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p More than 50 years have passed since the historic day when the sons and daughters of revolutionary Russia, representatives of the revolutionary youth organisations created and moulded by the Party of Bolsheviks, came to their first congress to take the oath of allegiance to Lenin’s Party and the great ideals of the October Revolution, and proclaimed the foundation of the All-Russia Young Communist League.

p During its whole history the Leninist Komsomol has always worked under the Party’s guidance; the Communist Party has always exhibited paternal care for the Komsomol, supporting and assisting it.

p The Communist Party of the Soviet Union is the vehicle of revolutionary theory; it has absorbed the historical experience in the struggle of the older generations of revolutionaries. In this capacity it helps Soviet youth and the multi-million army of YCLers to master the scientific ideology, shares with the younger generation the traditions and experience of revolutionary struggle, socialist and communist construction, and guides the multifarious activities of the Leninist Komsomol.

p The Central Committee’s Report to the 24th Congress of the CPSU outlined the nature and purposes of the Party’s leadership over the Komsomol as well as the tasks involved in the Party’s work with youth in the developed socialist society.

p “Our duty,” said Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, "is to pass on the rising 171 generation our political experience and our experience in resolving problems of economic and cultural development, to direct the ideological upbringing of young people and to do everything to enable them to be worthy continuers of the cause of their fathers, of the cause of the great Lenin.”  [171•1 

p From the very first days of its inception, the Communist Party has been resolving the historic task of organising and bringing up youth according to revolutionary traditions and in the spirit of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism.

p “In the Bolshevik Party,” said S. M. Kirov, "the question of the organisation of young workers has been on the agenda ever since the Party’s inception. We had as yet not succeeded in becoming hard-rock Bolsheviks, when Lenin called on us to focus the most serious and the most careful attention on the rising generation of workers.”  [171•2 

p The Communist Party began to extend its activities among the broad masses of young people, paying particular attention to the revolutionary education of young toilers in town and country, patiently explaining to them the goals and tasks of the forthcoming revolution, and recruiting them for the struggle against tsarism.

p The Party supported the initiative of the revolutionary youth and directed its efforts into the general channel of the proletarian struggle.

p In its work with youth the Party has been relying on and guided by Lenin’s teaching on the revolutionary education and organisation of youth and on Party leadership of the youth movement. Lenin advanced the principal theses of this teaching prior to 1917 in such works as the address "To Secondary Schools Students”, the draft resolution "On the Attitude Towards Student Youth”, "The Tasks of the Revolutionary Youth”, the letter to A. A. Bogdanov and S. I. Gusev, "The Question of Party Affiliation Among Democratic-Minded Students”, "The Youth International" and others.

p Lenin’s "Letters From Afar”, "The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution”, "On Slogans" and " 172 Marxism and Insurrection" were of exceptional organisational and mobilising significance for the youth movement and the entire struggle of the proletariat for the victory of the socialist revolution. In directing the Party to mobilise the broadest masses of workers for the revolutionary struggle, Lenin also underlined the role of young workers in the coming armed uprising.

p In his meetings with working people after the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution, Lenin developed his ideas about bringing up youth and indicated the role and place of the younger generation in carrying on the revolutionary struggle and building communism. The most brilliant comprehensive and profound exposition of his views on youth as an active force in the building of socialism and communism was made in his historic speech at the 3rd Congress of the Komsomol. This speech has been adopted by the Party and the Komsomol as their basic programme for bringing up youth the communist way.

p In working out the Party’s policy on youth and defining the tasks involved in its education, Lenin proceeded from precise and definite class positions. Youth constitutes part of society, its rising generation, and has definite features, wants and interests, which are peculiar to age. In a society divided into exploiter and exploited classes, however, in a society torn by irreconcilable contradictions, there can be no such thing as youth in general; there is only the young generation of one or another class or social group. Under capitalism there are the bourgeois youth, the proletarian youth, and the peasant youth. In tsarist Russia, just as in the capitalist countries today, even the student youth was never a homogeneous whole; it included representatives of the bourgeoisie, the intelligentsia, the government executives and so on. As far back as 1903 Lenin pointed out in the article "The Tasks of the Revolutionary Youth" that "among the students there are, and are bound to be, groups differing greatly in their political and social views”, because "the students would not be what they are if their political grouping did not correspond to the political grouping of society as a whole".  [172•1 

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p The starting point, the essence of Lenin’s teaching on youth and its education and on the Party leadership of the youth movement is to be found in a class, Party and historical approach to the problems of the youth movement, an approach which determines the role and place of youth as class segment in the social movement and in the struggle for socialism. This was precisely why Lenin paid particular attention to young workers, the rising generation of the working class—the most revolutionary class of society, the leader of the people. Lenin’s attitude to young workers is most forcefully expressed in his wonderful article entitled "The Crisis of Menshevism”. In this article he points to the one important feature of the proletarian movement, namely, the active participation of proletarian youth in the revolutionary struggle of the working class and in the activities of the new-type proletarian Party. Criticising the Mensheviks for their refusal to understand that the Party’s composition (including its age composition) depended on the tasks and forms of the struggle which the Party was waging, and exposing their dissatisfaction with the fact that young workers were predominant in the ranks of the Bolshevik Party, Lenin pointed out that there was nothing accidental in such a predominance, that it stemmed from the very nature of the new-type Party which had been set up as a revolutionary Marxist Party of fighters for communism.

p “We are a party of innovators,” he wrote, "and it is always the youth that most eagerly follows the innovators. We are a party that is waging a self-sacrificing struggle against the old rottenness, and youth is always the first to undertake a self-sacrificing struggle".  [173•1 

p In these heart-felt words the Party’s leader defined one important feature of the new-type Party—the inviolable ideological unity of the working class younger generation and the Party, the loyalty of youth to the Party’s communist ideals.

p Soviet youth is inspired by the great goals of the newtype Party, by its policy and by the heroic struggle of the proletariat. This is why the younger generation of the proletariat has always rallied to the Party’s banner. This is 174 why at all stages of the revolutionary struggle and the building of socialism and communism, the young workers joined the ranks of the Bolshevik Party and showed "an impassioned, uncontrollable enthusiasm for the ideas of democracy and socialism".  [174•1 

p This is why, in characterising youth as a segment of the revolution, as the younger generation of the revolutionary class fighting under the banners of the Party of that class, Lenin wrote:

p “We shall always be a party of the youth of the advanced class!”  [174•2 

p Noting the role and significance of youth in the proletariat’s revolutionary struggle, the revolutionary passion, energy, courage and enthusiasm of young people, Lenin and the Party, however, censured any temptation to overestimate youth, all statements about youth having a special role as the vanguard of the revolution, and all attempts to counterpose the youth to the older generation.

p The backbone of the working class are adult workers, veterans of proletarian descent who bear the glorious traditions and experience of the working class. It is on them that the Party relies first and foremost in its struggle and in its social activities. The Party brings up young people according to the revolutionary, militant and labour traditions of the older generation.

p “Young workers,” Lenin wrote, "need the experience of veteran fighters against oppression and exploitation, of those who have organised many strikes, have taken part in a number of revolutions, who are wise in revolutionary traditions, and have a broad political outlook.”  [174•3 

p Lenin taught that the principal and decisive prerequisite for the revolutionary education of youth and the activities of youth unions is leadership by the Bolshevik Party, which embodies the wisdom and the experience of older generations of revolutionaries.

p The Party draws up its policy towards youth, indicates the principal fields of activity for youth organisations, defines 175 their tasks and place in the proletariat’s revolutionary struggle, as well as their tasks in solving problems specific to the youth movement. The Party leadership opens up broad prospects before the revolutionary youth leagues, co– ordinates their struggle and makes it more purposeful, and coordinates their work with other organisations led by the Party.

p In the resolution "On the Attitude Towards the Student Youth”, drafted by Lenin, the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party stressed the importance of Party leadership for youth organisations, and invited them to establish close contacts with the Party organisations "to have the benefit of their advice and, as far as possible, to avoid serious mistakes at the very outset of their work".  [175•1 

p Time and again Lenin pointed out that bringing up young people should not be reduced to bookish learning; he said that it should be an efficient combination of theoretical studies and practical activities, because "every practical step in the revolutionary movement will decidedly, inevitably give the young recruits a lesson in Social-Democratic science”.  [175•2 

p By fulfilling the assignments of Party organisations and taking part in strikes and demonstrations during the revolutionary struggle young people passed through the first school of their revolutionary education, acquired the needed experience and prepared to join the Party ranks.

p Mobilising young workers for the revolutionary struggle, combining their theoretical education with practical participation in revolutionary, creative activities that actually transform society and bringing up youth by using its own historical experience—the Party has always considered these tasks as constituting the most important principles behind its leadership of the masses and their education.

p “The real education of the masses,” Lenin wrote, "can never be separated from their independent political, and especially revolutionary, struggle. Only struggle educates the exploited class. Only struggle discloses to it the 176 magnitude of its own power, widens its horizon, enhances its abilities, clarifies its mind, forges its will.”  [176•1 

p This combination of theoretical education and training through actual revolutionary practice is possible only if youth actively participates in the proletarian revolutionary struggle. Lenin believed that the inner unity between young workers’ struggle, their aims and tasks and the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat for socialism was the most important and salient feature of the proletarian youth movement, one which emerged as part and parcel of the revolutionary movement of the working class.

p Lenin pointed out that the younger generation was going into the revolution, towards socialism in conditions produced by a new era, which greatly differed from the preceding period. This new era—the era of imperialism and socialist revolutions, the era of mankind’s transition from capitalism to socialism—called for new forms of struggle and organisation, new methods of educating youth and Party leadership of the youth movement.

p “Incidentally,” he wrote, "that is why we must decidedly favour organisational independence of the Youth League, not only because the opportunists fear such independence, but because of the very nature of the case. For unless they have complete independence, the youth will be unable either to train good socialists from their midst or prepare themselves to lead socialism forward."  [176•2 

p Thus, in the organisational independence of youth leagues Lenin saw an important means for the revolutionary organisation of youth, within the framework of which the Party could most efficiently exercise its leadership of youth leagues, see to the revolutionary education of young men and women, and fight the corruptive influence of opportunists. According to Lenin, the organisational independence of youth leagues was not an aim in itself, not a means of leading youth away from the Party of the working class, but rather an organisational form of the revolutionary Youth League’s life and activities.

p In such an organisation young people, relying on the 177 Party’s support and leadership, can develop the qualities of future Communists, mature as revolutionaries and creators of the new society. At the same time Lenin was vigorously opposed to all preachings about the absolute independence of youth organisations, which is so much in the minds of modern revisionists; such an unlimited independence would mean anarchy in the youth movement and the severance of its ties with the working class and its party. To allow anarchy and spontaneity in the youth movement is to deprive it of leadership by the revolutionary party of the working class, i.e., to deprive youth of clear revolutionary prospects, to rob it of the experience and wisdom of the older generation of revolutionaries. To allow such an independence would mean to betray youth into the hands of the enemy. This is why Lenin always linked the problem of organisational independence to the question of party leadership of youth organisations, and party criticism of their errors. "We stand for the complete independence of the Youth Leagues,” he wrote, "but also for complete freedom of comradely criticism of their errors! We must not flatter the youth.”  [177•1 

p Lenin’s principles for party leadership of the youth leagues are education of working youth in the spirit of Marxism; a party and class approach to youth affairs and problems; broad mobilisation of young people for the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat; party ideological and political leadership of and assistance to the organisationally independent youth leagues; comradely criticism of their errors; and resolute exposure of opportunist and other false friends of youth. It was in line with these principles that the Bolshevik Party fought for the organisation of young workers. Lenin’s principles for party leadership of youth organisations determined the whole nature and direction of the work of the Bolsheviks with young working people.

p The Bolshevik Party was out to create a mass revolutionary youth organisation which would become its militant reserve and assistant in the struggle for the victory of the 178 socialist revolution, establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the building of socialism.

p The Bolshevik Party led the revolutionary struggle of the working class and peasants against tsarism, and one of its basic tasks was to involve the broad masses of student youth in this struggle. The Party took account of the democratic nature of the student movement in the bourgeoisdemocratic revolution, regarding it as one of the key factors in the revolutionary struggle against the tsarist autocracy.

p Influenced by the upsurge of the revolutionary workingclass movement and the activities of Leninist SocialDemocratic organisations, the student movement at the turn of the 20th century swerved towards political struggle. The main point was that the democratic students recognised the leading role of the proletariat and its party in the revolutionary struggle against tsarism.

p Noting these positive changes in the formerly corporative, academic nature of the student movement, Lenin called upon the Party to bring up students in the spirit of Marxism.

p This task was fulfilled amidst a ruthless struggle against Liberals, Mensheviks, and Socialist-Revolutionaries, who flattering the youth, tried to lead it away from the workingclass movement and the revolution. The Bolsheviks mercilessly exposed the falsity of the Socialist– Revolutionary and Trotskyite theories as to the leading role of students; they warned young people against the counter– revolutionary essence of the ‘Leftist’ utterances of their false friends.

p The Party explained to students that they could only really play an important role if they participated in the revolutionary struggle under the leadership of the working class—the real leader of the people in the democratic revolution.

p Today, just as in their time the Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Mensheviks and the Trotskyites of Russia did, imperialist reaction, the Right-wing and “Left”-wing revisionists are trying to lead politically immature young men and women astray and cynically employ them for criminal antisocialist purposes.

p Ultra-leftist anarchist ideas acquired some popularity among certain groups of students during the student 179 troubles in France, the United States, Mexico and other capitalist countries. Ultra-leftist elements, Trotskyites and adherents of Marcuse, the ideologist of petty-bourgeois rebelliousness, attempted to provoke students to an immediate socialist revolution without and in defiance of the working class. They hope to convince students that the proletariat is no longer a revolutionary force, and that it is only the students that can effect a socialist revolution.

p Thus the high-sounding phraseology of the latest ultrarevolutionary theories is based on ideas which have long been refuted by the Communist Party; they conceal the same old attempts to divert the democratic forces, particularly democratic students, from the proletarian struggle.

p Communist Parties are waging a resolute struggle against the splitting tactics of anarchist and revisionist elements.

p “Communists think highly of the upsurge of the youth movement and actively participate in it,” says the Communique of the International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties. "They propagate in its ranks the ideas of scientific socialism, explaining the danger of various pseudorevolutionary ideas, which could influence young people, and seeking to help young people find the right path in the struggle against imperialism and for the defence of their interests. Only close unity with the working-class movement and its Communist vanguard can open for them truly revolutionary prospects.”  [179•1 

p In an attempt to undermine the influence and authority of Communists among the masses of young people, the bourgeoisie and its learned henchmen from the ranks of falsifiers of history belittle in every possible way the significance of the experience acquired by the Bolshevik Party in guiding the student movement.

p Typical examples are the books Pattern for Soviet Youth by the American historian Ralph Fisher and The Decline of Imperial Russia by Professor H. Seton-Watson of the University of London.

p By distorting and juggling with historic facts, the two authors attempt to prove that during the democratic 180 revolution the student movement was completely independent of the proletarian party and that it had no ties with the working-class movement. Ralph Fisher, for instance, says that the South Russian Group of Students "acted largely on its own initiative”, i.e., that it was not guided by the RSDLP which "was at this early date too weak to exert any strict control".  [180•1  The same idea, but in relation to the student movement in general, is expressed by Professor Seton– Watson. He claims that on the eve and during the first Russian revolution, "the most successful were the Socialist Revolutionaries, whose method of assassination was more attractive to many students, as a heroic act of individual revolutionary safrifice, than the mere humdrum work of agitation among workers in which the Social Democrats specialised.”  [180•2 

p These false assertions by Fisher, Seton-Watson and other bourgeois “researchers” are completely refuted by documents and materials about the work of Iskra and, subsequently, Bolshevik organisations in higher and middle schools, as well as by the active participation of democratic youth in the revolutionary struggle of the working class under the leadership of the proletarian party during the democratic revolution. These documents show the leading role played by the Bolshevik Party in the democratic student movement both on the eve and during the first Russian revolution.

p In August 1905, the Central Committee of the RSDLP made an appeal To All Students and asked them to return to the universities, turn them into a rostrum of the revolution and the armed uprising. The appeal read in part:

p “Many of you are fighting together with us under a common banner; the great majority of you accept our slogans and support the proletariat in its struggle against tsarism.”  [180•3 

p An examination of the work of the Bolshevik Party in guiding the actions of student youth during the preparation and in the course of the bourgeois democratic revolution in Russia reveals that many students actively participated in the revolutionary struggle under the leadership of the 181 working class. It was precisely the leadership of the proletariat and its party that determined the vigorous and militant revolutionary, democratic nature of student action.

p From the very beginning the Bolshevik Party guided the struggle of the working class in defence of the rights of working youth, and included their specific demands in the general demands of the entire working-class movement.

p The development of capitalism in Russia was accompanied by the wide employment and intense exploitation of child and juvenile labour. The basic characteristics of working conditions for youth in tsarist Russia were a long workingday (up to 10 or 11 hours), low pay (30–50 per cent of the pay of adult workers), factory and vocational apprenticeship —the rudest forms of capitalist exploitation and, finally, complete powerlessness before arbitrary rule of administration.

p The revolutionary outlook of the young proletarians and their active participation in the revolutionary movement of the working class were generated by the conditions of work in large-scale production, the influence of big proletarian collectives, the example of the revolutionary struggle provided by senior comrades, and the policy of Party organisations in respect to youth. This is why the movement of worker youth during the tsarist regime was not isolated or independent; it was a component of the revolutionary struggle of Russia’s working class, and was guided by the Bolshevik Party which was spreading socialist ideas among the young proletarians.

p During the class battles young workers matured politically and ideologically.

p I. Radchenko, one of Lenin’s associates in the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class in St. Petersburg, wrote in a letter to the Iskra about his meeting with young workers, members of the Social-Democratic Party, who asked for more revolutionary literature, told him about their disgust with the opportunism of the Economists, and hoped to become professional revolutionaries.

p “I felt happy for Lenin’s sake,” I. Radchenko wrote. "Lenin, who from his remote exile, cut off from his country by bayonets, guns, borders and customs of the tsarist 182 autocracy, knows nevertheless who works in our shops, knows what they want and what they will become.”

p The 2nd Congress of the RSDLP paid a good deal of attention to youth problems. The Party’s Programme, which the Congress adopted, demanded prohibition of child labour (up to the age of 16), a six-hour working-day for juveniles (between 16 and 18), and free general and vocational education for all children of up to 16. These demands became the proletariat’s main slogans in their defence of the rights of young workers.

p In the Congress’ draft resolution "On the Attitude to Student Youth" Lenin underlined that the most important task of youth organisations was to work out a united and consistent revolutionary outlook, and he called for a resolute struggle against the Liberals and Opportunists who were trying to dissuade youth from revolutionary struggle. Lenin reiterated the importance and necessity of Party leadership for youth organisations.

p The revolution of 1905–07 set the Party the task of organising the masses and directing them in preparation for the decisive onslaught on tsarism. The new tasks faced by the Party in connection with the tremendous scope of revolutionary events required new methods of struggle and new forms of organisation, as well as wide mobilisation of the new and young revolutionary forces.

p Comparing the revolutionary epoch with the war period in the article "New Tasks and New Forces" Lenin drew attention to the need to swell the ranks of the revolutionary army and expand "the membership of all Party and Partyconnected organisations".  [182•1 

p Lenin insisted on strengthening the Party’s mass work "in new ways, by new methods of training".  [182•2  "So tackle the new methods of training more boldly, comrades!" Lenin wrote. "Forward, and organise more and more squads, send them into battle, recruit more young workers, extend the normal framework of all Party organisations, from committees to factory groups, craft unions, and student circles!”  [182•3 

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p With his usual astounding foresight in the changing revolutionary situation Lenin posed new tasks before the Party and mapped out new ways and methods of achieving them.

p The main organisational task, the achievement of which substantially ensured the victory of the working class and the Party, was that of extending the framework of all Party organisations, from local groups in enterprises, shops and higher educational establishments to Party committees in towns and provinces. According to Lenin, this extention of Party organisations, which is essential during a revolution for guiding the masses and strengthening the ties with them, could and should be carried out by boldly admitting youth into the Party because its role as the Party’s reserve force in the revolutionary struggle acquired great importance.

p It should be noted that the attempts by some historians to use Lenin’s words to derive conclusions about some “special” role played by youth in the revolutionary movement due solely to its age peculiarities are completely unfounded. Such conclusions have nothing in common with Lenin’s conception of the role of youth as the Communist Party’s reserve and assistant. They are in fact a peculiar form of avantgardism which is, to this day, being preached by followers of Trotsky and Mao Tse-tung, who are striving to lead the young away from the Party and deprive the youth movement of Party leadership.

p Although it took into account certain age peculiarities of youth, the Communist Party never overestimated their importance nor did it ever looked upon youth as the vanguard of the proletariat or the leading force of the revolutionary movement. It has always regarded youth as one of the detachments of the working class, as its successor.

p In the famous letter to A. Bogdanov and S. Gusev, Lenin insisted on the bold and wide mobilisation of youth into Party ranks.

p “We need young forces,” he wrote. "I am for shooting on the spot anyone who presumes to say that there are no people to be had. The people in Russia are legion; all we have to do is to recruit young people more widely and boldly, more boldly and widely, and again more widely and again more boldly, without fearing them. This is a time of 184 war. The youth—the students, and still more so the young workers—will decide the issue of the whole struggle ... form hundreds of circles of Vperyod-ists from among the youth and encourage them to work at full blast. Enlarge the Committee threefold by accepting young people into it....”  [184•1 

p At the same time Lenin insisted that the Party leadership of these circles be strengthened, demanding that the Bolshevik committees should assist them, ... give them the benefit of their own knowledge and experience, ... stimulate them with their own revolutionary initiative".  [184•2  Lenin emphasised that the Bolsheviks, the hardened professional revolutionaries, could draw youth into Party ranks only if they took a most serious attitude towards the young Party members, only if they could establish a rapport with the youth in Party ranks and pass on to them their revolutionary experience. The professional revolutionaries, Lenin wrote, had to "teach them and bring them up to the mark not by lecturing them but by work".  [184•3 

p Lenin time and again repeated his demand that the youth should be taught by work. With the help of senior comrades, and under their leadership the young people had to acquire the needed experience of practical revolutionary action in the clashes with the police and troops, in street fighting, in protecting mass meetings and demonstrations and in strike committees and Soviets.

p Lenin also said that the same methods should be employed in teaching young people Party work. In posing the task of recruiting youth to Party organisations, he proposed to enlarge Party committees threefold by accepting young people into them, forming hundreds of circles from young people and encouraging them to work at full blast, i.e., to teach them real, organisational and revolutionary work, the great art of Party work among the masses under the supervision and with the assistance of experienced Bolsheviks.

p In an earlier letter to Bogdanov (dated January 10, 1905) Lenin advanced some exceedingly important ideas on Party 185 work with youth. He insisted on the need to drastically increase the number of articles, particularly reports from young workers, for the Bolshevik Vperyod (Forward) newspaper.

p He said that reports, excerpts from local and special Russian publications, items about articles in Russian newspapers and magazines "are quite within the range of contribution by working-class and especially the student youth, and therefore the thing should be given attention; this work should be popularised, people should be roused and filled with zeal; they should, by concrete example, be taught what is wanted and how necessary it is to utilise every trifle; they should be made to see how badly needed the raw material from Russia is abroad (we shall be able to work it up from a literary angle and make use of it ourselves)".  [185•1 

p Lenin proposed that all student circles and all groups of workers should be given the address of the newspaper Vperyod. He angrily denounced the idiotic prejudice against the wide distribution of addresses to the local youth organisations. "Combat this prejudice with all your might,” he wrote, "hand out the addresses, and demand direct contact with the editorial board of Vperyod—–What we need is scores and hundreds of workers corresponding directly with Vperyod."  [185•2 

p In this letter, therefore, Lenin indicated another important aspect of work with youth—the employment of young workers and progressive students to deal with the practical problems of organising revolutionary printed propaganda and improving the work of the central press organ. “Workers’ correspondence is very badly needed,” he wrote, "and there is so little of it.”  [185•3 

p The recruitment of youth for this important work made it possible, thanks to the considerable increase that had taken place in the amount of correspondence from worker districts, factories and plants, to noticeably extend the scope of questions taken up by the Vperyod and, consequently, to make it more understandable to the rank-and-file workers and enhance its influence in the masses.

186

p On the other hand, the direct contacts of young correspondents with the editorial board of the Bolshevik newspaper headed by Lenin enriched their knowledge, immeasurably broadened their outlook and gave them access to the core of party work, or, in other words, enriched them both in theory and practical experience.

p Thus, the new forms and methods of party work with youth, of organisation and educating young people, which were worked out by Lenin and which met the demands of the revolution, ensured the required expansion of Party ranks by wide recruitment of young people, contributed to the spreading of revolutionary ideas and mobilised youth for the revolutionary struggle of the working class.

p The Party’s educational work, the revolutionary environment, life, work and struggle in big industrial enterprises, particularly amidst the mounting revolutionary activity, exerted a tremendous influence on young workers and generated proletarian solidarity and revolutionary enthusiasm.

p Guided by Lenin’s instructions, the Bolshevik Party organisations began to spread their work among young workers. Hundreds and thousands of them joined the Party, took part in the revolutionary battles and heroically fought on the barricades.

p On March 12, 1905, the Dvinsk Committee of the RSDLP organised a demonstration of young proletarians to protest against the shooting of the demonstrators on January 9 in the same year. They carried red banners and, crying out "Down with tsarism!”, marched through the streets of Dvinsk. The leaflets which they distributed said: "We took to the streets to protest against tyranny. . .. We will never forget the blood which our brothers shed in St. Petersburg on January 9.”

p The Bolshevik newspaper Proletary wrote that "Children vigorously built barricades and fought with the police and troops in Odessa; many of them were wounded or killed”.

p Juveniles could be seen alongside adults in the streets, on the barricades and at meetings. A boy of 13 or 14 addressed a meeting and said: "Many say that children and juveniles are taking part in the movement—lots of them. .. Is there anything wrong that we, the children of workers, have joined the struggle? Don’t we, the children of proletarians, suffer 187 from the same poverty as our fathers and mothers? Don’t we suffer from the same oppression? We children suffer even more because we have no rights. They give us jobs in factories because they can pay us less than adults while at the same time our parents are jobless. So when our fathers take to the streets and die fighting, we must also join the struggle.”  [187•1 

p Young proletarians heroically fought on the barricades in Moscow, Rostov, Novorossiisk, Donbas, Krasnoyarsk, Chita and many other towns.

p In the article "The Lessons of the Moscow Uprising" Lenin gives an example of the courage of young people. On December 10, 1905, two young workwomen, carying the red flag at the head of a column of demonstrators in Presnya, rushed towards the attacking Cossacks, crying: "Kill us! We will not surrender the flag alive!" "These examples of courage and heroism,” Lenin wrote, "should be impressed forever on the mind of the proletariat.”  [187•2 

p Young peasants, whose political maturity was accelerated by the class battles, also took an active part in the revolution of 1905–07. The revolution was a real school of political education for young people in villages.

p Their revolutionary activity was guided by the Bolshevik Party organisations. They organised circles which conducted work amidst poor and middle peasants. Under the leadership of the Bolsheviks, peasants and farmhands, including young people, demonstrated throughout the country.

p During the period of reaction and the new revolutionary upsurge the Bolsheviks continued to work amongst young people; they strove for inseparable unity between the worker youth movement and the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat and its Party. Under the leadership of the Bolsheviks and with the support of the Pravda the workers of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Bryansk and Mariupol demonstrated in defence of the rights of young people.

p During the imperialist war the Bolsheviks organised and directed underground revolutionary circles of young workers. In 1917 these circles produced such prominent organisers 188 and leaders of the first unions of proletarian youth as Vasily Alekseyev, Pyotr Smorodin, Sergei Afanasyev, Mikhail Dugachev, Alexei Zlatopolsky and Mikhail Ratmansky.

p The victory of the February bourgeois revolution created a favourable situation for the development of the proletarian youth movement and for the Bolshevik Party’s efforts in setting up a mass revolutionary organisation of young workers.

p The bourgeois Provisional Government did nothing to improve the position of young workers. Everything that was done in this respect resulted from the struggle of the Party and the working class and the support which they received from the Bolshevik Soviets, trade unions and factory committees, which acted counter to the Provisional Government and ignored its authority. Without asking anybody’s permission the working class introduced an 8-hour working day for all, for everybody including juveniles.

p In 1917 nearly 300,000 juveniles and children were engaged in Russia’s industry. Their position was exceptionally hard—working conditions, pay, and hours of working day remained almost the same as they had been under tsarism. Prices soared sky-high, while wages remained on approximately the same level. The Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies at Chulkovo Mine pointed out that in April 1917 food prices went up by an average of 185 per cent as compared with 1915, while the wages of workers and office employees rose by only 55 per cent. Pay for juveniles was particularly low—it did not suffice to cover even the minimum requirements.

p In 1917 the young worker movement for economic and political rights was spreading in close unity with the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat.

p The Bolshevik Party and the worker organisations (Soviets, trade unions, factory committees) it led resolutely defended the interests of young workers. The demands for the protection of youth labour, universal and free education, and political rights for young people, which were advanced by the Bolsheviks in their programme, complied with the cherished hopes of young workers; the mass proletarian youth movement adopted these demands as its principal slogans.

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p Through the agency of Soviets, trade unions and factory committees the Bolsheviks pressed for higher pay and shorter working hours for young people, levelled crushing blows at the capitalist system of apprenticeship and, in this way, helped to put questions dealing with the labour, education and upbringing of young people under workers’ control.

p The Party’s persistent efforts in educating youth in revolutionary traditions and its defence of young people’s rights brought the first spontaneous youth actions to a higher stage of development—namely, creation of youth revolutionary organisations.

p It should be noted that in the first few weeks and months following the February Revolution not all young workers understood the need to participate in the proletarian revolutionary struggle. Young people had as yet no clear idea about the aims of youth organisations and the nature and forms of their activities. Very often factory youth collectives, which were set up spontaneously from a desire towards unity, reduced their tasks to purely economic problems. Without Bolshevik leadership and without close ties with the revolutionary proletarian movement such organisations could easily come under the sway of the bourgeoisie and conciliators.

p “The youth organisation in Russia is in its cradle,” wrote N. Krupskaya in the article "The Struggle for the WorkingClass Youth”, "it is taking its first and most important steps. These steps will determine to a great extent what direction the whole movement will take—whether the youth organisation in Russia will become proletarian, whether it will march side by side with the working-class organisation of its own country and with the Youth International, publishing its own proletarian organ which will discuss in simple and easily understood language all problems of political and economic struggle, or whether the organisation of the working-class youth will separate for a certain period from the working-class movement and publish a cultural and educational organ influenced by the bourgeoisie which will discuss all kinds of abstract questions.”  [189•1 

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p Krupskaya expressed the hope that guided by the Bolshevik Party the revolutionary youth would take the first road, the road of the revolution.

p By fighting to improve the position of young workers and to satisfy their demands through the agency of the working-class organisations, Bolsheviks ensured an inviolable and inherent unity between the spreading youth movement and the proletarian revolutionary struggle; it was on this basis that they created the first organisations of the working-class youth. Thus, the majority of proletarian youth organisations were set up not spontaneously, but in the process of the Bolshevik Party’s struggle for youth, and its rights and interests. Bolsheviks were the organisers and leaders of the first organisations of the working-class youth. These appeared during the spring and summer of 1917 in the country’s largest industrial centres—Petrograd, Moscow, Kiev, Odessa, Yekaterinburg and some other towns with large numbers of industrial workers where the Bolshevik Party had great influence. The local Party organisations were greatly assisted by the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party in creating youth organisations.

p The Central Committee of the RSDLP (Bolsheviks), Pravda and the Moscow Regional Bureau of the Bolshevik Central Committee, which united Party organisations in 13 gubernias, received letters from all over the country with reports about work with youth and requests for advice and assistance in organising young workers and setting up new youth organisations.

p In June 1917, the CC RSDLP (Bolsheviks) and Pravda were requested by the revolutionary youth organisation of Kherson to help it in organising a library at the Youth House "by sending it regularly all issues of Pravda”. The request was granted.

p On July 3, 1917, the Mogilev Student Union asked the Central Committee of the RSDLP (Bolsheviks) to send a lecturer "to throw light on some political questions—- revolutionary socialism, the agrarian question and the national question”.

p When the Bolshevik committees organised unions of young workers, they asked the Central Committee to send out materials on the formation of youth organisations. In 191 a letter dated June 14 the secretary of the Tula Committee of the RSDLP (Bolsheviks), G. Kaminsky, asked the Central Committee’s Moscow Regional Bureau for instructions and explanations concerning a number of questions, including the question of organising youth. In conclusion, G. Kaminsky wrote:

p “If possible, send out all materials (instructions, Rules. . .) you have concerning 1) youth organisations, 2) domestic servants, 3) clubs.”

p A letter from the village of Kokhma, Vladimir Gubernia, said: "The Bureau of the Kokhma group of the RSDLP is applying to you with a comradely request to send us the Rules for running a circle of young workers. We ask you to send the Rules as soon as possible.”

p A report from Voronezh said: "We have a socialist youth group here (with up to 200 people). The committee is quite inert, so someone must tell us what we must do, and how.”

p The Central Committee replied in detail to all letters and requests, helping the local Party committees to organise and guide the activities of the young workers’ unions. Thanks to the Party’s Central Committee and Pravda, the experience acquired by Bolsheviks in Moscow and Petrograd in guiding the proletarian youth movement was made known to Party organisations in other parts of the country.

p Of great importance were the articles written by N. Krupskaya and printed in Pravda. In the article "How to Organise Young Workers" she submitted draft Rules for a proletarian youth organisation and the basic organisational and ideological principles of such an organisation. That helped the Party committees to set up organisations of proletarian youth.

p In 1917–1918 the main forms of proletarian youth organisations were the organisationally independent mass unions of young workers (youth organisations in working-class districts in Moscow, Petrograd, Odessa, Rostov-on-the-Don, Voronezh, Tula and other towns). These were however ideologically united with and guided by the Bolshevik Party. An analysis of the main aspects of their activities ( Bolshevik leadership, class nature, mass character, political animation, Marxist-Leninist education and training in practical 192 revolutionary action, etc.) leads us to the conclusion that these unions were direct predecessors of the Leninist Komsomol.

p It should be noted that even in the absolutely clear question of the revolutionary Bolshevik character of the young workers’ unions in Moscow we come across attempts by bourgeois ideologists to falsify the facts.

p Just recall R. Fisher’s assertion to the effect that the "3rd International" union of the working-class youth in Zamoskvorechye District was set up spontaneously and that only in the summer of 1917 did the Bolsheviks begin to infiltrate the organisation.  [192•1  He adds that before the October Revolution the Moscow union of the working-class youth remained outside the sphere of Bolshevik influence.  [192•2  This he says about the youth organisation, every step in whose development, from the formation by the Zamoskvorechye Bolsheviks of a sponsoring group in April 1917 and the approval by the Moscow Party Committee of the Moscow Organising Committee for the convening of the town conference of the young workers’ union, was guided by Bolsheviks.

p The Party brought up and organised young workers amidst the revolutionary upsurge and growing proletarian struggle for the victory of the socialist revolution. Bolsheviks waged a resolute struggle against the bourgeoisie and conciliators who tried to deviate young workers from the revolutionary movement and to bring them under their own influence.

p The struggle for the working-class youth was a component of the Communist Party’s struggle for the masses, for the mobilisation of the political army of the socialist revolution.

p It was a struggle for the proletariat’s future, it was a struggle for the generation which was to build socialism and communism. Karl Marx wrote: "The more enlightened part of the working class fully understands that the future 193 of its class, and, therefore, of mankind, altogether depends upon the formation of the rising working generation.”  [193•1 

p In the spring of 1917, the conciliators, who were taking advantage of the political immaturity of juvenile workers, succeeded in taking over some youth organisations.

p The Trud i Svet (Labour and Light) organisation of conciliators, which was set up in Petrograd in May 1917, most vividly reflected the policy of the bourgeoisie and its henchmen (Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks) towards the working-class youth. The practical steps, the aims and programme goals of this organisation pursued but one end— that of detaching young workers from the proletarian revolutionary movement and putting them under the control of the bourgeoisie.

p In their struggle against the Trud i Svet, the Bolsheviks helped young people to learn in practice that the policy of the Communist Party was correct and that the conciliators were in essence counter-revolutionary. Having exposed the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks and isolated them from the young worker masses the Party crushed the attempts of the bourgeoisie and the conciliators to subjugate the proletarian youth movement and it abolished the Trud i Svet and similar conciliatory youth organisations.

p Of great importance for the promotion of the revolutionary youth movement were the historic decisions of the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP (Bolsheviks)—"On the Youth Leagues”. Proceeding from Lenin’s theses, the Congress determined the principal features and nature of youth organisations and indicated that it was vitally important for youth organisations to be led by Bolsheviks. The resolution stressed that in the period "when the struggle of the working class enters the phase of the direct struggle for socialism, the Congress views assistance in setting up class socialist organisations of young workers as one of the most urgent tasks of the moment, and it puts Party organisations under the obligation of paying maximum attention to this work".  [193•2 

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p The decisions of the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP ( Bolsheviks) marked a new stage in the development of the proletarian youth movement which was characterised by the further growth of Party influence among the masses, the consolidation of Bolshevik leadership over the youth movement and the transformation of young worker organisations into mass revolutionary organisations.

p After the Sixth Party Congress, in autumn 1917, youth organisations in all major centres of the country held their conferences. They resulted in the formation of town unions of the working-class youth in Petrograd, Moscow, Kiev, Yekaterinburg and other towns. Revolutionary youth organisations appeared in Siberia (Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk), the Far East (Vladivostok) and Transcaucasia (Baku, Tiflis, etc.). In the same period the first unions of working youth were set up in villages. By October 1917 the revolutionary youth organisations in town and countryside led by the Bolsheviks numbered more than 30,000 people.

p Thus, on the eve of the Great October Socialist Revolution the Communist Party had already assumed undivided leadership of the young worker movement, completing thereby the task of recruiting the broad masses of proletarian youth to the side of the socialist revolution.

p Young workers prepared for the armed uprising together with the working class. In factories and plants of Moscow and Petrograd they joined the Red Guards and underwent military training. Some districts in Petrograd—Narvskaya Zastava, Vyborgskaya Storona and Vasiliyevsky Ostrov— organised Red Guard youth detachments. Similar detachments were organised in Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa, Rostov– onthe-Don and other towns.

p During the October armed uprising young workers fought heroically for the victory of socialist revolution. Juvenile workers from factories and plants, members of the first unions of young workers stormed the Winter Palace side by side with their grey-haired fellows, veterans of the revolutionary movement. The young proletarians of Moscow, Kiev, Odessa, Rostov-on-the-Don and other towns bravely 195 fought for Soviet power. Many of them gave their lives for the victory, among them Mitrofan Shlemin, Lusya Lisinova, Sergei Barbolin, Nikolai Zhebrunov—activists of the young workers’ union of Moscow; Alexei Zlatopolsky, a leader of young workers in Odessa; Nikolai Tomchak, the brilliant youth organiser in the Moskovskaya Zastava District of Petrograd. The participation of the broad masses of proletarian youth in the battles for socialist revolution was characterised by mass revolutionary heroism and courage, by unprecedented political activity and selfless support for the Bolsheviks.

p The Great October Socialist Revolution opened before young workers broad opportunities for fruitful and efficient work, harmonious education and active participation in the country’s political life. Soviet power did away with the exploitation of child and juvenile labour, prohibited child labour in enterprises and reduced the length of working day for juveniles, radically changed and improved labour conditions and apprenticeship of young people in factories and plants. In creating a single system of education the Communist Party and the Soviet government resolutely demolished the foundation of the old privileged school; they displayed exceptional care for the youth, afforded all children of working people an opportunity to study, and started the campaign against illiteracy.

p In this work the Party relied on the support of honest teachers, unions of young workers and revolutionary-minded students, whose best representatives joined proletarian youth organisations or Communist student unions. The organisations of Communist students played a positive role in carrying out the radical school reform; together with unions of young workers they helped the Party in its struggle to consolidate Soviet power. In April 1919 the All-Russia League of Communist Students decided to join the Komsomol.

p Addressing the All-Russia Congress of Communist Students on April 17, 1919, Lenin said: "The important thing is that the youth, the communist youth, are organising. The important thing is that the youth are gathering together to learn to build the new type of school.”  [195•1 

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p Lenin pointed out to the delegates that it was precisely the youth that would have to build the new society. "At present,” he said, "we are only laying the foundations of this future society, but you will have to build it when you grow up. At present, work as your strength permits; do not undertake tasks that are too much for you; be guided by your seniors.”  [196•1 

p These wonderful words formulate the programme of school communist organisations—participation in the building of the new, Soviet school and preparation of the younger generation for fruitful work, the building of socialism and communism. Once again Lenin repeated that Party leadership was the most important prerequisite for the success of Communist youth organisations.

p In its gigantic work of consolidating Soviet power and developing the socialist revolution, the Communist Party was guided by Lenin’s brilliant plan for laying the foundations of the socialist economy. The historic task of building the socialist economy and socialist statehood required further enhancement of the leading role of the Communist Party within the dictatorship of the proletariat and the consolidation of the Party’s ties with the mass organisations it guided—the Soviets, trade unions, youth organisations, etc. The Party paid particular attention to its leadership of the working-class and peasant youth unions, as well as of revolutionary student unions; it regarded all these organisations as assistants in the communist education of the younger working-class and peasant generation and in recruiting them for the building of socialism and the consolidation of Soviet power.

p In 1918 the mass revolutionary youth movement was developing very quickly. In 1917 it involved mostly major industrial centres, but in 1918 youth organisations began to appear in nearly all gubernias of European Russia, the Ukraine, Transcaucasia, Siberia, the Far East and Central Asia, and not only in major industrial centres, but also in gubernia and uyezd townships (Kursk, Vladimir, Nizhny Novgorod, Rybinsk, Simbirsk, Smolensk, Tashkent, Tver).

p Supporting and encouraging the youth in its striving to 197 consolidate the ties between its separate unions, the Communist Party helped it to unite on a gubernia and region scale, strengthen the ideological unity of the revolutionary youth movement on the principles of Marxism-Leninism, and thereby introduced the necessary organisational and ideological prerequisites for the formation of the All– Russia Youth League. One of the important prerequisites for the formation of this league was the purge of Mensheviks, Social-Revolutionaries and Anarchists from youth organisations which was conducted under the Party’s guidance.

p Communists did their best to make Lenin’s theses on the aims and tasks of youth organisations known to all youth unions, and to prove how important the Party leadership was for their life and activity. A great role in the establishment of strong organisational ties, consolidation of the ideological unity of youth unions, and exchange of revolutionary experience was played by the Bolshevik unions of the working-class youth in Moscow and Petrograd and their press organs, the Internatsional Molodezhi and the Yuny Proletary magazines.

p The youth unions encompassed political, propaganda, cultural, educational, military, production and economic work. Prime accent was laid on political work which was designed to recruit youth for the active struggle against counterrevolution both at the front and in the rear.

p The direction and nature of the revolutionary youth organisations’ work in 1918 were clearly expressed in the basic provisions of the Rules adopted by the 3rd Congress of youth unions of Vladimir Gubernia. These were loyalty to Lenin’s principles of proletarian internationalism, allegiance to Soviet power, defence of the interests of working youth and its upbringing.

p During the Civil War priority concern was given to the military training of young workers and peasants.

p Thousands of them joined the courses for training commanders. On September 18, 1918, stressing the importance of such courses for training cadres both for the army and governmental work, Lenin, in his message of greeting to the school for commanders in Petrograd, said: "The success of the Russian and world socialist revolution depends on the 198 degree of energy the workers display in running the state and commanding the army of working and exploited people fighting to overthrow the rule of capital.”  [198•1 

p Committees of youth organisations helped in recruiting youth into the Red Army, and organised youth detachments and squads which were included as separate units in the Red Army.

p In 1918 youth organisations raised more than 50 detachments which fought on the battlefields of the Civil War.

p Of great importance for the consolidation of the alliance between the working class and the peasants were the Communist Party’s efforts to bring up village youth and create revolutionary youth organisations in the countryside.

p During the development of the socialist revolution in villages in 1918 which ensued from the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat and growing influence of the Communist Party, the mass movement of peasant youth gained momentum, and the Bolsheviks helped to set up revolutionary unions of young peasants. These unions, mostly incorporating poor and middle peasants, as well as farmhands, appeared in Central Russia, in the North-West, in the Baltic Sea area, in the Urals, the Ukraine, Transcaucasia and other parts of the country.

p The main and common tasks of youth organisations in town and countryside was the struggle for Soviet power.

p Local Party committees paid much attention to unions of peasants youth and helped them to strengthen their positions. The autumn of 1918 was marked by a further upsurge of the revolutionary youth movement. Working-class and peasant youth unions grew up and gained in strength. The time was ripe for the formation of the all-Russia organisation of working youth.

p In August 1918, the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) [RCP(B)] sponsored the formation of an organisational bureau for the convention of the 1st All-Russia Congress of Youth Unions. The bureau included members of the Moscow, Petrograd and Urals youth organisations. The organisational bureau appealed to all young people and called upon them to unify their ranks on 199 principles of internationalism; it indicated that the road to the Youth International lay through an All-Russia League.

p “Comrades,” the appeal said, "we call on you to step up your efforts; the All-Russia Congress must mark the beginning of organisational work on an all-Russia scale. Publicise the need for the congress, prepare for it!”

p The appeal was warmly approved by young people, who began to prepare for the congress.

p The gubernia and regional conferences of revolutionary youth organisations in summer and autumn completed the process of their unification. The conferences elected delegates to the 1st All-Russia Congress of Youth Unions. Youth organisations in Petrograd, Kiev, Odessa, the Spartacus youth union in Georgia, the Social-Democratic Union of Working Youth of Latvia and many others adopted the honorary name "Young Communist League" and instructed their delegates to propose at the Congress that this name be given to the future all-Russia youth union.

p The Party’s Central Committee rendered great assistance to the organisational bureau. The members of the bureau were recieved by Y. Sverdlov; they told him about their needs and asked for advice. On the instructions of the Central Committee, the bureau was directed in its work by N. Krupskaya.

p Local Party organisations also played an important role in preparing for the congress.

p On August 3, 1918, the Moscow Party Committee heard a report by a representative of the 3rd International youth union and adopted a resolution in which it recognised the union’s work as "useful in the sense of organising youth in plants and factories, as well as of feasible assistance to the work of the Communist Party”. With a view to further strengthening the ties with the union and improving its leadership, the Moscow Party Committee allowed the union to send its representatives with a deliberative vote to the Party’s town and district committees; it instructed the Party’s district committees to delegate its functionaries to the union’s district committees.

p On October 10, 1918, the Petrograd Committee of the RCP(B) adopted an exceptionally important decision on the 200 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1974/SYAS228/20071214/228.tx" youth union. The decision instructed "all Party members under 20 to join the youth union and take an active part in its work”.

p On September 29–30, 1918, the 2nd Tver Gubernia Conference of the RCP(B) discussed the report "On the Organisation of Youth Leagues" and adopted a resolution in which it outlined the work of Communists in rallying the working youth.

p The Conference instructed all Party organisations in towns, volosts and villages to set up sponsoring groups "for the organisation of Youth Leagues which should incorporate all Party members under 21”.

p These sponsoring groups of Communists, the resolution said, should rally young people and assume leadership "in the class education of youth”.

p The decisions taken by the Communists in Moscow, Petrograd, Tver and other urban centres were of great significance for the promotion of the youth movement in the country. Basing themselves on Lenin’s directions concerning the Party leadership of youth, they determined the required concrete organisational forms of such leadership at that time (Communist groups in the unions, sponsoring groups of Communists for the organisation of youth unions, representation of youth organisations in Party committees, etc.). The Communist Party scrupulously prepared for the 1st AllRussia Congress of the unions of young workers and peasants and the formation of the Communist Youth League.

p From the very first days of its existence the Party struggled for the revolutionary upbringing and organisation of working youth. The Komsomol’s theoretical foundation is based on works by Lenin, his directions concerning the essential principles in the work of youth unions under Party leadership, and the decisions of the 2nd and 6th Party congresses based on Lenin’s theses.

p The 1st All-Russia Congress of the unions of young workers and peasants opened on October 29, 1918. Delegates arrived from all parts of the country.

p The total of 22,100 union members were represented by 194 delegates whose composition was a vivid demonstration of the leading role played by the Bolshevik Party in the promotion of the revolutionary youth movement and of its 201 great authority amidst the masses of working youth. Of the delegates, 88 were members of the Communist Party, and 38 were Bolshevik sympathisers.

p The work of the Congress was directed by Communists.

p The motion to elect V. I. Lenin the honorary chairman of the Congress was approved with stormy applause. The congress passed a resolution to send a delegation to greet the leader of the Party and the Soviet state in person.

p The delegates listened with great attention to the report on the current situation delivered by Y. Yaroslavsky on the assignment of the Central Committee of the RCP(B). In the resolution on the report the delegates declared their readiness to defend the gains of the October Revolution with arms in hand: "The world counter-revolution, which is ripening in the South, will be rebuffed by us. We will dedicate all our revolutionary enthusiasm, all our youthful energy to fight it.”  [201•1 

p The delegates painted a vivid picture of the life and activities of youth unions in all parts of Russia under Party leadership. They participated in the work of Soviet state and public organisations, fought against counterrevolutionary sabotage and black-marketeers, took part in suppressing whiteguard revolts, worked heroically in production enterprises, spread political and cultural knowledge, attended military training courses and, finally, volunteered in their thousands for the Civil War fronts.

p The delegate from the Ukraine, occupied at that time by the German imperialists, told the Congress about the heroic struggle of the Ukrainian people against the foreign invaders, the courage and audacity of young partisans and members of the underground organisations who were fighting shoulder to shoulder with their fathers and brothers for freedom and socialism.

p The youth union of Latvia carried on work under the terroristic regime established by the German invaders and the national bourgeois counter-revolution. The young revolutionaries helped Communists to spread Bolshevik literature and carry on explanatory work among the people. 202 “Riga,” said the delegate from Latvia, "has at least 200 members (of the youth union) who are working illegally and doing much useful work jointly with the Party.”  [202•1 

p The reports which were made by the delegates were a kind of collective report by the first generation of the Komsomol about its glorious deeds at the front and in the rear.

p The Congress adopted the Rules of the Young Communist League of Russia (RYCL) based on Lenin’s principle of democratic centralism. The Rules ensured centralised leadership and greater cohesion of the organisations. Important in principle were the main theses of the RYCL Programme, adopted by the Congress, which proclaimed solidarity between the Komsomol and the Party. That meant consistent propaganda of Communist ideas and struggle for their implementation by recruiting the broad masses of youth for the building of the new society.

p Before the congress adjourned, Lenin received a delegation of youth. He dwelt at length on the tasks of the new Young Communist League.

p The 1st All-Russia Congress of the unions of young workers and peasants marked the end of a long period in the Party’s work and struggle for the establishment of an independent communist revolutionary socio-political youth organisation which would become its reserve force and assistant.

p The founding of the Komsomol was of great historic significance; it was a decisive turning-point in the history of the international youth movement. The Komsomol is a revolutionary youth organisation of a new type, led by the Communist Party and guided in its activities by the principles of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism. Party leadership of the Komsomol, its vigorous participation in the struggle for socialism and communism, unfailing concern for the ideological integrity of its ranks, class and Party positions in the solution of all problems, and, finally, the vast experience of the revolutionary youth movement in Russia—all go to make the Komsomol a leading force in the world communist youth movement.

p The history of the Komsomol shows that at all stages of 203 the evolution of the socialist society in the Soviet Union it played and continues to play an important role in social and political life, and in recruiting the broad masses of young people to practical participation in the building of communism.

p The nature of any public organisation depends, first and foremost, on its aims and tasks, and the interests of the class which it champions. The Komsomol is part of the general proletarian revolutionary movement; from its very inception it has taken up the positions of the working class, its activities are dedicated to the struggle for the ideas of communism, for the revolutionary transformation of society and the fulfilment of the Communist Party’s tasks. The Komsomol has no other aims than the aims of the Party, the aims of the revolution. The success of the Komsomol, its popularity and force, and its authority, are based on the fact that at all stages of the country’s development it has been the Communist Party’s reliable assistant in the solution of cardinal historical problems. More than 115 million people have received Communist training in the ranks of the Komsomol.

p The Komsomol has been developing as a class organisation, which is proletarian and revolutionary in nature, communist in its aims and the character of its activities, undivided and centralised in structure, independent in the principles and methods of its work.

p The delegates to the Plenary Meeting of the YCL Central Committee devoted to the 50th anniversary of the YCL declared: "The Soviet youth always sides with the Party of Communists, the Party of innovators and creators, the Party of the revolutionary cause.”  [203•1  It is precisely this loyalty to the cause of communism that won the YCL the love and respect of the Soviet people; it is for precisely that reason that the Komsomol has become a mass organisation which unites broad segments of the advanced Soviet youth.

p The YCL is a communist organisation in its aims and tasks, revolutionary in spirit. It is communist because the Komsomol helps the Party to bring up young men and 204 women in the spirit of communism, train harmoniously developed people, and attract young workers to the administration of public affairs. It is communist because the basic and essential task of the Komsomol is to implement the policy of the Communist Party, the ideas of communism, and involve young people in the practical creation of a new society. In adopting Lenin’s name, the Komsomol set as its task the implementation of Lenin’s behests and the triumphant embodiment of the cause of Lenin and the Party he founded.

p The YCL is a public and political organisation because it spreads its influence amongst broad segments of youth, because it makes a direct impact on young people outside the YCL, rallies them to the Party, and attracts them to public and political life. One of the Komsomol’s basic tasks is the propaganda of Marxism-Leninism and the policy of the Communist Party. The YCL has its own system of political education. M. I. Kalinin underlined that "the Komsomol is a political organisation which designs the political outlook of young people, directing it into a definite, Party channel and preparing future members of the Party”. The Rules of the YCL require that each of its members should "actively participate in the country’s political life”.

p YCL is an educational organisation because its basic task is to bring up young people the communist way. The Rules of the CPSU adopted by the Party’s 22nd Congress stress that "In their communist educational work among the youth, local Party bodies and primary Party organisations rely on the support of the YCL organisations, and uphold and promote their useful undertakings.”  [204•1 

p The educational work of the Komsomol organisations consists in bringing youth up the revolutionary, communist way, educating them according to the traditions of Communists and the older generations of the Soviet people, and forming a class outlook among young men and women. The Komsomol moulds active builders of the new society, and prepares reserves for all the other mass organisations of the proletariat in every field of management. The Komsomol has asserted itself in the society’s political organisations as 205 a school for bringing up youth according to lofty ideological and moral principles.

p The YCL is an independent organisation and has its own Rules and its own central and local leading organs which are elected by the YCLers. The Komsomol is a public organisation which is centralised from top to bottom with a single discipline, subordination of lower bodies to higher, and the minority to the majority. The implementation of these provisions makes the Komsomol a league of like-minded people, a militant and revolutionary youth organisation.

p The YCL is a mass organisation because it unites the broad masses of advanced Soviet youth. Today the Komsomol has a membership of over 29 million—more than half the young people in the Soviet Union. The mass character of the YCL does not contradict the requirement that only the advanced young men and women, active builders of the communist society should be admitted into its ranks.

p YCL is an international organisation because it unites young people of all nationalities and peoples in the USSR. The republican Komsomol organisations have become considerably stronger.

p YCL is the leader of the Young Pioneer Organisation because the Communist Party has entrusted it with the guidance of the Young Pioneer movement and with bringing up real Leninists who love their country. The Rules of the YCL read: "The Komsomol organisations are obliged to direct the routine work of Young Pioneer detachments and squads, assist them in making this work useful and interesting, educate them in the spirit of collectivism, and strive to make each pioneer an example in studies and discipline.” The All-Union Leninist Young Pioneer Organisation numbers more than 23 million Young Pioneers. It has more than 118,000 Young Pioneer squads.

p The YCL is the assistant and the reserve of the Communist Party because it is precisely to this honorary mission that the Komsomol has devoted all its practical activities from the very first days of its inception. The YCL demands from all of its members persistent and continual struggle for the implementation of the decisions of the Communist Party and the Soviet Government. On these grounds the Rules of the CPSU stipulate that the Komsomol organisations "must 206 be active levers in the implementation of Party directives in all spheres of communist construction, especially where there are no primary Party organisations"  [206•1 . In its functions as the reserve of the CPSU, the Komsomol brings up people loyal to the Party, and every YCLer considers it a great honour to become a member of the Communist Party. Of all the public organisations in the Soviet Union only the Komsomol has the right to recommend its members for membership in the CPSU. In the four years between the 15th and 16th congresses of the YCL 1,043,080 YCLers were admitted as candidate-members of the CPSU. As S. M. Kirov said figuratively, the Komsomol is to a certain extent " ‘a preparatory class’ for our Party”.

p YCL is a forging shop, the reserve from which the Party replenishes its own ranks as well as the ranks of public, economic and other organisations.

p The Komsomol is a school for youth; its work is based on strict unity, inter-relation between the study and propaganda of Marxist theory, and participation in revolutionary practical activities.

p Bringing up the younger generation the communist way occupies a leading place in the harmonious and multifarious activities of the Communist Party. In his speech at the Moscow Party Conference in 1968, Leonid Brezhnev said: "When we speak about the ideological work, we have in mind primarily the upbringing of our youth. In essence, it is the question of the future development of our society.”  [206•2  During the 50 years of the Soviet state the Party has designed and implemented a fundamentally new system of bringing up the younger generation, based on Marxist-Leninist teaching and the Party’s revolutionary traditions.

p The basic Marxist document on the communist upbringing of youth is Lenin’s speech on The Tasks of the Youth Leagues which he made at the 3rd Congress of the YCL. This speech is the Party’s most important theoretical and policy document. It gives a Marxist definition of the aims and tasks of the youth communist movement and states Lenin’s conception of the role and place of youth in the building of 207 the new society. Lenin believed that the Komsomol’s task and aim was to help the Party to build communism and to learn communism. He called upon the YCLers to learn communism and to join efforts with workers and peasants.

p Lenin set out the programme of Komsomol activities. In the course of building socialism and communism the Communist Party and the Komsomol enriched the theory and practice of communist education for the younger generation. Today, too, the tested and reliable compass of Lenin’s teaching is helping the Komsomol to take the correct road.

p The Komsomol’s tasks in educating young Communists stem from the political nature of the League’s activities. The Komsomol energetically mobilises youth for the nation-wide struggle to build communism, and carefully cultivates new, communist relations. The whole point of the Komsomol’s practical activities is to bring young people up in the spirit of communism and revolutionary traditions. Ideological work and practical participation in the building of the new society constitute an undivided whole in the Komsomol’s activities.

p From the very first years of Soviet power the Party assigned the Komsomol a task of paramount importance— bringing up youth the communist way; it was this assignment that determined the nature and the meaning of the League’s activity as a public organisation for the younger generation. Viewing the Komsomol as one of the main forces in the solution of this task, the Party is rendering the YCL constant support and assistance and making state and public organisations’ assistance available for the purpose of bringing up youth.

p If we were to look back on the history of the Komsomol we would see how it solved the problem of bringing youth up the communist way at different stages of its evolution, how it improved and developed its methods, and how the tasks faced by the Komsomol grew increasingly complicated. This is only a brief outline of its work in this connection.

p In the first years following its inauguration the Komsomol was energetically spreading the ideas of the October Revolution among young people, expounding the aims and tasks of the Soviet power and training young people to be staunch fighters for the new society. It rehabilitated the national economy, sponsored schools of factory 208 apprenticeship, and endeavoured to put an end to unemployment among young people and juveniles. In doing all this, the Komsomol was exploring new paths, testing new forms and methods, and moulding strong Komsomol characters. In the years of industrialisation and collectivisation the Party was busy performing new tasks and implementing Lenin’s plan for the socialist transformation of the economy. The Komsomol also faced new problems. It had to mobilise millions of young people for the purposes of creation of the national industry and setting up the first collective farms. Energy and will alone are insufficient to remodel the world. They had to be backed by sound knowledge, efficient technical training, conviction and profound conscience. So the YCLers enrolled in schools for worker and peasant youth, engineering courses, worker departments and higher educational establishments. The Komsomol began to conquer the peaks of science.

p New forms of educational work appeared in the late 1920s and the early 1930s. There were teams and squads fighting inertness, routine and bureaucracy; and organising campaigns for the promotion of culture and the new way of life, and many other useful undertakings.

p During the Great Patriotic War the Komsomol organisations reviewed their work with due regard for war-time requirements and their main goals became victory over fascism, education of young people in the spirit of patriotism, and cultivation in them of courage, heroism, and readiness, if need be, to sacrifice one’s life for the country. During these grim but heroic years the Komsomol’s ideological work was mainly concerned with upbringing young people in the spirit of patriotic feats and the military traditions of the struggle for the country’s honour and independence.

p In the post-war period the Komsomol mobilised youth for the development of the national economy, the virgin lands, the natural resourses in the East and North, and the conquest of the peaks of science and engineering.

p In its greetings to the 15th Congress of the YCL the Central Committee of the CPSU gave a profound exposition of the Komsomol’s tasks in bringing youth up the communist way. Communist education of youth means imbuing young men and women with a Marxist-Leninist outlook, 209 ideological conviction, Soviet patriotism, friendship and fraternal solidarity with the working people in all countries, and a conscientious attitude to work.  [209•1 

p The Komsomol is fulfilling these tasks. It is in the Komsomol that young people mature as citizens and acquire the habits required for administering the affairs of state and society.

p The Komsomol organisations are intensifying their ideological work among young people; their attention is being focussed on Marxist-Leninist education of YCLers, and they are extending and improving the political education system. The principle of differentiation in the education of different groups and categories of youth is spreading.

p The history of the Komsomol is proof of the way revolutionary traditions have been handed down. The Leninist Komsomol brings up young people according to the heroic traditions of revolutionary struggle, selfless labour, and the glorious traditions of the Soviet people and the Communist Party. At all stages of its evolution the Komsomol resolutely rebuffed all attempts at severing its close ties with the Party.

p The fight against "youth syndicalism”, "youth avantgardism”, petty-bourgeois traits in the youth movement, and Trotskyism is not just mere pages of history. It was part of a great struggle for the Party’s cause, for unity with the Party, and lor unity in the ranks of the Komsomol itself. This struggle shows that only under the Party’s leadership can the Komsomol achieve success in bringing up the rising generation the communist way.

p The young generation and the Komsomol have an inexhaustible source of knowledge and experience—the teaching, the work and the traditions of the Communist Party. Absorbing the experience of the preceding generations, the new generation coins new values and traditions.

p Being educated in the revolutionary, battle and labour traditions of the Party and the people does not mean simply an acquaintance with historical facts and events; it involves first and foremost the infusion of revolutionary and 210 communist ideals, and the Leninist principles and standards of social life.

p The communist education of youth is facilitated by the Leninist principles behind the Komsomol’s structure and work. The organisational principles of the YCL are wholly subordinated to this educational process. The main principle is democratic centralism which integrally combines centralism in the structure and work of the YCL, strict Komsomol discipline and broad intra-Komsomol democracy. Democratic centralism implies electivity of all leading organs, from top to bottom, regular reports by Komsomol organs to Komsomol organisations and higher organs, strict discipline, and strict observance by lower organs of decisions adopted by higher organs. These principles raise the responsibility of each YCL member for the work of the entire organisation, strengthen the Komsomol’s ties with the broad masses of youth, and enhance discipline among all YCLers. Democratism and centralism integrally combine and constantly interact in the internal life of the YCL.

p The democratic principles of the Komsomol’s organisational structure (primarily, the electivity of the leading bodies, their responsibility before the YCLers, replacement of members of the leading bodies, criticism and self– criticism) fully ensure collective leadership which is an essential prerequisite for the normal working of Komsomol organisations, correct training of functionaries, initiative and creative work. No local or central organisation takes decisions without the knowledge of its members. Every member of the YCL has the right to discuss freely and frankly all problems pertaining to the work of the Komsomol organisation or the YCL in general.

p The combination of centralism and democratism consolidates the ideological and organisational unity of the YCL, increases its militancy, strengthens the discipline of its members, ensures unity of action amongst YCLers and MarxistLeninist trends in the work of all Komsomol detachments. Democratic centralism implies an integral combination of creative initiative and independence, businesslike collective discussion on all problems of internal life with voluntary discipline and the subordination of the will of individual members to that of the collective.

211

p The Komsomol has always been concerned with the development of the democratic principles of work, purging all elements of bureaucracy and red-tape. As the Komsomol gained in strength, it extended the rights of primary and local organisations, promoted the role of elective bodies and enhanced the social principles in the work of YCL committees. In 1971 there were more than 2,600 committees of large primary Komsomol organisations which enjoyed the rights of district committees in granting YCL membership, registering YCLers and bringing action against offenders.

p Independent activity and initiative as well as activities on the part of non-staff functionaries are promoted by standing and temporary commissions, councils and headquarters dealing with the various aspects of Komsomol work (economy, advanced methods in industry and agriculture, aesthetic education, culture, sports, etc.). The Central Committee of the YCL also has standing commissions. They are composed of members and alternate members of the YCL Central Committee.

p These and other measures for the development of the democratic principles in the work of the YCL have been dictated by life; they reflect the objective processes going on in the Komsomol and its growing role in building communism.

p The structure of the YCL follows the territorial and occupational principle. The primary organisations are set up where YCLers work or study and territorially they are amalgamated into district, town, regional, territorial or republican organisations. The Komsomol organisation is considered superior to all its component-organisations.

p In the beginning of 1971 the Komsomol numbered 399,825 primary; 823,000 shop, team, department, school and similar organisations; 649,000 Komsomol groups; 2,811 rural district, 760 town, 10 areal, 142 regional, 6 territorial and 15 republican Komsomol organisations.

p The basic structural unit in the Komsomol is the primary Komsomol organisation. They are set up in factories or plants, state farms and other enterprises, collective farms, army units, institutions, educational establishments and in all other economic, cultural and educational organisations. The primary organisations accept new members, organise the YCLers and direct their activities. It is precisely in the 212 primary organisations that the YCLers pass through the school of communist education; it is there that they become ideologically steeled, and it is there that they choose their place in the nation-wide struggle for communism.

p The Komsomol takes steps to turn all its primary organisations into militant collectives capable of rallying young people to the Party and stimulating their creative activity in the struggle for the implementation of plans for building communism. In recent years the number of large primary Komsomol organisations has been considerably increased. In early 1958 there were 28,780 primary organisations of more than 100 YCLers each, and in 1971, there were 57,482 large primary Komsomol organisations.

p The authority and militancy of the Komsomol organisations depend on the degree of participation by each YCLer in its work. The primary organisations help the YCLers to work out and implement personal life plans, and to uncover their talents; they mobilise them for the realisation of the Party’s plans. The Resolution of the 16th Congress of the YCL says: "There is no higher honour for the YCLer than to be sent to the foreposts and responsible positions in the struggle for communism, to be the champion of everything new and progressive, to set the example for others by selflessness, ability to overcome difficulties and readiness to accomplish any assignment from the Party and the Government.” YCLers can attain the leading role in work and studies only if the primary organisations help each member of the YCL to determine and realise in practice a clear-cut programme of personal participation in the struggle for the fulfilment of national economic plans, scientific and technological progress and acquisition of profound and firm knowledge.

p One of the most important issues is membership in the YCL and its composition. In its capacity as a public and political organisation and the vanguard of youth, the Komsomol differs from all the other youth organisations by the nature of its membership. The YCL is a voluntary organisation; membership is extended to all young citizens of the Soviet Union who recognise its Rules, actively engage in building communism, abide by the decisions of the YCL and pay membership fees. Young people who join the 213 Komsomol must recognise the League’s political platform of being the Party’s assistant and reserve.

p The strength of the Komsomol lies in consciousness and vigour, in the readiness of each YCLer to accomplish any assignment from the Party and YCL. The members of the YCL are united by their community of ideological and political views, moral principles, and activity for the triumph of the ideals of communism. In accepting new members, the Komsomol assumes responsibility for their education and civic moulding; it opens up before them great opportunities for public activities.

p The Komsomol unites the best and most advanced young people in the country; it is the vanguard of Soviet youth. In its Resolution the 15th Congress of the YCL stressed: "The Congress draws the attention of the Komsomol organisations to the need to be more careful and exacting in granting membership in the YCL; such an approach is the logical consequence of the political character of our League as the vanguard of Soviet youth, the reserve and assistant of the CPSU.” The Komsomol is against any artificial or forced swelling of its ranks, but it is also against the idea of turning the League into a narrow organisation. It has always been a mass organisation which unites broad segments of youth. In attracting the masses of young people to public and political activities and practical participation in the building of communism, the Komsomol exercises its function as the Party’s assistant in the education of young men and women.

p The growth of the YCL membership is the result of the Komsomol’s rising authority among unaffiliated young people, expansion of its activities in bringing up the younger generation the communist way, and the improvement of the forms and methods of Komsomol work. In recent years the ranks of the Komsomol have considerably grown. In early 1959 there were 17,790,000 YCLers, in 1963, there were 20,032,000, in 1967—22,450,000, in 1970—25,552,000, in March 1972—29,000,000 young men and women were members of the YCL.

p The 16th Congress of the YCL set the important task of replenishing the ranks of the Komsomol by recruiting, in the first place, advanced young workers and peasants and by 214 increasing the number of YCLers among young workers in the leading branches of production. Today more than a half of the YCLers are engaged in the sphere of material production. By 1971 of the total membership 32.6 per cent were workers; 7.2 per cent, collective farmers; 14.3 per cent, office employees; 45.9 per cent, students of various categories.

p The 16th Congress made it plain that it is a law of Komsomol life to consolidate its ranks so that every YCLer will carry high the name of the Member of the Young Communist League. Strict observance of the League’s Rules is the duty of every Komsomol organisation, every YCLer.

p The Rules require that the YCLer should be an active fighter for the implementation of the majestic programme of building communism, an example in work and studies; that he should constantly raise his labour productivity, strictly observe labour and production discipline, and protect and augment socialist property. The member of the Young Communist League must persistently acquire knowledge and actively participate in the country’s political life; he must be a selfless patriot of his country; it is his duty to strengthen the friendship of the peoples of the USSR and the fraternal ties with the youth of the socialist countries and to oppose all manifestations of bourgeois ideology; he must be ready to defend his country; he must develop himself physically and go in for sport. The Rules require that all YCLers adhere to the moral principles set forth in the Programme of the CPSU.

p The YCL member must consolidate the ranks of the Komsomol, raise its militancy and discipline, encourage criticism and self-criticism, uncover shortcomings and eliminate them. The Rules say: "Komsomol discipline and irreproachable implementation of the decisions of Party and Komsomol organs is the primary duty of all members of the YCL, of all Komsomol organisations.”

p The Rules grant the YCLers broad rights in the work of their organisations. They can elect and be elected to Komsomol organs, freely discuss all questions of Komsomol work at meetings and in the press, table motions, express and defend their views to the point when the decision is finally adopted, criticise any YCLer or any Komsomol organ at 215 meetings, conferences, congresses and plenary meetings, personally participate in discussions of his own activities or behaviour, and apply with questions, statements or suggestions to any Komsomol committee, including the Central Committee of the YCL.

p The rights and duties of the members of the YCL pursue a common aim—to encourage the independent and collective activities of each YCLer, to make him a conscientious, disciplined and staunch fighter for the cause of the Communist Party, and to imbue each YCLer with a sense of being an equal member of the collective. The Komsomol organisation is responsible for its members before society and therefore its members are responsible before society for their collectives. The YCLer must realise that he represents his Komsomol organisation. That raises his responsibility before the League and lends the character of public activity to his personal work.

p The Komsomol has its own budget which is raised from membership fees and the profits accruing from Komsomol and Young Pioneer newspapers and magazines. The YCL is the country’s and the world’s biggest publisher of youth press. It has three publishing houses—the Molodaya Gvardia in Moscow, the Molod in the Ukraine and the Yesh Gvardia in Uzbekistan. In 1966–1970 the Molodaya Gvardia publishing house of the YCL Central Committee printed nearly 1,800 books in 169 million copies. The YCL publishes 132 Komsomol and 28 Young Pioneer newspapers, 26 youth magazines and 40 magazines for children and Young Pioneers. The periodicals come out in more than 63 million copies in 22 languages of the peoples of the USSR. Their popularity is growing. By way of example we can mention that after 1957 the daily circulation of youth newspapers increased from 5.3 to 14 million copies, and of magazines, from 1.9 to 11.5 million copies. In 1972 Komsomolskaya Pravda was circulated in nearly 5 million copies.

p In setting down the tasks of youth associations, Lenin drew attention to the following: "The Young Communist League must combine its education, learning and training with the labour of the workers and peasants, so as not to confine itself to schools or to reading communist books and pamphlets. Only by working side by side with the workers and 216 peasants can one become a genuine Communist.”  [216•1  This advice determined the general line of the Komsomol’s entire activity for many years to come.

p Only the integral and effective conjunction and combination of educational work with the practical participation in the creation of the material and technical base of communism can determine the nature of the entire activity of the Young Communist League. The most correct and the most effective way of cultivating communist qualities is by concrete participation in the development of the country’s productive forces and remodelling its economy on the basis of the latest scientific and engineering achievements.

p In the Komsomol the moral education and education lor work comprise an integral whole. The Komsomol trains fighters who fully understand the complexity of their tasks and the personal responsibility for the common cause. This can be done only by mobilising them for practical activities.

p In looking back on the history of the Komsomol and in studying the biographies of the people it raised, we inevitably come to the conclusion that at all stages of the country’s development the YCLers always joined hands with workers and peasants, implemented Lenin’s ideas, and rallied the youth to implement the general programme for building socialism and communism.

p Analysis of the economic activities of the Komsomol reveals typical and specific peculiarities: in the first place, the selection, with the Party’s approval, of strategic sectors of socialist economy requiring the mighty energy, selflessness and enthusiasm of the young; secondly, the selection of the remotest and most difficult districts in the country where work had to be started from scratch, from the first tent and the first peg; thirdly, the courage of the pioneers, shock work and heroism; and fourthly, a craving for everything new and progressive, the elimination of outdated concepts and habits.

p It was the Komsomol that initiated socialist competition, stimulated shock work, displayed instances of bold initiative and heroism. This is one of the most typical aspects of the Komsomol’s participation in economic development. In planning its activities, the Komsomol has always been guided by 217 the country’s needs, the Party’s assignments and the young people’s interests.

p The Komsomol boldly tackled the most difficult tasks of building socialism, which required energy and enthusiasm. This approach was in the spirit of the YCLers who yearned for daring feats. It is probably hard to find a more striking example than that of the shock projects.

p Since 1929, when young people were first mobilised for such projects, the Komsomol has always been to the fore in building work. During the first five-year plan some 350,000 YCLers were engaged in building key projects, of which number 200,000 were directed there by the Komsomol organisations. The figure, though impressive, does not give a full picture of the scale of this movement. The movement under the slogan "Komsomol to the Key Projects!" assumed a mass scale from the very outset. The metro in Moscow, the Kharkov and Stalingrad tractor plants, the Moscow and Gorky automobile plants, the Rostov farm machinery plant, the Dnieper Hydroelectric Power Station, the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Complex and the town of Komsomolsk-on-Amur are all monuments to the labour feats of young people.

p The Komsomol’s part in implementing the Party’s agricultural policy affords examples of its fight for the new way of life and against stale concepts, norms and habits.

p Komsomol organisations helped to introduce principles of collective work in the countryside, to set up collective farms and organise the accounting in such farms. They were champions of everything new that was generated by the socialist system.

p Acting as the Party’s assistant in transforming agriculture on socialist lines, the Komsomol mobilised young people to work in sectors where socialism was laying the foundation of new economic relations. Villages began to get new and powerful machines which had to be mastered. According to some estimates, about 80 per cent of the 2.5 million machine operators trained in 1931–1934 were young people. In the spring of 1929 some 13,000 YCLers were sent to machineand-tractor stations, and thousands more to their political departments.

p In spite of the difficulties, the revolutionary transformation of agriculture inspired young people and filled them 218 with enthusiasm. In 1928 only 36,500 collective farmers were members of the YCL—4.8 per cent of the total number of YCLers in the countryside; by April 1, 1930, this figure had increased to 553,000 or 50 per cent of all YCLers in the countryside.

p The YCLers have always actively participated in building communism at all stages of the country’s development. Today the Komsomol directs its efforts towards the training of highly educated specialists for the national economy, encourages young people to study, helps workers, collective farmers and specialists to raise their professional skill, and mobilises them for the introduction of new machines and scientific methods of labour organisation. In this work the Komsomol makes use of the experience accumulated in the 1920s-1930s, with due regard for the modern achievements of science and engineering and the high educational level of young people.

p The shock Komsomol projects and live-stock farms, competitions, campaigns for higher standards of knowledge, student building detachments, school apprentice teams, and the movement of young innovators are among the countless forms and methods of Komsomol work based on past experience. These are today’s high schools for workers where millions of young people learn the communist way of life and joint work with workers and farmers.

p At the Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee of the YCL on October 25, 1968, Y. Tyazhelnikov, the First Secretary of the Central Committee, said: "By their way of life, by their convictions and deeds our young contemporaries are upholding the great traditions which one generation inherits from another and their inviolable unity in the struggle for the communist society.”  [218•1 

p Today the Komsomol employs various effective means of encouraging young people to raise labour productivity and take part in the drive for technological progress. The YCLers do research work, introduce scientific methods of labour organisation and set up public designing bureaus, councils of innovators, research institutes and scientific and engineering 219 associations. The movement for initiative and efficiency, started by young workers of Moscow and Leningrad, has developed into the all-Union competition of creative engineering work among youth. Young people made millions of efficiency proposals during the competition. Socialist competition before and after the war showed that young people prefer such forms of competition where the results can be openly compared and where the goals are definitely marked. This is why competitions between young drivers, turners, milling-machine operators, ploughmen, lamb-shearers and cooks are just as widespread as in the 1930s.

p Industrial and agricultural projects, the development of the unpopulated but rich regions in the East and the North are among the Komsomol’s most important tasks. Usually the Komsomol assumes responsibility over inaccessible projects in the unpopulated regions of Siberia, the North and the Far East. Soviet young people readily answer the appeals to volunteer for new projects. In the past 15 years some 1,700,000 young men and women have gone on Komsomol assignments to new projects. According to the sociological research laboratory of the Leningrad University, one out of every five young people in Leningrad wants to work at a new project.

p The progress of science and engineering naturally requires corresponding changes in the League’s work, to enable it to encourage young people to master the modern economic and engineering knowledge and acquire greater skill. Komsomol organisations are paying more attention to technical education and to stimulating scientific and engineering work among young people.

p This is done with due regard for the League’s specific nature and the interests of youth. In taking part in society’s affairs, young people form their views and convictions, mould their characters, acquire habits of practical, revolutionary and organisational work, and find their place in the nation-wide struggle for communism.

p The Party congresses and the Central Committee of the CPSU stress the need to expand the participation of the Komsomol in the country’s political, economic and cultural life. That means that all problems bearing on youth, its upbringing, education, professional training, work and 220 recreation should be solved with the active participation of Komsomol organisations and with due regard for their suggestions and initiative. In this way the Party further enhances the role and significance of the Komsomol.

p The socialist revolution has elevated the role of youth in all spheres of public, economic, cultural and political life. At the same time it has placed on the younger generation great responsibility for their country.

p Soviet young people occupy a high place in society, one that befits them; they represent an active, creative force. However, this does not signify that youth plays an “ avantgardist” role in society or that its interests are detached from those of society. The satisfaction of the younger generation’s cherished dreams depends wholly on the fulfilment of the nation-wide tasks in building communism. The inviolable unity of the revolutionary generations lies in that they have common basic class interests. This is why the attempts of bourgeois historians to counterpose young revolutionaries to old ones, and the youth movement to the general proletarian movement are altogether unfounded and unscientific.

p The recognition of the Komsomol as the Party’s assistant was an objective factor in determining its role in society and in the socialist transformations. The Rules of the CPSU give the Komsomol broad initiative in discussing and posing, before the Party organisations, questions related to the work of enterprises, collective farms and institutions. The YCLers are the Party’s assistants in the implementation of its policy and, therefore, it is quite natural that they should be concerned with all aspects of life in the collectives where they work or study. Consequently, when somebody says that the Komsomol organisation is "concerned with only this and this, and nothing more”, it means that he does not realise the role of the Komsomol as the Party’s assistant, that he is imposing an arbitrary restriction on youth’s participation in the affairs of society and, in essence, does not adhere to the Rules of the CPSU.

p Broad discussion of questions of public life by the Komsomol organisations, development of intra-Komsomol democracy and active participation in the life of the Komsomol—these constitute the prime school in which the young 221 people learn to manage the affairs of society and prepare for communist self-government.

p Under the Party’s leadership, young people actively participate in the multifarious and extensive work of the organs of state power. A considerable number of young men and women are involved in the work of the country’s legislative bodies.

p On the initiative of Komsomol committees or with their active participation, the government drafts its decisions on questions related to youth’s work, recreation and education. The Central Committee of the YCL in co-operation with ministries and departments adopts dozens of decisions on diverse questions of youth activities.

p In industrial enterprises, construction sites, collective farms, state farms and institutions the Komsomol is active in helping to organise socialist emulation among youth, sum up the results of emulation among the working people, prepare collective agreements and check their implementation, settle questions of the promotion of young workers, collective farmers, office employees and specialists, and encourage advanced young workers. Representatives of the Komsomol make suggestions when accommodation passes to sanatoria and holiday hotels are granted or when funds for housing and cultural purposes are distributed; they also take part in the public control of communal services. Komsomol and youth meetings discuss concrete measures for improving the work of enterprises or shops. All these represent active forms of young people’s participation in the management of enterprises, districts and the country.

p The Komsomol is directly concerned with exercising and defending the rights of young people as a whole. In this noble work the Komsomol acts as the Party’s assistant, and enjoys the Party’s trust and support. This is the great feature which distinguishes our League from the youth organisations of the ruling parties in the capitalist countries. It is one thing to talk profusely about the rights of youth, and quite another, to have a direct assignment from the Party, to possess the right of legislative initiative, and to take part in the drafting of laws, instructions and decisions concerning youth.

p Soviet power and the Communist Party have extended to young people all the rights that are necessary for creative 222 work, studies and recreation. The socialist society really is a society of broad opportunities. Therefore the whole question consists in expediently and purposefully utilising these opportunities, and protecting the rights of young people from the encroachments of negligent executives who fail to comply with the laws proclaimed by Soviet power.

p The Komsomol helps young people to exercise their right to work, insists on strict observance of labour legislation and labour protection, and takes part in creating the conditions necessary for raising professional skill, mastering the latest achievements of science and engineering, and introducing advanced methods of production. Along with the administration and the public, the Komsomol takes part in the management of production.

p The Komsomol helps young people and juveniles to exercise their right to education; along with public educational agencies and the administrations of enterprises, it contributes towards fully implementing the law on universal education; it has a vote in the enrolment of young people into special secondary or higher schools and in the assignment of jobs to graduates.

p The Komsomol helps young people to exercise their right to rest and health protection; it insists on the planned building of child and juvenile health centres, hiking and Young Pioneer camps, clubs and stadiums; it stimulates amateur circles and sport. The Komsomol brings up young people in the spirit of socialist morality; on assignment from the Party, it brings up children and Young Pioneers.

p Thus, one of the most important tasks of the Komsomol is to help the young man to realise his life plans to the full and make the best of the rights which the Soviet state has accorded to the younger generation, to fulfill all his duties before society and to observe the laws which express the will of the Soviet people.

p The growing role of the YCL in the country’s life is a natural process which is governed by very important objective factors in the development of the socialist society.

p The League’s role in the implementation of the Communist Party’s economic policy and the solution of the economic problems of the Ninth Five-Year Plan is growing. The Central Committee of the YCL has announced that the Komsomol is 223 assuming responsibility over key projects. Soviet youth will contribute to the development of the oil and gas, chemical, ferrous and non-ferrous industries, machine-building, transport, leading branches of the manufacturing industry, and power engineering. Young people will take part in building factories, plants, atomic power stations, mines, canals, water reservoirs, irrigation systems and scientific centres.

p The Central Committee of the YCL announced the enrolment of youth for shock Komsomol projects, each of which is to become a school for civic maturity and a model of organisation and efficiency of production. Young people are also encouraged to go in for live-stock breeding.

p The Directives of the 24th Congress of the CPSU say: "The Leninist Komsomol and the entire Soviet youth must make an important contribution to fulfilling the Ninth FiveYear Plan. The working class, the collective-farm peasantry, and the Soviet intelligentsia are getting ever more cultured and technically educated personnel, capable of successfully coping with the highly intricate tasks arising in conditions of the contemporary scientific and technological revolution. The broadest field for the application of enthusiasm, energy and knowledge is opened before the young people who always strive for the new, and they must be in the front ranks in the effort to create new, improved technology, persistently introduce it in all sectors of the national economy and raise the productivity and efficiency of labour, introduce in every-day life new, genuinely communist social relations and the lofty principles of communist morality.”  [223•1 

p The YCL also acts as the Party’s assistant in the execution of important tasks in the social and political development of Soviet society. These tasks include levelling out the standards of living among the working class, the collective-farm peasantry and the intelligentsia, and gradually eliminating the substantial differences between town and country and between mental and physical labour.

p Analysing and summing up the work of the YCL are very important for the practical business of bringing up youth in the communist spirit. Scientific study of Komsomol history gives the gist of Party and Komsomol achievements in 224 edueating youth and helps to use the time-tested Komsomol experience in ideological and organisational work.

p Elaboration of problems of contemporary Komsomol work is inseparably linked with the scientific analysis and comprehension of the Komsomol’s historical experience, which make it possible to indicate the basic trends of the communist youth movement, its tendencies and prospects of development. The only true policy is to improve the methods and forms of work on the basis of practical requirements with due regard for what has been accepted and what has been discarded.

p Lenin said that "we cannot learn to solve our problems by new methods today if yesterday’s experience has not opened our eyes to the incorrectness of the old methods".  [224•1 

p The need to link actual Komsomol work with science and scientific methods of bringing up young people is a hundredfold greater now than ever before.

p It is 55 years since the Young Communist League was inaugurated. During that time great changes have occurred in the life of the people, the Communist Party and the Komsomol.

p The League never slackened in its forward march, nor did it ever pause at any stage of its development; it advanced together with the Communist Party and the people, reflecting all the changes and successes which occurred in the country, and enduring all its hardships. The nature of its work has been enriched, the scale of this work has been enlarged and its role in the creation of the new society promoted. So the changes which have taken place in the work of the Komsomol are a logical outcome and an objective process resulting from socialist development.

p In the 1920s the League organised young people to go with pick and spade to repair factories and plants which, in terms of engineering equipment, were dozens of years behind the advanced enterprises of Europe; today the Komsomol is training the young reinforcements of the working class, reinforcements which will have modern machines, intricate technological processes and electronic computers at their command. In the 1920s the task was to eliminate illiteracy, to teach the YCLers to read and write, whereas today the 225 questions are those of universal secondary education and full utilisation of opportunities for the harmonious development of the individual. The scale of Komsomol work has been expanded. Local Komsomol organisations function in all plants and factories, collective and state farms, research institutes and organisations, in all production and educational establishments. The number of big organisations capable of assisting Party organisations and economic bodies is growing. The CPSU entrusts the Komsomol with the solution of big and important tasks of national importance.

p The new great tasks faced by the Komsomol cannot be solved without scientific analysis of past practice and scrupulous study of the problems in hand. A sound knowledge of the history of the Komsomol is absolutely necessary for a profound scientific comprehension of today’s work and a more accurate forecast of the future. The great Russian critic Vissarion Belinsky said: "We ask and interrogate the past so that it will explain the present and give hints on the future.”

p The years that have passed since the foundation of the YCL furnish sufficient material for a deep and all-round analysis of the experience accumulated. This experience shows that the youth movement can develop only as part of the general revolutionary movement, and the Komsomol, as the reserve and assistant of the Marxist Party, that the Komsomol can fully execute its tasks and achieve its aims only under socialism which opens up wonderful prospects before young people, affords them all opportunities for the application of their energy, knowledge and talents, develops the wonderful features and qualities of the citizen of the new society, and solves all the political, social and economic problems of youth. This experience shows that the Komsomol is successful in bringing up youth and building communism, and that it enjoys authority among young people and the people in general because from the very first days of its inception it fought for communism, spread the ideas of communism among the broad masses of youth, mobilised the younger generation for socialist work, and implemented Lenin’s behests. The leader of the proletarian revolution said that the Youth League should work under the Party 226 leadership and that it must adhere "to the general directives of the Communist Party if it really wants to be communist".  [226•1 

p The selfless work of many generations of YCLers, the work which is illumined by the rays of Lenin’s ideas, shows the Komsomol’s fathomless loyalty to the Communist Party, the country and the cause of communism.

p Bourgeois scientists are also very interested in the history of the YCL. This is not a cursory interest. Falsification of the history of the YCL is a component of their anti– communist struggle. Their aim is to falsify and belittle the role of the Communist Party and its leadership of the youth movement, to distort the essence of the Komsomol’s work and thus to raise barriers to the development of the international communist youth movement. They are trying to prove that the Komsomol enjoys no independence, that it resorts to compulsory mobilisation to difficult construction sites, stifles the initiative and interests of young people and that, therefore, it cannot be regarded as an example to be followed or studied. Many scientists in the West, including Ralph Fisher, Harald Ingensand, Richard Cornell, Leonard Schapiro, Jean Mrabini, and Patrice Gelard, have devoted their works to the “study” of the Komsomol. The best known of these works is Fisher’s Pattern for Soviet Youth.  [226•2  In the Mass Organisations in the Soviet Union. Trade Unions and the Komsomol,  [226•3  P. Gélard attempts an analysis of the Komsomol. But as soon as he arrives at his conclusions, the vulnerability of his positions become self-evident.

p The Western authors of works on the Komsomol frequently quote our newspapers, magazines and other Soviet sources. They do so for the sake of “objectiveness” and “cogency”. This sometimes misleads people who are unacquainted with the Soviet way of life and unaware of the fact that this “objectiveness” and “cogency” are taken out of context and distorted, and that the way they select their material is nothing but ideological subversion. Their method places emphasis on topical satires, critical articles, complaints 227 and satirical drawings. Then the materials are commented upon and presented to the public as the "deepest reflection" of the "most typical" reality, as a “genuine” portrait of Soviet youth.

p The bourgeois “experts” on the problems of the communist youth movement are trying to distract their readers from the basic problems of capitalism and to force on them their own conception of the social problems and the contradictions between the older and the younger generations.

p They place emphasis on the distinctions between the Communist Party and the Young Communist League, the age differences between Communists and YCLers and the changes in the ranks of contemporary youth. On these grounds they cast doubts on the possibility of a community of class interests between all generations of Communists. In the historical books about the Komsomol, which have come out in many Western countries, there is a clear tendency to oppose the Komsomol to youth, and the Komsomol youth to the Party.

p Soviet youth is proud that it can learn and build communism. The Komsomol has always regarded Party leadership as the source of its might.

p There are great and majestic prospects before Soviet youth and the Leninist Komsomol.

p The 24th Congress of the CPSU highly appraised the role of the Leninist Komsomol in the country’s public and political life: "It would be hard to name a sector of economic and cultural development where the energy, creative initiative and ardour of Komsomol members have not been displayed. Organisation of Komsomol shock building projects, team contests of skill by young workers, students’ building detachments, youth production brigades and summer work and recreation camps are the concrete and vital tasks being accomplished by the Komsomol, which is the leader of Soviet young people.”  [227•1 

The Congress devoted much of its work to youth problems. This is another vivid indication of the Communist Party’s concern for the rising generation of builders of communism. The Central Committee’s Report to the Congress, the speeches by the delegates and the resolutions dealt with the urgent 228 problems of Komsomol activities, and communist rearing of youth, its education, labour and recreation. This was another weighty contribution to the theory of the youth movement. The materials of the 24th Congress of the CPSU constitute the ideological and theoretical foundation for the practical work of the YCL and of all state and public organisations concerned with bringing up the younger generation.