The paper reviews the main activities of Komsomol organizations in the South Ossetian Autonomous Region of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic during the Great Patriotic War. The author enumerates the main events of the 1930s that contributed to the education of Komsomol members not only as future political cadres of the country, but also as future soldiers and officers of the Red Army. The paper studies participation of representatives of the Komsomol in support of the Red Army, organization of its sustainment, industrial and agricultural production. The author analyses ideological and agitation activities of the Komsomol organizations that are considered a state function assigned to the Komsomol of the region during the most severe military struggles in the Caucasian theater of operations. The paper identifies the main motive of the Komsomol organizations' activity driven by personal initiative of Komsomol members, as well as the reasons for its formation during the most difficult conditions of wartime.
The political system of the Polish People's Republic was modelled on the Soviet one. Polish youth organizations had the ambitions of being counterparts of Komsomol: they adopted similar work methods and tried to play a similar role in the country. The obvious differences resulted from the specificity of each country and the differences in the societies. The most deeply rooted in the memory of Poles is the Socialist Youth Union, which, being the most stable, existed for almost 20 years with nearly 1.3 million members in the early 1970s. The Union was closely connected with the Polish United Workers' Party and it had to accomplish two main kinds of political task: to select and prepare future members of the Party, both ordinary and those in the managerial positions, and to educate the whole young generation. The Party indeed treated the organization as its agency, an office dealing with the affairs of youths. However, non-political activity of the Union (culture, entertainment, tourism, etc.) was much more effective and evaluated more positively. Actually, there was much more falsehood in the Union: many members were almost completely passive and the work was often only simulated.
Based on extensive and diverse primary material, this article provides a detailed analysis of the development of Belarusian government-affiliated youth organisations from the late 1980s until 2002. Using a historical institutionalist approach, it examines the transformation of the Belarusian Komsomol into an independent association and the emergence of new, proactive pro-government youth organisations. The article demonstrates that, contrary to common assumptions, building a mass membership pro-presidential youth organisation in Belarus was a complex project that took years to complete. When the Belarusian Republican Youth Union finally emerged in 2002, it was a result of an interplay of many structural and agency-related factors. ; Peer reviewed
In the 1960s the Komsomol began to give particular attention to its international activity, which was not only limited to participation, but also involved the organization of many different events for foreign youth and students - international friendship camps, forums, trips of foreign delegations. The creation of the Committee of Youth Organizations of the USSR (KMO USSR) and the Sputnik International Youth Tourism Bureau (BMMT) contributed to the intensification of the tourist exchange between Soviet and foreign youth. Both organizations were subordinate to the Central Committee of the Komsomol and received funding from the Komsomol budget. In 1962, additional funds started being allocated for international activities, as evidenced by a new item of expenditure that appeared in the budget of the Komsomol. Most of this money was spent by the Central Committee, with excessive expenditure on the reception of foreign delegations and gifts, which was repeatedly noted by audit checks. Twelve to thirty committees with international youth camps (out of 86 regional Komsomol committees) received money under the framework of this funding item. During the period under study, the Komsomol actively helped with the payment of organizational fees to the funds of the World Festivals of Youth and Students, and then began to provide direct material assistance to the youth organizations in Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa, which regularly applied for it. It is important to note that the annual increase of spending on international activities occurred in the context of the termination of state funding for the Komsomol, which in 1959 became fully financially self-sufficient. Based on a wide range of archival documents introduced into scientific circulation for the first time, the article presents an analysis of the financial activities of the Central Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, its sources of funding and directions for spending the funds allocated for international activities. The relevance of the study is determined by the lack of serious scholarly investigation of this problem and the need to study the financial support of international activities in order to give a comprehensive assessment of its impact and efficiency.
Legacies of the Komsomol er en artikkelbasert avhandling om hvordan to nasjonale avdelinger av den all-sovjetiske ungdomsunionen Komsomol endret seg i årene før og etter Sovjetunionens oppløsning. Den diskuterer også hvordan og hvorfor dens arvtakerorganisasjoner senere ble integrerte deler av Putins og Lukashenkos autoritære regimer, og hva som er ungdommens motivasjon for å delta i dem. Legacies of the Komsomol is an article-based PhD on how two national chapters of the all-Soviet communist youth league Komsomol transformed during the years before and after the Soviet collapse. It also discusses how Komsomol's offspring organizations became integrated parts of the political regimes of Putin and Lukashenko, and the youth's motivation for participating in them.
