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History of the formation of the komsomol and its inclusion in the new Soviet Stalinist State

Seit Bestehen der Roten Armee und der Roten Flotte haben die politischen Institutionen der KPdSU in den Streitkräften eine bedeutende Rolle gespielt. Sie garantieren seit jeher den Einfluß und die Kontrolle der Partei über den Militärapparat. Sie besitzen eine eigene hierarchische Struktur, die außerhalb der rein militärischen Kommandolinie steht. Die politische Arbeit wird zwischen den Organen von Partei und Komsomol, die sich z.T. auch ergänzen und zusammenwirken, geteilt. (BIOst-Rsg)

The study of Soviet youth has long lagged behind the comprehensive research conducted on Western European youth culture. In an era that saw the emergence of youth movements of all sorts across Europe, the Soviet Komsomol was the first state-sponsored youth organization, in the first communist country. Born out of an autonomous youth movement that emerged in 1917, the Komsomol eventually became the last link in a chain of Soviet socializing agencies which organized the young. Based on extensive archival research and building upon recent research on Soviet youth, this book broadens our unders.

The Russian civil war was a fratricidal climax of seven years of war and revolution that fractured Russian society. Its traumatic effects on postrevolutionary life are beyond measure. In this article Sean Guillory examines memoirs of Komsomol civil war veterans to illuminate the ways the war shaped their sense of self. Guillory argues that veterans' memoirs reveal a shattering of the self where their efforts to narrate their experience as agents of war was overshadowed by their transformation on the batdefield into instinctual beings, imprisoned by emotions, senses, nerves, and muscles. Guillory engages the scholarship on the Soviet self and subjectivity by calling attention to the ways trauma produces a "darker side" of the self, and in particular, how the body serves as a long-term depository for experiences of loss, disorientation, and deprivation.

One of the most striking characteristics of modern totalitarianism is the conscious attention which it devotes to the organization and indoctrination of youth. The Soviet dictatorship is unique in having set the pattern of such activity; it has carried it on at a level of intensity and over a span of time unmatched by its now defunct Fascist and Nazi rivals. A third of a century has passed since the Bolsheviks rode to power in 1917; the membership of the Communist Party is today overwhelmingly composed of a generation which not only came of age since the Revolution but which also largely served its apprenticeship in the Young Pioneers and Komsomols. And waiting at the threshold of power is a new generation of approximately 10,000,000 Komsomols and 13,000,000 Pioneers, from whose ranks the Communist élite of the future is to be recruited.What has been the history of this effort to assimilate and discipline the new generations? What manner of training are they receiving? What values does the present leadership seek to implant in them? What motives operate to induce affiliation with the Komsomols? How is the Komsomol organized? What are the activities of its membership? How are the oncoming waves of Soviet youth relating themselves to the society which has produced them? To what extent are they deeply loyal to the present régime? Is there evidence of disaffection among them, and if so, does this disaffection present any important threat to the stability of the régime itself?