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History of the Cold War: Every Month - Dec '45 to Dec '91 > .
Berlin Wall: Escaping for Freedom and Love - Geographics > .
Thirty years after the
collapse of the USSR, the martial rhetoric and other trappings of the "strong men" of the totalitarian era are making a comeback. Why? The film's director Ivo Briedis and the journalist Rita Ruduša were both born in the Soviet Union. Together, they embark on a journey to explore the phenomenon of
Homo sovieticus. They want to know if a totalitarian mindset can still be found in countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union. The thinker
Alexander Zinoviev defined as Homo sovieticus as a person who is, at their core, an opportunist. They
[RWAs] do not rebel against their [SDO] leadership, and want to take as little individual responsibility as possible. Did these characteristics develop specifically as a result of growing up in the Soviet Union, or can they develop in any society? To find out, they speak with people who lived under the Soviet regime, as well as with members of the first post-Soviet generation.
Soviet Youth Organizations - Cold War ..
The
All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, usually known as
Komsomol, a
syllabic abbreviation of the Russian Коммунистический Союз Молодёжи (Kommunisticheskiy Soyuz Molodyozhi), was a political
youth organization in the
Soviet Union. It is sometimes described as the youth division of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), although it was officially independent and referred to as "the helper and the reserve of the CPSU".
The Komsomol in its earliest form was established in urban areas in 1918. During the early years, it was a Russian organization, known as the Russian Young Communist League, or RKSM. During 1922, with the
unification of the USSR, it was reformed into an all-union agency, the youth division of the All-Union Communist Party.
It was the final stage of three youth organizations with members up to age 28, graduated at 14 from the
Young Pioneers, and at nine from the
Little Octobrists.
Active members received privileges and preferences in promotion. For example, Yuri Andropov, CPSU General Secretary (1982–1984), achieved notice through work with the Komsomol organization of Karelia in 1940–1944. At its largest, during the 1970s, the Komsomol had tens of millions of members.
During the early phases of
perestroika in the
mid-1980s, when the Soviet authorities began
cautiously introducing private enterprise, the
Komsomol received privileges with respect to
initiating businesses, with the motivation of giving youth a better chance. The government, unions and the Komsomol jointly introduced
Centers for Scientific and Technical Creativity for Youth (
1987). At the same time, many Komsomol managers joined and directed the
Russian Regional and State Anti-Monopoly Committees. Folklore quickly coined a motto: "The Komsomol is a school of Capitalism", hinting at
Vladimir Lenin's "Trade unions are a school of Communism".
The reforms of
Mikhail Gorbachev,
perestroika and
glasnost, finally revealed that the
quality of Komsomol management was bad. The Komsomol, long associated with conservatism and bureaucracy, had always
largely lacked political power. The radical Twentieth Congress of the Komsomol (
April 1987) altered the rules of the organization to represent a
market orientation. However, the
reforms of the Twentieth Congress eventually
destroyed the Komsomol, with lack of purpose and the waning of interest, membership, and quality of membership. At the
Twenty-second Congress of the Komsomol in
September 1991, the organization was
disbanded. The
Komsomol's newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda, outlived the organization and is
still published (
as of 2019).
A number of youth organizations of successor parties to the CPSU
continue to use the name Komsomol, as does the youth organization of
Ukrainian communists:
Komsomol of Ukraine.
