komsomol, it will be recalled, was a stepping stone to the party. Although the Komsomol was not necessarily popular, belonging to it was at least a distinction. But with the advent of a mass-membership policy, inaugurated before World War II, the esprit de corps of a few came increasingly to be replaced by the apathy of the many. The process of deterioration in Komsomol morale, which has been a major topic of comment and discussion in the youth press and elsewhere for at least a decade, recently prompted some of the more zealous and devoted members to urge a return to restrictive practices. One ardent youth wrote to Komsomolskaia pravda: "When a platoon wins a victory, the commander gives awards after the battle. To whom does he give them? To everyone? No. Only to those who have done something extraordinary to bring about the victory. We have a great many fine boys and girls, but only the best of them, only the heroes, should be in the Komsomol." 1 The official reaction to this and similar proposals was swift and vitriolic. They were branded as the work of extremists who were said to be undermining the goal of an ever more inclusive membership. The sharpness of the response may well be the product of fears that an elite group composed of "heroes" might one day claim the right to match its prestige with power. A mass membership is a diluted membership. But it is a means of control purchased at the substantial cost of discouraging and scattering within a huge organization a hard core of enthusiastic and committed members, whose influence upon other youths otherwise might be much greater. Although the Komsomol achieves a quantitative victory

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in the form of an expanding membership, its qualitative effectiveness is surely reduced by the resentment of large numbers of young people who did not want to join at all, but who enlisted under the relentless pressure of recruitment drives. Dozens of young men and women revealed to me in private interviews their reluctance to enter the Komsomol — although none had displayed quite the daring of one refugee respondent who recalled his experiences with a Komsomol organizer in the late 1930s: When I was technical director of a butter factory I was once again asked to join the Komsomol. The regional secretary of the Komsomol organization came and said that, as an educated man, I should join the Komsomol. . . . I asked him to come to our factory to meet the laboratory assistant, who was also of Komsomol age, eligible to join. I asked the assistant to bring our guest a glass of cream to drink. . . . He poured a little lubricating oil and then filled it with cream and gave it to the secretary. The secretary was very pleased and asked for another glass. Then the secretary suddenly looked very sick, he asked where the toilet was, and he suddenly ran there very quickly. We never saw him again.2 Usually, resisters report the use of more diplomatic ways of expressing their reluctance to become members. Borrowing a technique from their elders under pressure to join the party, candidates sometimes insist that they are "ideologically unprepared" (that is, insufficiently versed in Marxism-Leninism ). Reluctant candidates, however, will have less and less success in staying out of the Komsomol as the organization grows; already for certain categories, notably university students, there is no real choice. And the effect of large numbers of reluctant members within the organization will be felt increasingly. Primary organizations sometimes are assigned quotas for new members and are admonished to fill them in one way or another.8 Central officers regard growth as an important criterion of the well-run organiza-

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tion, and active recruitment drives are launched when the quota cannot be filled with willing volunteers. Whereas in the past a candidate's qualifications had been thoroughly scrutinized, the present requirements are so diluted that almost anyone can meet them. The Komsomol's difficulties in attracting new members are reflected also in the unevenness of distribution. Adequate statistical information on the breakdown of membership among student, worker, and peasant youth is lacking, but fragmentary data and general comment indicate that workers and peasants are much less likely to become members than students are. As early as 1949, when Komsomol enrollment was only nine million, more than half of all students in the seventh through tenth grades (at that time, the last three years of the secondary school) were Komsomol members.4 (And, of course, almost all students in higher educational institutions are enrolled in the Komsomol.) In contrast is the perennial charge by all-union officers that worker and peasant youth are grossly underrepresented and that in many cases membership in industrial and agricultural primary organizations declines rapidly unless extraordinary efforts are made to keep old members and to recruit new ones. Complaints concerning declining membership rolls have singled out the newer Soviet territories (such as the Baltic region) and the non-European areas of the USSR. But the problem is widespread. The Moscow Komsomol organization, in the heart of urban Russia and the headquarters of the all-union Central Committee, lost half of its worker youth in the period between 1951 and 1956.5 The Ukrainian and Belorussian republics also have been criticized for the underrepresentation of young workers in their ranks. This uneven pattern suggests that the ability of the Komsomol to recruit new members depends on how much the local organization can cajole or coerce reluctant candidates. The Komsomol has a better recruitment record in those

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organizations where membership is required for career opportunities, and a poorer record where belonging depends purely on an interest in the Komsomol itself. Student membership is high because these youngsters spend most of their day in the classroom and are a captive audience for the Komsomol's attentions; this advantage is lost among older youths in a work environment. Moreover, enterprise and farm managers, unlike teachers, have little professional interest in the youth program and may even regard it as a nuisance because it takes up the time of young workers and sometimes intrudes into managerial affairs. Recruitment, to be sure, is only part of the problem in maintaining a large and growing membership; there is also the question of how to retain members. For more than a decade the Komsomol has experienced a membership turnover of approximately five million persons a year.® This figure is three and two-thirds millions more per year than can be accounted for by retirements of members attaining the maximum age. It is true that periodic purges of the membership in various localities are responsible for part of the surplus turnover; but since the Komsomol, unlike the party, is committed to rapid growth, its purges are aimed at expelling unsatisfactory members rather than at maintaining an ideal size. Therefore, the high turnover rate testifies either to a significant degree of dissatisfaction on the part of the Komsomol with its members or to a desire of many members to leave the organization, or both. Official spokesmen have admitted openly, in discussing the Komsomol's recruitment problems, that resistance to joining the organization has become sufficiently widespread to hamper the youth program's operations. "Does youth willingly join all Komsomol organizations? Unfortunately, no. Over many months, and sometimes even for years, . . . many Komsomol organizations fail to grow." 7 In sum, the Komsomol faces difficult circumstances from

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which there is no easy or obvious escape, unless there is a fundamental change in the regime's youth policy. Resistance to joining prompts the authorities to resort to recruitment tactics that border on coercion; the presence of reluctant members further erodes organizational morale; and the Komsomol becomes still less attractive to potential candidates. ORGANIZATIONAL RIGIDITY: BOREDOM BY DICTUM

Stimulating young people to join the Komsomol and enticing them to remain are only a beginning. What happens to them later is even more critical. Here, as in the case of membership policy, the very insistence with which the regime pursues the goal of total control over youth sometimes leads to unproductive effects. The party's control over the Komsomol, it will be recalled, originates in the party Central Committee, goes through the Komsomol Central Committee and an elaborate apparatus of paid officials in progressively smaller administrative units, and ends in the staff of the primary organization. Although the membership at the primary level occasionally has some voice in choosing leaders, the overwhelming majority of Komsomol officials and staff members are appointed from above; consequently, they do not owe their allegiance to and derive their authority from the rank and file. The purpose of such an arrangement is plain enough: it assures that official orders will be carried out obediently. But this system results in an organization sharply split between two kinds of members: the rank and file and the Komsomol apparatus. Their interests do not necessarily coincide. The bureaucrats are involved in a struggle for success and survival in a fiercely competitive system. At the lower levels they are rewarded by prestige, local power, material benefits, and, of course, opportunities to rise through the ranks and ultimately into the party apparatus. At successively higher levels, the stakes are greater, for above the local level most

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Komsomol offices are full-time careers. This set of circumstances aggravates tendencies inherent in many large bureaucracies: the concerns of the organization men begin to displace the goals of the organization. "Among the delegates to conferences, workers and collective farmers are so few in number that they are simply overwhelmed and embarrassed by the mass of Komsomol workers who know all the ins and outs of the Komsomol, who speak well and employ 'quotations.' . . . It is no accident that in many of the speeches the most important questions which concern worker and peasant youth remain in the background, while more discussion is devoted to narrow committee questions." 8 This report comes from no less reliable a source than two members of the Komsomol Central Committee, who note in the same place that even in the primary organizations the pattern carries over to the behavior of the secretaries: "Everything is done for the members, who assume the role of observers and executors of the tasks which are assigned to them. It is not unusual to have a situation in which the secretary of the Komsomol organization, setting out upon some important matter, gives out the assignments and checks up on their fulfillment by himself, instead of giving the members the opportunity to clarify the meaning and significance of the task." The practice of staffing many posts with paid professionals, rather than member-volunteers, further contributes to the separation between the apparatus and the rank and file. Izvestiia cites the case of the DOSAAF (the paramilitary Komsomol affiliate) in Dnepropetrovsk province, which has salaried city committee chairmen, paid borough committee chairmen and instructors, and a full-time, twenty-five-man province staff. In all, these people received approximately 500,000 rubles in wages in 1961. Yet membership dues collected in the province came to no more than 156,400 rubles.

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What are the society's salaried workers being paid for? Frankly, I could find no answer to this question. . . . All the committee chairmen do is give out receipts for the payment of membership dues and read and answer directives. But do the paid committee workers perhaps carry out organizational work among the masses? No, there is no sign of this either. During the whole course of 1961, not a single person joined the society in Dnepropetrovsk's Kirov, Lenin, and October Boroughs, in Dnepropetrovsk's Baglei Borough and in a number of districts of the province. Yet this had no effect on the wages of the chairmen and instructors. The plan for increasing the society's membership in the province was only 25% fulfilled. True, the assignment for collecting membership dues was considerably overfulfilled; however, as we have seen, the sum fell far short of covering expenditures on the apparatus. Yet this index alone sufficed to get the province's DOSAAF system numbered among the outstanding ones in the republic. One result of the bureaucratization of guidance over the activities of the primary DOSAAF organizations is that the society's members in effect cease to be its masters. . . . Local activists have refused to ignore these anomalies and have criticized the improper methods of leadership in the primary collectives. But healthy criticism from below meets only with hostility. . . . The society's activities have become so entangled in bureaucracy that some instructions contradict others. . . . Naturally, this kind of thing weakens the authority of the society. The DOSAAF Central Committee is alarmed by this, naturally, but it does not seem to draw the correct conclusions. The only thing the Central Committee seems to concern itself with is raising the salaries of paid staff workers.9 The first Secretary of the all-union Central Committee, S. P. Pavlov, in his keynote speech at the 1962 congress, referred repeatedly to the destructive consequences of overbureaucratization. He noted that the work of the Komsomol "is often hindered by the passion for needless meetings and by excessive paper work and the inventing of all kinds of bureaucratic superstructures." 10 He complained that "Komsomol committees have been channeling the energy and

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efforts of the Young Communists into secondary matters and failing to see the main, decisive problems." He cited the example of the Komsomol in Kazakhstan, where "there is a great deal of talk about patronage [by Komsomol organizations] over poultry raising. More than a few conferences, meetings and sessions have been held on the subject and tons of paper have been covered with writing, but the birds are few." "There are some officials," the first secretary continued, who concern themselves primarily with collecting all sorts of information, rundowns and statistical data, and who are rooted to their offices, who do not analyze the local state of affairs or help to eliminate shortcomings. The Kursk Province Komsomol Committee requires the district committees to submit no fewer than 80 reports a year on various questions, and every such report contains 50 to 60 items. The district Komsomol committees of Ryazan Province have grown used to receiving a resolution, plan, measure or recommendation from the province committee every third day. How can they possibly be fulfilled? The Komsomol activists do not even have time to familiarize themselves with them. . . . The Komsomol Central Committee has condemned such preoccupation with paper work time and time again . . . and still the papers go on multiplying in some Komsomol committees. Pavlov frankly identified the real danger of excessive bureaucratization: alienation of the membership. Unfortunately, there is often a fair dose of formalism in upbringing work. We do not yet have eyes for every individual; we have not yet learned to work with every young man and woman. Narrow practicality, paper work that fences us off from young people, die manipulation of overall figures, and talk about scale, measures, targets — these remain a great evil. . . . Recently some organizations have been making percentages and tons their sole point of departure in drawing conclusions about the work: so much scrap metal collected, the production plan overfulfilled by so much. And people? What were they wishing for, what were their thoughts, their feelings, their characters? As a rule we address ourselves to these questions only when it comes to light that Samoilov has left his wife, that Nikolayev is drinking

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and not bringing his pay home, that Nikonov is gambling at cards or that Melnikov is doing ten days for rowdyism. . . . Another thing that actually happens is that a young person is repelled from the collective, from good people, by the indifference and inattentiveness shown him. Although the problem of overbureaucratization does not seem to be as severe in the Pioneers as in the Komsomol, the junior organization is by no means immune from it. A Moscow teacher writes in Izvestiia: A good idea is being turned into something of a "law code" of compulsory activities. In strictly assigned classes the teacher must, with depressing pedantry, follow the items of the program, alike in a Siberian village or in Moscow's Sokolniki Borough. The program has covered every detail in advance, everything except freedom of creativity and the initiative of the teacher. For indeed no time is left for such "free activity" after the required program is carried out. . . . Finally comes the class meeting. Seated here are the 40 persons for whose sake their adult mentors took notes from dictation. "Let's go off on a hike this Saturday. Look how fine the weather is!" say the hiking enthusiasts. "We can't do that, children. According to the borough plan the 'arts relay' is to be held this Saturday. . . ." "Children, you can't think only of yourselves and let the school down." The situation requires the twisted argument: "One cannot think only about oneself." This about a hike! What activities are to be conducted — this must be decided above all by the teacher himself, by the Young Pioneer and Komsomol organizations of the individual school. . . . But "beneficial tutelage" — the school does not need this! Upbringing of school pupils should be more subtle than "participation" in relays and the tons of scrap metal collected. The pupil's knowledge cannot be set down in barren percentage figures; . . . in general, "percentomania" and calculations of the number of extracurricular projects are two sides of one and the same worthless medal. 11 The overwhelming bureaucratization of youth-program work, in both the Komsomol and the Pioneers, affects not

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only its form but its content. Because of the authoritarian structure of the organizations, the successful fulfillment of goals on the local level depends heavily upon the creativeness and initiative of primary-organization officials in their work with the rank and file. But since they, in turn, must be more responsive to higher authorities than to the local membership, they tend to "play it safe," to adhere rather closely to the tried and tested ways. Local problems and interests, if they are not related to issues on which the central authorities have stated definite policy positions, are likely to be ignored. Personal and group interests tend to be disregarded in favor of stereotyped lectures on political topics, harangues to do more and better in school or on the job, and propagandists accounts of the perfection of life in the Soviet Union. Even when lectures and agitators do turn their attention to local youth affairs, they are inclined to draw their materials not from surrounding life, but from reports and editorials in the local press.12 The result, to translate the Russian phrase, is that the Komsomol and Pioneers often are "divorced from life." 13 This overcautiousness on the part of bureaucrats is similarly reflected in indoctrination work. Since whatever is old and settled is regarded by youth-program bureaucrats also as the safest, "an inappropriately great amount of time is spent studying the prerevolutionary period and little time devoted to the study of contemporary problems."14 It is no surprise that slogans repeated to the point of ritualism should fail to arouse youthful interest. One Soviet report laments: "What's happened to youth?' you hear nowadays. Why are there so many indifferent people in the Komsomol? . . . The youth of the generation between 1931 and 1942 — how do we live? . . . It is impossible not to agree that in the lives of Komsomol members of the older generation there was more fervor, more of a spark."15

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Moreover, the power of the Komsomol bureaucracy over the rank-and-file membership and its great concern with administrative and career matters deprive serious members in the primary organizations of opportunities to become fully active and leave many of them apathetic, bitter, or frustrated. One unhappy member expressed his views in a letter to the editors of Komsomolskaia pravda: "I have been in the Komsomol for six years. I have carried out all of my Komsomol assignments, but frequently they have not satisfied me because of their insignificance. What needs to be done? — get tickets to the movies or to the theater; write a piece for the wall newspaper twice a year; call on a sick comrade. These have been my usual tasks during the year. And some members don't even do this. This is why a Komsomolets forgets his calling."16 Another Komsomol adherent wrote: "It is easier to direct a rather narrow circle of activists than an entire organization. And that's how silent people, who consider themselves to be outside of affairs, are brought up. Many remarkable young men and women who could do much that is useful for their organizations remain outside. Frequently we just don't notice such people, and when they themselves come up to the committee, they close the door on them. . . . Unfortunately, the raikom of the Komsomol tolerates such situations."17 In a similar vein, a member of a sovkhoz Komsomol committee complained that the Komsomol sent a hand-picked secretary to take over the organization, but that he fled when he discovered that there were "many difficult things" in connection with the job. When members then proposed their own candidate, a popular tractor driver, he was turned down by higher authorities.18 Such impediments to autonomy create among many members attitudes of resignation and passivity that go back to early experiences in the Pioneers. A youth official stated:

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Often, we regard political-educational work as cumbersome, boring meetings and discussions similar to classroom lessons; throwing together any kind of montage, putting out a wall newspaper with long leaders from the newspapers. But surely children can feasibly take part in surrounding life and can assist adults. It is essential to put serious, large assignments to Pioneer members, to explain the importance of these tasks to children. . . . I think that Pioneer work sometimes loses its political character because we ourselves narrow the boundaries of the children's activities, try too much to "keep them in their place." We talk a great deal about initiative and self-activity of the Pioneers, but often fail to give them room for the development of initiative. "Here you are, children. Here's your planting bed, go use your initiative. But so far as the kolkhoz is concerned, that doesn't involve you."19 This observation was seconded by a schoolteacher, who noted that many of his colleagues hold the view that Komsomol members in the upper grades are only children to whom it is not necessary to entrust important matters, with the result that "older students do not take part in discussions of Pioneer work, the organization of summer vacations, or in the formulation of the annual [Komsomol or Pioneer] plan for the school." 20 As one Komsomol member put it, "Aren't there bigger assignments than the preparation of lectures, reports, and so forth?" And another said, "The Komsomol should be entrusted with some major, serious matter — not just making posters, organizing excursions, and collecting scrap metal. The Komsomol should be entrusted with its rightful place in production and in social-political work." 21 In fact, as we have seen, the Komsomol is concerned with many "major, serious matters," but the rank and file is largely deprived of a feeling of direct participation in them. Moreover, because the power structure of the Komsomol strongly discourages the emergence of a conscientious, native leadership from the ranks, the organization provides rich opportunities for sycophants and cynical careerists; even idealists are soon enmeshed in the bureaucratic web. The case of one

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Zhukov, a student at the Moscow Economic Statistics Institute, is revealing in this connection. A successful Komsomol organizer, he was discovered to be using the post for his personal advancement and to provide a smokescreen for illegal activities as a speculator in foreign currency. When apprehended by the militia, he declared: "I have my own philosophy. . . . You say a man lives for the sake of a great goal. Nonsense! A man lives simply because he was born and he lives. Instinct alone governs him. The main thing is to attain harmony within oneself. As for those around me, what have I to do with them? I live by the maxim: 'Don't pry into another's soul. You'll either mess him up or mess yourself up. ... How does it happen that an individual will brilliantly state in an examination the propositions of Lenin's work . . . but will himself not sign up for a Sunday volunteer work project? At a meeting he [Zhukov] will assail a comrade with sharp criticisms, but in the corridor he will say "Don't be offended. This is what has to be done." In a graduation play, he plays the hero of our times, but he does not try to emulate him in real life. For such a person, views are a kind of umbrella — something that is needed when it rains but can be tucked away when the sun comes out. Zhukov says outright: "The study of social-economic subjects does not place any moral obligations on me." . . . What can be done so that the knowledge a man acquires becomes his conviction, so that he not only proclaims the principles of our morality but lives in accordance with them? 22 9

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No doubt Zhukov's double-dealing is a rather extreme case of cynical corruption on the part of a Komsomol officer. But the point is that even honest and well-intentioned individuals, if they are concerned primarily with their careers, are not notably responsive to — sometimes not even aware of — the needs and sentiments of a powerless rank and file. In Leningrad, in 1960, I met a number of youths who told me how they and their fellows in one primary organization had come to an "agreement" with the secretary to forge minutes of meetings to be forwarded to higher authorities so that the

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members would not have to be bothered with actually holding sessions; they had been engaged in this practice for more than a year and assured me that it was not uncommon. A few days later I spoke with a high official of the Leningrad Komsomol and asked him about such incidents. He assured me that nothing of the sort could possibly take place, that the love and devotion of every member was so great that staying away from a meeting would be unthinkable. Of course he could hardly have been expected to exhibit the Komsomol's dirty linen before a stranger, and an American at that. But I sensed that he was not simply dissimulating; sitting behind his executive desk with stacks of performance records and statistical charts on Komsomol activities, he genuinely believed, perhaps because he wanted to, that all was going according to plan. If Komsomol officials remain aloof from some situations, they are involved in others in which their presence is not desired: the Komsomol assumes the right to regulate the personal lives of young citizens in considerable detail. To many, this aspect of the youth program is an unwelcome addition to the already extensive official invasion of privacy in the Soviet Union. The resentment that it sometimes causes was cautiously expressed by a young woman, a member of a local Komsomol committee: Today in the Komsomol Committee . . . the case of two members — a man and wife — was taken up. Having met another girl, the husband told his wife that he would no longer live with her. She suffered much, and even became ill. . . . Surely, there are some things in family life which are not discussed before strangers; therefore, it is extremely difficult even for comrades to analyze and to decide who is right, who is guilty. In my opinion, no societal organization can help in a case of unhappy love. And if they don't help, then why discuss? I expressed this thought at a session of the committee. Many disagreed with me, and they even said that I don't think in a proper Komsomol way. Is my opinion correct? 23 This letter was made the topic of an editorial discussion in

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Komsomolskaia pravda entitled, "Is it Necessary to Interfere in Private Life?" The newspaper's reply was an emphatic "yes." The letter writer was declared to be entirely in the wrong for her reluctance to have the Komsomol delve into marital matters. The exaggeration and even abuse of the Komsomol's investigatory and enforcement functions by superzealots can hardly help its position among youth, yet the organization seems to lend itself all too frequently to such practices. A letter to Komsomolskaia pravda from a group of young workers in Dnepropetrovsk province pleads for an end to night dormitory inspections by their factory Komsomol committee; its members were invading the rooms of girls after bedtime and "snooping around." The letter writers conceded that checks by the Komsomol committee on order and cleanliness may be justified, but argued that there is no warrant for violating the rules of modesty and decency.24 Some of the most spectacular cases of abuse have come from the street patrols. The incidents in Sochi, where patrols were ripping sport shirts from the backs of vacationers, were cited in the preceding chapter. In Moscow, the vigor of the patrols prompted one outraged father to write the following letter to Izvestiia: A few days ago . . . the Moscow City Komsomol Committee carried out a "raid check on the appearance of young people." At five o'clock in the evening of that day my daughter Yelena, a Komsomol member and a student in the tenth grade, and a girl friend of hers were detained at the State Department Store by young people who said they were authorized to do so as members of an operational city Komsomol detachment. It was later explained to me that my daughter had done nothing reprehensible and had been detained only because her kerchief had been tied around her head in a certain way. This served as the basis for taking Lena to the 117th Militia precinct station, where a large group of drunken hooligans and female speculators was in custody. This group greeted the girls with a stream of unbridled bad language. The young people whose duty it was to maintain order held an

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insolent three-hour interview with my daughter and myself. Especially prominent in this was an unshaven young man who threatened physical force. This was how the opening of the holidays was "celebrated." Two girls were insulted and their families' peace of mind was destroyed. All this happened under the very eyes of the militia captain on duty. . . . V. Sokolov, instructor in charge of the Moscow Komsomol Committee, is in charge of the raids.25 The newspaper sent a staff member to investigate. He "arrived at the Komsomol committee just as the talk with the father of Ira, Lena's friend, was at its height. B. Zubchuk, an engineer, takes a very serious attitude towards his daughter's upbringing. . . . And there was Ksenia Bochkareva, a young woman member of the raid detachment and a technical engineer at the electrical machinery plant telling him how his daughter should dress. Ksenia personally thought that only girls over 22 years of age should be allowed to tie kerchiefs as Ira's had been tied. Perhaps she did not care for Ira's hair in a bun, either, and thought it should have been in braids. And, of course, the coat —"26 Izvestiia suggested that members of the Komsomol patrols should be more carefully instructed in order to avoid such excesses, but firmly endorsed the general purpose of "our young people's campaign for culture and beauty in everyday life." From Armenia, a young music lover wrote to Komsomolskaia pravda concerning the Komsomol's "music patrols." Your newspaper carried, in the column "Green Light for Komsomol Innovations," an article under the head "Music Patrol," which made me very indignant. As you know, music has not interfered in politics since ancient times; musicians are neutral about such questions. In any state there are all kinds of orchestras (symphony, variety, jazz band, etc.) playing various kinds of music. This is especially true of restaurants; people come to dine, to relax and to listen to music they like. Suppose the band plays (upon the customers' requests) the American songs "Lullaby," "St. Louis Blues," etc. What of

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it. Will Komsomol members intervene here? Let the Komsomol watch for order in the streets of cities and stop interfering in music and giving their stupid advice.27 The letter was turned over for reply to Yuri Miliutin, a Soviet composer, who upbraided the Armenian correspondent for his lack of political consciousness and declared, "And so I vote for the patrol.' I welcome with satisfaction the initiative of young people in making music beautify our everyday life." While the Komsomol frequently intervenes where it is not wanted, it sometimes fails to take effective measures where its assistance might be useful. In Penza province, the allunion Central Committee sent an inspection team "to see how the Penza Komsomol guards the rights of children and adolescents." The team discovered "numerous instances of a bureaucratic and heartless attitude towards children and adolescents." The Penza Komsomol committees, they charged, are "doing a bad job of caring for children without parents. They do not know how or where the children are living and who their guardians are. For example, public education agencies in Kuznetsk placed a little girl in the care of old people after her mother died. The aged people gave the girl a room in which there were neither chairs, table, nor bed. In 1959 she did not even attend school." 28 The first secretary of the province committee, it was added, replied to this and other charges of neglect by saying, " W e drew up measures. W e made raids and held meetings. W e formed a commission. W e took steps." Another report, on Komsomol organizations in industry, reveals that It has been established that at the Saratov Economic Council's Uritsky plant, heavy machinery plant, and gear-cutting machine tool plant, adolescents work seven hours instead of the six authorized by law, and that at the Balashov Shoe Factory ten adolescents were given work on the night shift.

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There can be no excuse for cases of this kind. The Komsomol organizations, working with the trade unions, must concern themselves with the observance of laws on adolescent labor. . . . A scandalous case occurred in Ryazan. The Komsomol member Viktor Svinarev, shop foreman at an artificial fiber plant, reported to plant executives that the shop superintendent and a mechanical engineer were cheating on the state, giving it wrong information on the consumption of materials, hoarding supplies that had not been inventoried and indulging in dirty intrigues. However, neither the plant management nor the Komsomol committee backed up the young foreman. What is more, they victimized him, forced him off the Komsomol committee and demoted him from foreman to janitor.29 The Komsomol's expansionist membership policy, its excessively rigid organization, its extreme attempts to regulate the lives of its members, and its frequent failures to protect young people when they are in need of assistance considerably weaken its position in carrying out the program for the new generation. No doubt the youth organizations have an ample share of committed and devoted young people, but it is in their work with the uncommitted, the indifferent, and the skeptical that they face their most difficult test. There are serious doubts that they meet it very well. We know from the unusually frank discussions of Komsomol problems during the post-Stalin period that the organization is not very popular. Although the Komsomol's record on this score is better in some localities than in others, the overwhelming impression given by Soviet sources is that the Komsomol suffers from a stultifying atmosphere and that the rank-andfile membership is a captive audience for bureaucrats who usually are more interested in their own careers than they are in carrying out an effective program. The most damning post-Stalin critique of the youth program was written in 1957 by the literary critic, Lev Kassil. Significantly, his remarks appeared in Literaturnaia gazeta, a literary newspaper — not in the Komsomol press. He charged:

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Boredom is the first culpritl What could be more stifling to the social life of young people than boredom? Indeed, we have seen some educators, propagandists and leaders, in their discussions with youth, ruling out all sounds except fervor made-to-order, the roars of a boss and the lulling mumble of the Talmudist. You go to a meeting in the young workers' club and there, covered by the speaker's stand to his head and shoulders, as if he were wearing an apron, his nose to his paper, the speaker is mumbling away. . . . All knew in advance that they would have to be bored at the opening of the meeting: nothing to be done about it — it's the custom. They have become habituated to regarding as "boring talk" the most precious and sacred ideas, the things for which we live on this earth. The natural and serious interest of youth in political life has been knocked out of them by formal rhetoric and boredom.30 Similar sentiments have been expressed in terser fashion by Komsomol members themselves. One former adherent recalls his experience in the following words: "It bored me. The activities were monotonous. You always heard the same words. Attending a meeting of the Komsomol was like sitting in a room in which a fly was constantly buzzing on the wall for two hours." 3 1 Indoctrination efforts in the Komsomol, designed to convince Soviet youth that the Soviet Union is the ideal society, are frustrated by this atmosphere. Kassil suggested that Sometimes the noisy rumble of prepared texts of speeches at some Komsomol meetings has drowned out the worried voices of young consciences. At times a deadening formalism has made the carrying out of important propaganda assignments meaningless: It was important to place check-marks in a column of assignments, "Done." . . . It is also true that an unthinking attitude towards life has been instilled by the parade-dress books, painting and films, abounding in a showy prettiness that concealed many flaws of life.32 What general conclusions can we derive from such accounts? Certainly there is no warrant on the basis of limited evidence to characterize the youth program as a failure. If the Komsomol and the Pioneers do nothing more than block

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the open organization of neutralist or dissident elements among Soviet youth — and this they seem to do quite effectively — then they must be counted as clear assets to the regime. But the youth program, after all, is supposed to be more than a political police force. And it is precisely the overemphasis on this repressive aspect of its responsibilities that impedes the program in its efforts to achieve basic, far-reaching goals as the key Soviet agency for training entire generations of new men. It does not necessarily follow that a more democratic or liberal youth program would work better —it might or it might not. Nevertheless, external constraints, which the youth program imposes with considerable effectiveness, are not an adequate substitute for the cultivation of positive loyalties. Such constraints may mask deviant orientations by forcing them to assume covert forms. Indeed, in the absence of legitimate outlets, some young citizens have simply turned away from the youth program altogether. The most widespread form of rejection with which the youth program must cope is the posture of apathy among youth — the refusal to abide by the official norms of active, loyal involvement in the system. It begins with the reluctance to join at all; once they are enlisted, members can effectively refuse to give much to the youth organizations. The formal requirements of membership — paying dues, attending meetings, carrying out token assignments, and the like — can be met perfunctorily and with a minimum of personal involvement and commitment: "Our youth loves to discuss; but they don't discuss in the Komsomol, they do it elsewhere. Why can't the Komsomol be made interesting enough so that people will do their discussing there?" 33 In the long run, too, such behavior may hinder not only the program's training and educational tasks but, ironically, its policing functions as well: accurate assessment of moods and opinions among the youthful population is impossible when so many

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members are unwilling to express their true thoughts in the presence of official observers. More active forms of resistance have come to light in the timid, but highly revealing, soul-searching of the post-Stalin days, especially in comments about "nihilistic tendencies" among the present younger generation. Known as the nibonicho (a contraction of the Russian words for "neither God nor the Devil"), these youngsters are described by Kassil, in his Literaturnaia gazeta essay: "If the world whistles and spins like a top, What's that to us?" — Everything on earth Seems like nothing to these characters Because they are nibonicho South or north, east or west, In ice or boiling water, He is neither hot nor cold Because he is nibonicho. They are depicted as "arrogant hooters and skeptics with their contemptuously protruding lips, whose every action emphasizes that nothing in life is sacred, . . . who put on a long face when those around them are having fun and jeer when others are moved." Their attitudes towards the Komsomol are decried: Imagine yourself in a school debate, let us say, where the Komsomol members are discussing the meaning of happiness. Boys and girls are on the platform, excited, talking as best they can, arguing with one another. From a far, dim corner of the room a remark is thrown out now and then as a comment on the sincere words of the debater: "Did you get that? Patriotis-sm!" It is pronounced this way on purpose — "Patriotis-sm." Suddenly someone concealed behind the others' backs utters: "Stormy ovation, all rise!" [This is a sarcastic imitation of stenographic reports of official Soviet meetings, which include a graded series of applause ratings.] This is the local nibonicho company at work. Soviet reports insist that the nibonicho and their fellows

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are a small minority of Soviet youth, and there is no reason to doubt this claim. Yet the very existence of the nibonicho — and the official concern about them — suggests that others may share their attitudes without expressing them so boldly and that large numbers of the youthful population may be alienated not only from the youth program but, more important, from the values it embodies. Why does the regime not take steps to maximize the impact of the youth program? Certainly the political leadership is aware of the program's shortcomings — they are discussed at length in the official press. Yet the ameliorative efforts conducted from time to time are only halfhearted and are aimed at symptoms rather than at fundamental sources. Criticisms are leveled at individual Komsomol officers and at regional or local organizations — but the system that gives rise to excessive bureaucratization and other serious Komsomol and Pioneer problems is almost never brought under tough-minded scrutiny, for to do so would be to endanger the very political assumptions on which a totalitarian social order rests. It is not improbable that some imaginative and thoughtful leaders know where the difficulties he — but they fear that the cure would be worse than the disease. And so even the boldest manifestos of independence and reinvigoration for the youth program are invariably coupled with restrictive warnings of this type: "Of course, it would be dangerous to convert the Komsomol into a kind of discussion club where people argue and discuss endlessly. After . . . a resolution is adopted, all the members of the organization act as one man." 34 No doubt the Soviet regime would like to have the youth program perform both its police and its educational functions simultaneously. Whether the program could live up to these high — and, I believe, contradictory — expectations in more favorable circumstances is an open question. A program seriously emphasizing its more humane and enlightened

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components — and these are latent in the Soviet program, even though they are often ignored or acknowledged only rhetorically — might be successful in engaging the interest and sympathy of wider circles of youth. But would this impair the police role of the youth program? It is easy enough, from a distance, to opt for the democratic solution, but in fact it may not be feasible in a totalitarian society. For the time being, at least — and in contrast even with the limited post-Stalin reforms in many other cases — the Soviet leadership has taken an unmistakably conservative approach to the youth program and its problems. They may reason that the youth program is far from perfect and is burdened by serious shortcomings, but that it nevertheless is sufficiently useful in its present form. It is fairly certain that for some time to come the leadership will not run the risk of experimentation and innovation in dealing with the new generations, but will continue to stress the priority of immediate control over youth.

7 The Case of the Idlers ANY assessment of the youth program must take into account not only the internal functioning of the organizations, but the program's relationship to the larger society. Particularly revealing in this connection are some aspects of the current Soviet "youth problem." This complex problem has taken various forms, ranging from hooliganism and juvenile delinquency, long under attack in the Soviet press, to manifestations of political and intellectual unrest among the present generation of university students.1 Although all of these phenomena are of considerable interest, it is bezdelnichestvo, or idling, which best illustrates how certain features of the society can counteract the best-laid plans of the youth program. The problem of bezdelnichestvo may be summarized as the rejection of the production ethic — the moral position, which forms a central theme in the youth program, that labor and production per se are positive values and that each Soviet citizen is obliged to undergo disciplined, self-imposed denial in the interests of Communist construction. Opposed to this official position is a complex of values that we may label the leisure ethic, which is totally foreign to the content and spirit of the youth program. The leisure ethic directly conflicts with the ideological commitment of the youth program, for it involves the heretical assumption that productive

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efforts are not in themselves moral imperatives, but necessary evils in the more worthwhile pursuit of pleasure and consumer comforts. Individuals who behave in accordance with this view are variously described in Soviet sources as loafers, good-for-nothings, white hands, petit-bourgeois souls, crown princes, and parasites. The sources of bezdelnichestvo date far back in the history of the Soviet system, but the problem has received substantial and open official attention only in recent years. The apparently growing concern felt by political leaders and others has been evidenced in a public campaign of antiidleness propaganda, waged since shortly after Stalin's death in 1953. There has been a steady flow of complaints in Soviet publications about the laziness and waywardness of some young people. Although cases cited differ in detail from one report to the next, the general implication of official comment is that many members of the younger generation are showing reluctance to work when, where, and how the regime wants them to. A report from Yaroslavl province is typical of these accounts, although it is most unusual in that it provides statistics: "In 1955, 6,500 students were graduated from the secondary schools of Yaroslavl Province (not counting the schools for young working people). What happened next in their lives? A total of 1,290 of them were admitted to higher educational institutions, 1,800 to technicums and 1,270 to technical schools. The remaining 2,140 did not continue their studies. Some of them are working in enterprises or in agriculture. But the majority of them are hanging around doing nothing." 2 Allowing the barest possible "majority" of the 2,140 students who did not go on to further education, simple calculation shows that almost 17 percent of the original 6,500 graduates in Yaroslavl province in 1955 were jobless. This is a high figure in an economy that is bent on rapid expansion and optimum exploitation of all economic re-

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sources, including labor. That a similar situation prevails in many other areas of the USSR is suggested by the volume and variety of press complaints. The problem of idling is not limited to secondary-school graduates; much of the official criticism is leveled at older youths who graduate from the universities or other advanced technical facilities, but who then fail to accept jobs for which they have been trained. Khrushchev himself has complained that many university-trained specialists, educated at considerable expense to the state, have been taking jobs as floor polishers. The sarcastic explanation he has offered is that students choose their course of studies by "picking slips of paper from a hat," only to discover at the end of their training that they are not suited to their fields of specialization.3 What he did not add is that many young people, because of the rigorous competition for openings in higher educational institutions, sometimes specialize in studies unsuitable to them when they must choose fields in which enrollment is open or forgo an advanced education altogether. Another aspect of the idleness problem is the reluctance of some youth to work in remote areas or in the countryside. The attempt of young people to remain in the city, even at the sacrifice of professional employment, is noteworthy.4 In particular, there is evidence that it has created obstacles in the recruitment of skilled and unskilled labor for such efforts as the new-lands program. Soviet claims point to these projects as examples of how Komsomol members and other young patriots answer willingly and enthusiastically the call of the Communist Party. But such reports frequently are supplemented by bitter complaints that too few people are volunteering and by directives to Komsomol organizations to round up more manpower. A cartoon in the satirical publication Krokodil shows a Komsomol "enthusiast" making a passionate speech to fellow members, in which he proclaims: "All, as one, we shall go to the virgin lands. All, as one, we

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shall go to the new settlements." The final scene finds him hiding behind some furniture in the meeting hall to escape being signed up as a volunteer. The last caption reads, "One not as all." B It should not be inferred that bezdelnichestvo involves more than a small minority of the youthful population. In the absence of statistical data, we can only assume that the majority of young people conform with the demands of the system; many do so out of genuine belief, others because they benefit from an appropriate display of correct attitudes, still others — probably the largest group — because alternatives have never occurred to them. As we know from studying juvenile delinquency in the United States, however, a problem involving even a small minority can have grave social repercussions and can often provide a sensitive index to patterns of stress and strain in the social order. Soviet authorities have indeed expressed concern that the attitudes associated with bezdelnichestvo should exist at all in the new society and that they appear to be spreading despite the enormous resources of persuasion and coercion embodied in the youth program. SOCIAL STRATIFICATION AND THE REWARD SYSTEM

The Soviet system of social stratification6 places a premium on skilled and professional occupations, especially those requiring at least some advanced education. Social class and status follow closely from one's occupation. The factors that have given rise to this pattern — which closely resembles that found in the United States and other highly industrialized bureaucratic societies — are related to the regime's attempts beginning in the 1930s to create a viable structure of opportunities and rewards in order to assure an adequate supply of strongly motivated people, possessing the skills and training required in an expanding industrial order. The details of the Soviet stratification system are discussed at

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length in at least one scholarly study and need not concern us here, but their general implications are quite important in understanding the youth problem. First, the absolute differences in material rewards between ordinary occupations and those demanding advanced training are great, especially between manual and nonmanual pursuits. Second, there is considerable competition for upward mobility, and the opportunities for advancement depend substantially on access to higher education. Moreover, while the Soviet standard of living has been slowly rising (especially during the post-Stalin period), the ordinary citizen still enjoys but few of the amenities and comforts generally available to the public in advanced economies where larger shares of the national product are devoted to consumption. At the same time, the possibility for a decent or even high standard of living is held out to those who successfully climb the mobility ladder. For many, then, the prospect of ending up in an ordinary job involving unrelieved labor for minimal reward is decidedly unattractive. So it is also with social status. Although there is not a oneto-one correspondence between income and status, generally the nonmanual occupations — especially the professions — are far more prestigeful and respectable than those involving primarily manual effort. That this combination of factors may be held largely responsible for the phenomenon of bezdelnichestvo is suggested by a closer scrutiny of the evidence. One official spokesman, for example, has deplored the tendency of Soviet youth to shy away from the necessary if unglamorous jobs, and he has suggested that the idleness which ensues when secondary-school graduates prefer to do nothing if they cannot have further education is the cause of juvenile delinquency and hooliganism.8 As an explanation of delinquency, this single-factor approach is sociologically naive, but it does reveal the great concern with negative

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attitudes toward ordinary occupations. V. Sukhmolinski, a member of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, notes with alarm that many secondary-school students who are convinced that they will have to go to work after graduation, instead of to the university, tend to neglect their studies on the grounds that there is no use for them.9 Another writer remarks that recent talk about the life of plenty and leisure under communism has undermined the appreciation for hard work: Physical labor will exist under communism, too, although unmechanized, exhausting labor will disappear in the process of comprehensive automation. Even the very best automatic line presupposes the use of some physical labor, as for instance, in the adjustment and repair of the line, but excludes arduous, unmechanized work. Physical labor may be very highly mechanized and yet remain physical labor. The view that the tremendous progress of technology, the development of automatic machinery and telemechanics, all-round gasification of production will result in man doing nothing at all with his hands, in physical labor completely disappearing, is incorrect and harmful to the education of the young generation. These tales have caused a small section of our youth to develop a supercilious, scornful attitude towards physical labor, as well as sybaritism and an idleness alien to Soviet society.10 In Moscow, in 1956,1 asked members of the editorial board of the Children's Publishing House what they considered the most pressing problem of the new generation. Their answer was that too many young people were refusing to take routine and relatively low-paying jobs. One member added that the Publishing House was just then planning a literary campaign to "convince our children that not everyone needs to go to the university, that all work is worthy of the good Soviet citizen." To return to the case of the Yaroslavl secondary-school graduates, Izvestiia stated elsewhere in its account that many of the unemployed youngsters had decided to "hang around"

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because they had been turned down for advanced education; they wanted to wait another year for a second chance to apply and in the meantime refused to be drawn into "productive work" for fear that they might stay there. The author of the article justified their exclusion from further education in the following terms: "Everyone realizes that higher educational institutions cannot admit the entire, immense body of secondary graduates. Moreover, it is unnecessary that they should do so. Who would then work in the plants and in the factories; who would grow the grain and build the houses?" 11 This assertion is undeniably correct; a complex industrial economy demands a variety of occupational resources short of the advanced training level, as well as an adequate pool of ordinary labor. But the existence of a reward system that tends to contradict this need, not to mention the regime's own emphasis on the importance and glamor of special occupations, is not likely to convince the individual to sacrifice his personal interests for the sake of some abstract need of the larger society. Another writer comments: All types of work in the Soviet Union are honorable. No matter what the work, a man is held in esteem if he does it well and consistently well. . . . [However], certain young Soviet men and women consider only a few professions important and honorable, and hold the rest in disdain. Some adolescents and youths dream of the jobs of aviator, polar explorer, captain of a long voyage, etc. Other occupations they regard as having little importance, as being unattractive. Such views are profoundly mistaken. Is the modest labor of the combine driver or tractorist less honorable than the labor of the aviator or polar explorer?12 It appears that a substantial number of young Soviet citizens are convinced that, at least for themselves, the answer is in the affirmative. These tendencies to reject the official evaluation of ordinary labor have appeared in extreme form among the chil-

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dren of the privileged occupational groups. Although the Soviet press as a rule does not report sensations, it has departed from this convention to the extent of publicizing the misdeeds of children of some high officials. One group was discovered to be stealing and selling property from their parents' apartments in order to finance drunken orgies. Investigators called into the case concluded that the fault was with the parents, who thought that "if their children had good clothes, food, and amusements, the rest would come by itself." The report added, "It has never occurred to any of them [the children] that they would have to work in a factory or on a construction project. They were certain that they were made for different sort of life." 13 Ironically, the threat of punishment that these parents had used in attempting to discipline their children was, "If you behave badly, I shall go to the militia [police] and ask them to send you to the virgin lands." Although this case is extreme, it is symptomatic of a trend among some youths who have enjoyed material advantages. A Pioneer official in Moscow gave me the following explanation: "Our problem children are the offspring of successful people who have made their way in the world the "hard way' and who now want their children to have an easier time of it. Being busy professional people, they do not have sufficient time to give to their children, who therefore suffer from neglect. Furthermore, they give their children too much spending money and, in general, spoil them. These children do not know the value of an honest day's labor and want only to have a good time." The problem, moreover, is not only "moral"; it sometimes poses obstacles to successful economic planning and labor recruitment. One Soviet dispatch reported: In Moscow this Spring [1958], there was an announcement about an important event: 200 tenth-grade children from Proletarskii Raion, having finished school, had made up their minds to set

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off for the new projects in Altai. There was much fuss made about this. They wrote about it and talked about it on the radio. In the middle of July, in Biisk, I met these children in the new hostels of a huge project. There were not 200 of them, but 40. "Why are there only 40?" "The rest were not allowed to come," a sturdy girl, with large eyes, sighed. "Who did not allow them?" "Their papas and mamas." Ah, those tender-hearted papas and mamas. The children bitterly told how one manager of a vegetable market told his daughter that she would leave for Altai only "over his dead body." And the poor girl had to carry her things out secretly under her blouse and skirt to her friends and called her home only when she was departing from the railway station. But the rest were not allowed. . . . Their parents played on their filial feelings, moved them to pity, frightened them, and cooled the ardent young hearts with philistine talk." 14 It is ironic that successful Soviet families — successful, that is, in terms of occupational achievement — should be partially responsible for undermining the influence of the regime's youth program. But it is also true that the Soviet regime itself has unintentionally created this situation. The system of stratification, which, through its encouragement of striving and attainment, has been an important factor in the success of the economy, is also substantially responsible for the emergence of privileged groups. Broadly speaking, those groups and individuals who were most responsive to the opportunities thus offered (or whose previous backgrounds enabled them to seize the advantage) now are in the top echelons of the stratification system. Yet some of them, in turn, are instilling negative attitudes toward work in their children. Because they can afford to give their children an easier time of it, they are in a position to neutralize some of the institutional demands of a competitive system. There is some paradox in the fact that secondary-school

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graduates desperately seek further education in an effort to avoid routine jobs, while some of their elder brothers with advanced training take just these jobs to avoid assignments in remote areas. Yet underlying both manifestations of bezdelnichestvo, the same motivation is discernible — the quest for leisure. To escape from the countryside is, for some, to escape from at least the more obvious discrepancies between what the system demands and what it offers in return. Implicit in this attitude is a strong orientation toward the city as a symbol of the better life. The Soviet city may be provincial by some Western standards, but it is infinitely more advanced than the countryside. The city not only has more consumer goods, but also offers cultural and social facilities such as theaters, amusement parks, restaurants, museums, and concerts. For many young people with whom I spoke, the lure was irresistible: dancing to Western tunes at one of the large hotels, drinking Soviet champagne, walking down Moscow's fashionable Gorky Street (or "Broadway," as the young sometimes call it), and looking at expensive luxury goods in the shop windows. The thought of being an agronomist on a collective farm, or a doctor at some far-off clinic, could not compete with these signs of growing affluence. Many specialists, to be sure, do not attempt to evade assignments away from the city. But even among those who fulfill the minimum obligations, there is a marked tendency to return to the city at the first opportunity. High officials have put the question bluntly: "Why do some young specialists, after working the required three years or even less in the country, leave for the city, abandoning the school, hospital, or other institution where they were sent? . . . Higher educational institutions do little for civic indoctrination of students, what they do is not always sufficiently intelligent, and the young people themselves lack the initiative to overcome slackness of character."15

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THE STILYAGI AND THE CROWN PRINCES

The extreme development of the leisure ethic is to be found among the stilyagi (a Russian word, essentially untranslatable, that means something like the old American zoot-suiters and has a contemporary parallel in Britain's Teddy boys), young people whose departure from the principles of the youth program finds an outlet in exhibitionist behavior. Though they are in a small minority, there is a clue in their exaggeration of the leisure ethic to the more general and less spectacular behavior that constitutes hezdelnichestvo. The stilyagi are young people whose lives are largely devoted to the quest of pleasure and whose basic philosophy is to get away with the minimum amount of work while enjoying themselves as much as possible. Those who can manage it pay for their indulgences out of allowances from parents, student stipends, or even from the proceeds of illegal speculation. In a conscious display of what they consider to be sophistication, they affect bizarre styles of dress and grooming — loud-checked padded jackets, shoes a size too large, and elaborate haircuts. Involved in the stilyagi's behavior is an attempt to imitate what they believe to be Western symbols of leisure. From their fragmentary — and often grotesquely distorted — knowledge of American popular culture, they single out those elements they associate with "having a good time": jazz, dance fads, the cocktail hour, and so forth. They also adopt English nicknames and American slang. Youth officials have insisted that it is not so much the outward behavior of the stilyagi that is disturbing — though it is bad enough — as the attitudes behind it. The press provides a stinging description of the various types of stilyagi. One type: "If he is Boris, he calls himself Bob, and if he is Ivan, he calls himself John. He lives off his parents, and "burns' his money in restaurants. Sometimes he is registered

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as a student, but he 'despises' crammers and therefore does not study. He adores' everything foreign and is ready to give his right arm for a fashionable [phonograph] record. . . . He is disillusioned with life." A second is caricatured as a type who "began working, but the work turned out to be uninteresting' and his co-workers were crude' people who lacked understanding' and 'sensitivity.' He sent in his resignation. Insulted, he returned to the bosom of his family, and . . . [rested] a year or so." On another type, the comment is, "If he works, it is without enthusiasm and only to have a good reputation." But the essence of the matter, the report concludes, is that, while some stilyagi work and others manage to escape it, "all of them have the same attitude toward work — they don't like it." 16 Campaigns against the stilyagi have not been limited to the national level; in local media, the attack is directed at individual nonconformists. I have in my files a photograph of a poster, conspicuously displayed in a main square of Kiev in May 1956, which shows a young dandy supported in the arms of his balding and harassed father and wearing a widebrimmed hat, striped socks, thick-soled shoes, loud necktie, and lazily puffing at a cigarette in a holder. The legend reads: "Edvard Falko, born in 1937, works nowhere, studies nowhere. Supported by his father, Ν. M. Lvkovsky, Candidate of Medical Sciences, Head of the Department of Dermatology; and by his mother, D. M. Voloshina, junior assistant at the Academy of Science of the Ukrainian Republic. He goes aimlessly through the city; his father will clothe him; his mother will feed him — they have brought up a 'specialist' who cares not a fig for anything." Since 1960, the campaign against the stilyagi has declined somewhat — perhaps its targets have learned to make themselves less visible — but it has been replaced by a broader attack against the "un-Soviet" attitudes of which the stilyagi are an extreme instance. The "crown princes," successors to

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the stilyagi in press commentary, are not as flamboyant, but they have organized their pursuit of the good life more effectively: they trade illegally in foreign goods. A Soviet magazine article describes some of them: Sergei Dubchenko belongs to that class of young people who feel a strong aversion to labor but who look with favor on its products. . . . Therefore, the ex-student decided to take up the only kind of labor fit for a gentleman — the buying and selling of currency and foreign commodities. And Dubchenko staffed his company with young loafers who had adenoidal voices and paralytic gaits. The loafers maintained their way of life on the following principles. Their working day was not normal. They would rise at noon, take a drink to combat their hangovers and start off to work, which consisted of making the rounds of the large hotels and looking for potential speculators among the foreigners there. Toward evening, loaded down with rags bearing foreign labels, they would return home and start to figure out the possible profits from the future sale of the underdrawers and suspenders they had obtained. And at night they enjoyed relaxation in cafes and restaurants. . . . Each young "trader" has his own specialized skills. One buys up and cashes in dollars, another suspenders from across the sea and a third, like Yu. Zakharov, for example, who is nicknamed "the Icon Man," specializes in the sale of icons. To them the highest virtue is a jacket of elegant style and a wallet packed with money. Calloused hands and workmen's overalls evoke from them only a contemptuous laugh. Anyone who does not own narrow boots, a short jacket and a crossstitched tie with a hand-painted girl on it they call a "farmer." 17 One of the most significant aspects of the new drive is its attempt to link social misbehavior with political disloyalty by associating it with the impact of Western culture — and espionage. Young people have been sternly warned that behind every informal contact with a foreigner lies the danger of betraying the motherland, and that an innocent interest in such exotica as wash-and-wear briefs or abstract art is an invitation to be duped by an agent. Komsotnolskaia pravda reports:

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Here is one sad story. It began in the Hermitage. Three young people — a student in a Leningrad higher educational institution, his brother and his comrade — talked in a loud voice about modern painting, making disrespectful remarks about old masters. They were approached by a foreigner. He introduced himself in Russian as a tourist and an art lover. They started talking about the latest trends in painting and sculpture in the West. . . . That is how they became acquainted. . . . The foreigners more and more frequently gave the brothers little payments and "presents." The villainous bog toward which the "art lover" had paved the first steps was sucking in the young people deeper and deeper.18 Moreover, according to Soviet sources, the desire for foreign-made glamor involves not only a debased and politically dangerous aping of the West, but can lead to heinous domestic crimes. An article in Literaturnaia gazeta, quoted here at length, exposes a group of currency speculators as well as a drug-peddling ring run by "respectable" young people — and it contains some trenchant remarks on why the youth program failed to save them. The fact is that on August 10, 1960, three young men were detained on Manege Square, Moscow, after they had bought a 100-franc note from French tourists. Somewhat earlier the militia arrested a group of young persons who had been selling morphine to a group of shady characters. The morphine had been stolen from an alkaloid factory. Dinosaurs, then, do exist. When you read the court records it all seems even quite ordinary. None of the defendants resembles Al Capone or Frank Costello. There was no gunfire at a bar, no mad pursuit in black limousines. Lyudmilla Voitenko, a chemical analyst at an alkaloid factory, stole a kilogram of morphine, carrying it out in a wrapping of stolen linen. Bit by bit she passed it to Valery Kalyuzhny. He turned over a part of it to Valentina Fridman, who sold the drug to a certain character in Tbilisi. The latter paid off in businesslike fashion at 35 rubles a gram. Voitenko received 7.50 per gram. Kalyuzhny and Fridman divided the remainder. Kalyuzhny's wife, Alia Stetsenko, carried out a similar operation with the help of her playboy friends Boris Khokhlov, Georgy Prokofyev and Tadeusz Kasyanov. . . .

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A boy is born. "He will become a doctor," says mama. "He will be an engineer," thinks papa. The boy enters kindergarten, then school. In the third grade he is presented with a red neckerchief and pronounces his first adult words, "Before my comrades, I, a Young Pioneer of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics . . ." — and there is a thrill and exultation in the air. In the seventh grade he writes an application [for membership in the Komsomol] : "I wish to be in the vanguard . . ." Now, after the kindergarten, after the school, a 20-year-old with dulled gaze writes at the end of the case record: "Yes, I confess my guilt." It is terrible. But it happens. Where, at what point, did our society fail this young man? Lately the press has been printing frequent reports about speculators in goods bought from tourists, about parasites and idlers. They are called "crown princes" and it is said that there are not so many of them, but neither are there so few. There is a reliable way to identify the parasite — by his Texas levis, called "jeeps." . . . After all, these are Soviet citizens. We must find out who they are, these youthful spectres of the past. Here are our foreign currency speculators: Dmitry Morozov, 19, salesclerk, Adolf Blank, 21, draftsman; Ilya Tsvik, 21, electrician. All three are students of evening or correspondence schools. What kind of "crown princes" are these? They study like everyone else, they work like everybody, they play — How do they play? The image of the stilyaga which has been sufficiently publicized in our newspapers and magazines is now outdated. The Academician papa, papa's Pobeda car, a wad of money. This kind exists too, of course, but if one grants that stilyagi and parasites arise from a surfeit of material benefits, how did the abovementioned boys, sons of ordinary working families, come to lead such a life? How did Valery Kalyuzhny, who had a very hard life, land behind bars? . . . [Kalyuzhny] wandered from job to job, seeking something. He wanted to "become a man." There they sat, he thought, "real men," behind the plate glass of cafes, finely clad, conversing about something very smart, laughing at something very funny, counting out 100-ruble bills and not bothering with the change. The boy felt himself a "man" only when he went downtown evenings

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in an elegant suit. Then he bought a trenchcoat from a foreigner and strolled down the street like, say, Jean Marais. Girls glanced at him. . . . This "prince" might be a Komsomol member, like Dmitry Morozov; not infrequently he is a ranking athlete; he may enjoy Remarque . . . or paperback spy stories. In the evening the center of the city calls him. . . . His "center" consists of the hotels, buzzing with unfamiliar and hence interesting life; the windshields of cars bearing foreign stickers showing the flags of foreign countries; the chords of jazz behind the plate glass windows of restaurants. In this "center" the "prince" encounters real parasites . . . with nicknames such as "Pinkerton" or "Fixer": Semi-underworld dzhentlmen, meeting at the Hotel National cafe and checking with one another on "how does the green stand on the market today?" — that is, what is the black market rate for dollars? These characters are elegant, they are "one hundred percent." Devil take it, why should the "prince" not become one of them and exchange his homemade levis for real, ravishing levis with a mass of incomprehensible metal gimcracks? . . . This struggle cannot be reduced to what used to be done several years ago, when every young fellow with welted pockets and every girl with dyed hair was hauled off to a patrol post. We must proceed differently and we must first of all understand why moths, flying towards the dangerous flame of an "attractive life," appear among our serious, intelligent young people. . . . Komsomol district committees, preoccupied with organizing mass activities at the factories, farms and offices, tend to overlook the leisure time of people. Perhaps this is where society failed our «our . young » prince. "Is it dull in your organization?" we asked Dmitry Morozov? He answered with a counter-question: "What could be gay about it? What can be gay in a Komsomol unit?" . . . This bureaucratic touch sometimes drives young people from public recreation centers into the streets. What follows is dissolute behavior in private life, worship of tawdry street ways, and spiritual poverty. . . . Life. Alia Stetsenko, Valery Kalyuzhny's wife, whispers through tears: "I never thought life would be so complicated." Yes, life is not simple, and no amount of trying can turn your life into

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a stroll along mown lawns in an elegant procession, wearing a constant succession of changing outfits and an Air France bag slung across your shoulder.19 The Morozovs, Stetsenkos, Kalyuzhnys, and others are not creations of journalists' pens, but real people who constitute real problems for the regime. Many Western visitors can testify to the ample presence of such youths at tourist hotels, where they do indeed congregate in their quest for samples of consumer goods and foreign currency. In Leningrad, in 1960, youngsters in their early twenties would regularly appear at my diningroom table, usually in pairs, to strike up conversations inevitably leading to the question, "Do you have . . .?" One young entrepreneur proudly displayed the label of his suit jacket, which bore the name of a wellknown American cut-rate clothing firm (he had purchased it from another tourist — for about twice its value — some weeks before), and said that he also owned an English-made phonograph. A devoted fan of the Voice of America's popular-music broadcasts, he knew the announcer's English-language patter from memory. He was familiar with the names of several American discount chains, and even with the biographies of a number of fairly obscure American jazz artists. He wanted to know if I would sell him wash-and-wear shirts or dollars. Although he had graduated from a retailing institute some months before, he refused to take a job in the city because "the responsibility would be too great," and would not accept a post in the countryside at a small store because "it would be boring." His wife, a physician, supported him. The almost emotional attachment of the idlers and some others to foreign consumer items and gadgets is an intriguing phenomenon. Its significance is not altogether clear, but it seems to stem from the fact that the Soviet consumer-goods industry now provides enough to whet appetites though not to satisfy them. The fact that the desired items are foreign also adds to their luster. Real need does not seem to be a

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major factor; rather, the symbolic significance of these consumer items — representing both the good life outside and the promise of better things to come in the USSR — probably accounts for their extraordinary appeal. This fascination with things foreign in the whole bezdelnichestvo syndrome extends also to styles and fads. For several years, Soviet officials have bemoaned the magnetic pull of Western dances for young people, and not only for "dissolute" types. The published discussions on this question are almost humorous in their extreme gravity and in their insistence on politicizing such an unlikely subject as ballroom dancing. Lev Kassil, the author of the critique of the Komsomol cited in the previous chapter, notes elsewhere the desire of young people to try new dances — and the efforts of cultural officials to suppress them: I remember an episode I observed about two years ago. I was driving on a highway near Moscow. It was drizzling. Suddenly I saw an unusual scene in the beam of my highlights. A young concertina player was sitting at the roadside on a little stool. His forehead was close to the bellows and his fingers moved the keys as if he were enchanted. A young fellow standing next to him, completely drenched, selflessly held an open umbrella over him. On the highway itself, about three dozen couples, in waterproof capes and three-cornered hats made of newspapers, danced a melancholy tango, trying to avoid the puddles. "Listen," I finally said to the umbrella holder, "why do you stay out in the rain and get wet? There is a club nearby." "They have a new director there," was the answer. "He has prohibited Western dances. So we adjust: We dance the waltz and the krakowiak there, but the tango and the foxtrot here."20 Igor Moiseyev, the internationally famous choreographer, has also commented on the unintended consequences of official efforts to ban unacceptable dance steps. The announcement was imperative: "Dancing 'in the style' is Forbidden." Those who disregarded this compulsory directive were ushered out of the district House of Culture. People's

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volunteers, militiamen, well-meaning guardians of the morality and chastity of the modern ballroom — all were mobilized and thrown into the struggle against "the style." Nevertheless, there was confusion, albeit unexpected. Among those who had come to the club dance hall, many did not know at all what "the style" was. But the above-mentioned ban, hung up for all to see and endowed with all the qualities of a visual agitation poster, performed its lofty mission. It got people interested. It hit the mark squarely, and it was effective. All the uninitiated immediately decided to learn about "the style." Young people are curious these days. "I want to know everything" is their motto. Moreover, their energy and intellect drive them toward independence in thought and judgment. This inherent inclination cannot be disregarded. 21 But one of the "well-meaning guardians" replied to the effect that the trouble lies not in prohibiting Western dances, but in inadequacies in the Soviet "plan" for producing new dances. A sufficient quantity of new Soviet dances, he held, would effectively compete with any Western repertory. And he warned of the evil influence of Western dances: Ask any organization with jurisdiction in the field how matters stand with regard to the dance repertoire. "Excellent," you will be told. "We have more than 50 dances." But how many of these dances exist on dance floors, rather than merely on paper? Ten to 15% of them, if not fewer. Years go by without any changes in our dance steps. Even if all the dances were ideal, the question of periodically replacing them would still have to be raised. It is legitimate and natural to want something new. It is not only the prohibitions to which I. A. Moiseyev refers but the stagnation of our repertoire that leads young people to investigate new dance forms for themselves. Here is where the Western dances lie in ambush for them. 22 From the perspective of an outsider, it is difficult to take these passionate exchanges about ballroom dancing as more than a tempest in a bureaucratic teapot. But in a larger sense they do reveal how the Soviet regime, in its approach to

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youth, needlessly creates problems for itself by heightening the appeal of the forbidden and therefore exotic. Moreover, the tendency of the political leadership to identify innocent curiosity with the sins of personal immorality and political wavering or disloyalty — instead of sorting out the superficial from the serious — can only make its task and that of the youth program more difficult. This almost hysterical approach to the preservation of moral and ideological purity is illustrated in the following remarks of a Leningrad city official concerning the sources of corruption among youth: We must take an approach that is principled and firm but at the same time sensitive and solicitous towards the upbringing of young people who are not yet fully formed and who start to show confusion and unwholesome inclinations in their views. . . . When we encounter manifestations of bourgeois ideology hostile to us, our position must be active and not passive. Bourgeois propaganda places more and more hope on its art, music and dances in trying to reach the minds of young people. . . . It stresses art that awakens animal instincts and that preaches egoism, cruelty, and a thirst for unhealthy pleasures. . . . Apologists for the bourgeois way of life stress licentious and hysterical jazz-like trash, dances with pornographic overtones — hack work by artists that relieves man of the need to think. On some people here and there this creates a certain impression. After all, our stilyagi are dangerous not because of their loud shirts but, because, refusing to work for the welfare of society and aspiring to luxury, they adopt a way of life alien to our society. . . . Speculators in goods bought from tourists, girls of frivolous behavior and other parasitic elements do not deserve leniency on our part. The time has come to stop their foul activity more resolutely and vigorously. Vigilance and the help of the people's volunteers and the Komsomol are most important in this struggle.23 This, then, is the official version of the fall from morality among problem youth: evil ideas from the West prey upon misguided curiosity, an interest in foreign items leads to

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alienation from Soviet life and values, to dissolution and idleness, and to political decay. OFFICIAL REACTIONS

Among the stilyagi, the crown princes, the children of privileged groups, the frustrated individuals from workingclass backgrounds looking for high excitement, and the seekers of forbidden experiences, one finds the sharpest and most dramatic expressions of attitudes that are antithetical to the purposes of the youth program. But while these more outwardly rebellious young people are the most obvious targets for attack in official publications, they constitute only a small minority in the Soviet Union. From the point of view of the regime, they are of course important in their own right as threats to the values of the system — but they are also seen as the extreme embodiment of attitudes toward work and life observable among many members of the younger generation. Indeed, it is the generally average young citizen who is the source of real concern to the authorities and who has been the subject of an increasing volume of press commentary across the USSR. To cite a few examples: In Central Asia, the Kazakhstan party newspaper protests the large number of people in Kazakhstan, "especially youth," who have "false bottoms" — that is, who pretend to live by Soviet standards for the sake of outward appearances but who, it is charged, share the worst features of the stilyagi and other idlers.24 From Georgia, the party organ reports that the Komsomol considers young people who "do absolutely no work at all" a key problem.25 In Lithuania, the official press announces that it is "annoying to see" how many university graduates refuse to seek work.2® From Estonia comes the charge that some secondary-school graduates are shirkers and slackers, that rather than do their share in the demanding tasks of building the Soviet economy they prefer to "sit

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out their time at home." When the call comes to go to the new lands, they would rather go "visiting grandmother."27 The measures that the regime is employing against bezdelnichestvo and related phenomena are important both because they afford an index to official conceptions of the problem and because they provide a basis for speculation about the future course of the youth program. A number of different approaches are being tried. One attempt, though it stems from pressures far broader than the youth problem alone, has been a moderate and halting policy of wage equalization — raising minimum rewards and in some cases reducing the higher ones.28 It may be that, if the availability of consumer goods substantially improves, such concessions will ease some of the tensions behind bezdelnichestvo — much as the abundance of such goods in other societies seems to paper over many faults in the social order. But there is no guarantee that this would work — aspiration, after all, is relative, and an increased supply of consumer goods might create new desires faster than they could be satisfied. Another solution is longer-range in intent and aims at forestalling the development of rebellious attitudes in future generations. It concerns not only bezdelnichestvo, but the potential erosion of the entire spectrum of values on which the youth program rests. At the core of this attempt is the plan, first announced at the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956, to create shkoly internaty, or boarding schools, for virtually the entire school-age population in order to reinvigorate the indoctrination of Soviet youth. The existing system of primary and secondary education is to be replaced with boarding schools where children will be subjected to a round-the-clock program away from the influences of the family and the street. Although the plan is also concerned with improvements in curriculum and instruction, its ultimate purpose is to effect total control over the early formation of basic attitudes and values. As one report indicates,

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"The pupils will remain in the boarding schools, making it possible to make these schools the true center of Communist upbringing."20 Initially, emphasis is to be placed on the eradication of incorrect attitudes toward work and their replacement with officially approved values: "Education in the boarding schools should be combined with productive work. Labor in all its forms should occupy an important place in the students' daily lives." 30 The boarding-school plan is off to an ambitious start; many schools are already in operation, some with full facilities, others providing for extended day sessions but lacking dormitories. The idea is to convert all existing schools into the boarding type. In the meantime, "with the new system of education in its initial stages, efforts should be focused on sending children aged 7 to 17 — the most impressionable age — to the boarding schools. Of course this does not mean that we shall not have complete boarding schools, including nurseries and kindergartens. . . . Such institutions exist, but there will be few of them at first."31 In addition to the boarding-school program, the recent reorganization of Soviet education, with a new emphasis on combining work experience with the educational process, is expected to make a major contribution in the inculcation of official values toward work.32 Whether these changes in the educational system will solve the problems discussed here remains to be seen. But the fact that such an ambitious project as providing dormitories for the entire school-age population is underway — in a society that has not yet found the resources for minimal housing needs — testifies to the urgency and importance that the leadership attaches to reinforcing its hold over the new generations. (By 1962, there were 1,179 boarding schools enrolling 400,000 pupils; extended day schools enrolled an additional 400,000. 3S ) Other measures have also been decreed. They were pres-

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aged by a 1956 speech in which Khrushchev, addressing a group of young workers bound for Siberia, said, "We are convinced that the time is not far off when higher educational institutions will recruit their students from factories, construction projects, collective farms . . . and state farms." He added, "I say this to you so that you will not think that by going off to the construction projects you will lose the opportunity for a higher education."34 This new recruitment policy for higher education is now largely in effect. Nicholas DeWitt points out that the "main intent of recent regulations is to deter the 10-year graduates from proceeding to higher education immediately upon graduation. . . . They decree that 80 per cent of the vacancies in schools of university level are to be reserved for those who have had two or more years of employment."35 In addition, the goal of universal ten-year education is being replaced with an eight-year pattern, and further schooling (required for admission to the universities) will be available to most students only in conjunction with full-time employment at a regular job. Thus it will be possible to "cut down on the number of school years with required attendance, so as to permit youngsters in the group 15 to 18 to enter the active labor force instead of remaining in school."36 These changes can do more than increase the supply of labor on a short-term basis; by placing individuals in the active labor force, it may also be possible to keep some of them there permanently and to dissuade them from applying to the universities. Khrushchev's 1956 statement to the Siberian construction workers, then, was not really a promise of higher education. The impact of these changes cannot be determined. It is at least questionable that administrative measures, such as alterations in the educational sequence, go to the heart of the problem. Indeed, by further reducing the numbers of those who have access to higher education, new restrictions

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may aggravate, rather than alleviate, tendencies already strongly present. The most dramatic attacks against bezdelnichestvo have taken the form of harsh legal measures against "parasitism." A decree of the Supreme Soviet of May 4, 1961, provides for sending idlers and others with antisocial attitudes to "special locations" for from two to five years, and specifies confiscation of any property obtained by means other than labor. Those sent away are required to work; if they refuse, they may be assigned to forced labor, with a portion of their salaries withheld. Finally, a prison sentence may be imposed on the extremely recalcitrant offenders. The Komsomol in particular is called upon for assistance in bringing the culprits to book.37 There has also been a re-emphasis in the youth program itself upon the values and behavior that it has so long attempted to instill. This is a change in quantity, not in quality. It involves broader membership coverage in the Komsomol and more intensive efforts to make the primary organizations carry out their fundamental training tasks. But membership drives, as we have already seen, can work in the wrong way. And the very effort to extend the program's network of control not only aggravates the already remarkable tendencies toward excessive bureaucratization, but may also provoke among the membership still more ingenious methods of evasion. Finally, to the extent that the drive to contain deviant tendencies involves a heightened emphasis on repressive measures, the fundamental dilemma of surveillance versus education becomes sharper. This is not the first time that the youth organizations have been called upon to take a more inventive approach in their dealings with Soviet youth —nor is it the first time that proclamations of good intent have produced few results. The youth program is set in its ways, and it will take a far more severe crisis than the

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one described in this chapter to prompt a serious rethinking about methods. In studying a society whose political leaders and official philosophers habitually make grandiose claims to perfection, who boast of the undying devotion of their subjects, and who, with closed-minded certainty, scornfully reject all other social systems as decaying relics of the past, it is an understandable temptation to exaggerate the evidence of internal disharmony; one would like to counter the conceited and narrow rhetoric of the totalitarian world view and perhaps to find in such evidence signs that the Soviet system is doomed to fall apart from self-generated contradictions. It would be most unfortunate, however, if the case of bezdelnichestvo were to be used for these purposes. The Soviet youth problem is serious enough without having to exaggerate it — so much official anguish is devoted to it, and so much newsprint, that it can hardly be dismissed as minor or incidental. Moreover, the evidence garnered from the official dialogue comes from party and state media, which tend grossly to underpublicize failures and to magnify accomplishments; if anything, the problem is worse than can be demonstrated by reference to such sources. Even so, it would be an error to classify the youth problem as a dangerous crisis. Given the structure of Soviet society, it is true, there seems to be no obvious solution to bezdelnichestvo and similar problems — but this is not to say that the Soviet system cannot live with them. All modern industrial societies are riddled with unsolved problems, internal contradictions, and tensions — including those involving youth — but few (save doctrinaire Marxists) would argue that they are therefore slated for upheaval and extinction. Moreover, the Soviet youth problem stems from the same circumstances that lie behind the many major successes. If the reward system is powerful

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enough to create severe strains, then no doubt it also motivates many other citizens to play the game according to the official rules. If the youth organizations alienate many youngsters who are repelled by the stifling and restrictive atmosphere, then surely they also enlist the ardent loyalties of enthusiasts and provide a haven and a training period for career-minded bureaucrats who will later assume important posts in the party and elsewhere. My concluding chapter will be devoted to a general evaluation of the credits and liabilities of the youth program, and these and other issues will be discussed there at greater length. But the case of bezdelnichestvo already suggests one major conclusion: in spite of all the resources at its command, in spite of its monopolistic advantage, in spite of its unprecedentedly vigorous efforts to indoctrinate entire generations, the youth program does not work well when it is undermined by the actual conditions of the larger society. The program's central imagery — the valor and glory of service to the state through self-sacrificing labor — thorough and persistent though it be, cannot compete with the more compelling influence of hard reality.

8 Conclusion THE central fact about the Komsomol and Pioneers is that they are not organizations of or for youth, but agencies of the Communist Party and the Soviet government. They are controlled and staffed by political personnel in the interests of an authoritarian regime. Therein lie both the strength and the weakness of the program. This highly centralized and coordinated effort contributes substantially to the maintenance of Soviet totalitarianism. Because they block the open formation of dissident youth groups, the Komsomol and Pioneers must be counted as important assets to the Soviet leadership. Although the program does not enable the regime altogether to escape the disruptive consequences of the Soviet variety of youthful rebellion and unrest, it does contain them to a significant degree by closing off legitimate channels of protest. This in itself is no small accomplishment. The program also successfully fulfills a number of positive purposes. Imperfect as it is, it is still an important medium for communicating to the new generations a monolithic political ideology, a consistent world view, and basic values useful in an expanding industrial order. If the content of its message at times appears to the outsider to be unsophisticated and naive, it should be kept in mind that the Soviet audience has very little opportunity for comparative evaluation.

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Certainly the program's incessant indoctrination accurately finds the mark in part of the new generation. Although the distribution of "types" in the youthful population is impossible to derive in the absence of accurate quantitative data, those who are thoroughly convinced by the program's message must be counted as heavily as those who are turned away or discouraged by the repressive tactics of the youth organizations. Even if we dismiss the notion of the New Soviet Man as sheer propaganda, there are ample numbers of ordinary humans who are convinced by the slogans of the youth program and thoroughly dedicated to the values they embody. A youth poll undertaken in 1961 by Komsomolskaia pravda tapped a large number of such sentiments, reflected in the overwhelmingly enthusiastic replies to a questionnaire on the mood of Soviet youth. Of almost twenty-two thousand replies from young respondents, claimed the editors, more than 83 percent "declared that they like the new generation and are satisfied with its accomplishments." Unfortunately, these and other statistics are almost worthless, for the questionnaire on which they are based invited a heavily disproportionate reply from enthusiasts and careerists (it was printed in the Komsomol's official newspaper and depended not on a legitimately selected sample, but on voluntary responses), and the editors of Komsomolskaia pravda made available only a few examples of what they decided were "illustrative" answers. 1 Nevertheless, the few published replies, if not necessarily typical of the generation as a whole, are genuine enough and remind us of the power of the youth program when it hits home. A Komsomol member from Minsk wrote this glowing account of life in the Soviet Union and the experience of his generation: "I think my generation is the happiest of all times. We have been the first to see sputniks and spaceships, automatic machinery working in place of people, and an atomic icebreaker. We not only have seen

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these, but took part in making them. My generation is now waging the most sacred battle on earth. . . . Of course I am in love with my times and with my generation. New relations among people and the new man of the Communist future are emerging." 2 Another reported: I want to tell you about the people of my town. I am speaking of the future city of Kachkanara, in the northern part of Sverdlovsk province, in the Urals, and its builders. This was impenetrable taiga until only three years ago. But the Komsomol came, and now the structures for a future iron-ore-enrichment combine are rising in the taiga, as is new housing. The day is not far off when the small settlement will have turned into a real city, built with the hands of my coevals. How many of them there are! Demobilized soldiers and young men and girls from the cities of central Russia, who came in response to the Komsomol campaign. Happy, lively people, able to work enthusiastically. After their work they dance high-spiritedly on the stage; their skates leave trails on the ice. These are people who live by high dreams. . . . If you're determined to accomplish something, you'll do it. 3 It is too much to expect that more than a small minority should emerge from the youth program with such unblemished views of a society where the noise of busy construction is interrupted only by the rhythm of happy dancing and skating; it does not take a very profound knowledge of social reality in the Soviet Union (or anywhere else) to realize that life is neither a series of travel posters nor a Mosfilm musical. But even a sprinkling of genuine enthusiasts is a powerful catalyst, especially if, as in the Soviet Union, the devoted are backed by an enormous party and state apparatus. In a totalitarian society, the circle of true believers is likely to have a degree of influence far out of proportion to its actual size. Nor is it necessary that the youth program produce only enthusiasts. Indeed, the presence of too many true believers may be undesirable in a system where the persistent em-

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phasis on formal values is likely to draw attention to the gap between the ideal and the actuality. An effective balance, instead, consists of enough such paragons to set the tone and a larger mass of the mildly committed who do not invest so much faith in literally interpreted doctrine that the inevitable departures of daily life from the golden image cause wholesale disillusionment. In this respect the Soviet regime may actually profit from its partial failure to arouse a universal and passionate acceptance of official views. The question of how to evaluate the youth program, then, centers not so much on its success among the minority of enthusiasts as on the way it affects the larger contingent of ordinary members. This study has attempted to provide a balance sheet of assets and deficits in the program as they affect this group. In the credit column, I have already mentioned the usefulness of the program in repressing dissident tendencies (or at least in hindering their coalescence) and the fact that it does provoke positive reactions in a part of the new generation. A less easily demonstrated but equally major strength of the program — when the Komsomol and Pioneers operate according to plan — is that it gives official recognition to youth as a partner in the larger societal undertaking and thereby provides a sense of identification and purpose that so often is lacking among youth in modern societies. Granted that this recognition is in large part a disguise for an extreme form of tutelage by politicians and administrators, it is recognition nonetheless and should not be underestimated. Moreover, by dealing with youth in adult terms — that is, by insisting that young people function according to rules rather than in terms of an adolescent or youth subculture — it may be that the new generations are more readily incorporated into the "serious" concerns of a growing industrial order. These strengths are partially offset by a number of pervasive weaknesses. There are extremely serious problems of internal organization: excessive bureaucratization, the vir-

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tual exclusion of the rank and file from responsible decision making and sometimes even from participation, the deadening consequences of boredom and indifference, the partial displacement of the program's long-range goals by its role of hiring boss and disciplinarian, the resentment aroused by the youth organizations' invasions of privacy, the adherence to routine at the cost of imaginative and productive innovations. In addition, the program is partially undermined by the inconsistencies between its content and the competing influence of reality — resulting, for example, in bezdelnichestvo. More generally, these inconsistencies may be said to stem from the effort to indoctrinate youth with highly orthodox, almost sacred convictions at a time when the development of the Soviet industrial system, the spread of mass education, and the growing sophistication of an urban population increasingly lead to a secularization of values. Even in highly favorable circumstances, the maintenance of a revolutionary elan is difficult. As the Revolution itself recedes into the distant past and the needs of the system come increasingly to center on the more routine needs for technical rationality, organizational skill, and occupational performance, the youth program is faced with the unhappy task of purveying a partially outdated message. Or, from another point of view, the advent of relative affluence in the USSR is creating new diversions, new aspirations, and new forms of emotional investment that conflict with the old single-minded focus on self-sacrifice and future-orientation. Such trends are not exclusively Soviet, and versions of them may be found in many modernized societies. Paul Goodman notes, "The irony is that in our decades, the combination of rationalism, asceticism, and individualism (the so-called Protestant Ethic) has produced precisely the system of boondoggling, luxury-consumption, and statuses (a rejection of the Protestant Ethic)." 4 There has been a seeming incapacity on the part of youth-program planners to cope with these

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phenomena or to take into account the fact that times, moods, and conditions are changing. The refusal to grant that there can be serious problems in a social system that claims to have achieved communism leads to unrealistic conclusions that there are no problems, only temporary aberrations that can be corrected by the proper application of administrative measures or the manipulation of public opinion. So an inordinate amount of attention is devoted to attacking symptoms and very little to seeking out causes. Perhaps it is reassuring to propagandists to be able to blame youthful unrest upon dark, outside forces, but ultimately it is not very helpful. Once I asked a Soviet sociologist for his view of the Soviet youth problem; his reply was that there is none. This denial of reality, whether calculated or coy, results in extraordinarily rigid and partially self-defeating tactics in the youth program and hinder it in coming to grips with basic issues. Indeed, perhaps the most significant conclusion about the youth program in the post-Stalin era is how little the liberalization in many other areas has altered its traditional narrowness and inflexibility. The few thoughtful analyses of the youth problem and the program have come almost exclusively from individuals who are not connected with it — artists, writers, and other intellectuals — and even their voices have seldom been heard on the really burning issues. The officials directly concerned with the program, who might be in a position to effect reforms, for the most part have maintained silence, except for routine and rather circumscribed attacks on small organizational problems. Until now the sheer weight of the system of controls has prevented an incipient youth problem from getting out of hand, and no doubt these controls will continue to be effective for some time to come. But the tendency of youth officials to confuse their image of how things should be with actuality may outrun the capacity of the program to handle the demands and aspirations

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of increasingly curious, restless, and sophisticated Soviet young people. The Soviet youth program represents such a radical departure from conventional and familiar means of socializing new generations in modern societies that it is difficult to find comparable cases that can contribute to our perspective. The youth programs in the other Soviet-bloc nations are not especially useful for comparative purposes, for they have been so consciously and closely modeled after the Russian example, even to the details of nomenclature and insignia, that their similarity is less impressive than the imitative skills of their organizers. The most instructive independent case is the youth program in Nazi Germany. Its similarities to the Soviet youth program underline the essentially totalitarian features of both, but a number of important differences serve to demonstrate special features of the Soviet policy. The Soviet and Nazi programs arose out of radically different historical circumstances. At the time of Hitler's accession to power, Germany already had a long tradition of youth movements, dating from the first Wanderer groups before the turn of the century. They had begun, innocently enough, as bands of adolescent hikers who, through their self-conscious, idealistic return to nature and the simple verities of companionship, attempted to express a vague protest against what they considered to be the hypocrisy of the adult world and its new middle-class comforts.5 At first apolitical and without clear goals, these groups were transformed under the impact of World War I and the ensuing period of social disorganization into an entire spectrum of highly nationalistic youth movements, anxious for leadership and ripe for political exploitation. This was the situation in 1933, when Hitler moved to suppress the non-Nazi youth movements and established for the Hitler Youth (until then

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one of the least successful of the groups) a monopoly over organized youth activities. As one student of the German youth movements has commented, the Nazis did not so much found a youth movement de novo as take over and pervert one already available in the prior tradition.® With their peculiar vulnerability to the Fuehrer principle and their deep romantic identification with German national aims, they were readily converted to the Nazis' purposes. The Soviet youth organizations, as we have seen, owe very little to prerevolutionary youth movements. The latter had been only weakly developed, and the Bolsheviks were extremely reluctant to incorporate organizations dating from the bourgeois period. After a very short time, during which the Bolsheviks smashed the few existing youth organizations, they instituted their own, completely new, program and stressed the break with tradition. In view of these historical differences, it is all the more significant that the Nazi and Soviet youth programs should have ended by being alike in so many respects. Like its Soviet counterpart, the Nazi program denied that youth can incorporate the values of the new order, or become politically loyal, without being subjected to an intensive, longterm, manipulative experience under the control of adult representatives of the central political power. The Nazi program, too, called for the rapid and planned development of a program, based upon a comprehensive and consistent political ideology, leaving no room for private or competing efforts. The Nazis were also fond of glorifying youth as the builder of a future utopia and of portraying themselves as the true champions of the new generations. Moreover, the political practices behind the Nazi youth program bear an important similarity to the Soviet case: despite official claims of having liberated youth from the bondage of the old order, the Nazi program was staffed by hand-picked adult repre-

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sentatives delegated by the party, assisted by salaried personnel whose close and detailed control over local units effectively deprived members of any independent power. Another major similarity is to be found in the wide age span included in both programs and in the efforts to exercise maximum influence over young people during their formative years. In the Nazi State Youth Service, Junior Boys enrolled at the age of ten, transferring to the Hitler Youth at fourteen and at eighteen to the Storm Troops, Elite Guard, or Labor Service. Girls joined the Junior Girls at ten, graduated to the League of German Girls at fourteen, and remained there until the age of twenty-one. As in the Soviet Pioneer program, membership was virtually compulsory (except for Jews and other "undesirables"). Finally, the Nazis incorporated in the youth program an elaborate system of auxiliary paramilitary units, summer camps, training facilities, a special youth press and publication section, and other supporting services designed to provide comprehensive coverage of all youth affairs. As far as the content of the programs is concerned, both constituted efforts toward the permanent mobilization of the youthful population, either for explicit military purposes or for the achievement of national goals announced from the center. The use of youth in both cases as an aggregate economic or military resource led to a de-emphasis upon individual worth and to the insistence that only through identification with politically sanctioned and organized groups would it be possible for the citizen to fulfill his duties and to attain a legitimate relationship with his fellow man and society. There was a concomitant lack of attention to individual psychology and the proliferation of simplistic slogans and formulas tailored to the obvious requirements of political socialization. Viewed from a broad perspective, both programs involve the attempt to reserve for the state, through the youth

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organizations, training functions that have traditionally belonged in such autonomous and private settings as the family, community, or church. In their early stages, totalitarian youth programs undercut the influences of these institutions by creating unbearable cross-pressures (for example, by encouraging children to spy on their parents). Later, the youth organizations assume a more conservative role in transmitting the values of the established order to successive generations of postrevolutionary youth. To this extent, both the Soviet and the Nazi youth programs may be considered variants of the general totalitarian type. But there are some differences that are equally, if not more, important. The most striking difference is in style and tone. The Nazi program, to judge from descriptions of it, was marked by a bizarre and self-defeating irrationality. Through the youth program, the Nazis attempted to raise a nation of blind fanatics, convinced above all of their racial and moral superiority. Their destruction of the German educational heritage, their substitution of a know-nothing emotionalism for the authority of science, and their persistent emphasis on surrender to the community of fanaticism led to a neglect of the less romantic but essential training and manpower requirements of an industrial economy. Since the Nazis were defeated in war before the youth program had had enough time to produce entire generations thus affected, there can be no certainty about the probable consequences of these myopic policies. But the Nazis were living on the accumulated human resources of the past, and the projected results of an essentially negative, irrational, and destructive youth program might well have taken their toll at a later date. In this respect the Soviet leadership has been far shrewder in assessing the human requirements of the social system. To be sure, the Soviet youth program (especially under Stalin) has also emphasized the cultivation of fanatic loyalty as well as hatred of everything foreign to the Communist world view. But these essentially totalitarian features have

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been considerably tempered. As we have seen, there is a very strong concern with knowledge, a respect for science, education, competence, and technical proficiency, faith in the power of reason, in the constructive possibilities of social action, and in man's capacity for purposeful self-improvement through planning and effort. That these themes have often been sacrified to political expediency, or have been neglected by professional bureaucrats, has by no means eliminated them or precluded the possibility that they will receive greater emphasis at some future time. As I have suggested, the Soviet youth program suffers from combining these educative purposes with repressive and police functions, but they have never been altogether lost. This contrast between two totalitarian youth programs points to the conclusion that the Soviet program is superior because it is more rational in approach. An altogether different kind of comparison can be made between the Soviet effort to train new generations through an organized program and the situation in the United States, where there is no such program. A hypothetical observer from a different planet would probably find little — except for the program — to distinguish between the general experiences of the Soviet urban youngster and his American middle-class counterpart. Both receive their earliest training in relatively isolated, nuclear families in which outside kin play only limited roles. Neither participates directly in economic tasks, for the household in industrial societies is not especially relevant in the general division of labor; nor does the family determine the child's future occupation. Both begin school at approximately the same age, and they not only are exposed to rather similar curricula but become increasingly involved with peers and less dependent on the family. Both are required to remain in school until at least the middle of the adolescent period. In sum, children in the Soviet Union and in the United States — as in most industrial societies — go through a long transitional period between

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physical maturation and full participation in the adult society, much longer than in other types of societies. Moreover, the transitional period may be expected to become still longer as modern industrial systems call for more technological sophistication, and thus for more education. The stresses and strains potentially present in this situation are described for American society by Talcott Parsons: "The period of youth in our society is one of considerable strain and insecurity. Above all, it means turning one's back on the security of both status and of emotional attachment which is engaged in the family of orientation. It is structurally necessary to transfer one's primary emotional attachment. . . . For the man there is in addition the necessity to face the hazards of occupational competition in the determination of a career." 7 We have no direct evidence of the reaction of Soviet youth to a parallel situation, but it is likely that similar structural conditions produce similar results. If so, then the important differences He not in the basic problem of strain, but in the way in which the situation is handled. There is some danger in applying a still unproven surmise based on the American experience to the thin data from the Soviet side; but, provided that the results are viewed with caution and carefully indentified as speculative, they serve a useful purpose. In American society there are no regularly or officially institutionalized agencies whose task it is to oversee the transition from childhood to adulthood (unless one counts the system of formal education). Membership in youth organizations is neither universal nor mandatory, and many organizations are oriented more to carrying out the interests of their members than to transmitting adult values. But as Parsons and others have argued, an informal youth culture has emerged to absorb some of the strains of the transitional period. According to this view, the youth culture, with its emphasis on irresponsibility and on "humanistic" and personal values, serves as a buffer between the youth and the

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demands made upon him by early adult experiences in a highly organized and competitive society. That the content of this youth culture may result in what some critics have called the inanities of adolescence in modern America, and that it has a lingering and unfortunate influence on the adult culture as well, are assertions not under examination here. The point is that the American youth culture, because it centers on the informal peer group and is formed by the young people themselves, ordinarily is highly solidary and voluntaristic. This means that the American youngster is likely to participate in his group, clique, or gang with considerable emotional investment and to be subjected to very powerful — and to a considerable degree self-imposed — restrictions against being too different. We know that the Soviet youth program, in contrast, specifically seeks to avoid the development of a youth culture through its monopoly over the time and energy of young people in supervised activities; instrumental values are heavily stressed in the Soviet training literature as well as in the daily activities of Komsomol and Pioneer members. There appear to be two possible consequences of these efforts to hold Soviet youth to a straight and narrow path. One is that, in the absence of alternative outlets in the form of a generally accepted youth culture, there is an intensive focus of motivation toward achievement and performance in terms of adult and "serious" standards. The other possibility, ironically enough, is that natural pressures toward the development of a distinctive youth culture, since they are shut out of the official program, come to be expressed in deviant and (from the regime's point of view) illegitimate forms of behavior. This may well be the source of the stilyagi and others: in their efforts to disassociate themselves from the conventional morality of the youth program, they create a distinctive badge of allegiance to the "wrong" attitudes. The Soviet youth organizations are imposed by adults. Without the backing of the party, they would very probably

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lose all but a hard core of faithful followers. This does not necessarily signify widespread dissatisfaction with the larger system or demonstrate that Soviet youth, even if given the opportunity to do so, would actively attack the program. But it does appear to be true that the overwhelming majority of citizens who are old enough to have formed an opinion view the program with great indifference at best. Although the junior organization is spared the more severe hostility experienced by the Komsomol, it is not immune. But the young person who is not attracted by the youth program, or who refuses to accept its values, cannot easily find a legitimate alternative; the formation of competing groups, even if they are informal, is strongly discouraged by the youth organizations. Thus, the individual who rejects the program must rely heavily upon his own internal resources in working out personal standards of behavior. One Komsomol member, whose comment was reported in the youth poll cited above, put the situation this way: The desire to prevent young people from making mistakes sometimes leads to depriving them of the right to think independently, leads to thinking in formulas and stereotypes unregulated by debate, proof, or life itself. Sometimes individual young people, failing to receive answers to sharp questions, become distrustful and reserved. Their social interests shrink, turning often into a kind of nut — often with a rotten center. Some take the path of hypocrisy, and split personalities appear — persons who are quite different when alone than when among people.8 Split personalities, of course, are a very real danger in the Soviet system, for they are a potential source of accumulated pressures toward unplanned and unanticipated innovation and change. And it would be strange indeed if the relatively laissez-faire approach to youth training in American and other pluralistic societies were to produce conformist personalities, while a rigidly imposed youth program in the Soviet Union produced a generation of hardened rebels.

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These and other inviting speculations must remain untested against fact until it becomes possible to study Soviet society from within, free of political and ideological restrictions against objective social inquiry. But they do suggest that, even with the full resources of an authoritarian regime available, it is not easy to control or to raise new generations in accordance with a prescribed pattern or to create a new society by revolutionizing the minds of the young. The changes that have been wrought over the generations since the Bolshevik Revolution are profound, yet they seem to stem as much from the general influences of industrialization and modernization as from the programmatic efforts to transform youth through a system of all-encompassing organizations. Above all, we must remember that the youth program does not operate in a vacuum. Despite its enormous scope, it has not succeeded in insulating youth from contact with life. In particular, the Soviet regime has neither destroyed nor replaced the family as an influential source of early attitudes, values, and sentiments that sometimes compete with those of the official youth program; nor is there any sign that Soviet leaders are prepared to incur the enormous liabilities that would be involved in the kind of major internal revolution required to replace the family altogether — if, indeed, this were at all possible. The establishment of the boarding schools is an important step in extending the influence of the program, but it falls far short of the total envelopment of entire generations in a manipulated training environment. For the next decade or two at least, there is little probability of important alterations in the established youth program. Trends now in evidence, such as the expansion of membership and the efforts to include still younger members in the organizations, will continue. Certainly there is no prospect that the organizations will revert to their earlier status as exclusive groups of elite youth, for there is no longer

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a place for them. Moreover, as long as the plans for rapid industrialization and capital development remain in force, the central values of the program, emphasizing achievement, self-sacrifice, and the suppression of independent attitudes and behavior, will persist. At the same time, the program will be faced with more counter-pressures generated by its own internal deficiencies as well as by the accelerating dynamism and complexity of an industrialized modern society. The growing demand to enjoy the fruits of a productive economy, already felt to some extent, increased contact with heretical ideas from the outside world, the subtle problems of controlling a literate populace, will all aggravate tendencies now faced by the youth program. The more distant prospects depend in part upon how rapidly and how far Soviet society continues in the direction of liberalization that has taken place since the death of Stalin. I believe it would be a serious error, however, to expect the Soviet regime to abandon or modify its efforts to draw new generations into the system through a comprehensive, official youth program. Liberalization has involved the diminishing resort to mass terror and brute physical coercion that we usually associate with totalitarianism. But this change should not be confused with a surrender on the part of the dictatorship of its claim to ultimate scientific knowledge about society or of its belief in both the practical necessity and the moral desirability of planning and direction from above. There is little prospect, then, that certain social functions — including the training of youth — incorporated under Stalin into the public realm, will be returned by a Communist regime to the status of voluntaristic or private concerns. At best, the Soviet youth program will become more benign and less repressive, though no less total in its coverage. The day when there will be free and autonomous organizations of Soviet youth is not yet on the horizon.

Notes Index

Notes Note on Sources The principal sources used here are Soviet books, pamphlets, and newspapers. Most of them are from the Komsomol's own ambitious publishing program, but relevant materials issued by other governmental and party agencies (for example, the RSFSR Ministry of Education and the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences) are also extensively consulted. Their use poses some special problems of which the reader should be aware. Availability, fortunately, is not one of those problems. Even at the height of the cold war, most Soviet publications continued to flow into our research libraries. Several American institutions (for example, Harvard, Columbia, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress) possess excellent and up-to-date collections of Soviet materials, including a range of representative materials on the youth program. The content of these publications is another matter. All Soviet media are controlled by the government and often serve propaganda functions. Accepted uncritically, the image they convey of Soviet life is a grotesque distortion of reality. If skepticism and caution are routine requirements in any objective inquiry, here they are extraordinarily important. Yet the situation is by no means as discouraging as it might first appear. Experience in reading Soviet publications over a period of years allows the development of a special sensitivity to the nuances of official prose and usage; the researcher using Soviet materials acquires a facility for reading between the lines, much as Soviet citizens (for more urgent reasons of personal security) are known to do. When combined with a general knowledge of the Soviet system and reasonable care in cross-checking for internal consistency, this enables one to employ Soviet materials with considerable, if not total, accuracy. Soviet publications for domestic consumption, in spite of their propagandistic messages, also serve as a vital means of communication and instruction from government and party to the general population and to specialized audiences. Through the columns of the Soviet press and in the pages of books and journals, policies are transmitted downwards. Also, the limited exercise of "criticism and self-criticism" provides at

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least some clues about public reaction to issues and currents. While news in the sense of reporting events is subordinated to the overall aims of propaganda and agitation, the diligent observer who follows his sources of information over a period of years can obtain a reasonably adequate picture of the course of affairs. The liabilities entailed in working with Soviet sources vary, of course, with the purposes for which the materials are used. Official policy statements, for example, ordinarily can be taken at face value, whereas sweeping claims of success must be scrutinized with some care and admissions of isolated failures thoroughly examined for the possibility that they may point to an underlying pattern of difficulty or crisis. Even in such cases, effective techniques are available. The vocabulary of extravagant claims follows ritualistic forms that help to identify the material. And, in spite of official reluctance to publicize unfavorable information, the necessity of warning and exhorting lower officials and the rank-and-file membership often results in revealing discussions in print. In addition to published sources, two other types of information are used in this book. One consists of the Refugee Interview Files of the Harvard University Project on the Soviet Social System. These interviews, carried out during 1950 with former Soviet citizens then living in Germany, contain scattered data on respondents' attitudes toward and experiences with the youth organizations. Because of the time span involved (most of the subjects left the Soviet Union before or during World War II), the usefulness of these data is necessarily limited in a study emphasizing the current youth program. Nevertheless, there have been some major continuities in the program since the mid-1930s, so that refugee testimony provides valuable clues to the attitudes of the present membership and affords opportunities to check on the veracity of more recent Soviet accounts. The final source is direct observation, now made possible by the partial relaxation of Soviet prohibitions against foreign visitors. I visited the Soviet Union in 1956 and again in 1960. The first visit coincided with the most relaxed months of the political thaw following the denunciation of Stalin. For that brief period, the pent-up tensions of years of Stalinist repression were close to the surface, and many young Soviet citizens eagerly engaged in relatively frank and open discussions with American contemporaries. The second visit, while presenting fewer opportunities for spontaneous contacts (it was only a few months after die U-2 incident), nevertheless provided a chance to re-evaluate some earlier impressions and to inquire at first hand about some of the changes (relatively unimportant, as it turned out) that had been announced in the Pioneer program. On both occasions, Soviet restrictions on time, travel, and access precluded any systematic surveys of youth attitudes, but the informal accounts of young men

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and women (who ranged in their views from zealously patriotic to indifferent to profoundly disaffected) lent the capstone of reality to library resources and refugee witness. A series of interviews with youth-organization personnel provided a direct, if brief, acquaintance with their modes of operation and views of the youth program. There is no gainsaying the many disadvantages inherent in studying a complex situation from a distance and on the basis of limited information. Ideally we should have access to a range of data far beyond that now available. But if Western students of Soviet life are to withhold inquiry until we have all the data we should like, we shall have to wait until the Soviet Union becomes an open society with leaders sympathetic to the canons of social science and able to tolerate criticism as well as praise. From the vantage point of the 1960s, this promises to be a very long wait. Perhaps one day the Soviet scholars themselves will be able to undertake objective research not only about their youth program, but about Soviet society generally. Despite some recent signs of a developing interest in sociology among Soviet academicians, there is still no indication that self-analysis is likely to proceed beyond the most timid and uncritical limits. In the meantime, the advantages of being able to seek answers to important questions concerning die Soviet system, unfettered by the restrictions of dogmatic politics and ideology, far outweigh the disadvantages of working with imperfect sources. 2.

The Historical Background

1. Sidney I. Ploss, "From Youthful Zeal to Middle Age," Problems of Communism, September-October, 1958, p. 9. 2. Cf. Pervyi vserosiisskii sezd RKSM (The First All-Union Congress of the Russian Communist League of Youth; Moscow-Leningrad, 1929). 3. Ralph Talcott Fisher, Jr., Pattern for Soviet Youth — A Study of the Congresses of the Komsomol, 1918-1954 (New York, 1959), chap. 2, "The Establishment of the Komsomol," pp. 8-78. 4. Ploss, p. 11. 5. This summary of the shift in Soviet psychological theory is based on Raymond A. Bauer, The New Man in Soviet Psychology (Cambridge, Mass., 1952). Of course, the philosophical issue of "consciousness versus spontaneity" involves far more than psychological theory. It is a problem that occupied the attention of Marxists and played an important part in the debates of the prerevolutionary Russian intelligentsia. As far as the youth program is concerned, however, the changes in psychology were the most immediate cause of — or rationalization for — the shifting emphasis from politics to pedagogy. 6. Fisher, p. 409. Fisher estimates that the 1925 figure covered only about 5 percent of the age-eligible population.

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7. Ibid., p. 409. 8. Merle Fainsod, How Russia Is Ruled (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), p. 248. The figures for Komsomol membership during World War II and for a few years afterward are somewhat uncertain. See the discussion in Fisher, pp. 218-222, and the pertinent footnotes. 9. Kotnsomolskaia pravda (Komsomol Truth), February 25, 1958, p. 2; Pravda, April 17, 1962, p. 2. 10. Pravda, November 30, 1957, p. 2. 3.

Training the Soviet Child

1. Scientific endeavor of course is always colored to some extent by extrascientific considerations, especially in its efforts to understand and interpret human behavior. In the Soviet case, however, the systematic intervention by political authorities into scientific affairs and their powerful control over scholarship in all fields is unparalleled. This stems in part from the claim that Marxism (as interpreted by the ruling elite) is itself a science, in part from the conviction that all scholarship (and art) has political significance and therefore must come under political control. An example of the impact of ideological assumptions and restrictions on one social science can be found in the study of Soviet psychology by Bauer (The New Man in Soviet Psychology). For a general discussion of Soviet beliefs and practices in the arts and sciences, see Barrington Moore, Jr., Terror and Progress, USSR (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), pp. 98-153. 2. See, for example, N. D. Levitov, Psikhologiia starshego shkolnika (Psychology of the Older Student; Moscow, 1955), and F. F. Korolev, in Sovetskaia pedagogika (Soviet Pedagogy), July 1961, pp. 12-36. 3. T. P. Simson, Detskaia nervnost, ee preduprezhdenie i lechenie (Nervousness in Children, Its Prevention and Treatment; Moscow, 1949), p. 3. 4. In fact, Western social scientists are quite aware of cross-cultural variations in socialization patterns, the more so since, unlike their Soviet critics, they have taken the trouble to investigate them empirically. One of the foremost exponents of the cross-cultural view is Margaret Mead. See especially her Coming of Age in Samoa (New York, 1928). A more recent treatment of this question is found in John W. M. Whiting and Irvin L. Child, Child Training and Personality: A Cross-Cultural Study (New Haven, 1953). 5. P. N. Shimbirev and I. T. Ogorodnikov, Pedagogika, uchebnik dlia pedagogicheskikh institutov (Pedagogy, a Textbook for Pedagogical Institutes; Moscow, 1954), p. 52. Soviet officials with whom I spoke in 1956 and 1960 regard this volume as the most comprehensive and authoritative. Actually there is very little difference in content between this and other pedagogical textbooks and handbooks — none at all on matters of principle. For the sake of consistency, most of

T R A I N I N G THE S O V I E T

CHILD

1 93

the direct quotations used in this chapter are cited from Shimbirev and Ogorodnikov. 6. Levitov, p. 4. 7. Shimbirev and Ogorodnikov, p. 201. 8. See, for example, the image of effective child training in a book for parents such as E. A. Arkin, Roditeliam ο vospitanii (To Parents Concerning Upbringing), 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1957). 9. For recent discussions of this question, see Wilbert E. Moore and Arnold Feldman, eds., Labor Commitment and Social Change in Developing Areas (New York, 1960), and David C. McLelland, The Achieving Society (New York, 1961). The classical statement of the relation between economic institutions and value systems is, of course, Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. An essay on some of the problems in analyzing personality and social structure can be found in Alex Inkeles and Daniel Levinson, "National Character: The Study of Modal Personality and Sociocultural Systems," Handbook of Social Psychology, ed. Gardner Lindzey (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), II, 977-1020. 10. Η. V. Dicks, "Observations on Contemporary Russian Behaviour," Human Relations, 5.2:140 (1952). 11. Raymond Bauer, Alex Inkeles, and Clyde Kluckhohn, How the Soviet System Works (Cambridge, Mass., 1956), p. 142. While I know of no direct evidence of similar patterns among other Soviet ethnic groups, it is probably safe to assume that their traditional patterns are equally "unindustrial." In any event, the regime's central concern has been with the Russians as the largest and most important ethnic group. 12. Inkeles and Levinson, p. 1011. 13. Shimbirev and Ogorodnikov, p. 253. The morality-in-labor theme also can be seen in such typical works as Ν. I. Boldyrev, Ο moralnom oblike sovetskoi molodezhi (Concerning the Moral Quality of Soviet Youth; Moscow, 1954) and Ο kommunisticheskom vospitanii detei (On the Communist Upbringing of Children; Moscow, 1955); A. K. Bushlia, Vospitanie kommunisticheskoi morali u detei (The Inculcation of Communist Morality in Children; Moscow, 1948); I. S. Kamenogradski, Vospitanie chestnosti i pravdivosti u detei (The Inculcation of Honesty and Truthfulness in Children; Moscow, 1948); Μ. I. Volokitina, Ocherki psikhologii mladshikh Shkolnikov (Notes on the Psychology of Younger Students; Moscow, 1955). 14. Levitov, pp. 139-140. See also the concept of the "eager robot" in Ralph T. Fisher, Jr., "The Soviet Model of the Ideal Youth," in The Transformation of Russian Society: Aspects of Social Change Since 1861, ed. Cyril E. Black (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), pp. 625-635. 15. Levitov, pp. 112-113. 16. Ibid., p. 114.

1 94

NOTES

TO C H A P T E R

3

17. G. S. Prozorov, Nasledstvennost i vospitanie (Heredity and Upbringing; Moscow, 1960), pp. 5-6. 18. Ibid., pp. 12-13. 19. Shimbirev and Ogorodnikov, p. 49. 20. Ibid., p. 50. 21. Ibid., p. 52. 22. Ibid., p. 53. 23. Ibid., p. 54. 24. Ibid., p. 193. 25. Ibid., p. 194. 26. Ibid., p. 252. 27. Ibid., p. 195. 28. Ibid., pp. 205-206. 29. Ibid., p. 23. 30. Ibid., p. 195. 31. Ibid., p. 56 (italics added). 32. Ibid., p. 201. 33. For an example of the stress placed upon the imitation principle in learning and habit formation, see E. A. Florovski, Mkogol— vrag sportsmena (Alcohol, the Sportsman's Enemy; Moscow, 1954). 34. Ν. I. Sotserdotov, Trudovie obuchenie ν I-IV klassov (Work Training in Classes I-IV; Moscow, 1960). 35. Prozorov, p. 27. See also V. S. Ilin, "Rol proizvoditelnogo truda ν razvitii u Shkolnikov stremleniia k znaniiam' (The Role of Productive Labor in the Development of the Striving toward Knowledge in Pupils), Sovetskaia pedagogika, June 1962, pp. 56-63, and Iu. V. Sharov and V. P. Shuman, "O raznostoronnem razvitii dukhovnykh potrebnosti podrastaiushchego pokoleniia" (Concerning the Development of the Spiritual Need of the Rising Generation), ibid., pp. 25-32. 36. Bolshaia sovetskaia entsiHopediia (Large Soviet Encylopedia), 2nd ed., vol. 21, p. 612. 37. Ν. I. Boldyrev, "Moralnyi kodeks stroitelia kommunizma — osnova nravstvennogo vospitaniia molodogo pokoleniia (The Moral Code of the Builder of Communism: The Basis of the Moral Education of the Young Generation)," Sovetskaia pedagogika, June 1962, pp. 14-24. 38. Talcott Parsons, Essays in Sociological Theory, Pure and Applied (Glencoe, 1949), pp. 218-232. 39. I. F. Svadkovski, Ο vospitanii trudoliubiia u detei (On the Inculcation of a Love of Work in Children; Moscow, 1959), p. 89. 40. Τ. E. Konnikova, "Pedagogicheskie printsipy pionerskoi raboty" (Pedagogical Principles of Pioneer Work), Sovetskaia pedagogika, May 1962, pp. 29-37. 41. Shimbirev and Ogorodnikov, p. 240. 42. Ibid., p. 243.

STRUCTURE A N D

MEMBERSHIP

195

43. Ibid., p. 234. 44. Bauer, Inkeles, and Kluckhohn, How the Soviet System Works (Cambridge, Mass., 1956), p. 142. 45. Ibid., p. 40. 4. The Youth Organizations Today

1. From a message to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, read at the Eighteenth Congress of the Komsomol of the Ukraine. Komsomolskaia pravda, February 25, 1958, p . 1.

2. Ibid., January 9,1956, p. 3. 3. Ibid., April 21,1962, p. 6. 4. Ustav Vsesoiuznogo Leninskogo Kommunisticheskogo Soiuza Molodezhi (Rules of the All-Union Leninist Communist League of Youth; Moscow, 1959), pp. 3, 4-5. 5. Bolshaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 2nd ed., vol. 50, p. 273. 6. The 1958 figures are taken from Report of the Mandate Commission to the Thirteenth Congress of the Komsomol. Komsomolskaia pravda, April 18,1958, p. 5. 7. The 1962 figures are taken from Report of the Mandate Commission to the Fourteenth Congress of the Komsomol. Ibid., April 21, 1962, p . 5. 8. Ibid., p. 6. 9. Speech by S. P. Pavlov at the Fourteenth Congress of the Komsomol. Ibid., April 17,1962, p. 6. 10. Nicholas DeWitt, Education and Professional Employment in the USSR (Washington, 1961), p. 440. 11. Komsomolskaia pravda, April 16,1962, p. 5. 12. Ibid., April 16,1958, p. 3. 13. V. Zaicnikov and N. Mesiatsev, "O samodeiatelnosti i initsiativa komsomolskikh organizatsii" (On Participant Activity and the Initiative of Komsomol Organizations), Molodoi kommunist (The Young Communist), June 1956, p. 19. 14. Komsomolskaia pravda, April 18,1962, p. 2. 15. Ibid., April 22,1962, p. 6. 16. Age-group statistics for the general population that might be compared with Komsomol membership statistics are not available (Soviet census breakdowns do not correspond with the Komsomol age limits), but in interviews various Soviet officials estimated that about half or more of the age-eligible group is included in the Komsomol. 17. See the discussion of basic membership policy, for example, in Komsomolskaia pravda, March 20, 1957, p. 2. 18. Τ. I. Ershova, Ο rabote Komsomola ν shkole (On the Work of the Komsomol in the School; Moscow, 1949), p. 32. This practice

196

N O T E S TO C H A P T E R

4

appears to be in violation of official procedures, which specify that acceptance must be conducted on an individual basis. 19. The number of cells was reported by the all-union Central Committee in Komsomolskaia pravda, April 16, 1958, p. 5. 20. Report of the Mandate Commission, ibid., April 18, 1962, p. 5. 21. From a resolution of the Seventh Plenum of the Central Committee of the Komsomol, ibid., November 30, 1957, p. 1. 22. When the first Pioneer units were organized in 1922, they were attached to the place of employment of the member's parents: an enterprise or institution would organize a Pioneer unit for the children of its employees (perhaps as an added inducement to stay on the job by providing activities for children during working hours), or, in some cases, units would be organized in apartment houses or residential areas. It was soon decided, however, that the Pioneer program would benefit by being associated with the school. It was supposed that not only would the curriculum and Pioneer activities interact to mutual advantage, but that the participation of trained teachers would be a better arrangement. Accordingly, at the beginning of 1923, Pioneer units were also established in the schools in addition to those already operating in factories and apartment houses. The result was a double membership system that proved to be unsatisfactory because it overburdened the children with activities. Subsequently, the nonschool program was eliminated. See Pionerskaia organizatsiia imeni V. I. Lenina, posobie dlia pedagogicheskikh uchilishch (The Pioneer Organization Named after V. I. Lenin, a Textbook for Pedagogical Schools), 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1956), pp. 10-11. 23. Komsomolskaia pravda, December 12, 1957, p. 1. 24. Pionerskaia organizatsiia, p. 40. 25. Interview with Leningrad teachers, May 1956. 26. Pionerskaia organizatsiia, p. 52. 27. Ibid., p. 53. 28. Ibid. 29. For a complete description of the administration of the summercamp system, see Spravochnik profsoiuznogo rabotnika (Handbook of the Trade Union Worker; Moscow, 1953), pp. 535-540. 30. Americans who are familiar with typical staffing procedures in our own summer camps for children — with the counselor and juniorcounselor system — will find no equivalent in the Soviet camps, where there is a thoroughgoing insistence on adult supervision. The rules for Pioneer camps categorically forbid the employment of persons under eighteen years of age. Ibid., p. 537. 31. Pravda, June 21, 1962, p. 4. 32. A description of the city summer camps is found in the Moscow Pioneer House, Gorodskoi pionerskii lager (The City Pioneer Camp; Moscow 1956).

THE Y O U T H

PROGRAM

IN

ACTION

197

33. Pravda, June 21,1962, p. 4. 34. Komsomolskaia pravda, February 26,1958, p. 1. 35. Ibid. 5. The Youth Program in Action

1. Pionerskoi leto (A Pioneer Slimmer; Moscow, 1954). 2. V. G. Iakovlev and V. S. Aranski, eds., Ob uluchshenii pionerskoi raboty ν shkole (One the Improvement of Pioneer Work in the School; Moscow, 1955), pp. 28-29. 3. Komsomolskaia pravda, December 26,1957, p. 1. 4. Komsomolskaia pravda, January 14,1958, p. 1. 5. O. S. Kel et al., Sovet druzhiny — organizator pionerskoi raboty ν shkole, ed. V. G. Iakovlev (The Council of the Brigade — Organizer of Pioneer Work in the School; Moscow, 1956), p. 6. 6. Iakovlev and Aranski, p. 59. 7. Ibid., pp. 28-29. 8. Ibid., p. 29. 9. Ibid.,-p. SO. 10. Ibid., p. 33. 11. See especially Matilda White Riley, John W. Riley, Jr., and Jackson Toby, Sociological Studies in Scale Analysis (New Brunswick, 1954), p. 138ff. 12. See also Talcott Parsons, Essays in Sociological Theory, Pure and Applied (Glencoe, 1949), pp. 218-232. 13. L. Khotilovskaia, Pioner — rebiatam primer (The Pioneer, an Example to Schoolchildren; Moscow, 1955), p. 7. 14. Ε. I. Glazunova, "Iz opyta pionerskoi raboty" (From the Experience of Pioneer Work), in Kommunisticheskoe vospitanie ν sovetskoi shkole (Communist Education in the Soviet School; Moscow, 1950), I, 326. 15. Iakovlev and Aranski, p. 59. 16. Komsomolskaia pravda, April 13,1957, p. 2. 17. Yevgenyi Yevtushenko, in L'Express (Paris), February 21, 1963. 18. Pionerskaia organizatsiia imeni V. I. Lenina, posobie dlia pedagogicheskikh uchüishch, 1st ed. (Moscow, 1950), p. 54. 19. Klassnye rukovoditeli ο svoei raboty s komsomoltsami i pionerami (Class Directors on Their Work with Komsomol Members and Pioneers; Moscow, 1955), p. 11. 20. Ibid., p. 4. 21. Μ. V. Kropacheva, Uchitel i komsomolskaia organizatsiia shkoly (The Teacher and the School Komsomol Organization), 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1953), p. 48. 22. Klassnye rukovoditeli, p. 9. 23. Komsomolskaia pravda, February 9, 1958, p. 3.

1 98

N O T E S TO CHAPTER

5

24. Ibid. 25. Pionerskaia organizatsiia (1950 ed.), p. 90. 26. Iakovlev and Arankski, p. 59. 27. Pionerskaia organizatsiia (1950 ed.), pp. 102-103. 28. Iu. Isaev, "Organizatsionnye voprosy komsomolskoi raboty ν VUZE" (Organizational Questions of Komsomol Work in Higher Educational Institutions), in Komsomolskaia rabota ο VUZE (Komsomol Work in Higher Educational Institutions; Moscow, 1953), p. 80. 29. Ibid., p. 84. 30. V. Iagodkin, "Rol komsomolskoi organizatsii ν ideino-politicheskom vospitanii studentov" (The Role of the Komsomol Organization in the Ideological-Political Education of Students), ibid., p. 3. 31. Ibid., p. 5. 32. Ibid., p. 6. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid., p. 10. 36. Ibid., p. 12. 37. V. Volonski, "Komsomolskaia gruppa" (The Komsomol Group), ibid., pp. 41-42. 38. N. Sizov, "Za dalneishii podem raboty komsomolskikh organizatsii predpriatii" (On the Further Development of the Work of Komsomol Organizations of Enterprises), in Komsomolskaia rabota na predpriatii (Komsomol Work in the Enterprise; Moscow, 1951), pp. 3-5. 39. Komsomolskaia pravda, December 10,1957, p. 2. 40. M. Igitkhanian, "Vospitanie kommunisticheskoi morali" (The Inculcation of Communist Ethics), Molodoi kommunist, February 1960, pp. 79-84. 41. Jerzy Gliksman, "Conditions of Industrial Labor in the USSR," mimeograpJied report of the Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System, 1953. 42. Komsomolskaia pravda, February 2,1958, p. 1. 43. Ibid., May 16,1961, p. 1. 44. Ibid., October 15,1957, p. 2. 45. N. Sizov, pp. 8-9. 46. Komsomolskaia pravda, May 12, 1961, p. 2. Translated in Current Digest of the SovietPress (CDSP), 13:29-30 (June 14,1961). 47. A. Kachanov, "Zorok komsomolskii glaz" (Vigilant Is the Komsomol Eye), Molodoi kommunist, November 1960, p. 40. 48. Komsomolskaia pravda, February 27,1958, p. 2. 49. Ibid., April 19,1958, p. 1. 50. N. Kokosov, in Sotsialisticheskii trud (Socialist Labor), February 1961, pp. 21-27. Translated in CDSP, 13:17-19 (May 3, 1961). 51. Some details of Komsomol activity in the military can be found

THE C O S T S OF

OVERCONTROL

199

in Komsomolskaia rabota ν sovetskoi armii t flote (Komsomol Work in the Soviet Army and Navy; Moscow, 1956). 52. A description of the DOSAAF is given in Komsomol i DOSAAF (The Komsomol and the DOSAAF; Moscow, 1954). 53. Komsomolskaia pravda, December 13, 1960, p. 2. Translated in CDSP, 12:19-20 (January 18,1961). 54. Komsomolskaia pravda, September 22,1960. 0. The Costs of Overcontrol 1. Komsomolskaia pravda, March 27,1957, p. 2. 2. Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System, Interview 102JB, p. 37. Corroborative examples can also be found in Soviet Youth: Twelve Komsomol Case Histories (Munich: Institute for the Study of the USSR, 1959). 3. "O chem govoriat tsifiy rosta VLKSM" (What the Figures on the Growth of tne Komsomol Say) Molodoi kommunist, June 1956, pp. 53-56. 4. Τ. I. Ershova, Ο rabote Komsomola ν shkole (Moscow, 1949), p. 32. For further figures on the comprehensiveness of Komsomol membership, see Ralph T. Fisher, Jr., Pattern for Soviet Youth (New York, 1959), pp. 222, 237,242-243,259-260. 5. "O chem govoriat tsifiy," p. 55. 6. See S. P. Pavlov's report on membership trends in his speech at the Twenty-Second Congress of the all-union Komsomol, Pravda, April 17,1962. 7. "O chem govoriat tsifry," p. 55. 8. Zaichikov and Mesiatsev, "Ο samodeiatelnosti i initsiativa komsomolskikh organizatsii," Modoloi kommunist, June 1965, p. 19. 9. Izvestiia, August 29, 1962, p. 3. Translated in Current Digest of the Soviet Press (CDSP), 14:27-28 (September 26, 1962). 10. Pravda, April 17, 1962, p. 5. Translated in CDSP, 14:6 (May 9,1962). 11. Izvestiia, January 20, 1962, p. 4. Translated in CDSP, 14:9 (February 14,1962). 12. Sovetskaia Moldavia, 285:2 (1956). 13. Zaichikov and Mesiatsev, p. 19. 14. Voprosy komsomolskoi raboty, p. 12. 15. Komsomolskaia pravda, February 23,1957, p. 3. 16. Ibid., March 21,1958, p. 2. 17. Ibid., March 5,1961, p. 2. 18. Ibid., April 16, 1961. 19. Ibid., March 24,1961, p. 1. 20. V. Mikhailov, "Vmeste ili razdelno?" (Together or Separately?), Molodoi kommunist, November 1960, p. 38. 21. Komsomolskaia pravda, February 23,1957, p. 3.

200

N O T E S TO C H A P T E R 6

22. Ibid., April 26,1961, pp. 26-27. 23. Ibid., January 4,1958, p. 4. 24. Ibid., January 7,1961, p. 3. 25. Izvestiia, March 31, 1961, p. 3. Translated in CDSP, 13:22 (April 26,1961). 26. Ibid. 27. Komsomolskaia pravda, September 22, 1960, p. 4. Translated in CDSP, 12:30-31 (November 23,1960). 28. Ibid., July 28, 1960, p. 1. Translated in CDSP, 12:33 (August 24,1960). 29. Izvestiia, April 17, 1962, pp. 3-7. Translated in CDSP, 14:7 (May 9, 1962). 30. Literaturnaia gazeta (Literary Gazette), May 25, 1957, p. 2. Translated in CDSP, 9:12-14 (August 14, 1957). 31. From an interview in the Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System. 32. Literaturnaia gazeta, May 25,1957, p. 2. 33. Voprosy komsomolskoi raboty, p. 13. 34. Zaichikov and Mesiatsev, p. 19. 7. The Case of the Idlers 1. An informative account of the delinquency problem is Mark G. Field's "Drink and Delinquency in the USSR," Problems of Communism, May-June 1955, pp. 29-38. For a report on student unrest during the early post-Stalin period, see S. V. and P. Utechin, "Patterns of Noncomformity," ibid., May-June 1957, pp. 23-29. 2. Izvestiia, July 1, 1956, p. 1. Translated in Current Digest of the Soviet Press (CDSP), 8:25 (August 8, 1956). 3. Komsomolskaia pravda, June 7,1956, p. 1. 4. For example, in 1956 in Kiev, I met a large group of university graduates who were working as shop clerks. They explained that they preferred working in nonprofessional jobs in the city to being employed in their specialties in the countryside and were optimistic about the chances for more suitable employment in the city if they could wait there long enough for openings. 5. Krokodil (The Crocodile), June 10,1956. 6. The best general statement on this subject is Alex Inkeles, "Social Stratification and Mobility in the Soviet Union," American Sociological Review, 20:465-479 (August 1950). For a study of mobility in the Soviet Union, see Robert A. Feldmesser, "The Persistence of Status Advantages in Soviet Russia," American Journal of Sociology, 59:1927 (July 1953). 7. Robert A. Feldmesser, "Aspects of Social Mobility in the Soviet Union" (unpubl. diss., Harvard University, 1956). 8. The Soviet author, Korneichuk, made this point in a speech to

THE C A S E OF THE I D L E R S

201

the 1956 congress of the Communist Party of the Ukraine. Pravda Ukrainy, January 23,1956, p. 4. 9. Komsomolskaia pravaa, February 10, 1961, p. 2. 10. L. N. Kogan in Voprosy flosofii (Problems of Philosophy), 1960, no. 2, translated as "From Socialist to Communist Labor," in Soviet Review, 1:18-26 (August 1960). 11. Izvestiia, July 1, 1956, p. 1. Translated in CDSP, 8:25 (August 8,1956). 12. Ν. I. Boldyrev, Ο moralnom oblike sovetskoi molodezhi (Moscow, 1954), pp. 25-26. 13. Komsomolskaia pravda, August 11,1956, p. 2. 14. Georgi Radov in Leningradskaia pravda, August 31, 1958, translated in Radio Free Europe, Office of the Political Advisor, Background Information, USSR, November 7, 1958, p. 30. 15. Izvestiia, February 9, 1962, p. 4. Translated in CDSP, 14:10 (March 7,1962). 16. Komsomolskaia pravda, August 11,1956, p. 2. 17. Vladimir Titov in Ogonek, 29:27 (July 1960). Translated in CDSP, 12:17 (September 7, I960). 18. Komsomolskaia pravda, September 15, 1960, p. 2. Translated in CDSP, 12:29 (October 12,1960). 19. Vasily Aksenov in Literaturnaia gazeta, September 17, 1960, p. 2. Translated in CDSP, 12:13-15 (October 5, 1960). 20. Komsomolskaia pravda, April 6, 1962, p. 2. Translated in CDSP, 14:29 (May 23,1962). 21. Izvestiia, April 29, 1962, p. 2. Translated in CDSP, 14:29-30 (May 23,1962). 22. Leonid Shkolnikov in Izvestiia, May 23, 1962, p. 4. Translated in CDSP, 14:16 (June 27,1962). 23. V. Liakin in Komsomolskaia pravda, September 15, 1960. Translated in CDSP, 12:28-29 (October 12, 1960). 24. Kazakhstanskaia pravda, December 20,1956, ρ 2. 25. Bakinskii rabochii, October 24,1956, p. 1. 26. Sovetskaia Litva, November 14,1956, p. 2. 27. Sovetskaia Estoniia, September 25,1956, p. 2. 28. For a review of these and related measures, see Robert Feldmesser, "Equality and Inequality under Khrushchev," Problems of Communism, March-April 1960, pp. 31-39. 29. Uchitelskaia gazeta (Teachers' Gazette), June 27, 1956, p. 2. 30. Ibid. 31. Pravda, June 28,1956, p. 2. 32. For a full account of these changes, see DeWitt's Education and Professional Employment in the USSR. 33. Pravda, July 25,1962, p. 1. 34. Komsomolskaia pravda, June 7, 1956, p. 1.

202

N O T E S TO C H A P T E R 7

35. Nicholas DeWitt, "Upheaval in Education," Problems of Com munism, January-February 1959, pp. 25-35. 36. Ibid. 37. Komsomolskaia pravda, May 17,1961, p. 2. 8. Conclusion 1. Komsomolskaia pravda, July 21, 1961, p. 1. Translated in Current Digest of the Soviet Press, 13:3-8 (September 20, 1961). For an evaluation of this and other polls organized by Komsomolskaia pravda, see Allen Kassof, "Moscow Discovers Public Opinion Polls," Problems of Communism, May-June 1961, pp. 52-55. 2. Komsomolskaia pravda, July 21, 1961. 3. Ibid. 4. Paul Goodman, Growing up Absurd (New York, 1960), p. 153. 5. Information on the German youth movement and the Nazi youth organizations is found in Howard Becker, German Youth: Bond or Free? (New York, 1946), and Walter Z. Laqueur, Young Germany: A History of the German Youth Movement (New York, 1962). 6. Becker, German Youth. 7. Talcott Parsons, Essays (Glencoe, 1949), p. 229. 8. Komsomolskaia pravda, July 21, 1961.

Index Achievement, 92-99 Adjustment, Soviet view of, 30 Adolescence, Soviet view of, 22-24 Adolescent psychology, 35-36 Adolescent subculture. See Youth culture Affluence, impact on youth attitudes, 144-170 passim, 175-176 Agriculture, Komsomol role in, 107117 Alienation: attributed to capitalism, 24-25; in Komsomol, 128-129 American popular culture, stilyagi's view of, 154-155 American youth, compared with Soviet youth, 181-184 Apathy, among members, 120-143 passim Balloting, in Komsomol, 56-57 Behavior, Soviet view of sources, 39-43 Bezdelnichestvo. See Idling Boarding schools, 165-166, 185 Bolsheviks, role in founding Komsomol, 10-11 Boredom, in Komsomol, 125-143 passim Brigade, 67-69 Bureaucracy, 64-65 Bureaucratization: of childhood, 7475; negative consequences of, 120-143 passim Camps, 70-72, 196 Careerism, 132-133 Cells. See Primary organizations Child psychology, 32-34 Civil War, youth program during, 10-12 Collective, 42-17, 81-87, 100-102

Collectivism, as goal of youth training, 42-47 Collectivization of agriculture, 13 Communist morality, 36-39 Communist Party, control over Komsomol, 48-56 Communist Party, Rules, as behavior model, 38 Conformity: in the collective, 4347; encouraged in Pioneers, 8687; enforced in universities, 100107 Congresses of the Komsomol, 53, 57-59 Conservatism, as characteristic of Komsomol, 18 Consumer goods, 165 Consumer goods, foreign, impact on youth, 156, 158-161 Control of Komsomol, by Communist Party, 48-56 "Crown princes," 155-159 Dance, Western, impact on youth, 161-163 Delegates: to Komsomol congresses, 52-53; occupational composition, 56 Democratic centralism, 53-54 Democratic procedure, appearance of in Komsomol, 57-59 De-Stalinization, 89-90 Detachments, 67-69 Discipline, as goal of training, 30 Dormitories, Komsomol regulation of, 104-106 DOSAAF, 118, 126-127 Druzhina, 67-69 Education: boarding schools, 165166; reorganization of, 166-167

204

INDEX

Efficiency, stressed in training, 9496 Elections, of Komsomol officers, 5657 Emotionality, 31 Environment, Soviet view of, 32-33 Factories, Komsomol role in, 110116 Families: role in child rearing, 3334; role in producing idlers, 151152, 155 First Congress of the Komsomol (1918), 11 Five-year plans: influence on Komsomol, 13; Komsomol during, 1617 Foreign consumer goods, impact on youth, 156, 158-161 Formalization of youth institutions, 5-6 Freudian psychology, contrasted with Soviet psychology, 32, 39 Friendship, 43-47, 84-85 Germany. See Hitler Youth Group pressure, as factor in behavior, 41 Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System, 28, 45-46, 190 Heredity, Soviet view of, 32-33 Higher educational institutions. See Universities Hitler Youth, compared with Soviet youth program, 177-181 Hooliganism, 144, 148 Idealism, 172-174 Identification, of Soviet youth with system, 174 Idling: regime's concern with, 145146; extensiveness, 147, 169; to avoid manual labor, 148-151; official reaction to, 164-165 Imitation, as factor in behavior, 4041 Independence of Komsomol, suppressed by Communist Party, 14 Indoctrination: role in youth pro-

gram, 24-27; in universities, 100107 Industrialization: preparing youth for, 3; as factor in youth program, 4-5 Industry, Komsomol role in, 107117 Initiation, in Pioneers, 78-81 Instrumentality, as goal of training, 30 Juvenile delinquency, 144, 147 Kruzhki, 91-92 Labor: stressed in youth training, 29-31, 37-39, 41, 95-98; stilyagi's view of, 155 Labor, forced, 168 Labor, manual: effects on status, 147-150; regime's view of, 149150 Leaders, in Pioneers, 67-69, 82 Leisure activities, workers', 110111

Leisure ethic, 144-145, 153-154 Lenin, V. I., on youth groups, 10 Liberalization, 19, 60-63, 176, 186 Marxism, as basis for indoctrination, 25-26 Maturation, Soviet view of, 24-25 Membership: figures for Octobrists, 1; figures for Pioneers, 1; age limits in Komsomol, 52-53; turnover, 124-125 Membership figures, Komsomol: current, 1, 195; during Civil War, 16; during NEP, 16; during fiveyear plans, 16-17; during World War II, 17; since World War II, 17-18 Membership policies: in Komsomol, 16-18, 63-65; during Civil War, 16; during five-year plans, 16-17; in Pioneers, 20, 69-70 Membership units, in Pioneers, 6769 Military, Komsomol in the, 117-118

INDEX Modernization, as factor in youth program, 4-5 Morale, problems in Komsomol, 120-143 passim Morality, foreign influence on, 163164 Morozov, Pavlik, 37-38 Narcotics, 157 National character, as factor in youth program, 27-31 Nazi Germany. See Hitler Youth New Economic Policy, Komsomol during, 12-13 New-lands program, 116-117 New Soviet Man, 3-4, 7, 28-31, 7677, 172 Nibonicho. See Nihilism Nihilism, among Soviet youth, 141142, 175 Octobrists: membership figures, 1; history of, 20-21; preparation for Pioneers, 79-80 Officers of Komsomol, educational level, 55 Optimism, 31 Otriad, 67-69 Overcontrol, tensions resulting from, 120-143 passim, Paramilitary training. See DOSAAF Participant activity, in Pioneers, 81-82, 89 Participation, as factor in behavior, 40-41 Pavlov, S. P., 52 Pedagogical psychology, influence on youth program, 22-47 passim Peer group, 42^7, 81-87 Performance, 92 Pioneer palaces, 72-73 Political control, as purpose of youth program, 5-6 Political indoctrination: in Pioneers, 87-92; in Komsomol, 108-109 Preparation for Pioneers, in Octobrists, 20-21 Primary organizations: elections in, 65; size, 64-65

205

Privacy, invasions of by Komsomol, 134-137 Production ethic, rejection of, 144 Productivity, stressed in training, 949Θ Propaganda, anti-Western, 90-91 Protestant Ethic, and New Soviet Man, 28-29 Psychological development, Soviet view of, 32-36 Psychological doctrines, influence on youth program, 14-17, 22-47 passim Psychological reconstruction, 5-6 Raids, by Komsomol, 113-115 Recruitment, labor, 103, 116-117, 120-124, 146-147, 151-153 Reform, failures of in Komsomol, 142-143 Resistance: to party control over Komsomol, 14; of Komsomol members to leaders, 59-60 "Rules for Pioneers," 79 Samodeiatelnost, 81-82, 89 Schools, relation to Pioneer program, 65-66, 196 Schoolwork, 93 Shaming, as means of social control, 44^6, 83-84, 93-94 Shkoly internaty. See Boarding schools Socialist humanism, 37 Social opinion. See Shaming Social pressure, in universities, 102103 Social stratification, 147-153 Social transformation, 5-6 Stalin, Joseph, 12-14 Stilyagi, 154-155, 158, 163, 183 Street patrols, 118-119, 135-136 Striving, stressed in training, 92-99 Study circles, 91-92 Surveillance, 108, 134-138, 168 Teachers, in Pioneers, 67-69 Temperament, as factor in behavior, 39-40

206

INDEX

Totalitarianism, as factor in youth program, 4-5 Training techniques, 36-47 United States. See American youth Universities: Komsomol activities in, 100-107; idlers' role in, 146; role in upward mobility, 148-150, 153; recruitment policy for, 167 Urbanization, as factor in youth program, 4-5 Vozhatyi, 67-69, 82 Wage equalization, 165 Western culture, impact on Soviet youth, 154-164

Work. See Labor Work habits, stressed in training, 95-98 Work projects, 97-98 World War II, Komsomol during, 17 Young naturalists' stations, 73 Young technologists' stations, 73 Youth culture, 86-87,181-184 Youth culture in United States. See American youth Youth movements, suppression of, 2, 18-19, 49-51, 56 Youth program, defined, 2 Zveno, 67-69

Russian Research Center Studies The Russian Research Center of Harvard University is supported by grants from the Carnegie Corporation and the Ford Foundation. The Center carries out interdisciplinary study of Russian institutions and behavior and related subjects. 1. Public Opinion in Soviet Russia: A Study in Mass Persuasion, by Alex Inkeles 2. Soviet Politics — The Dilemma of Power: The Role of Ideas in Social Change, by Barrington Moore, Jr. 3. Justice in Russia: An Interpretation of Soviet Law, by Harold J. Berman * 4. Chinese Communism and the Rise of Mao, by Benjamin I. Schwartz 5. Titoism and the Cominform, by Adam B. Ulam 6. A Documentary History of Chinese Communism, by Conrad Brandt, Benjamin Schwartz, and John K. Fairbank " 7. The New Man in Soviet Psychology, by Raymond A. Bauer 8. Soviet Opposition to Stalin: A Case Study in World War II, by George Fischer 9. Minerals: A Key to Soviet Power, by Demitri B. Shimkin 10. Soviet Law in Action: The Recollected Cases of a Soviet Lawyer, by Harold J. Berman and Boris A. Konstantinovsky 11. How Russia is Ruled, by Merle Fainsod. Revised edition 12. Terror and Progress USSR: Some Sources of Change and Stability in the Soviet Dictatorship, by Barrington Moore, Jr. 13. The Formation of the Soviet Union: Communism and Nationalism, 1917-1923, by Richard Pipes. Revised edition 14. Marxism: The Unity of Theory and Practice, by Alfred G. Meyer 15. Soviet Industrial Production, 1928-1951, by Donald R. Hodgman 16. Soviet Taxation: The Fiscal and Monetary Problems of a Planned Economy, by Franklin D. Holzman 17. Soviet Military Law and Administration, by Harold J. Berman and Miroslav Kemer 18. Documents on Soviet Military Law and Administration, edited and translated by Harold J. Berman and Miroslav Kemer 19. The Russian Marxists and the Origins of Bolshevism, by Leopold H. Haimson 20. The Permanent Purge: Politics in Soviet Totalitarianism, by Zbigniew K. Brzezinski 21. Belorussia: The Making of a Nation, by Nicholas P. Vakar

22. A Bibliographical Guide to Belorussia, by Nicholas P. Vakar 23. The Balkans in Our Time, by Robert Lee Wolff 24. How the Soviet System Works: Cultural, Psychological, and Social Themes, by Raymond A. Bauer, Alex Inkeles, and Clyde Kluckhohn f 25. The Economics of Soviet Steel, by M. Gardner Clark 26. Leninism, by Alfred G. Meyer 27. Factory ana Manager in the USSR, by Joseph S. Berliner f 28. Soviet Transportation Policy, by Holland Hunter 29. Doctor and Patient in Soviet Russia, by Mark G. Field f 30. Russian Liberalism, by George Fischer 31. Stalin's Failure in China, 1924-1927, by Conrad Brandt 32. The Communist Party of Poland, by Μ. K. Dziewanowski 33. Karamzin's Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia. A Translation and Analysis, by Richard Pipes 34. A Memoir on Ancient and Modem Russia, by Ν. M. Karamzin, the Russian text edited by Richard Pipes 35. The Soviet Citizen: Daily Life in a Totalitarian Society, by Alex Inkeles and Raymond A. Bauer f 36. Pan-Turkism and Islam in Russia, by Serge A. Zenkovsky 37. The Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict, by Zbigniew K. Brzezinski % 38. National Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century Russia, by Hans Rogger 39. Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism, 1812-1855, by Martin Malia 40. The Conscience of the Revolution: Communist Opposition in Soviet Russia, by Robert V. Daniels 41. The Soviet Industrialization Debate, 1924-1928, by Alexander Erlich 42. The Third Section: Police and Society in Russia under Nicholas I, by Sidney Monas 43. Dilemmas of Progress in Tsarist Russia: Legal Marxism and Legal Populism, by Arthur P. Mendel 44. Political Control of Literature in the USSR, 1946-1959, by Harold Swayze 45. Accounting in Soviet Planning and Management, by Robert W. Campbell 46. Social Democracy and the St. Petersburg Labor Movement, 18851897, by Richard Pipes 47. The New Face of Soviet Totalitarianism, by Adam B. Ulam 48. Stalin's Foreign Policy Reappraised, by Marshall D. Shulman 49. The Soviet Youth Program: Regimentation and Rebellion, by Allen Kassof * Out of print. t Publications of the Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System. % Published jointly with the Center for International Affairs, Harvard University.