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p The Bolshevik Party faced new difficult tasks after the Soviet people had defeated the interventionists and whiteguards, and the work of restoring the economy began.

p Workers and peasants were worn out by the war, hunger and devastation; the disastrous effects of the seven years of war could be overcome if all the people made a supreme effort. The Bolshevik Party pinned high hopes on the young people and the Russian Young Communist League. However, the new situation called for the elaboration of new forms and methods of work. During the Civil War everything was plain and straightforward: one knew who the enemy was and how to fight him. Now the times were just as difficult, but they no longer had the romantic aura of war. It was now necessary to show young people the new tasks facing them: to convince them that the fate of the revolution depended on economic achievements and their ability to gain knowledge and professional skills to defeat the bourgeoisie economically.

p This was the situation when the RYCL held its third congress in Moscow from October 2 to 10, 1920. The main items on its agenda were the discussion and adoption of the RYCL’s Programme and Rules. These items did not give rise to any basic divergences of opinion. Reports were made on the Soviet Republic’s position at home and abroad, and on the Young Communist International and the young workers’ political education.

Lenin made a brilliant policy speech at the congress. The delegates, most of whom had just returned from fighting in the Civil War, were full of militant fervour and thought that the leader of the

Lenin on the presidium of the First Congress of the Communist International in the Kremlin. 1919 Lenin at a session of one of the commissions of the Second Congress of the Communist International in the Kremlin. 1920 161 workers’ party would call on them to fight the bourgeoisie. However what he said was something quite unexpected. He told them to study, work and take part in the restoration of the economy and cultural development. At first they regarded these tasks as being too prosaic and commonplace. But Lenin’s speech outlining the Young Communist League’s programme of activities during the construction of the communist society made a great impression on them.

p In his speech Lenin pointed out that the elder generation had fulfilled the first part of the work by destroying the old, bourgeois society, and that now the young people had to erect the noble edifice of communism on the cleared ground. But before communism could be built, one had to know what it was. Communist teaching is based on a profound understanding of the laws of social development. This means that one has to acquire the sum total of human knowledge to understand modern thought. Therefore, to build a communist society, the young people must study first and foremost.

p What and how to study was the burning question of the day. Lenin said that the old methods of education were unacceptable. However this did not mean that they should be totally rejected. They did have something of value, namely, the ability to convey a certain amount of knowledge, and this had to be used. If communist teaching was to become the young people’s world outlook, it had to be based on the analysis ot concrete facts. But this was not enough. Communism could not be taught by books alone. Young people must put their knowledge to practical use. The young people’s education must be based on both theory and practice, and on the use of knowledge 162 gained in school as a guide to action and as a means of practical participation in socialist construction. Lenin wrote: “The Young Communist League will justify its name as the League of the young communist generation only when every step in its teaching, training and education is linked up with participation in the common struggle of all working people against the exploiters."  [162•1  By this it would immediately achieve two aims: socialism would be built more rapidly, and at the same time the young would be moulded into people with a communist world outlook and morality, the people who would live under communism. Lenin stressed that there was no other way. There would never be any other human material except that remaining from the capitalist system. These people would themselves change as they transformed their country.

p Lenin said that it was extremely important for every young man and woman to realise that by joining the Young Communist League they were taking on the task of helping the Communist Party to build communism. The young people must not shy away from work. They must always be in the forefront of everything new.

p Lenin’s speech at the Third Congress of the Russian Young Communist League provided the young people with their programme of action. As in the Civil War, the Young Communist League was the Party’s loyal helpmate during these hard years for the Soviet Republic. It took on the most difficult tasks, suffering hardship with the rest of the people and passed the most challenging tests with flying colours. Among other things, the RYCL members helped to eliminate illiteracy and 163 organise amateur cultural activities, stock up fuel supplies and prevent pilfering; they also helped the hungry and worked in the countryside.

p In a report on the Young Communist International, Lazar Shatskin analysed the development of the international youth organisation in the year following the Berlin Congress.

p The Russian Young Communist League had carried out an enormous amount of work to improve relations between the young communist leagues and the Communist parties and overcome youth syndicalism, then very widespread among youth organisations in the West.

p Concluding his report, Lazar Shatskin said: “If we want our organisation to retain its influence on the international youth movement, we must always bear in mind that all the West European organisations are looking to our league for an example; if we want to remain the international youth organisation’s main pivot, to be a strong force not only numerically, but also influentially, we must have, above all, theoretical clarity, purity of principles, internal solidarity and internal discipline in our own ranks."  [163•1 

p The Bolshevik Party blazed a trail for the people to socialism. Each time the building of socialism entered a new phase and new tasks and difficulties cropped up, the Party found new forms and methods of drawing the working masses into socialist construction.

p The Young Communist League brought the Party into contact with the young workers and peasants. The Party naturally always gave prominence to matters concerning the guidance of youth organisations.

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p In its circular letter of July 1920, the CC RCP(B) said that Party organisations’ guidance of the RYCL committees “must concern the main lines of work, the main content of agitation and propaganda, and must eliminate the main shortcomings, thus giving free reign to the initiative of the rising generation of Communists".  [164•1 

p Concerned about the training of the RYCL organisations’ leaders, the CC RCP(B) emphasised the need to set up sections in all Party schools for carrying on work among the young people and to attract young people into these schools through the RYCL organisations; it also recognised the RYCL provincial committees’ right to retain for their work not more than 25 per cent of those who had completed an educational course. “ Helping the league,” said the circular, “ultimately means helping the entire Party.”

p The Bolshevik Party saw to it that RYCL members took a correct stand and did not divorce the organisation from the broad sections of the young working people or drive a wedge between the RYCL organisations and the Bolshevik Party organisations.

p However the possibility of such mistakes could not be precluded because it was extremely difficult to carry on work in a multi-structural economy. The prevalence of petty-bourgeois elements in the country threatened the RYCL with falling into petty-bourgeois anarchy. In their efforts to protect organisations from this danger, RYCL members occasionally went to the opposite extreme by divorcing themselves from the broad mass of the young working people.

p In mid-1919 RYCL members in several 165 organisations began to form a narrow circle and set up various obstacles to prevent new members from joining the league. As a result, these organisations lost touch completely with the young people and ceased to influence them. The CC RYCL sent letters to all organisations, saying that the RYCL was a mass organisation and, as such, must be open to the workers and semi-proletarians of the town and countryside.

p To prevent the league from being overrun with petty-bourgeois elements, the local organisations could stipulate conditions for the admission of students, Soviet office workers and other intellectuals into the league, for instance, that they should obtain recommendations from members of the RCP(B) and RYCL, do work among the young people for a definite length of time before entry into the league, and so on.

p In 1919 and 1920 several responsible RYCL workers, including Vladimir Dunayevsky, tried to impose an erroneous viewpoint on the league concerning its nature, tasks and relations with the Party and the working class. Maintaining that the league could never be a mass organisation, they proposed to set up along with the Russian Young Communist League, whose function was to unite the young Communists and to carry out political work among the young people, such mass youth organisations as the Young Workers’ Councils and sections under the trade unions for defending the young working people’s economic rights.

p Vladimir Dynayevsky expressed his views on the forms of the young workers’ mass association in the Yuny Kommunist (Young Communist) magazine, an organ of the CC RYCL, and also at a meeting of the Moscow Council of Trade 166 Unions. Basically this was an attempt to set the young workers against the proletariat, and the youth organisations against the Bolshevik Party. Instead of setting the working class against the bourgeois class, he set young workers against the adult workers, and thus distorted the very principle of the class struggle.

p Most RYCL members, however, did not support this expression of “youth syndicalism”. Lazar Shatskin, a member of the Central Committee, set forth the CCRYCL’s viewpoint in an article for the Yuny Kommunist, saying that since it was the workers and not the bourgeoisie who held the reins of power in Soviet Russia, the young workers carried out their economic tasks in conjunction with the state. Young people could be successfully drawn into socialist construction only if the Young Communist League used all forms of work—political, cultural, educational and economic. There would be a dispersion of forces if these forms were split up according to various organisations.

p This question was so pressing and so difficult that it was the subject of a special discussion at the CC RYCL’s enlarged meetings with local organisations from April 26 to 28, and July 15 to 17, 1919, and later at the Second Congress of the RYCL.

p Vladimir Dunayevsky’s views were rejected. An absolute majority of league members opposed the establishment of special mass youth organisations, which went to show that the line pursued by the Central Committee was correct.

p Emphasising the need to render the Russian Young Communist League practical assistance, the CC RCP(B) set forth several measures for consolidating youth organisations in its letter “The 167 RYCL and Its Work”. The main proposals in this letter were later incorporated into the resolution adopted by the Tenth Congress of the RCP(B).

p In the period of the New Economic Policy  [167•1 , when the struggle against the bourgeoisie assumed more intense but indirect forms, the Bolshevik Party again raised the question of consolidating the Russian Young Communist League, which linked the Party with the young working people. To attract more RYCL members into Party work, the Tenth Congress of the RCP(B) adopted a resolution “On Party Construction”, in which it charged all Party members up to the age of 20 to be members of the RYCL and to take an active part in its work. The congress stressed that the "Party committees’ representatives on RYCL committees must take part in the ideological guidance of and must be up-to-date with all the league’s work”. The Party committees undertook to help the RYCL improve its members’ political education and to draw young people into Soviet and economic construction.

p To improve the composition of the RYCL’s leadership, the congress recommended that some of them should be replaced by Party workers.

p The congress adopted a decision which made it incumbent on RYCL members who were also members of the Bolshevik Party to be constantly active in Party work, and at the same time recommended that the Russian Young Communist League should take part in the discussion of general political questions and the problems of Soviet 168 and Party construction by means of RYCL participation in Party organisations’ open general meetings and RYCL representation in an advisory capacity at Party delegates’ meetings, conferences and congresses. This decision was an extremely important step in raising the RYCL members’ political awareness and helped the Party organisations to direct the young people’s vigour and initiative towards the solution of the most important problems of socialist construction.

p In its letter to local organisations “On the Popularity of the New Economic Policy Among the Young People”, the CC RYCL said in part: “At the present moment there is a certain vacillation and misunderstanding of the New Economic Policy in the league. This is only natural in the case of young workers who have not had a thorough Marxist schooling.” In reporting that the RYCL had already embarked on the huge task of adapting to new conditions, the Central Committee stressed that the league organisations’ duty was, on the one hand, to defend the young workers’ economic interests, and on the other, to inculcate in young people a “responsible attitude towards their duties, to teach them to be thrifty, practical and scrupulous in all their day-to-day work".

p The CC RCP(B) and the CC RYCL adopted a joint resolution “On the Week of Rapprochement Between the RCP and the RYCL" on November 2, 1921. The CCRCP(B) also addressed a letter to league members, in which it set forth the principles of the relations between the Bolshevik Party and the RYCL and explained the reasons for pursuing the New Economic Policy and the tasks facing the Bolshevik Party at the new difficult stage of socialist construction. The CC RCP(B) called on yOung people to train competent and 169 devoted Communists and to establish close permanent working ties between the RYCL and RCP(B) organisations.

p At its llth Congress, the RCP(B) dealt at great length with the youth leagues’ work. A report was made on the RYCL’s state of affairs, and the congress adopted a resolution “On the Question of the RYCL”, which stressed the part played by the youth leagues in socialist construction.

p In its resolution the congress emphasised that the maintenance of young workers at the factories and their protection from extreme exploitation were a prerequisite of the consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat and industrial development. To achieve this, the trade unions and state bodies had to reserve the required number of young workers at the factories, see to it that all the labour protection rules were observed, and set up a new school with the RYCL’s active assistance, combining practical training with theoretical education.

p As the young workers’ economic position deteriorated and petty-bourgeois elements began to exert growing influence on them, the young people showed less and less interest in the country’s socio-political life. In its fight against the counterrevolutionary organisations which were trying to win over the young workers, the RYCL had to carry on intensive cultural work to counteract this subversive influence.

p Analysing the drop in RYCL membership, the congress pointed out that along with the sacking of young people at factories and military mobilisation which had weakened the league, its ranks had thinned largely because it was unable to meet the young people’s demands. As the league weakened, it was less able to adapt to new conditions.

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p It should be noted that the CC RCP(B) attached great importance to the RYCL’s activities and, as we have seen earlier, often asked local Party organisations to render the RYCL practical assistance. However due to the pressure of everyday work, many local Party organisations did not give sufficient attention to young people, thus showing that they underestimated the importance of this sphere of activity.

p Among the most important practical tasks which the congress formulated for the league were: to attract a larger number of workers into it, to raise the age limit by admitting young progressive workers into it, and the development of its members’ class awareness in the process of practical, economic and cultural work.

p The congress resolution clearly formulated the Party’s tasks with respect to the league and stressed the importance of guiding the league ideologically in its work, carefully selecting Party representatives for the league committees, providing the league with all the requisites for developing educational work, and drawing RYCL members into Party work.

p With the aim of providing the Party with reliable n-ew members capable of carrying on the great work started by the elder generations, the CC RCP(B) approved the “Provision on the Admission of RYCL members into the RCP(B)" on June 22, 1922. This consolidated ties between the Party and the young workers still further, and the Party began to exert stronger influence on the young people.

p The RYCL had all the valuable experience which the Bolsheviks gained over the decades at its disposal. It was equipped with the theory worked out by the Party, and was constantly guided 171 by Lenin’s advice and instructions. It was only by becoming well acquainted with the Bolshevik Party’s principles of the youth movement that the RYCL could carry out its work correctly. The league soon became a powerful mass organisation. Its membership increased by more than twenty times between the First All-Russia Congress of the RYCL and the autumn of 1920.

p I have dealt with the history of the youth movement in Soviet Russia at such length because it is a very important component of the history of the world communist movement. The young people in other countries took a keen interest in the life and work of their counterparts in Soviet Russia.

p This was reflected in the young people’s movement in the capitalist countries for the defence of the Soviet state.

p At the same time the young Soviet people’s struggle and the privations which they suffered as a result of it left a mark on the world youth movement.

p The ideological opponents of socialism, including the social-reformists, made wide use of the difficulties in building socialism—difficulties caused mainly by capitalist encirclement and imperialist obstruction.

Although they tried hard to disorientate the young workers at large, the enemies of socialism could not prevent them from growing increasingly sympathetic to the Soviet state and the courageous young Soviet people. This was clearly borne out by the young people’s struggle in the capitalist countries. Despite varying conditions, all countries have many common features as regards the world youth movement: the struggle against social-reformism in the young workers’ 172 movement, the increasing role played by the Communist parties and the world revolutionary outlook, and actions in the defence of the Soviet state.