[2]
~
[3]
__TITLE__
Soviet
Youth
and
Socialism
__TEXTFILE_BORN__ 2007-12-14T10:07:44-0800
__TRANSMARKUP__ "Y. Sverdlov"
PROGRESS PUBLISHERS
MOSCOW
[4]Translated from the Russian by S. Vechor-Scherbovich
(C)
MOJTOAE>KL> B yCJIOBHflX COUHAJ1H3MA
1 1 II (IHCAtll'iCKOM .'MbtKC
flTCJihCTno «riporpecc» , MOCKBH, 1973, c HJiJiiocTp ~
CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS:
Volkov, Y. E., Dr. Sc. (Phil.)
Kogan, L. N., Dr. Sc. (Phil.)
Krivoruchenko, V. K., Cand. Sc. (Hist.)
Sokolov, N. Y., Cand. Sc. (Law.)
Torsuyev, Y. V., Cand. Sc. (Phil.)
Trainin, A. S., Dr. Sc. (Hist.)
__COPYRIGHT__ First printing 1974M
11301--068 014(01)---74
[5] CONTENTS Page Publishers' Preface................. 7 Youth and Society................. 9 Youth: Shock Detachment in the Building of Communism ... 37 Youth and Spiritual Values of Socialism......... 65 Youth Participate in State Affairs........... 91 The Part of Soviet Youth in the Management of Production . . 144 YCL---the Mass Independent Public and Political Organisation of Soviet Youth................ 170 [6] ~ [7] __ALPHA_LVL1__ PUBLISHERS' PREFACEThis book is about the life of young people in the Soviet Union, the first country in the world to build a socialist society. Naturally, we cannot hope to give a complete and comprehensive picture of the life lived by millions of Soviet young men and women of different age groups, by millions of young workers, collective farmers (members of agricultural co-operatives), office employees, schoolchildren, students, and young specialists in all fields of the economy. The youth of the Soviet Union constitute millions of people in the most varied professions, with the most different life orientations, educational and cultural levels, tastes and needs, degree of participation in public activity, and so on.
But for all the differences between individual (or even group) features and destinies, there are common features born of the essence and distinctive features of the socialist society. These include lofty cultural demands, ideals and aspirations, in particular the desire to work with all one's might and main for the benefit of society, and an attitude of mind which regards work as the principal life task and the principal field for the application and development of one's abilities; comprehension of the unity of interests and goals with the older generations, continued dedication to the cause and traditions of the fathers who made the revolution, built the powerful socialist state and defended it against all enemies; a feeling of responsibility for the country and its social production, and the consequent development of public activity, greater participation in the affairs of the 8 state and society; patriotism integrally united with socialist internationalism; and the constantly rising level of education, professional skill and general culture.
Some of these features are summed up and examined on the basis of facts, which have been supplemented by statistical data, collected throughout the country. In other cases, they are mentioned in sketches to illustrate the general in the particular.
[9] __ALPHA_LVL1__ YOUTH AND SOCIETY __ALPHA_LVL2__ [introduction.]According to the CPSU Central Committee Report to the 24th Party Congress more than half the Soviet Union's population are young people. "The Party,'' Leonid Brezhnev said, "has been and shall go on giving much of its attention to the problems, cares and interests of young people.''^^1^^
The 1969 International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties paid much attention to youth and its role in the world revolutionary process. The successes of the world socialist system, the class battles in the capitalist world and the upsurge of the national liberation movement are drawing more and more young people into the revolutionary struggle in active opposition to imperialist wars, militarism, racism and neo-fascism.
However, the contribution which they make to the general revolutionary struggle depends on their orientation, ideals and the road they follow.
If a keen ideological struggle is to be waged for the minds of young people, then a theoretical analysis of their role and place in the revolutionary process and in building socialism and communism is required. This analysis should be accompanied by practical work in helping young people shape an integral Marxist-Leninist world outlook and drawing them into the active struggle for the revolutionary transformation of the modern world.
_-_-_^^1^^ Congress of the CPSU, Ducumcnls, Moscow, 1971, p. 90
10 __ALPHA_LVL2__ METHODOLOGY IN THE STUDY OF YOUTH PROBLEMSThe scientific methodology in the study of youth problems is founded on the Marxist-Leninist theory of society. In its approach to the problems of the younger generation, Marxism-Leninism regards youth as an integral part of society, a part of definite classes. The Marxist-Leninist approach to youth is, first and foremost, a class approach.
It is not by chance that the definition of ``youth'' as a category, or rather, the methodological principles for such a definition are the centre of heated arguments.
It is clear that the evaluation of youth's role and place in society and its part in the revolutionary process depends on whether we regard youth as a homogeneous group, isolated, so to speak, from the existing relations in society and even opposed to the remaining ``adult'' population, or as a group, a category which reflects the class structure of society.
The bourgeois ideological doctrines about youth are based on the desire to disprove or distort the class principle, the most important feature of the Marxist-Leninist approach, to substitute the conflict of generations for the class struggle, oppose the younger generation to the working class and its vanguard, the Communist Party, and thereby undermine the unity of the revolutionary forces in the modern world. Bourgeois ideologists regard the age peculiarities of youth as something absolute; they represent youth as a group which is primarily characterised by age and not by social conditions. In this way the bourgeois ideologists are trying to imprison the younger generation within the capitalist ideology, direct it into the channel of bourgeois politics and make it adopt the bourgeois order of things and way of life.
The upsurge of political activity of the youth in recent years dealt a heavy blow to theories about the ``sceptical'' and ``indifferent'' young generation. Now the ideologists of capitalism resort more and more frequently to pseudo-- revolutionary theories which proclaim youth as the decisive factor at the current stage of historical development, as "the third principal class and the only revolutionary force of modern times''.
Such theories belittle the role of the working class in the struggle against capitalism. In flirting with young people 11 the bourgeois ideologists oppose them to the working class, preventing young people and students from uniting with the working class in their revolutionary actions.
This calls for a close examination of the methodological principles employed in the study of youth problems.
The Marxist-Leninist approach requires, first and foremost, a concrete historical analysis of youth---its place in the society's class structure, its attitude to the ideology and policies of the various classes in the given society, its role in the class struggle at its present stage, and the sum total of all the factors which make an impact on the formation of the younger generation.
Speaking about the participation of students in the revolutionary movement, Lenin said that "the students would not be what they are if their political grouping did not correspond to the political grouping of society as a whole".^^1^^ Lenin ridiculed all those who attempted to attribute the political aspirations of Russian students to the force of ideal motives of youth and not to the real conditions of public life in Russia.
All this is particularly true when we mean not only students but youth as a whole whose class structure reflects that of society more fully and, at the same time, determines the political goals of young people.
However, class affiliation does not mechanically shape the outlook of young people, but rather factors of "social being'', in all their entirety.
Lenin wrote that "the class division is, of course, the ultimate basis of the political grouping; in the final analysis, of course, it always determines that grouping. But this ultimate basis becomes revealed only in the process of historical development and as the consciousness of the participants in and makers of that process grows. This 'final analysis' is arrived at only by political struggle, sometimes a long, stubborn struggle lasting years and decades, at times breaking out stormily in the form of political crises, at others dying down and, as it were, coming temporarily to a standstill.''^^2^^ _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, "The Tasks of the Revolutionary Youth'', Collected Works, Vol. 7, p. 45.
^^2^^ Ibid., p. 46.
12 Characteristically enough, Lenin ridiculed as ``super-clever'' all arguments to the effect that "bourgeois students cannot become imbued with socialism".^^1^^It was the course of social development in pre-- revolutionary Russia and all the various social factors in their entirety that determined the formation of the student youth and led the most progressive of them, including those from bourgeois families, to the revolutionary struggle against tsarism and landlord and capitalist power.
Today we see how more and more students in the capitalist countries, influenced by the development of the modern society and the upsurge of the revolutionary struggle, are siding with the working class which expresses the basic interests of the working people who constitute the overwhelming majority in every country.
Thus the historical stream of events and analysis of the development of the modern world corroborate again and again that the social consciousness of youth is decisively determined and shaped by the totality of social factors operating in given historical conditions. It may be said that the social portrait of youth reflects the processes, tendencies and problems of society, in which young people live, and of the times in which they grow up.
This is precisely why the basic problems of youth are, first and foremost, the problems of the whole of society, the problems, which can be solved only within the framework of a general revolutionary process. This means that the problems of youth should be examined concurrently with the processes, events and phenomena in society and the world in general.
There are many factors which influence the formation of youth. Therefore, if we want to establish the basic (rather than haphazardly chosen) characteristics of modern youth, we must examine the sum total or at least the most important of these factors.
In the case of Soviet youth, researchers single out three groups of factors which influence its formation.^^2^^
_-_-_~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 7, p. 42.
~^^2^^ Youth: Interests, Aspirations, Ideals, Moscow, 1969, pp. 50--58 (in Russian).
13Group one---factors which are characteristic of modern times. The most important of them are the struggle between the two systems, the growing influence of socialism, the upsurge of the national liberation movement and the downfall of colonialism, the mounting anti-monopoly struggle in the developed capitalist countries, and the scientific and technological revolution.
Group two---factors related to the social system in which the younger generation grows up. These factors are determined by the dialectics of the socialist society's development, by the laws governing this development. The principal factors are socialist social relations, public ownership, the principle of distribution according to the amount of work done, the distinctions between town and country and between mental and manual work, socialist democracy and broad opportunities for the development of the personality.
These are precisely the factors that determine the basic new features of man in the socialist society---new attitude to work, communist conviction, collectivism and internationalism; they ensure reliable prerequisites for the development of the individual (in education, culture, management of public affairs, etc.).
Group three---factors related to the peculiarities in a particular period of society's development.
The current stage of building communism in the Soviet Union is characterised by creating the material and technical basis of communism, evolution of socialist democracy, growing participation of the working people in the management of society's affairs, and ever fuller satisfaction of the people's growing material and cultural requirements. These factors are very important in raising Soviet youth, and provide the best opportunities for educating and developing the individual.
At the same time we must also take into account the age peculiarities of young people. It is precisely these peculiarities that express specifically (in comparison with other age categories) tendencies and problems common for the entire society. These age peculiarities make some problems more acute and others less so. In the capitalist countries the proportion of young people among the unemployed is particularly high, and they get much less for their work than 14 senior age groups. Unemployment and unequal pay for equal work have naturally nothing to do with age peculiarities; they are the result of the social system, and can be eliminated only with the eradication of capitalism.
Age is to a great extent responsible for such psychological qualities of youth as the desire for adventure, maximalism, emotionalism, vigour, sincerity, the desire for change.
While we are on the subject of the age peculiarities of youth and the specific manner in which they are expressed in present-day conditions, we should like to stress once again that it would be wrong to attribute exceptional or decisive significance to these peculiarities, and even more so, to use them as the basis for the explanation of all processes or for formulating all problems. Naturally, the other extreme--- that of ignoring the peculiarities specific to youth---is also wrong.
Thus, the Marxist-Leninist approach to the study of youth problems is a dialectical approach. According to MarxismLeninism, youth, its features and moral make-up, determined by class affiliation and the laws governing the development of society, of which youth is a part, should be studied in conjunction with the age peculiarities which give "youthful colouring" to problems common to the whole of society.
The definition of youth as an age-and-demographic group conceals the essence of the matter---the social heterogeneity of youth and the paramount importance of social factors in the formation of its world outlook.
The definition of youth as a specific social group is also fallacious, because it substitutes the age division for the class division of society and therefore elevates age to the status of an independent social factor.
Youth is a socio-demographic group with a social structure which corresponds to the given society; its formation is decisively determined by particular historical social conditions and by specific age peculiarities.
At every given moment we should have scientific knowledge of the characteristic features and peculiarities of youth so as to objectively assess the results already achieved and further improve the communist education of young men and women.
15But the very assessment of the principal peculiarities which really characterise youth and reveal its essence, and the selection of research methods to ensure the objectivity of the collected data require greater specification of the methodological principles applied in studying man in general.
The study of a man or a group of people, their features and traits, is first and foremost a study of society. This is because man is both the subject and the object of social relations.
Many sciences---psychology, pedagogy, medicine, sociology, aesthetics---are devoted to the study of man and each of them has created its own image of man. Depending on the aspects under research and the level of research, the image of man is characterised by different parameters and qualities in usage in the given science. At the same time, every science which studies the moulding of man must proceed from an integral conception of man and from the determination of the role, place and relations of the ``specific'' image in the general theory of the individual. Consequently, no study of the features and traits of youth can be undertaken outside of the general philosophical and sociological theories which alone can give an integral image of man.
This thesis is important in principle, because it indicates, in the first place, that the study of man and his essence always involves social research, and in the second place, it shows that the analysis of empirical facts obtained by concrete sociological studies must be based on the integral conception of the individual presented by Marxism.
Karl Marx said that "the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations".^^1^^
This definition of man's generic essence indicates the dominating significance of social factors in the formation of man. But it would be wrong to extend this definition to every single man, because then the origin of man's individual peculiarities would become obscure.
_-_-_~^^1^^ K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Works in 3 volumes, Moscow, 1969, Vol. 1, p. 14.
16In the meantime, however, every concrete sociological study deals with single individuals. "The premises from which we begin,'' Marx and Engels wrote, "are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they find already existing and those produced by their activity. These premises can thus be verified in a purely empirical way.''^^1^^
The task, therefore, is to use the analysis of empirical facts obtained by concrete sociological research as the basis and single out in man the typical and general features which characterise youth as a whole or some definite groups within it, and discover how the factors stipulating various qualities are related to one another and why these qualities differ for groups and individuals.
In this connection, it is essential to formulate our conception of the individual, of the "concrete man'', and compare this conception with the definition of man's generic essence.
The starting point here is provided by a most important methodological principle which was formulated by Karl Marx, who said that the concrete should be regarded as the process of synthesis, as the result. The concrete is the unity of the general, the specific and the individual. The concrete man is the result of the ensemble of social relations, environmental peculiarities, individual social experience and individual psychophysiological qualities. Since we are primarily interested in the features and qualities, determined by social factors and formed under the influence of upbringing and education, the study of man in this case becomes first and foremost the study of the individual.
Since the individual is determined by the factors mentioned above (the totality of social relations, the environment, individual social experience), it objectively follows that the classification of the features and qualities of individuals, who become the subject of empirical research, should be brought into correlation with the studies of the whole of society (qualities common to the whole people and the whole of youth) and its social and demographic structure _-_-_
~^^1^^ K. Marx, F. Engels, The German Ideology, Moscow, 1964, p. 31.
17 (qualities which characterise one or another group of young people). What is more, generalisation, analysis and systematisation of individual social experience, definition of the right criterion for its typology, will afford an opportunity for uncovering still more subtle relationships in the determinate nature of the various aspects of personality. __ALPHA_LVL2__ THE GENERAL AND SPECIFIC FEATURESAs a component of society, young people are characterised by the common features determined by the dominating production relations and ideology. As a specific age group in society, youth also has its own features. Finally, the specific features of various groups of young people (workers, farmers, etc.) are determined by their social and age differentiation.
Thus a study of youth requires an analysis of the main features common to the entire younger generation and the specific features of the various social and age categories that make it up.
A personality is principally characterised by its world outlook, moral qualities, ideals, value orientations, interests and needs.
Under socialism the totality of social relations forms a new social type of man.
In answer to the question "What are the motives behind the behaviour of your contemporaries?'', in a questionnaire circulated by the CG YCL, young people mention the desire to win the respect of people, to be useful, and to fulfil their duty as the most important motives.
The general features of the new social type of the individual originated during the consolidation of the new social system. Loyalty to the great ideals of communism, selfless devotion to the common cause, class solidarity with the peoples fighting for freedom and independence, revolutionary ardour---these and other principal qualities of the Soviet man, engendered by revolutionary struggle and socialist transformation, are the determining features which the younger generations inherit from their seniors. The community of features of the different generations in the era of __PRINTERS_P_17_COMMENT__ 2---411 18 building socialism and communism indicates that "the socialist reality, the versatile activity of the Party, State and all public organisations decisively influence the younger generation and are responsible for its lofty political and moral qualities".^^1^^
The process of building communism enriches the social type of the individual. Having inherited from the senior generations the basic features, which are determined by the whole tenor of the socialist society, youth, naturally, acquires new features and peculiarities which reflect the present stage of building communism.
Further effort in the upbringing of young men and women requires a deep study of how the individual develops, influenced by various factors, and which of the latter should be pinpointed as principal and decisive ones. The concepts of activity, practice and personal social experience are very important if we want to understand the laws governing the development of the individual (including the causes and factors responsible for the fact that people are different even though they grow up in similar conditions, belong to the same social and demographic groups and even have more or less similar psychophysiological characteristics).
Man's activity, its purpose and nature are greatly influenced by his affiliation to a particular class or social group, but the influence, though significant, is not absolute. The concept "personal social experience'', therefore, cannot be reduced to the specific environment in which the given man exists or to the sum total of his "social roles''; it is primarily the result of man's activities, his entire practical experience in society.
``The chief defect,'' Marx wrote, "of all hitherto existing materialism---that of Feuerbach included---is that the thing [Gegenstand], reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object [Objekt] or of contemplation [Anschauung], but not as human sensuous activity, practice, not subjectively.''^^2^^ To this he added: "The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, _-_-_
~^^1^^ 50th Anniversary of the YCL and the Tasks of Communist Education of Youth. A Resolution of the CC CPSU. Komsomolskaya Pravda, October 6, 1968.
~^^2^^ K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Works in 3 volumes, Vol. 1, p. 13.
19 therefore, changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men that change circumstances and that the educator himself needs educating.''^^1^^The laws which govern the development of the individual also determine the principal methods by which the process is directed. These methods, of course, cannot be reduced to didactics. They envisage an alteration of conditions and circumstances for the formation of the individual; a system of incentives to draw the individual into the required activities; and education which provides man with experience and knowledge of the preceding generations and thereby ensures the further progress of human society.
We must, moreover, keep the following in mind. The individual is the product, the result of interaction between various factors. But, from the viewpoint of educational and pedagogical influence, every given individual represents not the result, but the starting point, and the analysis of the individual as the result is of primary importance for clarifying the action of the formative factors. Even such of man's qualities which are determined by his psychophysiological peculiarities can be changed by training to a lesser or greater degree.^^2^^
This is particularly true of the socially-conditioned qualities of the individual whose evolution takes place in the process of unceasing social activity. Thus, the findings of all tests are limited, because at best they indicate the result of development and the possibilities for "today`s'' individual in one or another field of activity, for the individual is not a metaphysical unchangeable entity, but a projection of the given state of the process, reflecting its continual moulding.
The fact that man's activity and practical experience in society decisively influence the formation of his personality makes important the study of the motives behind this activity. Thus, knowledge of these motives, their origin and, consequently, ways of influencing the direction, content and character of this activity is, naturally, absolutely necessary _-_-_
~^^1^^ Ibid.
~^^2^^ The Individual Under Socialism, Moscow, 1968, p. 75 (in Russian).
20 for the education of the individual; for this knowledge provides ample opportunities for effectively influencing the process of education.Human needs are the determining and motivating force of human activities. Engels said that "men became accustomed to explain their actions from their thoughts, instead of from their needs".^^1^^
Soviet scientists who examined the category ``needs'' regard it as an objective phenomenon, as a peculiar form of expression of necessity in animate nature and society. They note that though the ``needs'' are an inner necessity of the living organism or the human being, they are at the same time a specific expression of the exterior necessity.
Being the motive force of human activity, needs are at the same time its result. They express the inner tendencies of the object's development and help to reveal the essence of phenomena and man's social nature. This is why the study of youth's social requirements helps us to understand the essence of youth, the dynamics of its development, the distinguishing features of various groups, and the degree to which they conform to the socially necessary requirements. Requirements take the form of interests and demands. The Central Committee of the YCL conducted a special study--- a "social portrait" of youth---which was devoted to the demands and interests of young men and women.
The findings of this study as well as the analysis of work done on the same subject by many research institutions and scientists lead to the conclusion that Soviet youth today has the following principal social needs that show a tendency to grow:~
---a need for meaningful, creative and skilled work;~
---social and political activity, participation in managing the affairs of state and society;~
---a need for using spare time in a fruitful way;~
---a thirst for knowledge.
__FIX__ Here is a LVL3 heading embedded at beginning of paragraph; add markup so heading can be extracted by scripts.The Need for Meaningful Work. Numerous practical sociological studies conducted in the Soviet Union point to this need as a definitive social trait of youth. In describing young people in the era of victorious socialism, the _-_-_
~^^1^^ F. Engels, Dialectics of Mature, Moscow, 1954, pp. 238--39.
21 sociologists of the other socialist countries come to similar conclusions. The sociological research laboratory of Leningrad University, headed by Professor V. A. Yadov, conducted a poll among 2,665 Leningrad workers under 30, which revealed that the main factors which determine the worker's attitude to his job are its nature and the creative opportunities it provides.All other social groups within the younger generation of the country also hold that interesting work is of primary importance in the individual's orientation among human values.
``Interesting work" was the most frequent answer to the question "What is most important for happiness?" submitted during the poll conducted by the Central Committee of the YCL. This need, which is typical for all categories of youth, is particularly strong among those whose work provides great opportunities for creativity, that is, among those whose demands are actually shaped and determined by work.
This tendency becomes more visible when we compare youth groups within one and the same category but with different levels of professional skill. Rural machine-- operators, for instance, have a greater need for interesting work and are more content with their work than unqualified young people engaged in agriculture.
A growing need for interesting work, founded on the public character of ownership, socialist relations of production and better living and cultural standards, is typical of all young people. Today this need is connected, first and foremost, with the actual content of the work in hand and the training received. This need tends to grow with the technological advance, the progress in educational standards, and the gradual introduction of universal compulsory secondary education.
The growing interest in fruitful and creative work is undeniably a progressive tendency in Soviet society's development, because it makes labour not only more qualified and efficient, but a vital human necessity. Research results give grounds for asserting that labour has, to a great extent, become one of the most vital necessities in professions where it provides moral satisfaction and extensive creative opportunities. At the same time this need for interesting work 22 involves a whole complex of economic and educational problems. Under different conditions depending on the level of development of productive forces, the desire to satisfy this need leads to the migration of young people from the countryside, to the fluctuation of manpower at industrial enterprises, and acute shortages of labour, particularly in the services.
The difficulties involved in the solution of this problem are connected with a number of contradictory factors. The rapid development of the scientific and technological revolution requires considerable improvement in education--- general and special, higher and secondary, and this will inevitably generate a greater urge for meaningful work. But at the same time it is necessary to recruit the labour force for agriculture, the services, which has an obvious tendency to expand, and for some sectors of industry, as well as to create incentives so that young people would readily apply for work in these branches. The ways of solving this problem are discussed both by practical workers, responsible for the education and upbringing of youth, and by theoreticians.
Taking into consideration the contradictory factors which affect the conclusions, we may say that the solutions are not and cannot be simple. It is important, however, to select the main direction, the chief link. The decisive factors here should be the long-term interests of socialist society---the competition with capitalism, the creation of the material and technical basis of communism, and defence of the country. All this requires further scientific and technological progress. It follows, therefore, that only scientific and technological progress can decisively affect the professional structure of labour, i.e., make it more meaningful and gradually eliminate unskilled and uncreative kinds of work. It is just as important to note that in calling upon youth to make their contribution to scientific and technological progress and thereby take part in the solution of this major state problem, the Komsomol takes account of the innermost needs of the young people, and is helping them to satisfy these needs. This is of tremendous importance for the formation of the younger generation's world outlook.
It is but natural that scientific and technological progress is unable to eliminate some uninteresting and unskilled forms 23 of labour either now or perhaps even in the future. This calls for additional measures.
In the first place, it is necessary to pool the efforts of various departments and organisations to raise the social prestige of certain professions, particularly in agriculture and the sphere of services. (Questionnaires indicate that farm work and services stand at the bottom of the list.) Of course a single measure or even a year-long campaign is insufficient for this purpose. Work should obviously be carried on in two ways: firstly, by revealing the opportunities inherent in the professions concerned, including those rising from the creative attitude of the worker himself and from scientific and technological progress, and, secondly, by showing the importance of these professions for society.
In the second place, fuller use should be made of economic incentives. In practice it often happens that unskilled labour is paid just as well or even better than skilled labour, i.e., a certain compensation is provided for uninteresting and arduous work; the worker is being recompensed, as it were, for the spiritual and physical losses he suffers. It is expected that this tendency in remunerating arduous or tedious work will increase, particularly in the case of professions which would not yield to automation or mechanisation.
In the third place, it is very important to offer prospects to young people engaged in uninteresting work and to plan their promotion to grades of higher skill in their profession (this makes skill grades, classification, etc., an absolute necessity), as well as from less interesting to more interesting work. This upward movement should be envisaged by the collective's plans for social development.
There are other means for eliminating the contradiction between the urge for interesting work and the actual possibilities of realising this urge. This, for instance, may be done by enrolling young people for temporary or seasonal work (students going to the farms on vacations) and mobilising them for first-priority projects. The recruitment of youth for farm work, for instance, is conducted as an important assignment of society, and therefore the young people are encouraged to display a maximum of independent action, autonomy and initiative, as the case is in student building detachments.
24To sum up, we may say that the elimination of the above contradiction lies not only in further scientific and technological progress but also in the totality of moral and material incentives, aimed at mobilising youth for work in important fields of the economy.
The Need for Public and Political Activities. Under socialism the spiritual development of youth is determined by its public and political activities and the participation of the younger generation in the management of the affairs of society and state. Addressing the Plenary Meeting of the YCL Central Committee on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the YCL, Leonid Brezhnev said: "The Soviet system gives young people wide possibilities for public activity and for participation in affairs of state. One cannot imagine the work of our Soviets, trade unions and state institutions without the active participation of Komsomol members."^^1^^ The last elections considerably increased the number of young deputies in the local Soviets, the Supreme Soviets of the Union Republics and the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
Many practical sociological studies which have been conducted in this country in the past few years prove that there is an increase in the social and political activity of young people. The poll conducted by the Public Opinion Institute of the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda revealed that the broadest masses of the working people regularly participate in public activity, and youth in this respect is numerically ahead of all the other age groups.
Like the other general features of the Soviet youth of the 1970s, their public activity is a manifestation of the principal laws of socialist development and communist construction in the country. Growing socio-political activity of the youth is stimulated by the evolution of new social relations, the increasing role of the subjective factor under socialism, the extension of socialist democracy, and the growing consciousness of the working masses.
Though the common tendency towards public activity is obvious, and there is a rising demand for interesting work and participation in the affairs of the collective and the _-_-_
~^^1^^ L. I. Brezhnev, Following Lenin's Course, Moscow, 1972, p. 93.
25 society, a considerable number of young people either abstain from public activity or are dissatisfied with it.Naturally enough, the young people, who want their public activity to be rewarding and their assignments, of value to society, and who look for most efficient forms of Komsomol activity, tend to react sharply to formalism and poor organisation of work.
There is a number of factors to show the importance of encouraging the social and political activity among young people.
The so-called process of acceleration (the early intellectual and physiological maturity but late social maturity of young people owing to a longer period of training), which is in evidence in many countries, can lead to a dangerous discord between the developed need for serious public activity and the actual possibilities available for satisfying it. When a young man is deprived of an opportunity to prove his ability to act as a full-fledged citizen and participate in and influence the affairs of the collective, he tends to develop the traits of parasitism and infantilism which may subsequently result in a sceptical and a philistine, consumer attitude to life.
The participation of a young man in the collective's public life affords him an opportunity to express himself as a personality; this is particularly beneficial in cases when the job itself, being unskilled or of little interest, offers no such opportunities.
Finally, today when bourgeois propaganda and revisionists of all hues and shades are viciously attacking socialist democracy, young people clearly understand the fundamental advantages of socialist democracy, which ensures the actual, direct, personal participation of people in management---the advantages which clearly dwarf the false democracy of bourgeois society. Understanding of this fact should be backed up by practical experience. The participation of young people in managing the affairs of a collective, society and state, and the development of inner-Komsomol democracy and various forms of self-government in youth collectives are weighty instruments for stimulating public activity and, still more important, particularly in present-day conditions, for shaping the ideological outlook of young men and women.
26The need to intensify social and public activity has been underscored by the CPSU Central Committee resolution on "The 50th Anniversary of the YCL and the Tasks of Communist Youth Education''. This resolution points out the way and provides big new opportunities for tackling these tasks. The assignment to the Komsomol of important and responsible jobs in all fields of state, economic and cultural development; the instruction to invite Komsomol organisations to the solution of all problems bearing on the life, work and rest of young people; the setting up of youth committees at the Supreme and local Soviets---all these measures are aimed at enhancing the role of the Komsomol in the life of society; they open up before the Komsomol new opportunities for drawing youth into public and political activity and mark an important stage in the further development of socialist democracy and social relations.
The Need for Fruitful Leisure Time. The growing need for fruitful leisure time is a characteristic feature of modern youth.
Analysis of the "time budgets" in socialist and capitalist countries furnishes an interesting comparison between the ways Soviet youth and young people in other countries spend their free time.
This comparison shows that Soviet youth spend their leisure time in a much more meaningful way. They give more time to reading and learning than young people abroad.
Higher educational standards and material security, and more leisure time create realistic prerequisites for the allround development of the young man's personality. Sociologists note the wide cultural interests of Soviet youth, of which books, newspapers, radio, television and cinema are among the most long-standing.
Typically enough, the most popular recreations with young people today are those in which they can fully express their personality and creative talents and which, moreover, contribute to the development of the individual's activity and initiative. These include amateur art, tourism, sports, photography, amateur cinema, music, making collections of various kinds, and other hobbies.
But at the same time an opposite tendency can be observed. The swift development of the mass media, particularly 27 television and cinema, is giving prominence to passive forms of recreation, while inadequate development of amateur clubs, associations and societies provides little scope for the individual's creative talents which often find a spontaneous outlet: common interests often give rise to so-called informal groups or companies which remain beyond the influence of the Komsomol, or of public and state organisations. This has an unfavourable effect on the upbringing of young people, whose leisure time is wasted and its extension does them more harm than good.
This goes to show the importance of solving the twofold problem of satisfying the growing need for fruitful recreation on the one hand, and making recreation more rewarding on the other. To achieve this end it is necessary first of all to improve the work of cultural and educational establishments and mass information media so that they can focus their attention on utilising the individual's active and creative potential. The resolution of the CPSU Central Committee on "The 50th Anniversary of the YCL and the Tasks of Communist Youth Education" instructs "the USSR Ministry of Culture, the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions and the Central Committee of the YCL to take steps so that the work of clubs, Houses of Culture, libraries, parks and other cultural institutions will comply to the greatest possible extent with the growing needs of contemporary youth, contribute to the development of their active interest in the arts, and help to uncover their talents and abilities.''
Apart from improving the structure of various amateur groups, inside their own premises, clubs extend their outside activities. They become centres for encouraging creative interests of young people who live within the sphere of their influence; to this end they arrange competitions, festivals and exhibitions, including competitions for amateur poets, singers and guitarists, festivals of amateur films, exhibitions of engineering achievements, paintings, photographs, handicrafts, collections, etc.
The enrichment of recreation as such will undoubtedly develop a more selective attitude to the huge volume of information which young people have at their disposal. Therefore it is particularly important to guide the reading 28 interests of young people and recommend them the best books, films, radio and television programmes, etc.
Many departments and institutions take care of man's leisure time. In order to co-ordinate and plan their work and pool their funds, it would be expedient to set up committees (councils, headquarters) under district and town Soviets of Working People's Deputies which would be responsible for the recreation of all residents, particularly young people, of the given district or town.
The Need for the Self-Development of the Individual. The high level of education and increasing thirst for knowledge are an important feature of contemporary youth, reflecting the achievements of the socialist society.
In 1927--1928 there were 11,466,000 pupils in primary, seven-year, eight-year and secondary schools compared with 45,385,000 in 1969--1970---a fourfold increase; in schools for adults and worker and farmer youths the figures were 172,000 and 4,041,000 respectively for the given academic years---a 24-fold increase. In 1969 some 564,900 students graduated from the country's higher educational establishments.
The higher level of education has made a considerable impact on the cultural life of young people and is largely responsible for the wide range of their cultural interests and requirements. Soviet scholars note that education is influencing such important aspects of the life of the youth as professional orientation and future plans, the attitude to work, public and political activity, the use they make of mass means of communication, recreation and aesthetic development.
This shows that a proposal to decelerate the tempo of education, as made by some researchers, is unfounded. These recommendations spring from a limited understanding of the problem. True, a higher level of education gives rise to greater material and cultural needs and that, in some cases, can aggravate the contradiction between the needs and the possibility of satisfying them. But if they are correctly understood and timely channelled in the right direction, the contradictions themselves can become a mighty stimulus of social development. In addition, a higher level of education affects all aspects of the life of both society and its individual members. The growth of education is directly tied up 29 with greater public and political activity, enrichment of leisure pursuits, and an effort to improve production by making inventions and finding most rational techniques.
Today the growing social needs we have mentioned above are typical (in different degrees, of course, and in various combinations) of all groups of young people. The objective process of the personality's all-round and harmonious development finds expression in the growing fruitfulness of his working and leisure hours, in his rich spiritual world. These common features, which characterise the cultural life of the present Soviet younger generation, reflect the basic laws of socialism which are bound up with the formation of new, communist social relations (new attitude to work, participation in the management of state and social affairs, and allround development of the individual).
Social and Demographic Youth Groups and Their Distinguishing Features. These needs, which are common to all young people, exhibit themselves specifically for any individual youth group. These groups should become the object of our study if we want to find the practical ways of achieving the common aims in educating the youth as a whole and to establish relative priority for the different tasks involved in bringing up a particular group.
These considerations stress the importance of correctly establishing the signs by which one group is distinguished from another and, consequently, the structure of youth in general as a part of society. In principle, there is no end to such signs, so the leading ones should be pinpointed, which affect the social portrait of the chosen group as a whole, and, on this basis, the principal groups and categories comprising youth can be defined.
From the methodological viewpoint the specific signs of youth groups (social affiliation, age, sex, education, etc.) are not equal in their significance. This allows to single out the principal categories objectively, with due regard for each sign's significance. The materialist conception of social development requires that priority should be given to social and economic characteristics.
The rise of the spiritual needs in the individual is decisively influenced by the social affiliation connected with man's vital activity---labour. In the CPSU Central Committee's 30 Report to the 24th Party Congress, Leonid Brezhnev noted that "the different groups of our young people---young workers, collective farmers, specialists, students and schoolchildren---have their own special features. The Komsomol must be able fro work with each of these groups"^^1^^.
A comparative analysis of the principal features and needs of the various social youth groups reveals the essential differences between them and helps to formulate a series of tasks which should be given priority in the work with one or another category of youth, the central task being the upbringing of the younger generation in the spirit of communist ideology and morality, as well as respect for work at factories, farms and in the fields.
These are some of the important tasks as we see them: education in the spirit of the heroic traditions of the working class; assistance to young people in raising their skills, and making still richer their every leisure hour, and more active participation of factory Komsomol organisations in the drafting and implementation of social development plans which envisage a complex solution of the problems mentioned above.
However, an analysis of the peculiarities of social categories is an insufficient basis for specified, differentiated work with the various youth groups within the categories concerned. Subdivision into groups can be made according to a variety of signs: profession, education, earnings, age, etc., and the leading tendencies should be established.
Proceeding from the determining role of the social division of labour for the inner-class distinctions and from the analysis of experimental studies, we believe that subsequent differentiation shuuld be made on the basis of a worker s skill and the nature of his work in their unity, which implies different levels of incomes, education, cultural requirements and professional training, public activity, fruitful recreation, and needs in general.
Research work indicates that in all cases primary concern should be given to groups with lower qualifications. It is particularly important to open up prospects to young men and women in such groups, providing them with opportunities _-_-_
~^^1^^ 24th Congress of the CPSU, Moscow, 1971, p. 96.
31 for continuing their education, raising their skill or acquiring a new profession.The increased duration of adolescence in modern society (many sociologists believe that it lasts as long as 15 years) results in a greater number of age groups of the younger generation. Specialists, who study youth problems, correctly single out junior and senior age groups among young people.
The comparative age survey of the younger generation reveals that age substantially influences the formation of the individual, and the ways and means of drawing young people into public life. The tasks to be pursued in work with the junior age groups involve preparing them for practical life and work, explaining the existing contradictions, laws and tendencies of social development and helping them to formulate their life plans in accordance with the objective needs of the socialist society and its development.
A comparison between two groups---young men and young women---shows that their basic spiritual values are identical. The differences are insignificant, and they mostly concern the rational nature of the interests of young men and the emotional nature in the case of young women. This, in part, is displayed by the differences in their choice of information sources and the structure of their leisure time. Young men prefer problems of engineering, economics and science, while young women are mostly interested in moral and ethical problems. With the beginning of family life the differences become greater. Women over 23 or 25 have less leisure time, and that, of course, affects in a way their interests.
Group differentiation of youth can be continued further as a means of solving particular problems, but it should not be carried too far in determining the principal directions and forms of work, otherwise specific problems may assume undue importance and overshadow the general picture. The categories and groups must reflect sufficiently well the existing social relations and the actual differences.
It would be well to point out once again the importance of a single approach in determining the structure of youth. Such a single approach makes study of the younger generation more purposeful and ensures an identical interpretation of their problems and comparability of the findings. 32 Subjective definition of categories and groups is, as a rule, of no value in practical work.
Division of youth according to social and class affiliation and also according to sex and age, with definite subordination of each subdivision, gives a picture of the social differences and specific age peculiarities of the youth groups. Sometimes these factors reenforce each other and their combined influence is manifested with particular strength in one or another group, while at times these factors neutralise each other and their influence is hardly felt. If we learn to know how these factors affect the characteristics of the corresponding groups, we can foretell their behaviour in any given situation.
To Educate the Man of Communist Tomorrow. In noting the specific features of the various social and demographic groups of young people, we should repeat once again that the younger generation has a number of general features common to all young people.
These common features, in turn, result from the objective tendency of socialist society towards homogeneity and the elimination of class and social differences.
If we were to analyse the main social needs of youth in their entirety, we would find one essential and unifying feature: the growing desire of man in socialist society to assert his personality, to express himself as builder and active participant in all fields of activity. The rising level of culture and education, which results from socialist relations in society, generates a great thirst for knowledge which, together with work, affords the individual in the socialist society an opportunity to express himself most fully. This stimulates the further development of the social relations and of the individual.
The formation of the man of the communist tomorrow is, naturally, a long process, it depends on the development of productive forces, and the improvement of social relations and ideological education.
It is very important that all people should see today the actual prospects open for the development of the individual and thereby take an active and conscious part in the process.
In helping the young man to understand his place in life and shape his world outlook, it is very important to encourage 33 his desire for knowledge, creative activity, to build up his determination to realise these desires, and to draw him into activities that will help to bring to light his latent talents.
The socialist world outlook enables man to take up an active position in life and to struggle resolutely against smug philistinism and narrow-mindedness, as well as against inert scepticism and nihilism. Some people think that communism is a society of consumers and that it can be built without the active participation of all, without transforming activity on the part of all people in all spheres of life or without constant self-education. It is not enough simply to smash these conceptions theoretically; they must be nullified by training the individual to take up an active position and understand the main direction of his development and role in moulding the man of the communist tomorrow.
Thus, the study of youth's social needs helps us towards a deeper understanding of its essence; this understanding is absolutely necessary for setting concrete tasks in the communist education of youth. As we see it, the forecasting and planning of social needs is the basis of social prognostication and social planning, which if co-ordinated and dovetailed with economic planning, will serve as a reliable foundation for the purposeful upbringing of young people.
The social needs of youth we have examined are not something that belongs exclusively to the younger generation. In as much as they are engendered by socialist social relations, they are typical of the entire Soviet people. At the same time it is important to underline the tendency of these requirements to grow due to the continual progress of the Soviet socialist society, its growing economic might, the rising cultural, educational and material standards, the development of socialist democracy, scientific and technological advance, and growing leisure time. Hence, it is only natural to expect that the operation of these factors will determine the further development of the above-said social needs in every new younger generation.
The growing need for interesting work, public activity, fruitful recreation and for knowledge objectively reflects the laws governing the development of socialist society which provides greater opportunities for the all-round development of the individual. Consequently, regular and purposeful __PRINTERS_P_33_COMMENT__ 3---411 34 ideological and educational work with the aim of developing these needs among youth is both necessary and effective, because it coincides with the basic directions of the development of the individual under socialism.
These needs are important not only in themselves. They characterise man in the principal spheres of his vital activities (work, public and political activity, utilisation of leisure time) and therefore they determine, to a great degree, the entire trend of the individual's development.
But, as we have pointed out, one cannot help seeing the possible and actual contradictions between the needs themselves and the conditions required for their satisfaction. The acuteness of the contradictions depends on the scope of the requirements and the degree to which they are satisfied.
Therefore, in setting specific tasks in youth work, we do not restrict ourselves to studying the demands themselves and the possibilities of satisfying them. We correlate the needs of youth with the needs of the whole society, and the tasks which that society is tackling, and compare the existing needs with the actual conditions and possibilities of satisfying them and with socially necessary requirements. The trends of development, the contradictions and the degree of their acuteness, revealed in the course of such a profound analysis, will help to determine the concrete goals of activities concerned with educating young men and women, raising them in the spirit of communist convictions and developing definite traits in them.
In talking about the formation of definite qualities, it is difficult to say which of them are more important and necessary for man and society. But this is precisely what makes the work of the educator so valuable and responsible. It is his task to single out the principal, important and essential features, which will lead him to the goal set.
Human traits have been evolved during the long historical formation of man as a continually accumulating result of consecutive changes in social relations.
In the antagonistic types of society the individual's traits are centred around two main poles: individualism, which characterises the ruling class, and conformism, which is foisted on the oppressed masses by the whole system and way of life. A fundamentally new type of individual is 35 possible only in a society free from the exploitation of man by man---in socialist and communist society. This individual is above all part of a collective. The formation of a collectivist spirit is an objective requirement of socialist society, which is essential for its development and evolution into communist society.
The individual develops as he cognises the world, his own self and society, and transforms them in the process of his practical activity. This is why industriousness and thirst for knowledge are indispensable for his development.
We have already mentioned this tremendous thirst for knowledge and the vital urge to work. The day-to-day activity of Soviet youth proves that it has been developing in the spirit of collectivism. It is, of course, difficult to measure this spirit, like any quality of man in general, in figures or percentages.
Love for their country, Party and people, and ability to give priority to the collective interests---these are the distinguishing features of Soviet young men and women. It is interesting to note that in their replies to the questionnaire circulated by the YCL Central Committee, young people named as negative qualities extreme individualism (vanity, disrespect for people, careerism) and conformism (servility, cowardice, etc.).
But it should be noted that in the process of development of the individual certain negative tendencies may arise. The demand for interesting work sometimes leads to disrespect for manual labour, a higher level of education and individuality may turn into individualism, and better living standards can breed philistinism. That is why it is vitally necessary to inculcate respect and love for work as such, and oppose manifestations of individualism and philistinism.
The guiding tendency of man's development is his world outlook and knowledge, which become his convictions. These are his most important and, so to speak, definitive characteristics. The very pattern of Soviet youth's spiritual requirements, its moral make-up testifies to the fact that the socialist ideology is woven into the very fabric of the younger generation's life.
Today the world outlook of youth is shaped in specific conditions, which should not be ignored. Young people of 36 today have not been steeled in the class struggle, they do not know the hardships of the first years of building socialism or the trials of the war years. This is why it is so necessary to back knowledge with personal experience, so that the acquired knowledge will turn into convictions.
The formation of the individual---his social requirements, moral qualities, world outlook---is a very complicated, multistage process, influenced by many factors. Consequently, the further scientific study of the individual, its formation, and the education of young people at various stages of their evolution and maturity are acquiring increasing importance.
A person brought up in the spirit of communism devotes himself to people, his individuality is expressed within the collective and for the collective. It is to this end---the acquisition of communist morality---that the relations in the collective should direct the young man, and it is from this viewpoint that his activity in the collective during his formation should be assessed.
[37] __ALPHA_LVL1__ YOUTH: SHOCK DETACHMENTFollowing the triumph of the Great October Revolution, the youth of the first country to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat actively joined in building the new society.
In reply to the appeal of the Communist Party, millions of young men and women went forth to build factories and plants, the Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Combine, the Dnieper Hydroelectric Power Station, and numerous new towns.
This enthusiasm for labour was most visibly expressed on a mass scale in socialist competition which, in turn, became the most important instrument for encouraging this enthusiasm. "It is only socialism,'' Lenin wrote, "which ... by abolishing the enslavement of the people, for the first time opens the way for competition on a really mass scale.''^^1^^ He pointed out that "far from extinguishing competition, socialism, on the contrary, for the first time creates the opportunity for employing it on a really wide and on a really mass scale".^^2^^
Socialist competition soon assumed a mass scale. The first important milestones in its progress were "shock work'', the Stakhanov movement, labour roll-calls, socialist pledges, and front-line teams during the Great Patriotic War.
The highest form of emulation is the movement to promote a communist attitude to labour, which was initiated in the late 1950s. This movement combines into one the struggle _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 259.
~^^2^^ Ibid., Vol. 26, p. 404.
38 for achievement in production with the promotion of a higher ideological, moral and cultural levels.Soviet youth actively participates in all labour movements. Today more than 40 per cent of Soviet young people are engaged in the country's economy. They are particularly numerous in the modern fields of production which require a high level of general and technical education. By the beginning of the Ninth Five-Year Plan, young people accounted for 66 per cent of all chemical workers; 65 per cent of fitters and 70 per cent of turners.
The national economy annually absorbs at least 3 million young workers, collective farmers, specialists and office employees. Naturally enough, the advancement of communism greatly depends on the participation of young people in labour and their cultural, professional, ideological and moral background.
Continuing the glorious traditions of shock teams, the Komsomol organises youth collectives in the most important and difficult sectors of production. These teams initiate socialist competition among young people.
Getting them to serve as patrons over major projects is a means of involving youth in economic issues; it helps to teach them how to carry out responsible assignments.
In the Report of the CC CPSU to the 24th Party Congress Leonid Brezhnev gave a high appraisal of the activity of Soviet youth on the labour front under the leadership of the Leninist Young Communist League. "It would be hard to name a sector of economic and cultural development,'' he said, "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.''^^1^^
During the Eighth Five-Year Plan (1966--1970) young workers made a great contribution to the construction of the material and technical basis of communism.
_-_-_^^1^^ 24th Congress of the CPSU, Moscow, 1971, p. 96.
39The Komsomol organisations sent more than 350,000 young volunteers to the country's most important projects. They built 15 blast and open-hearth furnaces, 13 rolling mills, 20 agglomerate factories and coke batteries, nearly a thousand kilometres of electric transmission lines, 3,000 kilometres of railways and more than 8,000 kilometres of gas and oil mains.
The collectives of the All-Union Komsomol shock projects, such as the Cherepovets Metallurgical Combine, the Krasnoyarsk Hydroelectric Power Station, the Almalyk Chemical Works, and the Khrebtovaya-Ust-Ilim railway, became real schools of advanced methods and communist youth education.
Many interesting movements were born and much initiative shown during the Eighth Five-Year Plan. The young workers of Gorky, for instance, launched a campaign under the slogan "No laggards in our ranks!''. The aim was to give a helping hand to the novices in production who were not sufficiently active in public life, so that they would catch up with the advanced workers, acquire and subsequently raise professional qualification and develop an urge for making innovations in engineering. The results were quick to come. In the very first year the number of workers who failed to fulfil their production quotas in the region's enterprises was reduced by more than a third. The thirst for knowledge grew and many more young workers joined evening classes. Thousands of them enrolled in schools of advanced methods and learned new professions.
The young workers of the Dynamo Plant in Moscow initiated a movement for personal plans of higher labour productivity. Soon the movement spread to other enterprises. On the eve of the 24th Party Congress the young workers of the Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Combine sponsored a new movement---emulation contracts between advanced and lagging teams. "Catch up with us!" was the slogan.
The emulation of Komsomol-youth collectives assumed a particularly mass scale on the eve of Lenin's centenary. A good illustration of this was the work of the Komsomolyouth collectives in the Tushino District of Moscow.
There are nearly 300 youth collectives in the district. The Komsomol-youth team led by Victor Nikitin (Krasny Oktyabr 40 Plant) regularly fulfilled its assignments by an average of some 161 per cent. The quality of work was excellent. The team assumed patronage over novices who soon started to overfulfil production quotas as well. In 1969 five novices were helped to acquire qualifications in this way. Each of the team-members learned to handle two or three operations. The workers in the team were awarded the titles "Master of Quality" and "Shock Worker of Communist Labour''.
In the same year 875 young men and women in the plant competed for the title "Champion Young Lathe-Operator''. Courses of technical training were opened in all shops, young workers learned advanced methods of work, and, as a result, their labour productivity went up by 20 to 25 per cent.
Young people in the district competed for the title "Master of Quality''. The YCLers of the No. 1 Dye-and-finishing Factory pledged themselves to acquire two or three related professions.
The initiative of Maria Ivannikova, a weaver at the Frunze Textile Mill in Moscow, who called upon her comrades to save enough raw materials to supply the production needs through the whole of April 22, 1970 (Lenin's centenary), was widely supported by other factories. Her example was followed by the young workers. The YCLers of the No. 1 Wool-Spinning Mill undertook to save enough raw material for four days' work.
These are just a few examples. The past five-year-plan period stimulated many movements among young people, both at industrial enterprises, and in the countryside. Advanced Komsomol-youth teams of tractor drivers and machine operators competed for bumper harvests, higher cattle productivity and so on.
The YCLers and young people of the Zavety Ilyicha collective farm (Obukhovsky district, Kiev Region) were among the initiators of the emulation.
The team led by Maria Kuryan had always produced good yields of sugar beet, but they knew that in the neighbouring district the team led by Hero of Socialist Labour M. Lysenko had much better results, though the soil was almost of the same quality. When the subject was touched on during a lecture at an agricultural university for young people Maria decided to challenge the famous team.
41The story was printed in the local newspaper, and it stirred all the young beet-growers in the district. They spent the winter attending agricultural courses and went for consultations with twice Hero of Socialist Labour Olga Diptan. Now their sugar beet harvests are increasing from year to year.
Today all the teams are mechanised and so they have doubled the size of their fields to a total of 70 hectares. Manual labour has been reduced to a minimum.
Young cattle-breeders also joined the movement. Nadya Gavrilets, the secretary of the farm's Komsomol organisation, said: "Our girls decided to get 4,000 litres of milk from each cow!" At first the news astounded some people because even the best collective farms could only manage half this figure. Some thought that the milkmaids were boasting, but Nadya said: ``Don't you worry, Lesya herself promised to come to our aid.''
A few words should be said about Lesya. She left home to join a partisan detachment while still a girl, came through the Great Patriotic War with honour, and when peace came, graduated from an institute and soon became a school-mistress. Then she was elected chairman of the collective farm.
Lesya encouraged the milkmaids. Nadya Gavrilets and her friends spent many long days in the dairy farm before they finally won through. They are now getting 4,000 litres of milk from each cow, while Maria Sutkovaya and Sofia Yermak get even more than that.^^1^^
Thanks to their own knowledge and industriousness young people are managing to achieve good results in the fields and on the farms.
What is the source of this million-fold enthusiasm?
The material factor, of course, plays a certain (and quite important) role. It is well known that under socialism material benefits are distributed according to the amount of labour done: the more and the better the work, the greater the remuneration. This principle of socialism is the fairest one possible in the given social and economic conditions and stimulates people to raise their labour productivity. _-_-_
^^1^^ Komsomolskaya Pravda, June 19, 1970.
42 Consequently, a man's readiness to improve his well-being by greater personal contribution to the common cause is a natural inclination and not "petty bourgeois economism'', as some Left-sectarian falsifiers would have us believe.The desire to improve one's personal well-being is not the only motivation; and it has been proved in practice that it is neither the only nor the principal motive behind the urge to work exhibited by Soviet youth. Nor does the Soviet citizen's personal interest in the results of his work amount merely to egoistic indifference towards everything that bears no relation to material remuneration.
Economic incentives in socialist production imply both material and moral remuneration. But this is not all. Everyday life can provide us with plenty of facts which convincingly prove that the ideological conviction and the political consciousness of the Soviet people are the major source of labour enthusiasm. A vivid manifestation of this are the Communist subbotniks which, on the initiative of the working people themselves, are now held every year.
Sociological research has proved that working people--- particularly young men---are prompted mainly by ideological and moral motives. According to one survey the "most important" motives were, first and foremost, opportunities for constant self-improvement (given by 88 per cent of young people questioned), the opportunity for creative activity (53.5 per cent) and the chance to contribute to the national economy (48.9 per cent); only 28.8 per cent mentioned good pay as a motive for work, and 8.8 per cent career prospects. It is interesting to note that only 20.9 per cent said that guarantees of a secure future were of great importance to them. This is easily understandable, because the Soviet young man is usually confident of the morrow.
The new, communist attitude to work is developing and growing stronger under the influence of the socialist way of life and the collectives in which the Soviet citizen is raised from childhood. This new attitude to work and full comprehension of its great social significance were strikingly revealed by weaver A. V. Smirnova when she addressed the 24th Congress of the CPSU: "Today the Soviet worker,'' she said, "is the real master of the land, he is the creator of all values. .. . He regards work not only as a source of 43 earnings, but also as a mighty link binding him to a sacred communion of fellow-workers, who are engaged in creating the fairest social system in the world.''
__ALPHA_LVL2__ THE FRONT-LINE OF THE NEW FIVE-YEAR PLANThe decisions of the 24th Congress of the CPSU generated a new wave of enthusiasm among Soviet youth. Here are some of the statements by young workers which Komsomolskaya Pravda printed during and after the Congress.
K. Strokan, secretary of the Komsomol organisation of the Kiev Aircraft Plant: "Today, when the 24th Congress of the CPSU is in session in Moscow, the young aircraft builders are working with great enthusiasm. They are overfulfilling their shift quotas by 50 to 100 per cent. . .. All our YCLers and all young workers are now busy drawing up personal plans for the Ninth Five-Year Plan. These plans include ways of raising labour productivity and introducing innovations. True to their traditions, the Kiev aircraft builders will spare no efforts and knowledge to implement the Party's grand plans.''
N. Rebenok, team leader of the Avangard collective farm (Chernigov Region): "We decided to get a much better harvest than in previous years. We have been called upon to do so by the new five-year plan which is being discussed at the Party Congress.''
L. Papakina, deputy secretary of the Komsomol committee of the Yakovlev Flax Mill, Ivanovo Region: "We are all convinced that the tasks in front of us will be fulfilled. Today we are taking stock of our potentialities. The emulation which we started on the eve of the Congress revealed great possibilities. Six groups of YCLers succeeded in achieving a very high level of output, utilising their latent reserves to a maximum. The YCL group of Olga Aksenova has decided to fulfil the five-year plan in four years. I am certain that their example will be followed by many other groups.''
The facts of everyday life prove that young workers, collective farmers, specialists and scientists are unanimous in their decision to work efficiently and creatively during the new five-year plan and to raise their professional skill 44 so as to fulfil with honour the complex tasks of the Ninth Five-Year Plan. The collectives of industrial enterprises and construction sites widely support the slogan "5 in 4!" advanced by young workers of Leningrad. The slogan calls upon all young workers to fulfil the five-day production quota in 4 days. Young workers elsewhere add their own suggestions to the slogan. At the Arsenal Plant in Kiev the first to join the movement were the plant's veterans, Heroes of Socialist Labour A. Dovchenko and V. Filippov. Their example was followed by many young workers in Kiev, who initiated a movement "Catch up with the heroes!" As a result, more than 83,000 young workers in Kiev fulfilled the assignment for the first year ahead of schedule.
The YCLers of Kazakhstan launched the "Kazakh Hour" movement---the obligation to fulfil the day's quota one hour ahead of schedule. The YCLers and young workers of Krasnoyarsk announced a competition for Komsomol organisations under the motto: "Maximum labour productivity from everyone.'' The competition will last the full course of the five-year period. More than 200,000 young workers, collective farmers, specialists and scientists committed themselves to personal plans for raising labour productivity and fixed economically substantiated targets for each year. At the end of the first six months some 36,000 young workers in Krasnoyarsk achieved the highest production results in their collectives.
The Komsomol-youth collectives are competing to smelt the 150-millionth ton of steel, extract the 500-millionth ton of oil and increase output in the other branches of heavy industry.
Let us examine in greater detail how the young workers in the Kharkov Turbine Plant carry out the tasks set by the Party.
Half the workers in the plant are under 30. The fiveyear plan envisages a 6 percent increase in labour productivity. The workers decided to make it 7 per cent. When it comes to the production of modern gigantic turbines, this extra per cent means a tremendous saving not only of fuel and money but also measured in terms of the strain and efforts required of the entire collective. The battle for the "Kharkov per cent" became the target of all young workers 45 at the plant. These efforts have a tremendous influence on the formation of each young worker's personality.
Valya Pogorelova, a milling-machine operator from the 3rd turbine shop, has been working for the past seven years on turbine blades. She polishes them half as quickly again as envisaged by the norm. She is so slim that one wonders where she gets all the strength.
Valya and her work-fellows keep record of the amount of production materials they save in order to calculate, compare and analyse the cost of each case of absenteeism or each damaged tool and understand the mechanism of economy at the big modern plant. The battle for the "per cent" required that each worker should have a good understanding of his place and role in the collective. In this they are greatly assisted by the Party organisation, the administration, the local trade union committee and the plant's YCL committee.
The "Kharkov per cent" posed many problems for the turbine-builders. One of them---that of skill---directly concerns young workers. The 3rd turbine shop, for instance, installed new automatic lathes. Soon the operators learned to produce as many parts on three lathes as they formerly did on five lathes. It is not easy for novices to master the automatic lathes, so it was necessary to help them to "get into the rhythm''.
Experienced workers began to sign "friendship agreements" with their younger counterparts. Valya Pogorelova, for instance, volunteered to help a few young men from her shop. She and the other experienced workers share their know-how, attract young people to Komsomol work, and look after their general needs.
Agricultural workers are also displaying greater initiative. Following the example of the advanced farmers in the Kuban and Stavropol Territory, they launched a campaign for high rates and quality in harvesting. In 1971, nearly 40,000 Komsomol-youth detachments and teams of machine-- operators took part in the drive for efficient farming methods. This campaign is an excellent school of efficiency, knowledge and grain-growing know-how for thousands of young men and women.
The manifold activities of young people aimed at speedily implementing the decisions of the 24th Congress of the 46 CPSU have found general expression in a patriotic campaign under the slogan "Shock work, efficiency and initiative!''. This youth movement, which continues the glorious traditions of the Stakhanov movement, and the Komsomol shock construction sites, is now widespread.
The movement is designed not only to boost labour efforts. It pursues many other important goals. The aim is at least to mobilise reserves which are as yet dormant because of inefficient management, and utilise them for the benefit of society.
Following Lenin's behests and the Party's instructions, the Komsomol combines organisational work aimed at more active participation of youth in labour with educating it in the spirit of care for national property.
Initiative is closely interlinked with the struggle to accelerate scientific and technological progress. The efficiency of young workers requires that the technical base of production be improved and the quality of the more intricate production items be raised on the basis of constantly rising workers' qualification.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ YOUTH AND SCIENTIFICSoviet youth and the Komsomol link their activities with the struggle for greater scientific and technological progress and higher labour efficiency and production standards.
Young workers, collective farmers and specialists willingly join the struggle because under socialism its outcome corresponds to the interests of both society as a whole, and each worker individually. Scientific and technological progress eases the burden of labour, makes it more interesting, and raises the skill, and cultural and technical level of workers. There is nothing of the kind in capitalist society where the application of the latest achievements in science and engineering only swells the army of the unemployed.
Numerous sociological investigations in the Soviet Union have proved that the interest of young people in their work largely depends on the scope for creative initiative and opportunities for professional advancement it offers. The older the worker, the less he is dissatisfied with the 47 insufficiently high intellectual level of his work. Young people are usually more dissatisfied with uninteresting work. They want work with creative opportunities.
Automation, which makes work easier and reduces its monotony, affords man unrestricted opportunities for free and creative activity. This tendency is expressed in the disappearing contrast between work-time and leisure, and in the increasing leisure time which Marx regarded as a condition for the harmonious all-round development of the individual so that each could really contribute to the society "according to his ability''. The direct impact of the machine on man is exhibited in the considerable transformation that has taken place in the nature of work. Mechanical and monotonous operations are giving way to ones that require independent decisions and a growing stock of scientific and engineering knowledge.
Automation breaks the centuries-old chain which bound man and machine into a single work mechanism. As distinct from manual labour, in which the tool was the only means of subduing nature and as distinct from machine production, where a technical device as mighty as the machine stood between man and nature, automatised production includes a fundamentally important link like the cybernetic device. In its most advanced form automation affords man the maximum of technological freedom. As a result man is no longer tied to his lathe, or technological process.
Having emancipated his hands, energy and thoughts from the task of compensating the machine, man gains immeasurably more time and opportunities for developing his abilities and talents.
According to many research results, the advancing automation of production is accompanied by a huge growth in the proportion of mental work and an increasing number of problems requiring a creative approach.
The 24th Congress of the CPSU made an important contribution to the development of the scientific and technological revolution. Its decisions not only map out the road for intensive scientific and technological progress in general, but also indicate the changes which concern all aspects of material production and all elements of the productive forces.
48The Directives on the Five-Year Economic Development Plan for 1971--1975 envisage the designing and introduction of radically new tools and machine systems for the complex mechanisation and automation of the most vital production processes; they also envisage high output rates of automatic equipment with programme-digital control. In 1971 the output of programme-controlled lathes was increased by 50 per cent to a total of 2,500 units. They produce as much as 7,500 conventional lathes operated by 12,000 workers. By the end of 1975 the output of programme-controlled lathes will be increased by at least 250 per cent.
It is planned to start the production of machines and complex systems of automatic control over the technological processes in the metallurgical, chemical, oil-refining, oil, gas and coal industries and to devise automated lines for the building-material, light and food industries.
The 24th Congress of the CPSU set important tasks in the automation of the registration, collection, storage, transmission and processing of information, designing of complex technical means for a single nation-wide automated system of communication, broad introduction of economic and mathematical methods, employment of electronic computers and organisational techniques and means of communication in management and national economic planning. It is planned to step up the designing and the introduction of automated systems of planning and managing industrial branches, territorial organisations, amalgamations, and enterprises with a view to setting up in the future a national automated system of collecting and processing information.
The General Secretary of the CC CPSU Leonid Brezhnev said that the complex of branches creating the technical base for the automation of production and management were catalysts of scientific and technological progress. These branches include electronics, radio engineering and instrument-making. The Directives of the 24th Congress of the CPSU set them priority rates of development.
It is planned, in particular, to increase the production of instruments by 100 per cent, computers, by 140 per cent, and electronic computers, by 160 per cent, to expand the industrial output of modern instruments, apparatus and laboratory equipment for research work, as well as the means 49 of mechanising and automating administrative and engineering work.
The Congress set the task of introducing progressive, particularly non-stop, technological processes on a wide scale speeding up the development and industrial introduction of new processes in chemical technology and also processes based on electronics. New capacities must employ only modern technology. Measures are envisaged to develop and manufacture new and more economical materials, including polymers and extra-pure materials.
The Party's 24th Congress also mapped out a large-scale programme for developing of science, expanding fundamental and applied research work, and speedily introducing their results into the national economy. The Congress posed a problem of historical importance---that of amalgamating and integrating the achievements of the scientific and technological revolution with the advantages of the socialist system of economy, and of developing socialist forms of combining science and production.
The 24th Congress noted that "the revolution in the development of productive forces, touched off by science and its discoveries, will become increasingly significant and profound".^^1^^ This is why the full-scale programme of social and economic transformations on the basis of the achievements of the scientific and technological revolution, adopted by the Congress, outsteps in importance the margins of a single five-year period. It serves as the foundation for the Party's long-term plans.
The success of this programme greatly depends on the readiness of the working masses for these changes in the country's economy, particularly on the readiness of young people who are now receiving general and professional training.
This is why young people are actively joining the struggle to accelerate scientific and technological progress. The aims and directions of the work involved are as follows:~
---to master the achievements of modern science and engineering and introduce them into production;~
_-_-_~^^1^^ 24th Congress of the CPSU, Moscow, 197J, p. 69.
__PRINTERS_P_49_COMMENT__ 4---411 50---to ensure the introduction of scientific methods of work in production and raise the efficiency of production;~
---to encourage innovations in engineering;~
---to raise the level of production skill.
For this purpose the YCLers and young people of the Uralmash Plant in Sverdlovsk launched a campaign under the slogan "Scientific and engineering knowledge for all!'', the young workers of the Likhachev Car Plant in Moscow adopted the slogan "Learn, devise and introduce innovations!''
Young people with special scientific and engineering training, and young scientists and specialists play a particularly significant role in the struggle for scientific and technological progress. They actively participate in designing and introducing progressive types of machines and technologies. Young scientists and specialists in the Ukraine have started a movement under the slogan "Cybernetics in overalls'', stressing the need to introduce the achievements of cybernetics into production as quickly as possible.
Several years ago the Research Institute of Heating Devices in Moscow started a socialist competition under the slogan "Personal research subjects for all young scientists''. The young scientists made specific pledges: to master related subjects, methods and methodology of calculations, design new devices, etc.
The young workers of Mine No. 22 in Karaganda Region, true to their slogan "No to manual work!" began to introduce means of mechanising ancillary processes. The Komsomol committee, assisted by the Party committee and the administration, compiled a map of bottle-necks in the field of ancillary mechanisation and examined how the suggestions made by workers and specialists were realised in practice. Within a month they relieved 30 miners of manual work. There are 70 headquarters and sponsoring groups for the introduction of this kind of mechanisation in mines, industrial enterprises, research institutions and higher educational establishments of Karaganda.
Young workers, as well as young scientists and specialists, also take part in the struggle for scientific and technological progress. In the first place they raise the level of their scientific and engineering knowledge and take part in 51 mechanising and organising production processes on scientific principles.
Much is being done to encourage the interest of various categories of young people in scientific and engineering innovations. Scientific and engineering societies in the country have a membership of more than a million young men and women, and over 950,000 young workers are members of the society of inventors and innovators. There are nearly 90,000 public design bureaus and groups of economic analysis and more than 100,000 creative teams which involve hundreds of thousands of young men and women. Reviews and exhibitions of youth engineering achievements and theoretical scientific conferences are held regularly. The first national review of youth engineering achievements involved only 2 million young men and women, compared with 7 million who took part in the review held in 1970. Nearly 7,000 young innovators were awarded USSR Economic Achievement Exhibition medals, and 15,000 won diplomas and medals of the Central Exhibition.
The reviews of youth engineering achievements are arranged in order to develop a mass youth movement to conquer the peaks of science and engineering and to help young people acquire information on the latest achievements, to introduce into production the best works of young innovators, to imbue young people with an urge for interesting work and to raise their cultural, engineering and professional level.
During the 3rd review, for instance, young people in Moscow developed and put into effect more than 2,500 innovation proposals outside the range of the plan.
Young scientists at the Research Institute of Chemical Engineering designed and supervised the manufacture of equipment for two technological lines for the Uvarovo Chemical Combine. The work was completed two months ahead of schedule, and the state saved 2.3 million rubles.
The reviews stimulated the work of public design bureaus. The main goals of public design bureaus are to offer engineering aid to inventors and innovators, investigate the urgent problems of production, patronage, introduce new subjects, and encourage the creative initiative of young 52 scientists and specialists. During the review, the public design bureaus produced some 1,000 projects.
There are many detachments of engineering innovations, schools of young innovators, urban and district exhibitions of youth engineering achievements. Scientific and engineering conferences of young workers and specialists are held regularly.
Much is being done to create and expand the material and technical base for scientific and engineering innovations and to organise engineering circles and clubs in research institutions, enterprises, houses of culture and residential areas.
The current scientific and technological revolution insistently demands that young people constantly raise the level of their scientific and engineering knowledge.
The demand for research and engineering personnel, as well as for highly qualified specialists in all branches of economy and management is growing. Their proportion in the total number of working people is rising.
Between 1960 and 1969 the country's population increased by 12 per cent and the number of workers and office employees in the national economy, by 41.5 per cent. During the same period, however, the number of specialists with higher education increased by 83.2 per cent, engineers, by 111.9 per cent, research workers, by 149.2 per cent, and research workers in engineering, by 202.0 per cent, an increase of more than threefold. Between 1959 and 1969 the number of unskilled workers was considerably reduced, while the number of laboratory assistants, machine-operators, controlboard operators, and adjusters of automatic machines and lathes more than doubled.
The country's progress in education and training of personnel is generally known. The foundation for this progress was laid during the early years of the Soviet Republic. Today there is a grand total of over 79 million students, i.e., one out of every three inhabitants in the country is studying.
Between 1966 and 1970 more than 7 million specialists graduated from higher and secondary technical schools, including more than 1 million engineers, 270,000 economists, over 200,000 agricultural specialists, about 200,000 doctors, 53 670,000 teachers and workers of cultural and educational institutions; some 200,000 young men and women graduated from universities. The training of specialists for new and advanced fields of science and the economy has been particularly stepped up. In recent years the number of specialists trained for electronic techniques and electrical instrumentmaking has grown by 150 per cent, while the respective figure for radio-engineering is 100 per cent.
The training of research workers has assumed a really gigantic scale. There are nearly 100,000 post-graduate students, half of whom are attending regular day courses.
The number of young people among scientists and engineers is constantly rising. As of June 1, 1967, some 56 per cent of all scientists were under 30. As of November 15, 1966, some 32.3 per cent of specialists with higher and special secondary education were under 30, while 52 per cent were under 34.
Even in the USSR Academy of Sciences institutions where the "intellectual entry fee" is very high, the number of research workers under 25 increased by more than 50 per cent in the period between 1965 and 1969, and the number of candidates of sciences under 30, by nearly 40 per cent.
The scientific and technological revolution has radically changed the conception of training people in the so-called mass professions. It also changes our views as to which professions are to be regarded as mass professions.
The first question implies that whereas formerly a man in the mass profession category was one with elementary education and experience, now he is a specialist with special secondary, secondary or higher education. In the current five-year period the ranks of mass professions will be replenished by nearly 30 million young people.
The main point behind the second question is that scientific work is swiftly becoming a mass profession alongside those of teaching (which has more than 3.3 million in its ranks) and medicine (nearly 2.7 million). There are now more than 900,000 scientists in the country. Along with engineers and auxiliary research staff this brings the total research personnel to more than 3 million.
The employment rates in science are 3 or 4 times higher than in other fields of the economy, and they are continuing 54 to increase. Even if the present level is to be retained, then, according to Soviet sociologists, by 1980 the number of research workers may reach 3.2 million and a total of 6.3 million if engineers and auxiliary staff are included. That will account for more than 6 per cent of the total number of people employed in the national economy.
It is quite natural that the proportion of those employed in science and auxiliary services should grow at the expense of the other fields of the economy, i.e., the distribution of young specialists from institutes is considerably to change. What demands does this place on young people and the entire system of education?
First of all, complete continuity in science is ensured by training more full-fledged researchers. The rapid increase in the number of those employed in science is accompanied by a decrease in the number of highly qualified scientists amongst research workers as a whole. The average age of scientists with medium and high qualifications is rather high.
Therefore, the present rates of scientific development already demand the regular promotion of young scientists capable of assuming full responsibility for scientific progress. The scientific and technological revolution requires that young people master the versatile and dynamic process of modern education and develop, as far as possible, the ability for quick creative thinking.
Substantial changes are taking place in the training of young workers. The traditional method of training workers consisted of an apprenticeship on the production floor, acquiring skill from experienced workers. This is being replaced by another method: training in special vocational schools where young people, besides acquiring practical skill, master the elements of theoretical knowledge. During 1965-- 70 vocational schools trained over seven million qualified workers for all branches of national economy, or 50 per cent more than during the preceding period. Today there are more than 5,350 vocational schools in the country where 2.4 million young men and women are preparing to join the ranks of the working class. This is a record peak in the history of the Soviet vocational schools.
The Directives of the 24th Party Congress envisage stepped-up training of young workers in vocational schools. 55 The task is to train at least 9 million qualified specialists during the current five-year period.
Universal secondary education for young people is, of course, an essential requirement for technological progress. Complex mechanisation is changing the nature of the work done by the bulk of qualified workers. Muscular strength and manual skill are giving way to intellectual activity.
The transformation of science into a direct productive force turns mathematics, physics, chemistry and, in some cases biology, into important qualification requirements for workers in many modern professions, and they have to apply their knowledge of these sciences in practical work.
The resolution of the 24th Congress of the CPSU states that the network of vocational schools providing secondary education must be expanded. Today their number has been increased to 660, and they are being attended by nearly 200,000 young men and women.
The experience of secondary vocational schools has proved that the general education helps the students to raise professional skill. Here are some figures: the labour productivity of graduates from the secondary vocational school No. 36 (the Ukraine) is 5.2 per cent higher than that of graduates from ordinary vocational schools, and 15 per cent higher than that of workers trained directly in enterprises. In the Znamya Kommunizma mine three out of every eight innovation proposals are made by graduates from that school. In three years of work in mine No. 4 the average level of their pay went up by 27 per cent, compared with only 7.5 per cent in the case of all other miners.
There is no doubt that vocational schools providing secondary education will become one of the principal ways of educating young people. More than 1,240,000 people are to be admitted to them in the course of the current fiveyear period. By 1975 the number of students in secondary vocational schools will account for at least a third of the total number of students in all day vocational schools.
The expansion of the vocational school system is accompanied by the improvement of professional training of young people directly at enterprises.
Scientific and technological progress is also changing the work of young people in the countryside.
56Addressing the 16th Congress of the Leninist Young Communist League, Leonid Brezhnev said: "Our agriculture is an important field of activity for the young enthusiasts of scientific and technological progress. The solution of the major tasks which the Party set before agriculture can be undertaken only by people technically educated and qualified, people who love the land and love to work on it. We note with satisfaction that the Komsomol has actively responded to the Party's appeal to help young farming people in mastering engineering professions which are in such sharp demand in the countryside.''^^1^^
The efforts of rural youth in the struggle for scientific and technological progress are primarily directed at higher efficiency of agriculture and cattle-breeding on the basis of scientific achievements, accelerated mechanisation of production processes, and mastery of engineering professions by the masses of young people in the countryside.
In 1969 the Komsomol youth of dairy farms launched an all-Union competition for higher production efficiency. Young people actively participate in the mechanisation of dairy farms and introduction of progressive methods of work in stock-breeding, help in the construction of premises for cattle, and come up with interesting proposals. On the eve of Lenin's centenary (April 1970), for instance, the YCLers and young people of the Lipetsk Region launched a twoyear campaign for the introduction of machine-milking. After the campaign had been successfully completed, they started to mechanise other difficult processes. Their initiative has been widely supported elsewhere.
Much attention is being paid to the training of rural youth in engineering professions. Many districts have set up special headquarters and committees which study the needs of collective and state farms in mass professions jointly with argicultural and other interested organisations and departments, draw up training plans for young people, and supervise the universal technical education of young men and women. Many regions and republics announced competitions between Komsomol organisations in the technical training of rural youth, with prizes for the winners.
_-_-_~^^1^^ 16th Congress of the Leninist Young Communist League, Shorthand Record, p. 23 (in Russian).
57In 1970 more than 950,000 village young people mastered technical professions, and thousands upon thousands of them are working as tractor and lorry drivers. Last year the number of machine-operators in collective and state farms went up by 86,000 against a rise of 26,000 in 1969. More than half a million machine-operators graduated to higherclass categories.
Many Komsomol organisations attract young women to technical professions, form women tractor teams, and help improving the working and living conditions for women machine-operators. In 1970 these courses of technical knowledge were attended by over 60,000 women---four times more than in 1969. The number of young women attending rural vocational schools increased from 4 per cent in 1966 to 9 per cent in 1970.
Several years ago the Komsomol organisations of Uzbekistan and the other cotton-growing republics undertook to promote the introduction of complex mechanisation in cotton plantations. They are doing a great deal to train young people in rural areas as machine-operators. In Uzbekistan, for instance, nearly 100,000 young men and women have qualified as machine-operators in the course of the past five years. In 1961 there were only 300 fullymechanised Komsomol-youth collectives working in the cotton fields; now there are more than 4,000.
Thus, the scientific and technological revolution augments the wonderful advantages socialism has brought to the labour process and thanks to which more and more young people are beginning to see the principal goal of life and understand the principal joy of free creative labour. Work is becoming more interesting and offering greater opportunities for creative talents. Simultaneously, it is putting greater demands on the worker, and his knowledge and skill. The expenses involved in educating, training and raising the skill of workers are paid in full by the socialist state.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ TRAINING THE RISING GENERATION FOR WORKThere are undeniable facts to substantiate the great role being played by Soviet youth on the labour front. This is a logical consequence of the socialist system. Free labour, 58 which unites the interests of society and the individual, is the cardinal prerequisite for a full-blooded human life and the principal arena of a man's creative efforts. The young man, embarking upon independent life, finds himself in a social and psychological atmosphere in which people assess a person by his industriousness and success in work. Therefore, it is only natural that the young man should assert himself primarily in the sphere of production and work.
Does this mean, however, that socialist conditions exert an automatic influence? Does it mean that in every case these circumstances automatically help the young man embarking upon independent life to understand the lofty social and moral value of labour for the benefit of society and, consequently, make him willing to work efficiently to the best of his abilities? No, this process is neither simple nor automatic.
This is why the Communist Party, guiding the building of socialism and communism, has, in compliance with Lenin's instructions, always considered that one of its principal tasks is to conduct comprehensive educational work among the masses, particularly among youth. One of the most important aspects of this work is the bringing people up from early childhood in the spirit of the communist attitude to labour.
Lenin said that such education should be based above all on conscientious and disciplined work. He pointed out that "only by working side by side with the workers and peasants can one become a genuine Communist".^^1^^
In the Soviet Union the process of developing a love for work begins in childhood. After joining the Leninist Young Pioneer Organisation, schoolchildren are taught socially useful work. Naturally, the work they do, the time and energy they spend and the "production results" they achieve cannot be compared with what awaits them after they graduate from school and begin independent life. The aim is rather to help the little man to understand the joy of work, to see what he can do with his own hands for himself and, simultaneously, for his people and his country.
Usually the work done by young pioneers and _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 298.
59 schoolchildren directly supplements their lessons. Many schools have their own fields where the pupils stage agrotechnical experiments. There are numerous other spheres as well where schoolchildren can apply their efforts and sense the joy of work: school shops, gardens and parks. Pioneers join "school forestries" and take care of forests, collect scrap metal, paper, medicinal herbs, wild fruit and berries. These small deeds acquire great significance if one remembers that they are conducted on a mass scale. Millions of children thus gain initial labour orientation and training.With students the process takes a different form. Student builders' detachments are recruited from volunteers who agree to spend part of the summer vacations working at industrial enterprises or on farms. In 1969--71 nearly 700,000 students worked in such detachments. In three years they completed construction projects to the sum of over 1,000 million rubles.
Students in builders' detachments are, naturally, paid for their work, but this is not what prompts them to sacrifice part of the vacations. The sociologists of the Urals Polytechnical Institute and Leningrad University who investigated the motives why students join the builders' detachments found that they wanted to be useful to society, to test their abilities in practical work and acquire the habits of working in a collective, which, as they correctly pointed out, all specialists should do. Moreover, they were attracted by the friendly atmosphere in the student detachments. In their answers to the questionnaires, the students said that work in the detachments encourages initiative, independence, fosters a feeling of responsibility, etc.
So, as we have said, various categories of student youth are involved in diverse forms of socially useful activities which prepare them for independent work in the future.
Thus, general labour orientation is supplemented by the formation of interest in definite forms of labour and this is precisely the goal pursued by schools and other organisations.
Several years ago the Palace of Young Pioneers and Schoolchildren in Irkutsk inaugurated the Znaniye ( knowledge) society in which specialists lecture to schoolchildren, arrange practical work and inform them about the exact 60 nature of some of the professions. There are more than 20 sections with a total attendance of nearly 1,500. Children can freely pass from section to section until they find the subject that interests them most. When the time comes for school-leaving examinations, most members of the Znaniye society have already worked out definite plans for the future.
In the geological section the lectures by prominent geologists and geochemists are supplemented by practical lessons in mines and pits, mineralogical museums, the local research institute, as well as by summer practicals in geological parties and expeditions.
The medical section trains the children to be doctor's assistants or nurses. During the three-year course they learn how to render first aid and take care of patients, they stay on duty in first-aid stations, and doctors take them to see patients being treated in polyclinics.
By attending all these lectures and doing practical work in laboratories, clinics and geological expeditions, the children acquire knowledge and, more important still, love for the chosen profession. They come to know the routine work in the professions which appeal to them and acquire the necessary skill.
It is particularly important to develop interest in the mass professions associated with industry and agriculture. Sometimes young men and women who are about to set out on independent life are quite prepared, on the whole, to work for the benefit of society, and are even eager to do so. Yet this eagerness tends to be limited to professions like nuclear physics, aviation, etc., rather than mass professions like lathe-operating, building, farming and servicing.
It is necessary therefore to emphasise the social usefulness of all professions even apparently ``uninteresting'' ones.
Speaking on the subject at the 24th Congress of the CPSU, Leonid Brezhnev stressed the importance of "correct and timely vocational orientation of young men and women, and education of the rising generation in a spirit of profound respect for work at factories, on farms and in the fields".^^1^^
This work is done, first and foremost, by schools and cultural and educational institutions.
_-_-_~^^1^^ 24th Congress of the CPSU, Moscow, 1971, p. 96.
61Three years ago school No.~19 in Cherepovets opened a vocational orientation club. The club's work is planned by the children themselves. Its sessions, which are attended by no less than a hundred members, are devoted to meetings with representatives of diverse professions and graduates. The club arranges excursions to enterprises and educational institutions. In the beginning, membership was limited to pupils of the 8th, 9th and 10th classes, but then it became clear that the work could not be restricted to the seniors. Now the club acquaints younger children with the wonders of engineering and arranges get-togethers of young pioneers which are devoted to the professions of their parents, and the general glorification of labour. Similar work is conducted in other schools in the town.
All the libraries in Cherepovets compiled special card indexes of literature which help the juveniles to select vocations. The libraries arrange book exhibitions, lectures and joint get-togethers with schools devoted to the question of choosing a vocation.
The professional orientation of teenagers becomes effective when the production collectives, which have a genuine reason to be interested in the training of the rising generation, join in.
In Cherepovets, for instance, this work in school No. 13 is done by the workers of the neighbouring plywood-- andfurniture factory. The workers, whose children study in the school or some of whom have themselves graduated from it, often meet with the schoolchildren and tell them about the professions in the factory. The factory has opened vocational courses for the pupils.
The experiment at the Kharkov Tractor Plant won recognition throughout the country. The workers there opened a special training shop where schoolchildren learn dozens of vocations. Moreover, the plant has set up production training sectors, engineering class-rooms and laboratories. All of them comply with modern engineering requirements and utilise the latest achievements in engineering, technology and labour organisation in industrial enterprises. In ten years the training shop has helped more than 8,000 schoolchildren to master diverse vocations. Every year half of the school graduates who pass through the training shop 62 find employment at the Kharkov Tractor Plant and other industrial enterprises in the district.
The Bratsk Ferro-Concrete Works, one of the major building-material producers in East Siberia, is also actively engaged in vocational training. The factory's engineers and advanced workers have replaced amateur circles by an organised system of vocational training. Together with their school-leaving certificates, the boys and girls are presented with diplomas as qualified electric welders, electric fitters, and crane operators. In the past eight years nearly 300 school-graduates have received such diplomas, and 121 of them decided to work in the chosen profession.
One important side of vocational orientation is to develop young people's interest in farm work. The rapid expansion of industry and the resulting urbanisation attract young people from the countryside to towns. The continual expansion of industrial production creates a constant demand for labour. At the same time, the mechanisation of agriculture reduces the need for manpower in the countryside. However, the army of agricultural workers needs to be continually replenished. So the job is to induce village young people to stay and work in agriculture.
The scientific and technological revolution in agriculture is helping to solve this problem. Young people willingly remain on collective and state farms which mechanise their production, improve the organisation of work, apply scientific discoveries and advanced methods, and take care of the farmers' cultural and living standards.
The 21st Party Congress Collective Farm in the Blagoveshchensk district, Altai Territory, is noted for its high cultural and living standards. There is a secondary school, a boarding-school, a House of Culture, a canteen, and a dispensary. In recent years the village has been completely modernised. Gas and running water have been extended to all homes, the streets are covered with asphalt and lined with trees, and there is a fine park. The Party and the Komsomol organisations are very efficient; there are three Komsomol-youth dairy farms, and many young people work as machine-operators and builders. Attention is focused on farm vocational training and the mechanisation of work, which is becoming better organised, more efficient and better 63 paid. There are diverse opportunities for recreation. The House of Culture and the libraries sponsor all kinds of circles and sports competitions. The local branches of the Voluntary Society for Assisting Army, Air Force and Navy and the Nature Protection Society are very popular. Work and life in general on the collective farm is pervaded by an animated spirit. So it is not surprising that most schoolgraduates decide to stay on the farm, while those who continue their studies in institutes and secondary technical schools plan to return to the native village.
But this provides only one of the prerequisites for solving the problem. Vocational training and orientation of rural schoolchildren are indispensable. It has been proved in practice, in the same Altai Territory, for instance, that apprentice production teams are best fitted for the job of inducing young people to remain in their villages.
There are now 370 apprentice teams and nearly 100 school forestries in the Territory. The children grow grain and vegetables, and plant forest belts in the steppes. Scientists and specialists supervise their experimental work and help them to organise seed-farming. The best seed is sent to collective and state farms. The apprentice production teams bring in the best results when the heads and specialists of farms help them with machines, allocate fields, supply the seeds, and inspect their work.
A secondary school in Ust-Pristan district organised its apprentice team a few years ago. The team was given 100 hectares of arable land, a few tractors and other farm machines. The school has also opened a vocational club with sections of agronomy, cattle-breeding, mechanisation, tradesmanship and medicine. Experienced specialists help the children to conduct experiments, compile technological charts and organise field work. That draws the school and production closer together and serves as the foundation of vocational training. In the past five years more than 150 schoolgraduates have decided to stay and work in the nearby state farms; 38 graduates joined an agricultural institute.
In recent years the measures taken to raise the prestige of farm professions and the profound transformation of agricultural production have increased the proportion of young people engaged in farm work. In 1970, for instance, 64 there were 43,000 more Komsomol machine-operators than in 1969; the number of cattle-breeders increased by 18,000, and the number of specialists, by more than 12,000.
In addition, much attention is being paid to the development of young people's interest in services (trade, etc.). Until recently catering professions were not popular with young people. School-graduates preferred to work in industry, and there were few who agreed to work as sales assistants, cooks, and so on. Thus there was quite a shortage of people in these professions, while the demand was constantly rising because the Communist Party and the Soviet Government have decided to expand the sphere of services.
Fulfilling their responsible assignment from the Party, the Komsomol organisations have sent many young men and women to work in the sphere of services. They have explained to young people the importance of these professions from the viewpoint of the national economy and the interests of society; young people are now more favourably disposed towards entering the sphere of services, and are quite willing to work in catering professions. Young caterers hold gettogethers and arrange all kinds of competitions. During the eighth five-year period the number of young people in the sphere of services went up by 400,000, i.e., by nearly 30 per cent. Most of them work efficiently, thanks to the high level of their education, culture and upbringing. Many of them are quite enthusiastic about the new jobs which formerly they regarded as uninteresting.
Efficient vocational orientation and general labour training of schoolchildren help to recruit young people into new fields of national economy; they embark upon independent life with a developed interest in work and a deep understanding of the social and personal significance of labour--- the primary prerequisite for the labour enthusiasm of the young builders of communism.
The Soviet people regard educating the rising generation for labour as one of its fundamental tasks. Young people grow up worthy of the senior generations. Now, as always in the past, Soviet youth stands in the vanguard of communist construction.
[65] __ALPHA_LVL1__ YOUTH AND SPIRITUAL VALUES OF SOCIALISM __ALPHA_LVL2__ YOUTH AND CULTUREIn this age of scientific and technological revolution, and rising rates of development in science and engineering, the society puts increasingly greater demands on workers in all fields and branches of the economy. In the Central Committee's Report to the 24th Congress of the CPSU Leonid Brezhnev said: "Modern production sets rapidly rising demands not only on machines, on technology, but also and primarily on the workers, on those who create these machines and control this technology. For ever larger segments of workers specialised knowledge and a high degree of professional training, man's general cultural standard, are becoming an obligatory condition of successful work.''^^1^^
These demands are of prime concern to young people. Young people who start life today will still be working in the 1980s and in the 21st century. The Soviet Union's rates of scientific, technological, economic and social progress greatly depend on the training which young people get and the degree to which they avail themselves of socialist culture. This is why the questions of culture and the propagation of socialist spiritual values are such urgent ones.
The 24th Congress of the CPSU devoted much attention to this fact and discussed the matter in detail.
The Leninist Young Communist League has always been concerned with the cultural level of Soviet youth. This care _-_-_
~^^1^^ 24th Congress of the CPSU, Moscow, 1971, p. 51.
__PRINTERS_P_65_COMMENT__ 5---411 66 was most vividly expressed in the resolution of the 16th Congress of the YCL in May 1970.What access to the spiritual values of the socialist society does Soviet youth have? What does it mean to be a man of culture today? What contribution does Soviet youth make to cultural development?
Sometimes we use the word ``culture'' in a very narrow sense. It is often claimed that to be cultured is simply to know how to behave in society and to adhere to generally accepted norms of relations between people; others imagine that culture consists in knowledge. True, all these are essential features of a cultured man, but it would be utterly wrong to reduce culture to behaviour or a mere sum of knowledge.
We often talk about culture in production, everyday life and behaviour, as well as physical culture and cultural interests in leisure. We also regard culture as the basis of man's spiritual values and the all-round development of his personality. But what is the actual definitive meaning of this concept?
The principal human characteristic which sets us apart from animals are our efforts to transform our world, and our ability to work towards a goal. It is labour that has made man and created all the material and spiritual values of society.
Labour has created the whole of human culture. Culture means, first and foremost, activity; in all spheres of culture, whether material or spiritual, we find positive human activity. A. V. Lunacharsky pointed out that "man not only dresses, makes instruments, builds houses, towns, and so on, but also lays out parks and gardens around his towns, changes the direction of rivers and the boundaries of seas, creates straits and isthmuses where there were none before, and thus forges a life which is in harmony with all the spiritual demands of the self-made man".^^1^^
But does culture embrace all human activities? Certainly not. These activities can be directed towards the creation of material and spiritual values, but they can just as easily _-_-_
~^^1^^ A. V. Lunacharsky on Public Education, Moscow, 1958, p. 86 (in Russian).
67 be aimed at the destruction of these same values. Only such creative activity which produces socially significant values can be referred to as culture.In the words of the philosophers, human activity in the sphere of culture is materialised in the form of material and spiritual values. These values reflect both man's spiritual interests and the social relations of his time. This is why even the relics of ancient civilisations are sufficient to give us an idea of what their social relations, customs, morals and traditions were like. Man, the creator of culture, is at the same time its principal object. The individual develops and enriches his spiritual life by absorbing cultural values and norms.
``The concept `culture','' wrote the prominent author Heinrich Mann, "means concern,---concern for people.''^^1^^ In the final count, all products of culture serve to coin a definite type of human personality. It is precisely in this sense that we talk about man as the subject (creator) and object of culture. Culture has many aspects. In the first place, it is subdivided into material culture and spiritual culture. A stone or a bronze sculpture, a painting or an ornamental vase are, naturally, material enough, but since they are designed to satisfy the spiritual demands of society, we classify them as spiritual values.
In the case of material culture, its products go primarily towards satisfying the material requirements of society. Material culture encompasses not only the material results of man's activity, but also the knowledge, skill and ability necessary to produce them.
These differences between material and spiritual culture are, of course, relative. Let us take, for example, monuments of architecture: they are referred to as both the material and spiritual values of society because they satisfy housing needs while, at the same time, they are works of art.
Thus science, which is the potent spiritual force behind production, increasingly turns into a direct material productive force.
_-_-_~^^1^^ Heinrich Mann, ``Kultur'', in Verteidigung der Kultur. Antifaschistische Streitschrijten und Essays, Aufbau Verlag, Berlin und Weimar, 1971, S. 1G2.
68In the future, it seems that the dividing line between material and spiritual culture will become more obscure, because a growing number of material values will serve to satisfy spiritual (aesthetic, for instance) demands.
The following pages will be devoted to spiritual culture.
Man, in the process of his activity, incarnates the treasures of his spiritual world in the form of cultural values. On the other hand, having acquired these values, people use them to enrich their inner world.
However, we have not yet clarified the essence of culture. Culture is also a norm of life and behaviour, and includes norms of morality. A man of culture in socialist society not only possesses great knowledge; he also acts in conformity with the norms of this society.
Thus, as we see, spiritual culture is a complicated thing. It encompasses not only man's activity in creating spiritual values, but also the distribution and consumption of these values. To this end society establishes schools, theatres, clubs, philharmonic societies, libraries, cinemas.
Proceeding then from what we have said, we believe that it is possible to regard spiritual culture as the human creative activity which is subject to the mode of material production and in the process of which people produce, accumulate, distribute and consume spiritual values; we can regard culture as the sum total of these values and norms which materialise people's creative activities.
In the society divided into antagonistic classes there can be only class spiritual cultures. In his Critical Remarks on the National Question Lenin brilliantly proved that the two cultures in capitalist society---reactionary and democratic--- are irreconcilable. This is because spiritual culture is based on a definite world outlook, on a definite class ideology. Proceeding from its ideology, the bourgeoisie proclaims works, which are actually alien to the people's interests, as spiritual values of society. Bourgeois culture is just as hostile to proletarian culture as the bourgeois ideology and morality, on which bourgeois culture rests, is hostile to proletarian ideology and morality.
Bourgeois ideologists, from downright reactionaires to liberals, deny the class opposition of the two cultures in the modern world, and proclaim the unity of world or, at 69 least, European culture. All the latest theories---opposition of mass culture to culture for the elite, culture for youth and culture for adults---are calculated to gloss over the class struggle in the spiritual life of modern society and the confrontation of the two ideologies.
The founders of Marxism-Leninism always approached culture from a class angle and showed what class this or that culture serves and what type of individual it moulds. The class approach is the basis, the living soul of the entire Marxist-Leninist teaching on culture.
Soviet youth readily absorbs socialist culture. Youth is an essential segment of the Soviet society which is united politically and morally. This is not so in the capitalist countries. Young people there, like the whole of their society, are divided into antagonistic classes. Try as they may, the bourgeois sociologists will never succeed in glossing over the irreconcilable antagonism between the bourgeoisie and young workers; this antagonism will last as long as the capitalist system exists. Bourgeois sociologists usually reduce the specific character of young people to psychological and physiological peculiarities. The West German sociologist F. Tenbruck, for instance, claims that youth is simply "a definite age, characterised by certain biological and psychological relations and, consequently, by all the peculiarities of that age class".^^1^^ Other bourgeois sociologists even place the youth as a whole, irrespective of its social composition, into a class of its own which is supposed to be confronting the whole adult society.^^2^^ Bourgeois sociologists accordingly refer to a youth ``subculture'' which they regard as international, non-class and applicable to all young people irrespective of the social system in their countries or the class and national affiliations of the various sections of which they are made up.
In any antagonistic class society the real struggle is waged between the confronting cultures of the combating classes and not between age ``subcultures''.
_-_-_~^^1^^ F. Tenbruck, Jugend und Geselhchaft, Freiburg, 1962, S. 52.
~^^2^^ G. Schwartz, D. Merten, "The Language of Adolescence'', The American Journal of Sociology, Chicago, Vol. 72, No. 5, March 1967 pp. 453--08.
70Though the dominating bourgeois culture doubtlessly influences young working people in bourgeois society, the conditions of capitalist production and the bourgeois way of life bring conscientious young people into irreconcilable conflict with the bourgeois culture rather than with the imaginary culture of their adults. Young working people absorb the fine traditions of their fathers and join the struggle against the bourgeois system and its culture.
It is precisely this preparation for independent activity that differentiates youth from other groups in society. Young people first absorb the spiritual values created by the preceding generations, and on the basis of these they mature. Their social and spiritual make-up depends on the kind of culture they absorb. Bourgeois sociologists ignore this and depict the young person as someone ``free'' of society, who fashions his own culture.
In opposing the bourgeois theories of "youth subculture" we do not deny that there are salient peculiarities in the cultural development of the rising generation. Rather than talking about a special youth culture different from the culture of the given class, the real point is the specific means of access for young people to this culture, the particular way in which young people absorb its values and norms.
Socialism, which is the first stage of communism, still retains class distinctions and this is why in analysing Soviet youth, we single out different segments and groups of it--- young working people, urban and rural, young collective farmers, young intellectuals, young workers in the sphere of services and students. However, the principal and decisive factors are the features which all these groups and segments have in common, while the differences are relative and not so consequential. The reason for this lies in the political and moral unity of the socialist society. Socialist culture, too, is common to the entire nation and constitutes an integral whole. In origin and content this culture is the culture of the working class and as such it has been adopted by all the social groups of the socialist society. Thus it has provided, for the first time in mankind's history, a common culture for society as a whole. From the very first years of conscious life all segments of Soviet youth adopt this culture. Soviet 71 youth is multinational; young people are educated in their native tongue, they read their own national literature, and so on, and thus they absorb a socialist culture which is unified in content.
In socialist society the different cultural levels of youth groups are expressed not in terms of the content of culture, but merely in terms of the degree to which they have absorbed it and the intensity of their independent creative activity in this cultural sphere.
Man draws on the riches of culture all his life. There is always room for developing his intellect and knowledge. A man who stops in his development inevitably falls back, because culture is not a ready stock of knowledge and skill, but a continuous process of human activity. In the Central Committee's Report to the 24th Congress of the CPSU Leonid Brezhnev said: "Today progress is so swift in all fields that the education received by young people is only a foundation that requires the constant acquisition of knowledge."^^1^^ However, the foundations of a man's cultural progress are laid in his youth. It is then that he develops his character and acquires knowledge and definite norms of behaviour.
On the one hand, the young man absorbs the existing values in the socialist society and the benefits and norms of its culture, as well as imbibing the experience of the preceding generations. On the other, by embarking upon life and participating in creative work, he begins himself to create spiritual values and contribute to the development of culture.
Such bilateral participation of youth in cultural activities is pregnant with complications and contradictions. Today young people are better educated and technically qualified than the preceding generations. Their living standards are also much higher.
As a result of better living standards, medical services and other factors, young people today mature on the average two or three years sooner than 15 or 20 years ago. But their social maturity is somewhat retarded, partly owing to the longer time needed for education. This gap, of course, is _-_-_
~^^1^^ 24th Congress of the CPSU, Moscow, 1971, p. 103,
72 not the main reason for the basic contradictions in the spiritual formation of young people, but it cannot be wholly discarded.Meanwhile public life over the past few decades has become extremely complicated. The rates of social progress are very high, there is intense class struggle in the world arena, and a stream of today's political, scientific, artistic and other information has acquired new quality. All this goes to underline how important it is that young people be educated and imbibe the experience of the preceding generations.
The task facing Soviet youth today is to absorb not only the great cultural values created in the past, but also (and this is the main thing) the culture of socialism. It would be wrong to assume that only schools and other educational establishments help them to absorb these values; the process goes on in the course of their public activities---at work, in the family, at the club and within the confines of the numerous youth and other public organisations.
The spiritual wealth of the young man's personality can be developed only in the course of practical routine participation in all spheres of social life. This spiritual wealth cannot be reduced merely to the scope of his knowledge, but is assessed on the basis of his diverse social activity. A spiritually rich man not only accumulates spiritual values, he generously shares them with others and employs his knowledge in practical work in some field of communist construction.
The deciding role in helping Soviet young people to acquire the wealth of spiritual culture is played by the Leninist Komsomol, which is implementing Lenin's behests to help them to acquire "all modern knowledge".^^1^^ Even while the Civil War was still raging in the country, the Komsomol cells opened schools and literacy courses, sent their best functionaries to conduct cultural work in villages, and founded young workers' clubs and theatres. Komsomol organisations played a decisive role in recruiting students for workers' secondary schools and _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, On Youth, Moscow, 1970, p. 242.
73 training young intellectuals from among workers and peasants.It is moving to read the yellowing newspapers and documents from the archives about the great role of the YCL in the Soviet Union's cultural revolution. In April 1921 Uralsky Rabochiy, for instance, reported that the YCLers of the Yekaterinburg (now Sverdlovsk) district No. 1 were the first in the Urals to completely eliminate illiteracy in their area.^^1^^ In 1929 the Perm district YCL Committee mobilised one thousand young workers and as many students to eliminate illiteracy. In the same year the YCLers taught more than 25,000 people in the Urals to read and write. In 1926 a quarter of the reading-rooms in Ural villages were supervised by YCLers.
The YCLers of today have developed and augmented these wonderful traditions. The Komsomol conducts cultural and educational work on enormous scope among all segments of Soviet youth. Komsomol and art organisations are opening new youth hobby clubs, studios and literary associations. Youth and children's theatres, youth publishing houses and newspapers are directly guided in their work by Komsomol organisations. In the period from May 1966 to May 1970, i.e., between the 15th and 16th congresses of the YCL, the Komsomol sponsored the All-Union Review of Young Composers, the Festival of Youth and Children's Films, the Exhibition of Young Artists, the Theatrical Festival devoted to the 50th anniversary of the YCL, and the Festival of Youth Songs. There ?re regular all-Union, republican and regional conferences of young writers. In the period between 1966 and 1970, nearly 20 million young readers took part in the all-Union readers' conferences sponsored by the Komsomol. From 1966 on, outstanding young scientists, writers and art workers have been awarded Leninist Komsomol prizes.
All this is only part of everyday organisational and educational work conducted by the Komsomol in helping youth to become spiritually rich persons.
How, then, does Soviet youth acquire the spiritual wealth of socialist culture in practice?
_-_-_^^1^^ Uralsky Rnbochiy, 1921, April 24.
74 __ALPHA_LVL2__ THE RISING EDUCATIONAL LEVEL OF YOUTHThe young man's spiritual culture depends, first and foremost, on his general and specialised education. Lenin regarded it as the most important task of the cultural revolution to raise the educational level of the masses, as the basis for the development of socialist culture as a whole. During a conversation with Clara Zetkin, he said: "... We put foremost public education and training on the biggest scale. It creates a basis for culture.''^^1^^
Education involves many important social functions. It acquaints the young man with a definite system of knowledge of the surrounding world (general education), and gives him the knowledge indispensable for some kind of work (special education), and knowledge about society and its development (political and economic education). The process of education shapes a definite type of human personality with a definite world outlook. Thanks to education, the national economy is provided with qualified specialists, the spiritual values accumulated by mankind are passed from one generation to another and thus the liaison between the generations is maintained. Education helps man to understand the whole system of social relations and to absorb social information.
Besides the systematic acquirement of knowledge in special institutions (formal education), the society also offers opportunities for self-education in line with personal inclinations and wishes.
Naturally, even higher education does not make a cultured man in the full sense of the word. But it serves as the basis for acquiring culture. Moreover, as distinct from other components of culture, the formal level of education can easily be assessed.
Ever since the foundation of the socialist state, the Party, the Komsomol and the Soviet Government, implementing Lenin's behests, have always shown great concern for the education of Soviet people, primarily the younger generation. In the past few decades the general level of education among youth has risen sharply. According to the spot checks _-_-_
~^^1^^ Lenin on Literature and Art, Moscow, 1970 p. 253.
75 which were made early in 1936 among workers under 25 in some Soviet industries, the picture in the engineering industry was as follows: 0.4 per cent were illiterate, 13.5 per cent had incomplete primary education, 39.2 per cent had full primary education, 43.5 per cent had incomplete secondary education and only 3.4 per cent, complete secondary education. In a comparatively short while the picture changed completely, and the educational level of youth, particularly of its most progressive section---young workers--- was raised to unbelievable heights!At the beginning of the Eighth Five-Year Plan 26.8 per cent of young workers at the region's industrial enterprises remained with incomplete secondary education, but by 1970 the number had dropped down to 15.2 per cent. It is significant that an increasing number of young workers acquired complete secondary education. Today young workers engaged in the region's engineering and instrument-making industries, transport and communications have on the average an 8-- class education, while those in metallurgy, have an average education of 8 1/2 classes.^^1^^ In 1959 only 386 per 1,000 workers had secondary (complete or incomplete) education compared with over 550 in 1970. In the same year (1970) half the rural population had secondary or higher education. In Sverdlovsk Region 47.8 per cent of young villagers between 20 and 29 have an incomplete secondary education, 29 per cent have a complete secondary, special secondary or higher education (complete or incomplete), and only 23.2 per cent have an education of less than eight classes. It would be well to recall here that, according to the first Soviet census, in 1926, only 1.5 per cent of those engaged in manual labour had at most an incomplete secondary education.
In 1971 some 79 million people in the Soviet Union were involved in diverse forms of education. Of these more than 49 million went to general schools, 4.5 million, to higher educational establishments, and 4.3 million, to special secondary schools.
_-_-_~^^1^^ We selected Chelyabinsk Region as our example because it is one of the most developed industrial centres in the Soviet Union. The data, however, is typical for all young workers in the country.
76The upsurge of general education in the Soviet Union was a decisive factor in the general advancement made by socialist culture.
General education does not imply a mere assimilation of a definite volume of knowledge or information accumulated over a few thousand years. General education also implies the acquirement of the habits, skill and methods involved in the practical utilisation of knowledge. It must instruct man how to gain new knowledge independently and show him the way to self-education. Finally, another aim of education is to develop the rational sphere of human cognition and its emotional comprehension of the universe, i.e., to broaden the cultural gamut of human sensation. It is thanks to education that man can find his way in the diverse fields of production and public life. The process of education is inseparably linked with the development of the new man and the transformation of his knowledge into convictions.
The Party has assigned Soviet secondary schools and schools of higher learning the task of bringing up builders of communist society, who are both educated and convinced of their mission.
Bourgeois sociologists hypocritically deny that there is any link between education and politics. The West German bourgeois sociologist E. Weber says, for example, that "it (education.---Ed.) must be ... free and independent of everything; independent of politics, ideology and social influences of the times. In this sense education is above party influences, and unifies all groups of society.''^^1^^ Such theories are designed to veil the class nature of bourgeois schools, the social selection which prevents young working-class people from getting a higher education, and the subjection of all school education to the propaganda of the capitalist way of life. According to UNESCO, only one out of every four people in the world gets a primary education, and one out of twelve, a secondary education. In the FRG, France, Britain and some other countries only 20 to 25 per cent of young people, mostly from the ruling classes, get the education which gives them the right to matriculate in universities.
_-_-_^^1^^ E. Weber, Das Freizeitproblem, Miinchen/Basel, 1963, S. 320.
77School education (including higher educational establishments) gives only the fundamentals of knowledge, and teaches man the habits of independent work which subsequently help him to replenish his knowledge.
The Directives on the Five-Year Economic Development Plan of the USSR for 1971--75 set the task of completing the transition to universal secondary education. Today already nearly 80 per cent of graduates from 8-year schools subsequently complete secondary education, either in general schools (day or night), which will continue to supply the majority of graduates with secondary education, or in special secondary schools. These are now supplemented by vocational schools which will gradually adopt the curriculum of the secondary school and graduate skilled workers with a secondary education. The vocational schools are destined to play a significant role in the transition to universal complete secondary education.
Day schools are supplemented by all kinds of secondary and higher correspondence courses which are quickly spreading throughout the country. In the 1969/70 academic year there were some 8,335,000 people taking these courses.
The composition of the student body in evening schools has undergone a change in recent years. The majority of pupils now are under 25, the number of pupils in the primary classes has dropped sharply, while in the senior classes it has gone abruptly up (from 192,000 in 1950/51 to 2,991,000 in 1969/70).
What prompts these people to spend a good portion of their leisure time on education? Firstly the scientific and technological revolution. New techniques, technology and organisation of production require much better skill, greater knowledge and a different mental outlook.
An increasing number of professions requires secondary and even special secondary education. Economists predict that in the next decade the proportion of professions requiring secondary education and additional vocational training will increase sharply. Skilled and highly qualified workers will constitute more than a half of the expected increase in the work force. A number of them will come from vocational schools providing secondary education and high production skills.
78A growing number of graduates from secondary schools will enrol in vocational schools where they will master different professions. Finally, the ranks of the working class will be replenished by graduates from secondary technical schools. That will help to eliminate the disparity between the education and production skill of some workers.
The production and technical aspects of education are increasingly supplemented by various social requirements. Life in Soviet society demands a high level of education. It is needed for effective management and planning of production, participation in public activities, as well as for rationalisation work and inventions. You cannot creatively absorb the swelling volume of information, nor can you bring up children or effectively engage in other social activities without a sound education. To put it briefly, a man must have a high level of education to measure up to his civic duties as a full-fledged master of his country. In addition, a man's prestige among his friends and acquaintances also depends on his education. Today the socialist society regards education as one of its most treasured values.
The social demand for a higher level of education is just as strong as that of production. This is substantiated by the results of a poll conducted in 1967--69 by sociologists from the USSR Academy of Sciences' Urals research centre, at 12 metallurgical, chemical, engineering and electrical equipment enterprises in Sverdlovsk Region. In order to find the ratio between the production and the social demands for education they analysed the motives of 1,513 young workers who had enrolled in evening schools. It turned out that 10.9 per cent of them were motivated by production reasons, while 51.7 per cent were prompted by social demands.
We verified the results by employing a different method. In our interviews with workers under 30, we asked them whether they regarded their education as adequate for production assignments and diverse social activities. The interviews were conducted at four enterprises in Sverdlovsk Region: the Sredne-Uralskaya Power Station, the Pervouralsk Pipe Factory, the Medicines Factory, and the Engineering Plant (Sverdlovsk). We selected one out of every 79 ten workers submitting our questions to a total of 796 people. Only 10.4 per cent said that their education was inadequate for production requirements; 51.8 per cent considered their education insufficient for improving production techniques. Many felt unprepared for effective participation in the management and planning of production.
Thus the development of science and engineering, combined with the whole system of socialist relations are stimulating Soviet youth to raise the level of their education. The swelling volume of political, scientific and aesthetic information calls for the improvement of teaching methods in schools. The secondary school gives its pupils essential knowledge in science and engineering so that graduates can feel themselves at home in special educational establishments and training courses at production enterprises. This was precisely what the classics of MarxismLeninism implied by saying that polytechnical education was the most important foundation of the individual's spiritual wealth.
Polytechnical education provides the fundamentals of modern production, shows the importance of science for the development of production, imparts the simple habits involved in engineering skill, and inculcates respect for mental and manual labour. Polytechnical education is the essential basis for the acquirement of professions.
By acquainting young people with the fundamentals of modern production, polytechnical education helps them to choose a profession to their liking with due regard for the interests of society.
Lenin said that polytechnical education "gives theoretical and practical knowledge of all the principal fields of production".^^1^^ He said that it was wrong to give professional training to children under 16, and stressed that from the viewpoint of the Party's Programme, the education should be polytechnical.^^2^^ This is precisely the road taken by Soviet general schools.
_-_-_~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, On Education, 2nd Edition, Moscow, pp. 227, 290 (in Russian).
~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 517.
80 __ALPHA_LVL2__ THE INDIVIDUAL'S SPIRITUAL WEALTHThe people who are building the communist society are also changing in the process. "A great project---the building of communism---cannot be advanced without the harmonious development of man himself,'' said Leonid Brezhnev. "Communism is inconceivable without a high level of culture, education, sense of civic duty and inner maturity of people, just as it is inconceivable without the appropriate material and technical basis.''^^1^^
The final stage of the cultural revolution in the USSR has as its goal the harmonious development of the individual. This, as we know, implies development of spiritual wealth, moral purity and physical perfection. It is therefore incorrect to put an equation mark between the individual's spiritual wealth and his harmonious development. The relation between them is as between the part and the whole. Spiritual wealth is the cardinal component of the harmoniously developed individual; but there are many other things besides that go to make the personality.
The phrase "intellectual culture" is often used instead of "spiritual wealth" of the personality. We believe that the two phrases are synonymous. Intellectual culture, as we see it, does not imply affiliation with a specific social group---the intelligentsia; rather, it is the endowment of great intellect and spiritual wealth. Any man---worker, peasant---endowed with these high qualities can be considered an intellectually cultured person. The intellectual culture of Soviet people is constantly advancing.
Active interest in political problems and participation in production, social and political activities. Contrary to bourgeois ``culturologists'' who place culture outside the sphere of politics, we regard political activity as the essential component of the spiritual wealth of any individual who regards himself as a builder of communism. By political activity we imply, of course, not only regular newspaper reading and absorption of information from lectures, radio, television and other mass media, not only profound study of Marxist-Leninist theory and its components, _-_-_
~^^1^^ 24th Congress of the CPSU, Moscow, 1971, p. 100.
81 but also active and personal participation in implementing the policy of the CPSU---building communism. Political activity can be embodied in various forms---from work in elective bodies to regular social assignments. Man's cultural development is inherently connected with the intensification of his public and political activities and his participation in responsible social affairs. The new economic reform provides all workers, including young men, with ample opportunities to help manage the economic and social affairs of their enterprises.Young people are widely represented in the elective bodies of industrial enterprises. According to the versatile data collected at 62 enterprises in all branches of industry in Chelyabinsk Region, young people under 30 account for 10.6 per cent of elected Party functionaries, 24.2 per cent of trade union functionaries, 98.9 per cent of Komsomol functionaries, and 23.7 per cent of functionaries on Soviets.
Schools also encourage social activities among their pupils.
Komsomol organisations encourage juveniles to participate in social activities and teach them concern for the interests of society.
It has been proved in practice that social and political activity is conducive to success in work, and in all social fields, including that of cultural advancement.
Scientific Marxist ideology. A spiritually endowed man is one who adheres to a consistent scientific ideology, a staunch propagator of Marxism-Leninism in whatever sphere he works. By ideology we do not mean a spontaneous world outlook resulting from objective conditions of life, but a conscientious and systematised world outlook which comes from a deep understanding of the Marxist-Leninist classics and becomes a man's firm conviction.
This scientific outlook is worked out on the basis of all the components of Marxism-Leninism, the quintessence of which is given in dialectical and historical materialism---the science of the most general laws of the universe and the prevalent methodology in the study of natural and social phenomena.
Bourgeois theories on culture draw a dividing line between culture and world outlook, between culture and ideology. Some bourgeois ``culturologists'' even exclude __PRINTERS_P_81_COMMENT__ 6---411 82 ideology from the very concept culture. Marxism, on the other hand, avers that it is ideology that determines the character of the individual's spiritual values. It is not a question of acquiring a bookish knowledge of MarxismLeninism, one must learn how to apply its principles in practice. The practical implementation of Marxist theory is shown by an irreconcilable attitude to bourgeois ideology in politics, philosophy, the arts, and so on.
The essential source of spiritual values in socialist society is a consistent scientific ideology.
High level of general and special education, continual self-education and acquisition of new knowledge. We have already stressed the role of education in culture. The individual cannot accumulate spiritual values without education, nor does this harmonious development run counter to specialisation. Division of labour according to professions will remain even in advanced communist society when labour has become socially homogeneous. The spiritually endowed man, therefore, is always a specialist with a profound special knowledge. But this specialisation is combined with general development and knowledge in allied and relatively remote fields of science, arts and engineering. General development and specialisation are not antipodes, but merely different aspects of the individual's spiritual development. Regrettably some specialists in different fields of natural science and technology are completely ignorant of various fields in the arts, and those in the humanities are ignorant of the natural sciences. This does not mean, of course, that a chemist should simultaneously be an art critic or that a teacher, say, of literature should be equally versed in physics and mathematics. We are speaking about man's general outlook, a range of his knowledge. A man spiritually endowed should, irrespective of his particular specialisation, show interest in the latest achievements of the natural and humanitarian sciences. This is precisely what we mean by the general development and outlook of the individual.
The man spiritually endowed is always dissatisfied with his stock of knowledge. This dissatisfaction prompts him to continue his self-education. In his address to young people, the great Russian physiologist, I. P. Pavlov, said, "Never assume that you have learned everything there is to learn. 83 However highly people appreciate you, always find courage to say: I am an ignoramus.''^^1^^
Emotional tact. Culture of emotions. In addition to comprehensive knowledge, spiritual values also incorporate the great world of the individual's emotions. It would be extremely difficult to enumerate all human emotions; love of nature and its beauty, feelings of friendship, love, paternal care, admiration for human genius, anger, hatred, scorn, disdain for sycophants, hypocrites and cowards. The more is a man endowed spiritually, the richer is his emotional life.
Sometimes people wrongly oppose emotions to wisdom and knowledge. We see in practice that the development of the intellect and the acquirement of new knowledge have a direct effect on man's emotional life. Just think of the great joy and aesthetic pleasure which, for instance, a scientist feels when he succeeds in proving a theorem which has been a stumbling block for many generations of mathematicians!
His knowledge of the subject enables the scientist to gain aesthetic pleasure from his discoveries.
Spiritual culture represents a single whole; all its elements are inseparably linked together. In the same way science, as well as other creative activities, is also inseparably connected with man's emotions. This is why creative work gives such pleasure and produces emotions. When labour becomes a vital need, it enhances the aesthetic pleasure which a man derives from work.
What do we understand by "culture of feelings"? The prominent Soviet dramatist V. Rozov aptly compared our feelings to a steed "which all of a sudden defies its rider's control, rears up and dashes away headlong''. The ability to govern oneself, bridle one's emotions and subject them to reason is essential to culture of feelings, which implies besides tact, wealth of colour, and spontaneous and immediate emotional reaction.
The 20th century is often called the age of reason, the age of science. But it is also the age of rich emotions, the age of intense emotional life. This is why culture of feelings _-_-_
~^^1^^ I. P. Pavlov, Selected Works, Moscow, 1949, p. 51 (in Russian).
84 is an inalienable attribute of the spiritually endowed personality.Aesthetic development of the individual. It would be wrong to limit aesthetic breeding to the sphere of human emotions. Aesthetic breeding makes a tangible impact on the mind and fashions of the individual as an integral whole. Aesthetic education and its primary component---education in the arts---is a complicated process which includes three basic elements:~
a) a study of aesthetics, the theory and history of art and its components;~
b) absorption of the aesthetic values of life and art;~
c) independent participation in the creation of aesthetic values.
All these components of aesthetic education are closely intertwined; no single one of them can on its own ensure the efficient aesthetic development of the individual. As far back as the end of the 18th century Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher, pointed out that art (and other forms of aesthetic perception) cannot be put in terms of conceptions. Just try, for instance, to retell Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata! On the other hand, however, we cannot talk about art without the help of conceptions and words. Hence aesthetic perception is no substitute for theoretical analysis, and vice versa. In this age of radio, television, cinema, the press, records, and painting reproductions it is probably impossible to find anyone who remains uninfluenced by art in some way or other.
But does art merely provide the background of man's dayto-day activities or is it an important component of his intimate world, his everyday spiritual life? To put it another way: how deeply does man absorb what is provided by art?
A comparison of various research results obtained in different towns and through different methods indicates that the great majority of young workers are highly interested in the arts.
So now it is not a question of bringing the arts within the reach of Soviet youth; the task is rather to cultivate their ability to perceive the aesthetic information contained in different arts and to develop aesthetic taste. Socialist art, 85 and for that matter, socialist spiritual culture as a whole, preserves everything great, progressive and valuable that has been created by world culture going right back to the ancient past. This cultural heritage is not consigned to museums; it is an actual living component of contemporary socialist culture. The great works of art, both past and present, are meant not for the elite or a group of ``connoisseurs'', but for the broad masses of the people, particularly young people, embarking upon life. Aesthetic education arms young people with an understanding of Russian and foreign classics, teaches them to admire great ideas and feelings. This means raising aesthetic requirements and deepening their content.
Culture of behaviour. Culture of behaviour is a significant aspect of man's spiritual wealth.
It cannot be reduced to observing the rules of etiquette. Its essence is conscious discipline and self-discipline in work and everyday life.
A distinctive feature of socialist labour discipline lies in the fact that it is founded not on external coercion or oppression but on the conviction that one must comply with the demands of the collective and the rules of the enterprise where one works, that one must fulfil one's duty both as a worker and a citizen. This conviction is an essential component of the spiritual wealth of Soviet youth.
Discipline, responsibility and sense of duty are essential features of the moral framework of young people.
A morally upright man is one who strictly adheres to the principles and norms of communist morality in his contacts with others and in everyday work and life. Only then do the moral norms express the man's spiritual wealth.
Morals are the control valve which regulates the manifestation of man's individual traits in his relations with other people. It is not by chance that moral qualities like discipline, modesty, lack of conceit and complacency, helpfulness, high sense of duty, collectivism, are usually outward signs of an individual's spiritual wealth. A man's moral convictions are closely connected with his legal consciousness, his respect for socialist laws and constant readiness to fight against the violators of those laws.
Such, in our opinion, are the main components which constitute the individual's spiritual wealth. In actual life 86 they are naturally interlinked, all working together and influencing one another.
Our analysis of the individual's spiritual wealth would be incomplete were we to ignore the creative activity of the young man and his participation in the creation of socialist cultural values. This topic deserves to be discussed under a separate heading.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ KNOWLEDGE AND ABILITYIn their analysis of man's diverse cultural activities, bourgeois sociologists proceed from the wholly incorrect principle of "man as consumer''.
This principle is the cornerstone of the so-called mass culture theory. According to bourgeois sociologists, the culture of the masses, as distinct from a restricted "high culture" for the elite, is designed for the "average man in the street" whose cultural consumption is completely governed by the standards and cliches of industrial cultural output.
Mass culture not only serves the tastes of mediocre people, but it is designed (and that is precisely its main purport) to breed mediocre, one-dimension consumer man, bereft of creative potency and social activity, and is therefore welcomed by the ruling bourgeois circles.
Mass culture is an instrument for governing people, for conditioning them. Through it the bourgeoisie controls the thoughts and actions of millions of people; the `` consumerman'' formula has spread throughout the spheres of ideology and politics. Election candidates, political platforms and views are thrust upon people in the same manner as advertisements for merchandise.
All this is alien to the scientific socialist ideology, which affirms that man is primarily a creator. Karl Marx said, "history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims".^^1^^
The main purpose of the socialist cultural revolution is to enable first the majority of and then all the people to play an independent creative part in the development of socialist culture.
_-_-_~^^1^^ K. Marx, F. Engels, The Holy Family, Moscow, 1956, p. 125.
87Ideally the spiritually endowed individual not only absorbs spiritual values, but also takes an active part in creating them.
Creative work requires knowledge. However, one must also be capable of mastering the laws that govern the given kind of creative effort and of putting one's plans into effect.
In this age of scientific and technological revolution, the creative work of young people in the fields of science and engineering is acquiring particular importance. Today the results of this work are mainly to be seen in innovations and inventions, but there are also ample opportunities in research and development, and preparation of lectures, articles and booklets on urgent scientific and engineering problems.
Amateur engineering pursuits are of great importance. In designing and making radio and TV sets, motorcycles, electronic devices, etc., young people improve their knowledge of engineering, learn the principles of invention-work and familiarise themselves with scientific and technical literature. This explains why public design bureaus mushroomed all over the country in the 1960s. In these bureaus workers and engineers tackled many complicated engineering problems in their spare time.
Young people are increasingly contributing to the country's spiritual values. The average age of Soviet scientists is continually dropping and young people make up a significant portion of brain workers.
The number of people engaged in creative scientific and engineering work is growing. The number of innovators and inventors, for instance, went up from 555,000 in 1950 to 3,457,000 in 1969.
The spiritual world of young people is enriched by regular creative pursuits in science and engineering. Young innovators are distinguished for their higher cultural level. A poll conducted among young innovators at three enterprises in Chelyabinsk revealed that only 10.8 per cent of them had incomplete secondary education, 47.3 per cent had complete secondary education, 28.4 per cent had special secondary education, and 13.5 per cent complete or incomplete higher education; 91.9 per cent of them were involved in some form of education, 63.5 per cent subscribed to technical 88 magazines, 89.2 per cent read scientific and technical literature, 60.8 per cent were regular readers in technical libraries; only 27 per cent had a work record of less than 3 years.
A few years ago the YCLers of the Likhachev Car Plant in Moscow and the Urals Machinery Plant initiated a campaign for higher technical knowledge. One of the principal aims was to recruit more young people into active and independent creative work in science and engineering.
There are many other ways available for popularising creative technical work both in town and country. For though young people have a higher level of education, their share in innovations is smaller than that of other contingents of the work force. We investigated 61 enterprises in Chelyabinsk Region and found that though 7 to 9 per cent of the employees were involved in rationalisation work, only 3.9 to 5 per cent of the young workers (i.e., under 30) were so occupied. This can be put down to their lack of practical experience on the job.
Addressing the "24th Congress of the CPSU, the First Secretary of the YCL Central Committee Y. M. Tyazhelnikov said: "The task today is to work out a harmonious system of creative scientific and engineering pursuits for all ages and professional categories of young people. Every enterprise, every collective farm and state farm, every research and educational institution must provide adequate opportunities for creative pursuits for young workers and students.''^^1^^
This requires a whole network of amateur circles and associations in all fields of science and engineering in all urban and rural enterprises, clubs and cultural centres. The mobilisation of hundreds of thousands of young people for creative scientific and engineering pursuits will greatly contribute to the development of socialist culture.
Amateur art groups are the most popular form of creative activity. Some 13 million adults and 10 million schoolchildren are involved in them and their numbers are constantly increasing. In Sverdlovsk Region, for instance, they went up from 124,000 in 1965 to 275,500 in 1970, and this was accompanied by a rise in standards as well. There has been _-_-_
~^^1^^ Pravda, April 4, 1971.
89 a marked increase in the number of people's theatres (drama, opera and ballet), circuses, film studios, amateur associations of writers and poets, artists, composers, and ornamentalists, and even people's conservatoires. Some of them have reached professional standards. The People's Opera Theatre at the Metallurgists' Palace of Culture of the VerkhIset Plant in Sverdlovsk has successfully produced a number of Soviet and classical operas; the Ballet Theatre at the Palace of Culture of the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant has won fame throughout the Soviet Union; the student ensemble from vocational schools in Sverdlovsk Region even made a tour abroad.However, not all art fans are yet involved in amateur associations. There are boundless opportunities for encouraging amateur arts. For instance, a poll conducted among young workers of the Urals Machinery Plant and the Medicines Factory in Sverdlovsk revealed that some 40 or 62 per cent wanted to play a musical instrument, 18--20 per cent, to learn to sing, 14 per cent, to act on the stage, and 11--21 per cent, to learn to recite verse.
At the dawn of the revolution Lenin pointed out the importance of amateur creative work. "It's wonderful,'' he said, "when our workers write plays ... act on the stages of their own clubs, when they exhibit their own creative work and make progress in all arts.''^^1^^
The founder of the Communist Party drew no dividing line between artistic performance and script writing; he viewed them as an integral whole, but accentuated "creative work" in all forms of art.
To these two forms of creative amateur work on the part of young people we should add the voluntary work done by hundreds of thousands of young men and women as cultural organisers, editors and members of editorial boards of wall and factory newspapers, propagandists, canvassers, lecturers, directors of amateur circles and sports sections. The majority of higher educational establishments have opened departments of social professions where future specialists---engineers, doctors, teachers, agronomists---are trained as culture propagandists.
_-_-_~^^1^^ Lenin on Literature and Art, p. 712 (in Russian).
90The army of culture propagandists is swelling, and its contribution to the general development of the socialist culture is increasing. They play a particularly great role in raising cultural standards in the countryside.
The further development of socialist culture is tied up with the constant expansion of creative activities for the people in the sphere of culture. In the Central Committee's Report to the 24th Congress of the CPSU Leonid Brezhnev said that "in addition to giving the working masses broad access to cultural values, socialism has made them the direct makers of culture".^^1^^
_-_-_~^^1^^ 24th Congress of the CPSU, Moscow, 1971, p. 107.
[91] __ALPHA_LVL1__ YOUTH PARTICIPATE IN STATE AFFAIRS __ALPHA_LVL2__ [introduction.]A sequel of the Soviet people's successful advance along the road of communism is the rising role of the state in solving the tasks faced by society. The Communist Party is constantly improving the entire political organisation of the socialist society and consolidating the Soviet state. In the Central Committee's Report to the 24th Congress of the CPSU Leonid Brezhnev said: "The principal orientation of this work---in accordance with the tasks of communist construction---has been and remains the further development of socialist democracy.''^^1^^
There is an indissoluble interconnection and a certain mutual conditionality between the evolution of socialist democracy and the consolidation of the state. No strengthening of the entire political structure of society is possible without the harmonious development of democracy. The consolidation of the Soviet state, in turn, supplies the prerequisites for the further harmonious development of socialist democracy. This is shown by the progressively growing role and rise in the authority of the representative organs of state power---the Soviets of Working People's Deputies; it is also substantiated by the fact that an increasing number of the people are actively and directly participating in the administration of state and public affairs.
In the USSR there are all the essential conditions for every man to be socially active, to be a citizen in the loftiest sense _-_-_
^^1^^ 24th Congress of the CPSU, Moscow, 1971, p. 93.
92 of the word, to be personally concerned with the problems faced by socialist society and to bear his share of responsibility for the solution of such problems. The working people of the Soviet Union actively take part in drafting Soviet laws in which they express their will; the Soviet people are vitally interested in the observance of all the principles and rules laid down in these laws.The CPSU regards youth as a tremendous creative force in the national effort to build communism, a force which actively participates in the country's economic, cultural and political life. Every day of practical activity makes still stronger the conviction of Soviet young men and women in the deeply democratic essence of the Soviet society and state, and the fact that they are equal citizens and real masters of their country. Making use of their great rights and fulfilling their lofty duties, Soviet young people revere, guard and develop the democratic traditions of the socialist state.
The Leninist Komsomol, which unites more than 28 million young men and women in its ranks plays an eminent role in drawing young people into active social and political life and in administering state affairs. Today, as always in the past, the Leninist Komsomol is bringing up young men and women to be strict in the fulfilment of duties imposed upon them by the state; the Komsomol brings up active citizens.
The Resolution of the 24th CPSU Congress on the Central Committee's Report reads, "The Komsomol must make better use of the possibilities accorded it for drawing young men and women into broad participation in social life and in state, economic and cultural development.''^^1^^
The Communist Party has always stressed that it is very important to let youth and its vanguard---the Komsomol--- take part in state affairs. In determining the role of young people in this process, the Party has always proceeded from their place in the working-class revolutionary struggle. In his theoretical works Lenin gave much space to the various aspects of drawing young men and women into public life and the work of state organs.
_-_-_~^^1^^ 24th Congress of the CPSU, Moscow, 1971, p. 228.
93Lenin firmly believed that young people, particularly young workers, represented a mighty and potent force in the revolutionary transformation of society. He rejected all attempts to absolutise the peculiarities of youth as an age category, but he resolutely denounced all those who were afraid of youth or underestimated its role in the revolution, in the life of society and in state affairs. Lenin welcomed and encouraged young people, who developed an unprecedented desire, readiness and resolution to take part in state affairs.^^1^^
Even in the grim years of the Civil War when the young Soviet Republic was threatened by lethal danger Lenin paid great attention to the participation of young people in state affairs. In his article "All Out for the Fight Against Demkin!'', he wrote: "Fresh labour-power for the administration of the state and to carry out the tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat are rapidly emerging in the shape of the worker and peasant youth who are most earnestly, zealously and fervidly learning, digesting the new impressions of the new order, throwing off the husk of old, capitalist and bourgeois-democratic prejudices, and moulding themselves into even firmer Communists than the older generation.''^^2^^
Underlying that it was impossible to build communism without the active participation of young men and women in the administration of the socialist state---the main instrument of transition to a classless society---Lenin paid great attention to solving the problems involved in the practical mobilisation of youth for work in state organs, and he insisted that the same policy should be followed in the future as well. In this respect a prominent place belongs to the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR "On the Practical Training of Members of the Russian Young Communist League" signed by Lenin. The purpose of the Decree was to fortify the state machinery with new strength and to train new Soviet officials from among young workers and peasants.
Lenin's speech at the 3rd Congress of the Russian Young Communist League (RYCL) was accepted by the YCL as _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 30, p. 415.
~^^2^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 443.
94 its programme lor educating young men and women. The speech is one of the most fundamental theoretical documents of Marxism-Leninism on the role of youth in socialist society; it is a militant programme for bringing up the younger generation the communist way. In this speech Lenin concisely expressed his ideas about youth and its participation in public and political life and in the administration of state affairs. He said: "It was the task of the older generation to overthrow the bourgeoisie. The main task then was to criticise the bourgeoisie, arouse hatred of the bourgeoisie among the masses, and foster class-- consciousness and the ability to unite their forces. The new generation is confronted with a far more complex task. Your duty does not lie only in assembling your forces so as to uphold the workers' and peasants' government against an invasion instigated by the capitalists. Of course, you must do that; that is something you clearly realise, and is distinctly seen by the Communist. However, that is not enough. You have to build up a communist society.''^^1^^The delegates to the Congress accepted Lenin's ideas, set them down as programme theses in the documents adopted by the 3rd Congress of the RYCL, and mapped out the principal ways of implementing the ideas. The Programme of the RYCL, adopted by the Komsomol's 3rd Congress, underlined that "the solution of the problems of youth labour and education, which are of vital importance to the entire Soviet republic, is the cause of the whole working class, of the entire state. The RYCL takes part in the solution of all problems of principle which concern youth, it suggests new measures in this field, controls the implementation of published decrees,. .. sends its representatives to state organs and helps them by the efforts of its own organisational apparatus.''^^2^^
Later, too, Lenin stressed that young people should be the prime builders of the communist society, trained to administer that society, and that it was from the ranks of youth that the new forces would be drawn to administer the state.
Thus Lenin actively contributed to the elaboration of the _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 290.
~^^2^^ 3rd Congress of the RYCL, Moscow, 1929, p. 48 (in Russian).
95 principal ways and forms of youth and Komsomol participation in the administration of the state. Now these ways and forms are being developed further, becoming more effective and helping to ensure the widest possible participation of the younger generation in state affairs.Lenin's ideas are developed and embodied in the documents of the CC CPSU and the Soviet Government, and also in the everyday participation of Soviet youth in the country's public and political life. The Resolution of the CC CPSU "On the 50th Anniversary of the YCL and the Tasks of the Communist Upbringing of Youth" stresses the need to bring up young people capable of administering the state and society.^^1^^
In his speech at the Plenary Meeting of the YCL Central Committee in 1968, Leonid Brezhnev pointed out: "The Soviet system gives young people wide possibilities for public activity and for participation in affairs of state. One cannot imagine the work of our Soviets, trade unions and state institutions without the active participation of Komsomol members.''^^2^^
In recent years the state organs, primarily the Soviets of Working People's Deputies, have been paying increasing attention to bringing up youth the communist way and creating conditions for the harmonious development of the younger generation and its active participation in state affairs.
True to the behests of Lenin---the founder of the world's first socialist state---Soviet youth and the YCLers have always been among the first to defend the gains of socialism; they actively participate in the country's economic, political, public and cultural life. This growing social role of young people is a typical feature of the current stage in the perfection of Soviet socialist democracy. Soviet youth are administering the state, society and production together with their seniors.
One of the most important political rights of young people in the USSR is the right to take part in administering the _-_-_
~^^1^^ On the 50th Anniversary of the YCL and the Tasks of the Communist Upbringing of Youth, Resolution of the CC CPSU, Moscow, 1968, p. 6 (in Russian).
~^^2^^ L. I. Brezhnev, Following Lenin's Course, Moscow, 1972, p. 93.
96 state and society. This right stems from the guaranteed opportunities for all young men and women who have come of age to take part in the formation of the representative organs of state power---the Soviets of Working People's Deputies.The significance of this right can be gauged from the role and place of these organs in society and the state. Article 3 of the Constitution of the USSR reads:
``All power in the USSR belongs to the working people of town and country as represented by the Soviets of Working People's Deputies.''
The Communist Party pays particular attention to the local Soviets and their role. As evidence of this, we can point to the CPSU Central Committee's Resolutions "On Improving the Work of Soviets of Working People's Deputies in Villages and Settlements" (1967) and "On Measures for Further Improving the Work of District and Urban Soviets of Working People's Deputies" (1971). The resolutions further elevated the role of these, the most multiple links of the Soviet representative system, and enhanced their material and financial position.
The participation of Soviet youth in the formation of the organs of state power is most vividly exhibited when they exercise the right to elect or be elected. Suffrage is extended to young men and women when they reach the age of 18. At 18 young people can be elected to the local Soviets, at 21, to the Supreme Soviets of Union and Autonomous republics, and at 23, to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
Soviet legislation prohibits any and all restrictions of suffrage on the grounds of affiliation to any race or nationality; sex; religious beliefs; educational, property or residential qualifications; social origin or past activities.
Contrary to the practice in the capitalist countries, election candidates in the USSR incur no financial expenses, which are wholly taken care of by the state. Young electors, like all other citizens, enjoy the right of unhampered canvassing.
The deeply democratic nature of the Soviet state and the wide-scale participation of the younger generation in state affairs are in striking contrast to the anti-popular nature of the capitalist states and their policy of warding off young people from the solution of social and political problems.
97The reality of bourgeois society once again confirms that Marxism-Leninism is absolutely correct in asserting that bourgeois democracy is false. Lenin said: "Take the fundamental laws of modern states, take their administration, take freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, or 'equality of all citizens before the law', and you will see at every turn evidence of the hypocrisy of bourgeois democracy with which every honest and class-conscious worker is familiar. There is not a single state, however democratic, which has no loopholes or reservations in its constitution guaranteeing the bourgeoisie the possibility of dispatching troops against the workers, of proclaiming martial law, and so forth....''^^1^^
And indeed, let us take for instance the practical participation of young people in the formation of the representative organs of state power in the capitalist countries. Though the legislation of the bourgeois countries proclaims universal suffrage, many citizens have no opportunity to exercise this right because of a whole series of qualifications by means of which the ruling class regulates the composition of the electorate. Lenin underlined that "it is the young, more politically-conscious and resolute sections of the proletariat that these restrictions generally hit hardest of all".^^2^^
The age qualification is the greatest obstacle restricting the participation of young people in election campaigns. Even today young people in Britain and France are granted the right to vote only when they reach 21, in other countries the age qualification varies from 20 to 23, while in some countries, for elections to the upper chambers of parliament, it is set at 25.
In this way the bourgeoisie greatly affects the results of elections since young people for the most part support progressive circles or elements opposed to the ruling bourgeois parties. That is why the bourgeois legislature usually turns down all bids to lower the age qualification. Hoping to secure the support of young voters, however, many politicians frequently promise all sorts of benefits, including the reduction of the age qualification.
_-_-_~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 28, p. 244.
~^^2^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 18, p. 438.
__PRINTERS_P_97_COMMENT__ 7---411 98The age qualification for the right to be elected to the representative organs of state power is even higher. In Belgium, Italy and some other countries only citizens over 25 can be elected to the lower houses of parliament; the age limits for election to the upper houses are even higher---30 years in the United States and Japan, and 40 in Italy and Belgium.
The residential qualification is another serious obstacle. In Canada and Finland, for example, the right to vote is extended only to those who have resided not less than a year in the electoral district. But it is no secret that capitalists transfer workers from one end of the country to another, depriving them of residential qualification and, consequently, of some of their political rights. Moreover, many of the workers, who roam over the country in the hope of selling their labour power, are young people with insufficient labour skill and no professions and are the first to be hit by unemployment.
Unemployment compels young people to look for work abroad, and that frequently prevents them from taking part in their own country's social and political life. The bourgeoisie often tries to recruit them to its own side by promising work at home and a happy life; it even pays their fare if they agree to vote for one or another bourgeois party. Such methods are often used by the bourgeois parties in Italy and Austria.
The education qualification in some capitalist countries, according to which the electors must know how to read and write in the official language, is also a formidable barrier. It should be noted that this qualification exists mostly in countries of mass illiteracy, such as Brazil and Portugal.
In Greece, the new constitution sets an educational qualification for election candidates. One clause states that the citizen who wants to be a member of parliament must have at least a general or a special school certificate---and that in a country where education has been absolutely degraded!
Bourgeois ideologists strive to play down the significance of the various qualifications. They claim that the qualifications do not deprive the suffrage of its universal nature which, according to them, is ensured by the absence of any mention of property qualifications in legislation. 99 But the fact that there is no official mention of the property qualification does not mean that it does not exist actually.
One only has to recall what it costs the nominees to parliament to conduct their electoral campaigns. American newspapers reported that during the elections in 1968 the three principal presidential candidates in the United States spent nearly $50,000,000 on their election campaigns. The total sum spent on elections, including those to state and local legislatures, was really astounding---$230,000,000. It is perfectly clear that the chances for victory in the political struggle run pretty low or are altogether non-existent for the nominee with no personal means or financial support from the monopolistic groups. So it is not surprising that there is not a single worker, farmer or ordinary office employee in the US Congress.
The political activities of young people in the capitalist countries are hampered by bourgeois-democratic practices, such as the electoral geography by means of which the bourgeoisie artificially reduces the representation of working people in parliaments.
In the USSR, elections are always major public and political events for the whole Soviet people who vote with deep confidence in the Communist Party and its peaceful and constructive policy, with a feeling of profound gratitude for the Party's efforts to raise the material and cultural standards of the people, and with a readiness to strive for new achievements of benefit to the country. The elections are a guaranteed opportunity for millions of young people, who have reached suffrage age, to take part in political life. There are in fact millions of such people: in 1970 no less than 2,950,000 people came of age in time to cast their first vote for candidates to the USSR Supreme Soviet (Eighth (Convocation).
Soviet young people actively participate in election campaigns. This is the natural outcome of the broad democratic rights which the Soviet state has extended to youth and its public organisations. These rights include the right ol youth organisations to nominate representatives to the election commissions which, as we know, bear the main responsibility for the organisation of elections.
100 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1974/SYAS228/20071214/199.tx" __EMAIL__ webmaster@leninist.biz __OCR__ ABBYY 6 Professional (2007.12.14) __WHERE_PAGE_NUMBERS__ top __FOOTNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ __ENDNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+Youth and the YCLers participate in the work of electoral committees on a really mass scale. Nearly 1,150,000 young men and women worked on the election commissions during the last elections to the local Soviets of Working People's Deputies and to the Supreme Soviets of the Union and Autonomous republics; 400,000 young people were involved in the 1970 election campaign to the USSR Supreme Soviet. YCLers constituted 16.1 per cent of the members of election commissions; two representatives of the Komsomol were included in the Central Election Commission during the elections to the USSR Supreme Soviet (Eighth Convocation).
The Komsomol recommends its best representatives to the committees---advanced workers and activists. Many of them are elected as chairmen or secretaries of the committees, and, as is borne out in practice, they are equal to their complex and responsible duties.
YCLers and young people attend pre-election meetings of working people, meet the candidates, discuss the work of the Soviets, and make a record of their recommendations and suggestions for the candidates to be guided by in their future work.
Young electors regard participation in the elections as a sign of great trust from the Communist Party which has no higher aim than the well-being of the working people. They prepare for this great event carefully. In this they are assisted by the Party, Komsomol, trade union and other public organisations, as well as by state organs which regard the election campaign and the elections as a school for the communist education of young people. The Central Committee of the YCL and the Central Committees of the YCL in the Union republics give prime attention to this work. They recommend the Komsomol organisations to take the most active part in preparing and conducting the elections, in the work of election commissions, in preparing nomination meetings, and in canvassing. The Central Committee of the YCL calls upon the young electors to participate en masse in the elections and in this way to demonstrate their infinite loyalty to the cause of the Communist Party, the cause of communism. At the sessions of bureaus, plenums and at meetings of activists, the Komsomol committees discuss the 101 participation of young people in the election campaigns. The local Komsomol organisations draft and carry out plans of work with young electors.
During the election campaigns the Komsomol organisations place special emphasis on work with young electors. They explain the rights and duties of young electors and expound the democratic principles of the Soviet electoral system. They also open clubs for young electors, sponsor evening get-togethers of those who are voting for the first time in their life, initiate competitions of canvassers working with young electors, and arrange amateur concerts and sports events.
Representatives of production collectives, who are nominated at general meetings of working people, acquaint the electorate with the professional, public and political activities of candidates. Active and efficient preparations for elections make it possible to involve all young people in the elections.
During the election campaign for the USSR Supreme Soviet the electors' club at the 19th polling station in Almetyevsk was continually full of people. It stayed open from 8 a.m. until late in the night. Faina Shiganova, who was voting for the first time in her life, had this to say about the club:
``I find everything of great interest here. I have already attended six meetings in the club. They truly were lessons for me. I learned so much---about the development of oil deposits in the Tatar Autonomous Republic, the life and activities of our candidates, and the works of Ibraghim Gazi, the Tatar author for whom I will vote on election day.''
Young men and women help to furnish and decorate polling stations, booths and rooms for children. In a word, they do all they can to help the electoral committees achieve a high level of organisation on election day.
The Komsomol press and the youth sectors of radio and television inform young people about the course of the election campaign. Komsomolskaya Pravda and other youth newspapers devote special columns to stories about candidates, the best methods of organisational work and propaganda, and answers to questions by young electors. There are definite possibilities for further improving the work of 102 Soviet and public organisations with the multi-million army of activists who draw youth into the actual process of forming the representative organs of state power.
The young electors' clubs usually continue their work after the elections are over. In addition to sponsoring meetings between deputies and young people they popularise the principles of Soviet state and law.
Soviet young men and women not only have the right to elect, but also the right to be elected. According to Soviet legislation, youth organisations, like all other public organisations, can nominate their candidates. Young citizens are also nominated candidates by general meetings at enterprises, institutions, army units, and collective and state farms.
The Soviet people nominate as candidates those who have earned general trust by selfless labour and utter devotion to communist ideals. Young candidates represent different nationalities and all segments of society; they are themselves advanced workers and farmers, specialists in diverse fields of the economy.
Take, for instance, the biography of one of the candidates to the Soviet of the Nationalities of the USSR Supreme Soviet (Eighth Convocation), Vasily Balandin, a delegate to the 16th Congress of the YCL, who was nominated by the Ukhta electoral district. He was born in 1946. After graduating from the Ukhta Secondary Oil Technical School, he joined a geological party, then served his term in the armed forces, and went back to his job as an oil-driller. Balandin is an expert at his job. He contributed to the discovery of new gas-condensate deposits.
He is member of the geological trust's Komsomol committee, and is presently completing correspondence courses at an industrial institute.
Every new election enhances the role of Soviet youth in administering the state and increases the number of young deputies. The marked rise in the number of young deputies to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR is a live testimony to the Communist Party's efforts to promote the role and activity of youth in administering state and public affairs. There arc now 281 young deputies in the country's supreme legislature---99 more than in the USSR Supreme Soviet of the 103 previous convocation. Of this number, 100 deputies are Komsomol members.
All decisions by state and public organisations are taken with the participation of youth representatives.
Young deputies actively discussed and approved the economic development plan and the national budget for 1971 at the session of the USSR Supreme Soviet in December 1970. On their motion, the state increased its allocations for social and cultural needs by 170 million rubles. This example goes to show that the opinions of young deputies are valued highly.
Today there are more than 500,000 young deputies in the local Soviets, including many YCLers.
Young deputies are equal to their responsible duties, energetically prepare for sessions of Soviets and busily engage in the work of standing committees, territorial groups of deputies, and electoral districts. They know the needs and requirements of the electorate and enjoy general respect.
The nature of deputies' work is determined by their rights and duties. The deputies can examine documents and other materials which interest them, discuss all items on the agenda, make suggestions or critical remarks, table amendments, vote for or against resolutions, make draft resolutions and submit them to the Soviets. They have the right to submit formal questions to executive agencies or officials in order to obtain required information or to uncover shortcomings.
It is perfectly clear that these rights are extended to all deputies, young and old. When, for instance, M. Gvritishvili, a weaver of the Tbilisi Silk Factory, was deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the Georgian SSR, she raised such issues as the observance of laws on juvenile labour, school meals, and the work of juvenile commissions. All these problems were carefully examined, and the republic's Supreme Soviet worked out measures to eliminate the shortcomings. Generally speaking, all young deputies are in one way or another concerned with youth problems; they help to solve them in their official capacity and otherwise, by taking part in various youth undertakings.
The 16th Congress of the YCL devoted much of its work to the need to mobilise youth for work in state 104 organisations, as well as co-operation between Komsomol organisations and the Soviets. The discussion was set off by Leonid Brezhnev who pointed out in his speech at the Congress that "we cannot advance successfully without the participation of young people in the country's socio-political life".^^1^^
It is hard to imagine even a single representative organ of state power without young deputies. Youth representatives at sessions of Soviets, on standing committees and on executive committees help to solve the problem of providing young men and women with jobs and helping them to raise educational and cultural standards. They check the implementation of laws designed to protect the work and health of juveniles, they help to improve conditions in hostels, and expand recreation and sports facilities.
Young deputies are busily occupied in the standing committees of local Soviets. Usually the young deputies are assigned to different standing committees according to their professional training and personal wishes. In close co-- operation with the Komsomol and public organisations, they submit interesting and detailed plans for approval by their local Soviets. For example, V. Pavlov and T. Gogolenko, members of the standing culture committee of the Orsk Town Soviet of Working People's Deputies, tabled a motion to open a musical school. Having carefully examined the motion, the standing committee placed the question on the agenda of the Town Soviet's executive committee, and the proposal was approved.
Young deputies consistently implement the decisions adopted by the local Soviets. In this they are helped by the Komsomol organisations; when possible, they use the help of the electorate to put into effect the planned measures so as to dispense with financial aid from the state or public organisations. In Ussuriisk (Primorye Territory), for instance, the young deputy V. Pleshivaya mobilised the local residents to plant trees and shrubs and generally improve the locality. Such campaigns, known as subbotniks and voskresniks (voluntary unpaid work on Saturdays and Sundays) which are organised to provide amenities and services in villages and settlements, collect scrap metal, plant trees, etc., are arranged in all other regions, territories and republics.
_-_-_~^^1^^ L. I. Brezhnev, Following Lenin's Course, Moscow, 1972, p. 309.
105Many young deputies closely co-operate with the public in controlling the implementation of decisions adopted by organs of state power. For this purpose they establish posts of deputies at construction sites and industrial enterprises which work hand in hand with YCLers and other young men and women.
In exercising their wide powers, the Soviet deputies express the will of the electorate. This calls for close and regular contacts with the electorate. These contacts serve as a means by which young people influence the work of their deputies and of the entire system of Soviets.
When the young deputies meet with the electorate, they explain the nature of problems faced by the state and persuade young people to join them in administering state affairs. The Soviet state underlines the importance of close contacts between deputies and the electorate and, for the purpose of promoting such contacts, it has set down definite guarantees. Article 142 of the Constitution of the USSR says that every deputy is obliged to report to the electorate on his work in the Soviet.
This duty is of particular significance in solving the problem of youth participation in state affairs. Meetings of deputies with young electors are one of the methods of acquainting young men and women with state affairs. Usually it is not difficult to arrange such meetings, particularly at enterprises and organisations with a considerable number of young employees. At them young workers, collective farmers, students and employees can make suggestions and recommendations.
Among other important forms of participation in state affairs mention should be made of mandates, i.e., instructions given by a constituency to the deputy. These mandates are compulsory for deputies. The electors can demand the deputy's assistance in problems which they cannot solve independently. These days most of the mandates are concerned with cultural and living standards. For example, young electors instructed their deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR V. Kaleikin, a team leader of fitters of the Bashspetsneft trust, to raise the question of increasing the number of mobile canteens and service vans in their area.
106The electors can include in the mandates all questions which require action by state agencies. They can demand that their deputy raise the problems mentioned in the mandate at the local Soviet.
Usually the mandates become the deputy's programme of action. The majority of mandates, including the principal mandate---selfless service to the Soviet people, and devotion of all efforts and knowledge to the building of communism ---are always fulfilled. Soviet deputies are not professional politicians, they either work, study or serve in the armed forces. The young deputies set examples of selfless work, and they are noted for a high sense of responsibility before the constituency. Their example mobilises young men and women for new achievements in fulfilling the Ninth FiveYear Plan. Young deputies are energetic in improving the organisation of labour, arranging competitions of workers of different professions, and organising schools and groups of advanced methods.
It must be said that their main occupations enable the young deputies to carry out their responsible duties as members of Soviets most efficiently. They are always in the midst of young people at the plants and factories where they work and in the towns and villages where they live; they know the interests and needs of their comrades and listen to their opinions. The word ``deputy'' implies that they must safeguard the interests of young electors, and this is one of the advantages of the socialist democracy. Testimony to this fact can be found in the regular reports to the constituency, in the replacement of deputies, and in the right of the electorate to recall the deputies who have violated their trust.
Young men and women can influence the administration even when they are not members of Soviets. The local Soviets are helped in their work by an army of 25 million activists, many of whom are young people.
But this is not all. Young people are always discussing the draft laws that lie before the Soviet parliament. In April 1968 the Fundamentals of Legislation of the USSR and the Union Republics on Marriage and the Family were the subject of nation-wide discussion. The standing committees of the USSR Supreme Soviet alone received 7,000 remarks 107 and suggestions, and hvestia got 8,000 letters. It is easily understandable that most of the letters should have come from young people, who are particularly keen on matrimonial problems.
Freedom of opinion is an inalienable principle of socialist democracy. Proof of this can be found in all issues of Komsomolskaya Pravda, the main Soviet youth newspaper. For example, when the newspaper printed the draft Directives of the Five-Year Economic Development Plan of the USSR for 1971--75, young people immediately and energetically plunged into the national discussion of this document.
Today Soviet young people freely express their opinion on diverse subjects and various aspects of life in some 226 youth newspapers and magazines with a total circulation of over 64 million copies.
The development of the socialist society, the rising role of the state in building communism, and the greater experience gained by youth and youth organisations in state administration demand further improvement of the ways and forms of youth participation in state administration.
At first the newly elected deputies are hampered, naturally, by lack of experience and practice in public and political activity, and they feel rather indecisive in the way they bring forward the problems that arise. Young deputies seldom use their right of interpellation, though this right is the most effective means of obtaining information on issues in question and a mighty weapon in fighting the shortcomings they come across.
The interpellation made to the Executive Committee of the Kursk Regional Soviet by deputy N. Nagorny, secretary of the Komsomol organisation at the Farm Machinery Spares Factory, is a good example of the great force that this right has. N. Nagorny asked to be told why the construction of social and cultural projects in Kursk was proceeding unsatisfactorily, and what was being done to ensure the fulfilment of the annual building plan. The chairman of the executive committee gave a detailed account to the deputy. In addition, the Regional Soviet invited the chief of the Kursk Building Association to its session, heard his explanations and took steps to eliminate the shortcomings. The Soviets, their executive committees, and public 108 organisations, including the Komsomol, are constantly improving the way they work with young deputies and teaching them efficiency. State and public organisations are allocating more time to individual work with young deputies, spreading their experience in teaching them and setting up schools for activists recruited for work in state agencies. The executive committees of Soviets and Komsomol committees have organised more seminars for young deputies. At seminars and conferences like these the young deputies discuss their tasks in the Soviets as regards the implementation of Party decisions, measures to enhance the role of young deputies concerned with the work, living standards and recreational facilities for young men and women. Young deputies are supplied with literature on legislation; publishing houses are printing more reference books and manuals on problems of state and law.
The authority of young deputies will be enhanced by the special law on the status of deputies in all Soviets, from the Supreme Soviet down to those in villages. This law, which was adopted in line with the decision of the 24th Congress of the CPSU,^^1^^ defines the powers and rights of deputies, as well as the duties of officials in respect to deputies.
In recent years the Komsomol organisations have been giving more attention to work with young deputies. In October 1969, the Bureau of the YCL Central Committee discussed the question "On the tasks of Komsomol organisations in strengthening the ties with the Soviets of Working People's Deputies and improving the work with young deputies''. It approved the accumulated experience of Komsomol organisations' joint work with Soviets and young deputies, and advanced a series of recommendations designed to improve this work.
The Bureau of the YCL Central Committee noted that the Komsomol organisations were doing much to improve methods of enlisting YCLers and young people for work in the Soviets and state administration. The Komsomol organisations in the Ukraine, Georgia, the Soviet Baltic republics, and Orenburg, Gorky, Chelyabinsk and Belgorod regions co-operate with the local Soviet in working out _-_-_
^^1^^ 24th Congress of the CPSU, Moscow, 1971, p. 94.
109 concrete measures to stimulate the activity of young deputies.In their work with young deputies, the Komsomol organisations~
teach them to put their abilities at the service of the people, to act as public and state leaders, viz., inculcate in them a sense of responsibility before the state, their constituency, work-fellows and Komsomol organisations;~
concentrate their attention on the solution of problems of youth education, work and living standards; help them raise the efficiency of their work in the Soviets, executive committees, standing committees and other state and public agencies;~
assist young deputies in studying the needs and requirements of young people, attract them to work in Komsomol organisations.
The close co-operation between youth organisations and young deputies makes it easier to prepare the agenda for the Soviets and the standing committees, as well as to check the implementation of their decisions. It also helps to develop new and better forms of joint work.
Some Komsomol committees have established councils of young deputies which co-ordinate their work with youth organisations, and draw up recommendations and suggestions. A good example is the council in Rustavi which was set up by the Town Komsomol Committee. The council did much to promote co-operation between YCLers and young deputies in studying the needs of local young people.
Deputies, members of the Komsomol, are particularly concerned with facilities for the education of young workers. They have worked out plans for raising the educational level of these workers, set up school-assistance committees and are taking steps to increase the number of schools for young workers. The young deputies to the Rustavi Town Soviet organise the leisure time of young men and women, improve the work of Palaces of Culture and clubs, and promote physical training and sports.
The reports which the young deputies make to the YCLers and young people raise their sense of responsibility. Young deputies report on their activities in the Soviets, how they study the needs and requirements of youth, prepare questions for the regular Soviet sessions, check that the 110 decisions are implemented, and enlist YCLers and young people for work in state agencies. They also report on how they comply with the mandates, and on the implementation of their motions concerning the improvement of working, living and recreational conditions for young people.
Such reports, naturally, are no substitute for reports to the constituency. This is why, in making their reports, the young deputies speak of their work as an important Komsomol assignment. Their reports to the Komsomol organisation which they belong to, raise their authority and sense of responsibility before their comrades.
Of late the Komsomol organisations have been focusing attention on the implementation of mandates which the young deputies get from their comrades.
The close co-operation between the young deputies and Komsomol organisations makes their work more interesting, ensures timely reports to the constituency and makes it easier for them to comply with mandates, suggestions and requests.
The nomination of candidates by Komsomol organisations and the evaluation of their public, political and organisational abilities is not a mere formality; the Komsomol organisations constantly check on the way the Komsomol deputies are fulfilling their duties; they regularly discuss the participation of young people in the work of Soviets, standing committees and executive committees and do not rest satisfied with solving problems only in collaboration with the executive and administrative organs of Soviets. This will have a favourable effect on the work of young deputies and of the Komsomol organisations themselves.
In this respect, the demand expressed in the Resolution of the 16th Congress of the YCL acquires particular significance: "YCL Committees are to strengthen their various ties with the Soviets of Working People's Deputies. Acting jointly with the standing committees of Soviets, they are to examine questions which concern young people, stimulate the work of young deputies, raise their sense of responsibility, and hear their reports in Komsomol organisations.''^^1^^
_-_-_~^^1^^ 16th Congress of the Leninist Young Communist League, Moscow, 1970, p. 28 (in Russian).
111The lofty democratic nature of the Soviet state and the close collaboration of its representative organs with youth organisations are expressed in many other ways. To take one example, non-deputies, representing public organisations, are given opportunity to address the sessions of Soviets. This practice is most widespread in local Soviets, particularly those in villages and settlements.
Young men and women can observe the working procedures of representative organs and the adoption of decisions by them, thereby assessing the performance of their deputies in Soviets. In the final count, all this helps young people to acquire the habits of administering the socialist state. The right of legislative initiative is an important public and political instrument which ensures the active participation of young people in state administration. This right is enjoyed by the Soviet of the Union, the Soviet of the Nationalities, the commissions of the Supreme Soviet and its houses, deputies to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the USSR Council of Ministers, the Supreme Court of the USSR, and the Union republics through their supreme organs of state power. The Central Committee of the CPSU plays an exceptionally important role in drafting new laws. The Programme of the CPSU envisages greater participation by public organisations and associations of working people in legislative activities, and points out in particular, that the Komsomol should be given the right of legislative initiative via its central organs.
Some Union republics have already implemented this decision. For instance, Clause 23 of the Regulations of the Supreme Soviet of the Latvian SSR, which enumerates those persons and organs having the right of legislative initiative, also mentions republican public organisations as represented by their central organs.
The Komsomol has accumulated the great experience and knowledge necessary for formulating questions of statehood, the solution of which calls for the adoption of corresponding laws. It is sufficient to mention that at the 16th Congress of the YCL, many delegates who addressed its plenary and sectoral meetings raised a number of questions concerning the improvement of social and legal relations.
Also of concern to the activities of the organs of state 112 administration is the participation of youth in the administration of social and state affairs. The organs of administration maintain regular contacts with youth organisations, and hand them over documents which reflect their activities in the solution of youth problems. Representatives of youth organisations are regularly invited to attend various conferences in ministries and departments where they can express the viewpoint of youth organisations on questions under consideration. It is a rule in the Soviet Union to include representatives of youth organisations as board members of national and republican central organs of state administration. There is not a single ministry or department, whose activities touch on the interests of young people, with no representatives of youth or Komsomol organisations on its board.
In line with the CPSU Central Committee's Resolution "On the 50th Anniversary of the YCL and the Tasks of Communist Education of Youth'', all decisions by state organs concerning young people are taken jointly with youth organisations or with due regard for their viewpoint. This practice has been justified in full. Usually such joint decisions concern problems of the work, life and education of young people. It is interesting to note that nearly 200 joint decisions of this sort were taken in the period between the 15th and 16th YCL congresses.
The Komsomol frequently poses before state organs questions which are subsequently reflected in legal documents. One can mention for example, the decrees of the Soviet Government "On measures to improve the organisation and raise the efficiency of student summer work'', "On the procedures for paying scholarships to students of higher educational establishments when they are engaged in practical production work'', "On the organisation of preparatory departments in higher educational establishments" and many others. Each of these decisions is very important for the solution of different problems in the life and work of young people.
Suffice it to say that the last of the decrees mentioned above gives some 100,000 young workers and collective farmers the opportunity to enrol in the country's higher educational establishments. The interests and requirements of 113 Soviet youth are reflected in many other documents adopted by the ail-Union and republican organs of state power and administration.
On the other hand, officials participate in undertakings of youth organisations, while proposals by youth organisations are agreed upon beforehand with organs of state administration.
State organs attentively watch the principal trends in the activities of youth organisations, primarily the activities of the Komsomol whose public and political role is growing. This helps the state organs to take timely note of the younger generation's initiative. For instance, the state organs began to examine and put into effect many proposals made by delegates both during the 16th Congress of the YCL and on visiting ministries and departments, while the Congress was still in session. In studying the interests and requirements of youth, the state organs of administration rely on their special sectors, which are entrusted with such work.
Young deputies go deeper into the work of the executive committees of local Soviets; a growing number of young deputies become members of these committees. In some republics, territories and regions the number of young members of executive committees has undergone a manifold increase.
It is a tradition with the executive committees to invite to their sessions directors of industrial enterprises, chiefs of construction sites, and secretaries of Komsomol organisations.
The attention which the state organs, primarily the Soviets of Working People's Deputies give to bringing up the younger generation the communist way stimulates young people to participate in elections, and in the administration of state affairs, and helps young deputies to fulfil their duties.
In the past few years the Supreme Soviets of the Union republics and their Presidiums have been regularly putting up questions of communist youth education and the all-round development of the individual on the agenda. The Presidiums of the Supreme Soviets of the Ukrainian, Byelorussian, Kazakh and other republics regularly analyse the implementation of the law on universal education, the __PRINTERS_P_113_COMMENT__ 8---411 114 juvenile labour laws, and the reasons for youth delinquency, subsequently adopting necessary decrees and decisions. Proceeding from the results attained by the Soviets of the Chelyabinsk and Gorky regions, the Presidium of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet outlined concrete measures for elevating the role of the republic's Soviets in bringing up and educating the younger generation, encouraging young people to take part in productive work and public activities, and organising the leisure time of young men and women.
The standing committees on youth problems, set up by the Soviets, are another step in the implementation and development of Lenin's ideas of youth participation in the administration of state affairs. There are now nearly 10,000 such committees with a total of more than 60,000 deputies. They are responsible for bringing up young people the communist way, as well as for their education, professional training, work, life, recreation and health, protection of their rights and interests, and also questions connected with the participation of young men and women in the administration of state, economic, social and cultural affairs. Such committees enjoy special rights which help them to perform their functions.
The competence of standing committees can be inferred from their composition---representatives of Party and Komsomol organisations, scientists, people connected with the arts and educationalists, advanced production workers, and representatives of various state agencies and public organisations.
The youth committees of the USSR Supreme Soviet have on their boards such prominent figures as academicians M. V. Keldysh and I. I. Artobolevsky, Hero of Socialist Labour Tursunoi Akhunova, secretaries of the YCL Central Committee Y. M. Tyazhelnikov and B. N. Pastukhov, and writers S. V. Mikhalkov and V. M. Kozhevnikov.
The work of these standing committees helps to create a better system of guiding youth and to unify the efforts of state and public organisations responsible for bringing up the rising generation the communist way.
The USSR Supreme Soviet's standing committees on youth examine the most important problems in the life of young people. It is interesting to note that the first problem which 115 they took up was that of summing up the experience gained in enlisting youth for work in the Soviets of Working People's Deputies and working out recommendations for strengthening their collaboration with all public organisations responsible for the upbringing of youth. The committees give considerable attention to instructing young people in legal questions.
The committee on youth affairs has the right to keep an eye on the work of ministries and other organisations. For instance, its members have checked up on the vocational training of young men and women in various places. The findings were examined at the committee's session by ministers, scientists and teachers. The committee heard the reports by the various institutions responsible for vocational training and made its recommendations. As a result, new vocational schools were opened, the curriculum was expanded, and young people in villages were provided with opportunities to acquire new and interesting professions.
Here is another example. In 1970 the summer session of the USSR Supreme Soviet adopted the Fundamentals of Labour Legislation. The youth committees of the Supreme Soviet's two chambers took part in their drafting. On their proposal, the chapter on the labour rights of youth was enlarged; it now enumerates the privileges extended to young people. For example, young people under 18 have a shorter working day, but they get paid for the full working day. Those who work and study in evening schools or take correspondence courses in institutes get additional paid vacations. There are many examples of a similar nature. The work of the standing youth committees of the Supreme Soviets of Union and Autonomous republics is also very interesting and important. The youth committee of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet, for instance, has analysed how young people spend their leisure time when they are on a five-day working week. Jointly with the committees on health, social security, education, culture and sports the committee worked out important recommendations on juvenile health, education, work and life.
The work of the standing youth committee of the Rostov Regional Soviet of Working People's Deputies is an example of a creative and active approach to youth problems. In just 116 one year it examined and made recommendations on the following questions: "On the participation of youth in the fulfilment of socialist undertakings in honour of Lenin's centenary'', "On the living conditions of students and their improvement'', "On the readiness of collective and state farms to accommodate students arriving for farm work'', "On the state of educational and cultural work with youth'', etc.
The standing youth committees of the Novorossiisk Town Soviet of Working People's Deputies pay particular attention to the introduction of new ceremonies in the life of young people---presentations of passports and work-books, first pay, send-offs into the army, etc.
The question of communist youth education receives much attention from standing youth committees in Gorky, Orenburg, Chelyabinsk and Ivanovo regions, as well as in Krasnoyarsk Territory.
The Soviets in Gorky Region, for instance, and the local Komsomol organisations take concrete steps to encourage young people to join production activities. They have done much to spread the slogan "No laggards!''. The region's enterprises have created all the necessary conditions for young men and women to raise their production qualification and general education. Each year thousands of young workers and collective farmers increase their professional know-how.
The advanced workers patronise young workers, share experience and help them to learn difficult trades. It is a rule in many of the region's enterprises to attach newcomers to the best workers, who pass on their skill and sense of responsibility for the job on hand. The constant attention which the Soviet, trade union and Komsomol organisations pay to these questions has helped to reduce the number of workers who fail to fulfil their quotas and to strengthen production discipline.
The active enlistment of youth in the work of state organs develops the habits required for administering the state and helps to train young executives and leaders. This is fully in compliance with the CPSU Central Commitee's Resolution "On the 50th Anniversary of the YCL and the Tasks of the Communist Upbringing of Youth" which says 117 that it is necessary to be more bold in promoting efficient YCLers and Komsomol functionaries to responsible economic and administrative posts in the boards of collective farms, the Soviets of Working People's Deputies, elective organs of Party, trade union and other public organisations.
There are big prospects for close collaboration between youth organisations and state organs. The Communist Party "believes it essential that the Soviets of Working People's Deputies, ministries, departments, trade union and other public organisations should solve the problems of youth upbringing, education, professional training, work, life and recreation in conjunction with YCL committees; they should regard with attention the proposals submitted by Komsomol organisations and help them in everyday work".^^1^^
The following stories from youth newspapers illustrate how young deputies do their job.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ A FITTER'S STORY ABOUT HIMSELFI would like to express a few thoughts which occurred to me after a conversation in the shop.
Our factory is often visited by foreign delegations. Some come to see new Soviet machines, others want to talk with Moscow workers, and quite a few come simply as tourists. They come to our shop and watch how we work, and sometimes they ask questions. Well, once a foreign correspondent asked me:
``Are you content with your life?''
I made a joking reply then. It was probably because a man satisfied with his life rarely thinks about it, and assumes that it is something natural and proper. It is hardly possible to make a short reply to such a question. Later on, though, I came to think about it more seriously. I wanted to understand what is it that lies behind the happiness and pride of the Soviet citizen.
I was born in a huge and powerful multi-national country. My homeland is the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics--- the first country in the world to create a new society and _-_-_
~^^1^^ On the Mlh Anniversary of the YCL and the Tasks of the Communist Upbringing of Youth, Moscow, 1968, p. 14 (in Russian).
118 take the road to communism. Ours is the natural joy of pathfinders and discoverers, and our life is free, vigorous and happy.But does this mean that I---Victor Shashkin, 25, Russian, of working class origin and a worker myself, member of the YCL, reservist, with an incomplete special secondary education, married, father of a three-and-a-half-year old girl, deputy---does this mean that I, Victor Shashkin, am free from all cares? Am I carelessly squandering the fortune left us by our fathers and grandfathers, the fortune which they amassed by their feats on the revolutionary and labour fronts?
In my opinion, the question of a man's satisfaction with his life is a dialectical, a developing concept. This satisfaction is gained in overcoming the great difficulties we are faced with while we carry out our various duties, great and small, under the constant pressure of human cares. Sometimes you feel that you have realised some of your personal plans and reached a certain goal which, it would seem, should make you feel content. But then the next day dawns and once again you want to do something outstanding to keep your finger on the pulse of life.
Without achievements---lofty achievements---and if you fail to prove your right to happiness, you can never be satisfied with life.
I know that it all sounds commonplace, and so, to make my point clearer, I would like to tell you about myself, about the factory where I work, and about my comrades and workmates.
My First 'Title Is Worker. To be exact, I am a fitter, class four. I work in the motor shop of the Order of the Red Banner Leninist Komsomol Car Factory.
My job is on the motor assembly line of the famous Moskvich car. The cars we turn out can be seen all over the Soviet Union as well as in some seventy foreign countries. There are few roads on our planet which have yet to see our factory's trade mark. It is not an easy job to make a car. Tens of thousands of different parts go to make one Moskvich, and it takes 65,000 operations to assemble them! Our plant has ties with three hundred enterprises in different cities and republics of the USSR. We cannot 119 manufacture the magnificent Moskvich without their co-operation. Our employees belong to 27 nationalities. So actually, though the car is called Moskvich (Muscovite), the whole country has a hand in making it.
My job is to install petrol pumps and starters. On my left they are fixing the carburetors, and on my right, my friend, Sasha Yermilov, screws on the gear-boxes. Next to him is Volodya Davydov. Slowly the engines drift past on the assembly line, but they only seem to move slowly. Actually, I have to tackle 140 engines during my shift. That's my day's task.
Sometimes we do much more than that, up to nearly 160 engines in a shift. But don't think it's easy. I have to turn the 150-kg engine twice round its axis, fix the petrol pump and starter in position, and tighten the nuts with an electric nut wrench. Then I have to fix the bolts tightly in position with a piece of wire so that they won't fall out from jolting on the way. You have to use your brains all the time, and use them fast or else you'll drop behind.
I had just reached sixteen when I came to work at the plant. Father contracted a serious illness and died when he was quite young. Mother was a mail-carrier. At first I helped Mother to carry the mail, but then I decided to go to work at the plant. In 1962 I started as an apprentice in the engine shop.
In the beginning it was very difficult. Accustomed rather to the fountain pen, my hands were at odds with the nut wrench. I thought that the job was beyond me, but then my workmates stepped in, particularly my first instructor, Nikolai Letov. The veteran workers helped us kids to get along and acquire skill.
If it comes to the items which add up to make what I call satisfaction with life, I must mention in the first place the fact that I belong to the working class, the principal productive force of society.
My factory and my labour bind me to the country's working class. We are all engaged in common work; we are all producing the things needed by the people.
YCLers have greatly contributed to the plant's construction and modernisation, and they account for a good deal 120 of the total output. Today some 45 per cent of the total work-force are YCLers.
My Second Title Is Member of the Komsomol. I joined the Komsomol in 1962. Many a time since then I have been elected as group Komsomol organiser, and now I am assistant group Komsomol organiser. I have another important assignment as well, but I will speak about it later on.
For me and my comrades, membership in the Komsomol means a lasting commitment to shock work and public activities.
A couple of years ago the plant's Komsomol committee reported to the 24th Congress of the CPSU that we had overfulfilled the assignments for the Eighth Five-Year Plan and lived up to our socialist commitments. The YCLers of our shop assembled 100 engines in their spare time. That was our present to the Party's congress. All in all, the YCLers of our plant put out 150 cars over and above the plan.
There are nearly 4,000 YCLers at the plant. When it was announced that the plant had decided to fulfil the plan of the first quarter of 1971 by March 30, some 3,700 YCLers (32 YCL-youth teams) joined the drive. Once again they proved true to their word.
Last year the YCLers forwarded 396 efficiency proposals representing a total economic saving of 60,000 rubles. Today 1,128 YCLers bear the name of communist shock workers, and there are 724 striving for the honour.
We promised to the Party to fulfil the Ninth Five-Year Plan in four and a half years. This is a serious commitment.
But we have such wonderful specialists as Shalekh Shakirov, foreman of the pressing shop, Zhandarbek Dzhunusov, adjuster in the metal-coating shop, Anatoly Razizny, adjuster in the assembly shop, Lara Kim, stamping-press operator in shop No. 2, and Valentina Kondratenko, grinder in the metal-coating shop. They all work with a will, and they are all YCLers.
Today the Komsomol is equal to the most responsible tasks assigned to it by the Party. Our fellow-members of the League, which bears Lenin's name, work at the firstpriority projects---on the construction sites in the Far North, 121 on the Tyumen oil deposits, at the Kama Car Plant and the Toktogul Hydroelectric Power Station construction sites, on the modernisation of hundreds of enterprises in the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Latvia and Moldavia.
This common task of all the detachments of the Komsomol lends me, Victor Shashkin, a sense of kinship with the boys in all republics, territories and regions in the Soviet Union. We are a 28 million-strong family of young people. This is another thing which contributes to our civic satisfaction.
My Third Title Is Muscovite. It is high time for an explanation. I say my first title, second title, third title and so on but the order is free, I can change their places, and begin with the second, third or fifth---it doesn't matter; what matters is that they are all important.
And so, my third title is Muscovite. Our plant is located in Krestyanskaya Zastava. Just read this description of it by a newspaper in 1911: "Once past Spasskaya Zastava (now Krestyanskaya Zastava), you find yourself in a peculiar world, a kingdom of garbage. Gloomy wrinkled land with contaminated soil and poisoned air. ...''
Can anyone recognise from this description the modern industrial Krestyanskaya Zastava? Certainly, not! This has long been the site of our plant, one of the best in the country and equipped with first-class machinery. Today the plant is undergoing a new phase of modernisation, and by the end of the current five-year plan its shops will occupy nearly 80 hectares, and put out more than 200,000 cars a year.
There are thousands of towns in the Soviet Union, but Moscow occupies prime place among them. Moscow is the capital of all the republics of the Soviet Union. Moscow is the Hero City which smashed the nazi hordes during World War II. (My father worked on the fortifications then, and he was awarded the medal Defender of Moscow.)
We are Muscovites, and this name places great responsibility on all of us. Our primary duty is conscientious work, and our labour productivity must be the highest in the world. However, I believe that this aspiration is common to all workers in all Soviet towns. Were I to live in Tashkent, I would probably have wanted all the world to know 122 the trade mark of its factories. Certainly, my counterparts in the other towns think the same way.
Like all the other Muscovites, I want now to lend a hand in making Moscow a model city with excellent order, excellent sanitation, excellent services and excellent transport facilities. I always feel responsible for my city. Anywhere I go, I feel that I represent the Muscovites and therefore must be exemplary in work and conduct.
This feeling of kinship with Moscow became particularly keen when it was my turn to serve in the Soviet Army, because
My Fourth Title Is Soldier. I became a soldier in November 1967. I left my mother, wife and a little daughter at home. For the next two years I served in an engineering unit in the arid steppes of Kazakhstan. Of course, they could have sent me to the Baltic area, Sakhalin, or Transcaucasia, just as they send the boys from the Baltic area to serve in the Moscow Military District. We live in one country, and have one common concern---the defence of its frontiers.
We were at once picked out as Muscovites, and the officers were more exacting towards us. We decided to organise an amateur theatrical circle and soon our "ensemble from Moscow" began to give concerts in the neighbouring units. That earned us praise from the command.
But, as we all know, what counts in the army is good service, discipline, and engineering knowledge. We tried our best to live up to the name of Muscovite, YCLer and worker.
Military service is hard work. We drilled through rocks, laid out roads and communication lines under the scorching sun.
I am glad that we have honestly fulfilled our lofty duty. If need be, I will readily go into the armed forces again. We soldiers are responsible for the country's security; it is our duty to protect the peaceful labour of the Soviet people. I, Victor Shashkin, am also aware of my responsibility for preserving peaceful labour whether it be in the country as a whole or in its smallest unit---the family, because
My Fifth Title Is Head of the Family. My father had a hard life. He was an orphan, and it was the Soviet society 123 that brought him up. He was a carpenter, he built houses, and he was the head of the family.
I still remember the time when all of us---Father and Mother and I---lived in a communal flat in Tekstilshchiki (Moscow). It was a two-storey house. Now there is a big building standing in the same place.
Since I have a family, the executive committee of the district Soviet has provided me with a flat. My wife is a teacher, while Mother continues to work at the post office.
However, I am the one who is responsible for the welfare of the family and for the upbringing of Svetlana, my daughter. The war left many people of my age orphans, and they know what it is to be fatherless. Now we all answer for the upbringing of the younger generation; it is our common duty to make them worthy successors to the cause of our fathers and our own selves. And that is what I call happiness.
My Sixth Title Is Student. When I came to the factory, I had only an incomplete nine-class education, so I joined the evening school for young workers and finished it just before going into the Army. On demobilisation, I enrolled in an auto-mechanical special secondary school at our plant. Now I am in my fourth year.
My friends---many of them---are also studying. We have our own educational centre at the plant with a student body of nearly 4,000, of which 800 go to the general school classes, 1,000, to the special secondary school classes, and about 500, attend institute courses.
The factory needs educated people; every year we get new machines which you can't operate without proper training. We have a computing centre with two Minsk-22 and a number of EV-80 electronic computers.
The advanced engineering at the plant is not the only reason why we are raising our educational qualifications.
As I see it, a worker, no matter what his job is and no matter where he works, must have a broad outlook. He must be familiar with the achievements of science and engineering, literature and the arts. A man unharmoniously developed cannot be really happy, nor can he perceive the value of life.
__NOTE__ Seem to be missing last word of last paragraph on this page.All of us can bear the high title which I bear today. It is the title of.~
124Deputy of the Supreme Soviet. This honorary title requires great knowledge and sense of responsibility.
I was elected deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in June 1971, and was nominated as member of the Supreme Soviet's commission on industry. Together with the other 38 deputies we investigate the work of enterprises and industrial branches in the republic, study shortcomings and advanced experience, submit our proposals and give recommendations to the government.
In addition, I have to help my constituency and fulfil their mandates. I meet my constituency once a month at the Executive Committee of the Lyublino District Soviet. People come to me for help and advice; they speak with me as the trusted representative of Soviet power.
When we meet in session in the Grand Kremlin Palace, I sit together with Asya Galyatdinova, a 24 year-old milkmaid from Tataria, Anna Romanova, a 22-year-old mason from Karelia, Nikolai Churakov, a 26-year-old turner from Udmurtia, and many other elected representatives from the Russian Federative Republic. In the other Union republics 1,842 workers, including 1,012 young people under 30 (of which 529 are YCLers) were elected deputies to the Supreme Soviets. They are all servants of the people, just like me. We are all concerned with the same problems, and we all have the same duties.
Frankly, at first I was surprised that they elected me. I worked conscientiously. But so did others....
Then it came to me that my merits had nothing to do with it---to be a deputy is an honorary and responsible duty before the people, and every citizen of the USSR should be prepared to fulfil this duty.
My seven titles---worker, YCLer, Muscovite, soldier, head of family, student, and deputy embody my seven responsibilities, my seven duties. I have many others, but these are the principal ones. Taken together they add up to my
Eighth Title---Citizen of the USSR. Russians and Armenians, workers and peasants, office employees and intellectuals, Party members, YCLers, and non-Party members, heads and members of families, students and professors, soldiers and officers, deputies and electors---we are all citizens of the Soviet Union.
125We all belong to one and united collective. This was best explained by Leonid Brezhnev at the 24th Congress of the CPSU: "A new historical community of people, the Soviet people, took shape in our country during the years of socialist construction. New, harmonious relations, relations of friendship and co-operation, were formed between the classes and social groups, nations and nationalities in joint labour, in the struggle for socialism and in the battles fought in defence of socialism. Our people are welded together by a common Marxist-Leninist ideology and the lofty aims of building communism. The multi-national Soviet people demonstrate this monolithic unity by their labour and by their unanimous approval of the Communist Party's policy.''
To me, the citizen of the USSR is the man who is ready to bear the burden and the joy of great concerns. But are we happy and free simply because we are always aware of this burden? Yes, it is because we are the people entrusted with the loftiest responsibilities and duties of citizens of the USSR.
This is, perhaps, the whole secret of why I am satisfied with my life, why I am happy to work and live in the Soviet Union, and why I am always ready to defend it.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ WORTHY OF TRUSTTamara Uvarova worked for a long time as an electric mechanic at the Dynamo Plant before she was elected deputy to the Moscow City Soviet. Before that she worked at a textile mill, and it was much easier there---no complex circuits, no instruments, no webworks of coloured wires as in the 2nd assembly shop in the Dynamo Plant. But she herself decided to change her profession for a more difficult one, and so she came to the Dynamo Plant.
And it was really hard in the beginning, she had to learn how to work in a team. This is a double responsibility, for if you make a mistake, the whole team suffers. The members of the team explained this to Tamara Uvarova as soon as she joined them. The team leader, Alexandra Lavrentyeva, and all the others were friendly, but exacting. Tamara knew that they were being exacting for her own good.
Her apprenticeship lasted three months, then she passed 126 the qualification exams and began to work on a par with all the others. Diagrams and circuits ceased to be a mystery, her hands got used to the instruments and the webwork of wires was no longer a puzzle. Her workmates approved of the way she worked and her industriousness. She liked her new job, she liked it because there was no monotony and because it involved real brainwork. The moment came when Tamara began to think that she had learned all the secrets of her trade and could work no worse than the others. The team leader guessed Tamara's thoughts, and was not surprised at that, because it is often like that with beginners. And she gave Tamara a piece of work usually done by experts. What happened is something that Tamara would like to forget, but the lesson was a good one. No, Tamara was not angry, she is the kind of woman who would learn even from her mistakes.
That was five years ago. Lavrentyeva's team came to be known as the most close-knit collective in Moscow. Tamara cannot imagine her life without the team. She became proficient in her trade and soon she assumed the responsibilities of a Komsomol functionary. It couldn't be otherwise, because her energy and her interest in life had to be applied in a practical way. Then when the YCLers in the shop saw her at work, they elected her member of the Komsomol bureau. Tamara loves songs, and she herself has a very pleasant voice, so it was only natural that she should join the amateur art group. In the vocal competition she won the first place.
As a Komsomol functionary, Tamara selected the work she likes best---cultural activities. But the YCLers credit her not so much with the organisation of concerts and tourist hikes, as with the fact that she helped a dozen young men and women to prepare for joining the Komsomol. Tamara explained to them the Komsomol Rules, helped them to carry out their first Komsomol assignments and patiently answered all their questions, no matter how difficult or unexpected they were.
Her comrades were right when they appointed her to the important and delicate work with young people unaffiliated with the Komsomol. They correctly assessed her prestige and her ability to convince without thrusting her opinion on people.
127``You know what makes Tamara so winning?" Valery Stepin, the present secretary of the Komsomol bureau, asked me. "It is her cheerful disposition, and the calm way of doing things. Some people spoil everything with their haste, she is not like that, she never takes off-hand decisions, but once she comes to a decision or gives her word to do something, you can rely on her. Tamara is always ready to give moral support to people, and to cheer them up. This impresses people more than the best of lectures.''
What forms our attitude to one or another person? In the first place it is an assessment of his work and contribution to society. All the other things may seem trivial at first sight. It often happens that a man works honestly, is highly thought of as an advanced worker, yet nobody comes to him to share his joy or doubts with him. Tamara is not like that. Everybody in the plant likes her. When Dynamo Plant were nominating their candidates to the Moscow City Soviet of Working People's Deputies, Tamara Uvarova was among the first they named.
Tamara Uvarova is 24. She is one of the youngest deputies entrusted with the lofty mission of representing Soviet power.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ A STUDENT DEPUTYVictor Korolev, a fifth year student at a mechanical department, earned the respect of his comrades and two years ago he was unanimously elected deputy to the Frunze District Soviet of Moscow.
Victor was a conscientious worker. After graduating with excellent marks from an auto-mechanical secondary school he enrolled at the Moscow Automobile Institute. There too he emerged as an honours student and soon earned the right to a Lenin scholarship. He is the group's monitor, and a very fair monitor, as the boys say. This perhaps explains why his group is considered one of the best in the institute.
Sometimes we forget one simple truism---it is worthwhile having an example to follow, whether in work or in studies. The boys in Victor's group know that he is very serious in his studies, that he takes the best summary notes from lectures, and that he absorbs knowledge because he knows that 128 it is the key to good work for the benefit of the people. In work he is also one of the first. He made a good impression in a student builders' detachment in Roslavl, and a year later he was nominated chief of a detachment in Astrakhan.
``He is a surprisingly hard worker,'' says Grisha Lomazov, one of his fellow-students.
When the house-maintenance office needs a bus for an excursion, or assistance in arranging a meeting with students, they always apply to Victor. These are all trifles, at first sight, but it is these trifles that in the final count make up the complex duties of a deputy, and these trifles entail important consequences. The hockey team of the housemaintenance office holds second place in Moscow's Gold Puck championship. The boys always win prizes in skiing and shooting competitions. Setting aside the sporting side of his work, we must concede that he has succeeded in winning the kids away from "street pleasures" and providing them with an interesting and instructive pastime. This is no trifle.
Victor's comrades have a very high opinion of him. They point out that everything in life interests him. He is very tactful and sympathetic. Even while working on his diploma project he finds time to go to the institute and help to arrange a meeting of juveniles and foreign students studying at the institute. He really works with all his might and main.
Victor Korolev is about to graduate from the institute. The prospect of interesting work now lies before him. We may be certain that in all circumstances Victor will remain true to himself and that he will not spare himself at any job.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ THE GREAT HONOURThe workers' meeting at the Krupskaya Factory in Michurinsk unanimously decided to nominate Valentina Khitrova as a candidate for deputy to the regional Soviet. Her friends will be voting for her for the second time. How did she, a member of the Komsomol, earn this great honour?
This is what D. Shaigashev, the factory's director, has to say on that score:
129``Valentina started as an apprentice. She quickly learned the secrets of her trade, and now she can manage all sewing operations.
``We noticed her industriousness and made her a controller. It is a responsible job for it is the controller who defends the customer's interest.
``Valentina is very exacting, and she never lets spoilage pass through. But her exactingness is of a peculiar nature. Some controllers separate good and bad shirts or trousers, and they never care even if the bad pile rises sky-high. Not so with Valentina. She immediately goes to the guilty seamstress and shows her how the work should be done. This is why we all---the administration and the employees--- appreciate her.
``We will now be perpetual holders of the challenge banner with the inscription, 'To the winner of the socialist emulation in honour of the 50th anniversary of Soviet power'. We achieved remarkable results in the socialist competition held in honour of Lenin's centenary. Valentina's contribution to our success was quite tangible.
``In her capacity of deputy, Valentina Khitrova takes heed of all requests and applications; she tries her best to satisfy the wants of the constituency.''
The following story was told by A. Pisanova, secretary of the YCL committee:
``Valentina is a member of the committee. She is always active in all our undertakings. Recently, for example, we had a meeting with the factory's veteran workers. Valentina helped to organise the meeting, and then she delivered a very interesting speech. Such meetings are very useful to us, the young workers. We learned, for instance, that 20 years ago there were only 50 workers in the factory, the building was in a bad state, and the machines were primitive. Today the factory is altogether different. We modernised it ourselves. I say `we' because we all contributed to the modernisation, including Valentina.
``Valentina is a reliable friend. We will all be willingly giving her our votes.''
This is what Valentina Khitrova has to say about herself.
__PRINTERS_P_129_COMMENT__ 9---411 130``I went to school No. 18. We often came to the factory for our vocational practicals. I developed an interest in sewing, and I am glad that I chose to work here. The administration takes care of the employees. When we were yet in school, the director, Dmitry Petrovich, often came to us and aroused our interest with his stories about the factory.
``As a deputy, I am member of the health protection commission. Now and then I go to other districts on business. Recently I went to Morshansk and Nikiforovka and inspected field camps and sanitary conditions in the local kindergartens.
``My husband, Victor, is a fitter in a van depot; he takes correspondence courses at an institute. He is a Communist and member of the Komsomol's regional and town committees.''
M. Ivanova, a foreman, expressed her opinion in two short sentences:
``Valentina is an honest and fair woman, wonderfully industrious. This is why we decided to elect her for the second term.''
__ALPHA_LVL2__ TRUSTThey are employees of the town telephone station's repair bureau. One of them is the fair and bright-eyed electrical mechanic, Ruslana Kotova.
Just a few months ago she was still leading an ordered life---in the morning she went to work, and in the evening she hurried back home to her husband and little Lenochka. And at home, of course, there were plenty of things to do about the house.
Public work? Well, only when time permitted, and there were valid excuses for that. She started work at the telephone station immediately after school. At first she was an electrician's apprentice and then she entered the Leningrad Secondary School of Communications. In her fourth year she took maternity leave.... It was not easy at times, but she always worked honestly and that gained her the collective's appreciation. At the last pre-election meeting the employees elected her member of the trade union local.
She was in no way different from the others---she had a job, and a family, which brought the usual troubles and 131 cares. Ruslana Kotova herself insists that she is in no way conspicuous.
However, it was precisely on her that the choice of her comrades fell; she was nominated candidate, and on June 13, 1971, they elected her deputy to the Petrozavodsk Town Soviet of Working People's Deputies.
The reason is very simple. The collective had seen her mature, they knew her perfectly well and assessed her abilities. They saw Ruslana completing her education, acquiring her trade and gaining in experience. Young, vigorous and energetic---she was equal to the job.
They said many nice things about her during the preelection meeting and gave her their mandate. Their strictest instruction was to justify their trust.
Now that she has her deputy's card, and people have entrusted the reins of government to her, while she is yet in her early youth, her greatest worry is how to start and how to justify the hopes placed in her.
A new life began for Ruslana. Strictly speaking, outwardly everything is almost the same, but life has acquired a new and deeper meaning.
During the very first session Ruslana understood that the town Soviet was a very intricate mechanism. They formed many committees and leading bodies. She realised that the problems which she would have to solve were all important and serious.
She made the first entries in her deputy's notebook.
Soon they invited her to the Town Soviet and offered to place her at the head of the deputy group at house-- managing office No. 1. This came as quite a surprise and Ruslana was a little afraid of the responsibility, but, after thinking it over, she consented.
Later she explained her consent in the following way:
First. The post was headed for two terms in succession by M. Zhuravleva, an experienced and respected deputy. Ruslana attended one of the meetings with the constituency together with Zhuravleva. She liked the intelligent and kind expression on her face and the way she talked with people.
When Ruslana was offered the post, Zhuravleva promised to help. So she gave her consent mostly because she wanted 132 to become more closely acquainted with that woman and find the secrets of her charm and efficiency.
Second. When people trust you with a job, it means that they believe in you and know that you are equal to the task. So there is no reason to refuse.
And last, but not least. Ruslana puts it this way:
``I've lived all my life in this town, and I don't think I'll ever move anywhere else. I want to see my town made more beautiful; I want the townsfolk to have a pleasant and comfortable life. This to some degree---even if it is a very insignificant degree---depends on me. Why then can't I try and do something useful for the people of Petrozavodsk?''
Thus Ruslana took charge of the deputy post. It is a responsible job, involving many obligations.
From the very outset she discovered that she knew little about the district. So Ruslana began to collect information. One of the entries in her notebook says: "My constituency (No. 250) encompasses Chernyshevsky, Lunacharsky and Svir streets. We have a shop, a kindergarten, a school; the yard of a house in Svir Street has no playground for children....'' Ruslana looks after the needs of all people who live on the territory of the house-managing office.
At the seminar of heads of other deputy posts Ruslana met with executives of communal services, the house-repair department, the special motor vehicle depot and officials of house-managing offices; she got to know their responsibilities and duties, whom to press for the electors' requests and whose work needed supervision.
``Now I know whom I have to blame for empty sandlots and the unkept yard about my own house,'' she laughs.
In another entry in the notebook Ruslana inserted the addresses of the 15 deputies of her post, the agenda for the next meeting, the plan of work and the mandates with which the other deputies should be acquainted.
The post had already held its first session. The deputies were informed by the chief engineer of the house-managing office about capital and routine house repairs, organisation of amenities and planting of trees and shrubs in the second half of 1971; the deputies approved the time-table of their shifts during visitors' hours. The deputy on duty receives the visitors once a week, on Thursdays, and makes note of 133 their requests, advice and complaints. Then the matter is passed on to the deputy directly responsible for the given sector.
Ruslana's duty is to know all the matters in hand. This, of course, takes up a good deal of her time.
She reads special books, subscribes to a special magazine and other reference material on the best ways of organising the work of deputies.
Besides knowledge and experience, the deputy must have a kind heart. He cannot remain indifferent to people in trouble or in need of advice or assistance.
Once the residents of 25, Pravda Street asked to arrange for a different lay-out of rooms in their flats. Ruslana went to the house (she had visited it on many previous occasions, and knew the inmates and their needs) and studied the grounds for the request. Then she took the matter up with the corresponding authorities.
Thus she and her group of deputies embark upon their new duties. They find their work interesting, and they do it with a ready will. Ruslana is confident that her group is quite militant. The deputies take shifts during visitors' hours and examine the problems which have already cropped up.
Now Ruslana, instead of going directly home after work, goes to various organisations or examines the problems in hand.
Thus she matures as a citizen. The training she got in the Komsomol made her an active public organiser. Her election as deputy is only the first stage in the evolution of her personality and realisation of her place in life; it represents a serious examination of her relations with the world and society.
This is only the beginning, but there is every reason to expect that Ruslana Kotova and her group of deputies will accomplish much in their capacity as representatives of the people's government.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ COURAGELast autumn we were digging with our bare hands in the early snow on the fields of Dilaram Rafikova, looking for the fragile stalks of the raikhan. We wanted to take some 134 back with us. Raikhan is a plant not much to look at, but in the evening it fills the air with a mysterious and fairy fragrance.
While we looked for the raikhan, Dilaram was pacing up and down the field with a triumphant look in her eyes. She did not even try to conceal the pleasure she felt at the fact that the bumper harvest had been collected before the foul weather set in.
The next time I saw her was on a grand occasion. In her national-style shawl over a light-grey suit, which she had specially ordered at the best tailor's, Dilaram went up a red carpet to accept the Gold Star of the Hero of Labour. Her eyes were cast downward, and she pressed the tips of the shawl to her lips.
I heard somebody whisper, "What luck! Do you think she really accomplished something?''
The man, of course, had no way of knowing what had preceded this grand occasion.
Ten years ago Dilya graduated from the Dzhalal-Abad mechanical school and got her diploma as a harvester-driver. That was a special occasion because it was the first group of students to be graduated from the school.
Though only ten years have passed since then, many changes have taken place. New problems have cropped up, obsolete views that women should not do men's work are losing ground, the times have gone when girl-drivers were pulled down from the harvesters and ordered to put on skirts over their overalls.
The practical cotton-growers came to a simple conclusion that if their daughters worked as harvester-drivers, they would earn much more than they would with the outdated hoe. They even encourage their daughters to join the Dzhalal-Abad mechanical school which has become a special school for women and trains drivers of farm machines.
Now it no longer surprises anybody to see a woman driver. Many of the graduates from the Dzhalal-Abad school have become team leaders, like Dilaram Rafikova, or secretaries of Party committees, like Ibakhan Saidova, or chairmen of village Soviets.
In the village where Rafikova lived people were assessed according to their work. Rafikova proved that she was very 135 industrious, and so nobody was surprised when she was made a team leader.
Then someone made a telephone call from the regional Komsomol committee and offered her a trip to Egypt. Winter is the off-season for cotton-growers, and so Rafikova took advantage of the offer. When she returned, many venerable farmers came to see her and respectfully congratulated her on the return. Dilya was puzzled at this show of respect, and then she understood everything. It was because during her trip she had been quite close to Mecca and Medina, the sacred cities of the Moslems. The old men of the village decided that since she had returned safely from the trip, she must be a good person. Allah would not receive bad people. ...
The trip to Egypt and the respect from the grey-beards were, of course, a coincidence, because long before that she proved that she could grow higher harvests of cotton than anybody else on the collective farm or indeed in the whole of the Osh Region.
Today Dilaram Rafikova is prominent in the republic, many people know her better than they know popular film stars, and that is not surprising, because the local newspapers are constantly printing photographs of her taken during the harvest.
The first word which Dilya heard in her childhood was cotton, and then came the word bread.
Last spring Hero of Socialist Labour Dilaram Rafikova was elected deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the Kirghiz SSR.
That was an acknowledgement of her fine work and great courage.
I keep in my reporter's office a small bouquet of raikhan which we collected in the snow on Rafikova's field. Autumn is drawing near and more snow will come, but the raikhan is as fresh and green as ever.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ ONE OF A FAMILY OF WORKERSThere is nothing out of the ordinary about the beginning of her professional biography. I feel the urge to describe her in the usual journalese manner---a girl with pigtails and 136 staring eyes fearfully entering the workshop. Yet, it really was like that---the pigtails, the staring eyes, and the shyness. And, luckily, she had the reliable hand of a senior to support her.
It is hard to say what turn the professional biography of Natasha Monikainen would have taken, were it not for her elder sister who brought her to the factory. There was nothing unusual about that, though; many people come to the factory for the first time with their parents, sisters or brothers. At first the elders stand by, instruct them and watch them work. It is a great help to the novice.
It takes six months to learn the trade of pressing. In the seventh month the apprentice becomes a full-fledged worker, or rather he is regarded as one, because the six-month course is sometimes insufficient. Today Natasha says that her job is quite easy, and that it was not difficult to learn the trade at all. ``You've got to be on the move, that's all,'' she says. She forgot her anxiety in the beginning and failure to keep up the pace; she forgot about the fatigue and the initial clumsiness which led to spoilage.
It is fine when people next to you are sympathetic, when no one scolds you or reminds of your worker's duties, when they understand that it is excess of energy that leads you astray. Such people are in no hurry to jump to conclusions; they know that with time people get accustomed to the work and acquire the necessary skill. Natasha was lucky to have such people around her.
She learned her trade to perfection and earned the title of Communist Shock Worker. The YCLers elected her to the shop Komsomol bureau.
Once a month the Komsomol group reviewed their achievements and drawbacks. The laggards had it hot. But when they found fault with an apprentice, the approach was quite different.
Care for novices is the basic principle of the factory's Komsomol organisation. A few years ago the factory YCLers were among the first in the republic to advance the slogan "No laggards!" Today's apprentice is tomorrow's qualified worker, and the sooner he acquires skill and experience, the better it is for all. Naturally, it is not only the newcomer's own business; he must be guided by an experienced hand.
137Natasha soon became an instructor herself and helped many apprentices on the way. She was friendly with all of them, but particularly so with Svetlana.
Svetlana came to shop No. 4 for a practical course. Later she graduated from the vocational school and came to work permanently. Apart from the usual failures common to all beginners, Svetlana could not stay in her place for more than half an hour; she always wanted to see what was happening elsewhere. The foreman was furious because the press was standing idle and the work quota went to blazes.
Natasha saw all this because they worked in the same shift. Soon she guessed the cause. It was useless, she thought, to call on the girl's conscience when she hardly knew how to work. And so Natasha began to teach Svetlana the trade.
``She must have nerves of iron,'' Svetlana said later. "I always got on her nerves, but she never raised her voice!''
Perhaps it was just this that made an impact---kindness and patience. When Svetlana's neighbour went on vacation, Natasha took over her press. Now they work side-by-side, the instructor and the beginner. When Svetlana gets bored with her job, Natasha lays a hand on her shoulder and quietens her down.
Svetlana is not an easy person to understand, and though only 17, she has seen life. She became independent quite early, and she knows the meaning of kindness and care. When she came to know Natasha, she immediately realised that she was the kind of friend she wanted, a person she could respect. All teenagers crave for such friends, but not all find them. Svetlana knows that she is very lucky.
Once she overfulfilled the norm. Her workmates were sceptical, but Svetlana was proud and happy. True, that was the only occasion, but she will never forget that month. She will always remember Natasha's joy and congratulations.
Svetlana is only seventeen. There is plenty of time to master the press and bridle her own restlessness. The main thing is that she proved to herself and others that she can work. The YCLers accepted her as member of the Komsomol. One of the recommendations was given by candidatemember of the CPSU, Natasha Monikainen.
A year has rolled by, and many events occurred in Natasha's life. She received her Party-membership card, and 138 she was elected to the bureau of the Petrozavodsk Town Komsomol Committee. In addition she was elected deputy to the republic's Supreme Soviet. That is a responsible position.
I want to say a few words about the word ``instructor''. Usually, when we speak about an instructor we imply an elderly, grey-haired veteran worker. But in this case we have a young girl with nothing imposing about her. Yet she represents hope, support and exemplary conduct for newcomers---she is one of the factory's family of workers.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ THE CLUB MANAGERNina Sirotkina always kept silent when her classmates ardently discussed their future work and plans. She kept silent because she had decided long before to work in the club. She had always loved to sing, dance and recite poems; in school she was busy organising evening parties and concerts, and she wanted her future club to be full of people, joy and fun.
Soon after the school-graduation ball, Nina was called to the secretary of the collective farm's Party organisation, Fyodor Ratmanov. Even to this day Nina does not know whether Ratmanov already knew something about her or whether his choice was accidental.
Ratmanov asked her:
``Well, what are you planning to do? Will you continue your education in town or stay here, in the collective farm?''
Nina did not say anything. She did not want to go to the town, but she was too shy to tell Ratmanov about her dream.
``Look here, my lass,'' the man said, "why don't you take our club in hand. You know how dull and unpleasant it is there. It needs a good manager. You are young and energetic, I'm sure you'll succeed.''
On the very first day Nina took a pail and some rags and joined the cleaners tidying the place. She washed the blinds and the curtain, asked the farm's painter to draw new placards. The hall acquired a better appearance. But, as the saying goes, it is not the clothes that make the man nor the decorations that make the club. Nina was worried by the 139 recreation facilities which the club could offer to the farmers.
Sirotkina went to Chkalovsk for a talk with the chief of the department of culture and the director of the district House of Culture. Then she called the club's council and invited young people to its meeting. Many useful suggestions were made. Somebody complained that the club put on nothing but cinema shows and dances, which, incidentally, were quite dull. Why not arrange interesting games, contests, song parties?
It was autumn, and so they decided to have a big autumn ball.
That made them all very busy; they went to the villages in the vicinity, put up advertisements, and distributed invitation cards. The hall was decorated with Russian birches, vases of scarlet-red mountain ash, and colourful autumn leaves. Everything was magnificent. The people danced and sang and competed for prizes. The ball was a great success. Nothing of the kind had ever been heard of in the Sitskoye club.
Ever since, the balls have been traditional affairs marking autumn, summer, spring and the New Year.
The balls were followed by parties marking special occasions, amateur concerts, and debates. They have also opened a "university of culture" and some sports sections. Nina enlisted many assistants. The local teachers headed by Nikolai Melnikov, the director of studies, founded a lecturing bureau; Nadya Melnikova, the librarian, acquaints the villagers with new books. In addition, Nina Sirotkina was the first in the region to organise the so-called posidelki ---the sit-round gatherings.
She was told about the posidelki at the courses for club workers by Maria Alyabina, an instructor at the Borsk school of culture and education. Nina made detailed notes of what Alyabina had to say and decided to follow suit.
When the first posidelki was announced, the women brought two big samovars, tea cups with ornaments, vases with sweets and biscuits, and colourful table-cloths. They put on sarafans and embroidered blouses and brought along the long-forgotten balalaikas, pipes, reed-pipes, horns and rattles.
140The hall was decorated with twigs and flowers. They sat on benches around the table, talked, sang old songs, and danced. It was merry and interesting.
Nina rejoiced at the success, but she thought that the posidelki should be modernised. So she invited Boris Kryazhev, the farm's chairman, to one of the posidelki. He told them about the collective farm's tasks under the Ninth FiveYear Plan. Also invited were Rufina Melnikova, a school teacher, who delivered a lecture on the international situation; and Natalya Kazantseva, a doctor from the district hospital.
Then she organised a folk choir which came first in the district's competition. Later the choir began to take part in all festivals and holiday celebrations. Tatyana Bolonkina and Sergei Borin will probably never forget their wedding. The members of the choir presented them with bread and salt, sang old wedding songs and strewed them with hops for luck.
At one of the meetings of the club's board Nina said:
``It is all very well to print up-to-the-minute bulletins and reports, but I feel that that is not enough, we must arrange meetings with advanced farmers and celebrate labour successes.''
The suggestion was accepted, and masters of farm production now come to the club and share their experience.
Now take amateur art activities. Nina told that at first only four people came to the rehearsal; she felt so frustrated that tears came to her eyes and she wanted to chuck the club and go away from the village to some Komsomol construction site or to Lena Vasilyeva, her best friend in Gorky, and work with her in the factory. But when she had got over it, she was not a little chagrined by this momentary weakness. Nina reminded herself of her own words about difficulties and the need to overcome them. Now the club has groups of soloists, drama, and artistic recitals. The amateur artists recite poems, sing popular songs and put on short plays on local topics. They went on a tour to nearby villages, and even to Chkalovsk. And everywhere they enjoyed a hearty welcome.
141The club's manager is always busy, her hands are full of cares. But what can equal the joy she feels when her work brings success!
In the evening farmers hurry to their club. Sirotkina relies on the support of the farm's chairman, the secretary of the Party organisation, the agronomist, the young people and the old timers as well. The villagers cannot imagine their life without Nina. Their club is their second home. The club has been awarded the title Club of Excellent Work.
Sitskoye is a small village of not more than sixty cottages. An asphalt road divides it in two. One half of the village is enclosed by the timid Sanakhta River, and the other, by a wood. All villagers know one another, and there are no secrets. Half the people there are kinsmen.
The villagers know everything about Nina. Though she is only 22, Nina is one of the most respected people. Recently she received her first award---the Lenin Centenary Medal. She is also leader of the local YCLers. As an expression of the great trust they place in her, the villagers elected Nina Sirotkina as a deputy to the village Soviet.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ A COMMUNIST SHOCK WORKER RUNSNina Shnyakova, the daughter of a worker, was born in 1945 in Leningrad. She began to work at the Lunacharsky Factory and then, in 1961, went to the Vibrator Plant where she learned the trade of a winder.
She proved an efficient and industrious employee. She always shares the experience she has gained on the job with her workmates. Nina Shnyakova is a communist shock worker. She was awarded the Badge of Honour and a medal for high production figures and overfulfilling her fiveyear plan norm.
__*_*_*__Nina lived with her mother and sister not far from the Vibrator Plant in the Malaya Posadskaya Street. Her sister, Galya, was a winder at the plant, and Nina and her mother kept up with all the news at the factory and knew most of Galya's friends.
142At fifteen Nina completed the eighth class, and the family decided that she should go to work and carry on at evening school. Nina wanted to work in Galya's shop but the personnel department refused to take her until she reached sixteen.
In May 1961 she at last reached sixteen and rushed to the Vibrator. They sent her to the No. 19 shop, where everybody knew her. The foreman took her to Galya and said:
``Here's your sister, take her and train her in your trade.''
In three months Nina was done with apprenticeship and started to work independently. She soon caught up with the advanced winders. The foreman and the administration found that they were not deceived in their expectations, while the workers in the shop helped her to learn to respect the collective.
But Nina was also member of another collective which moulded her character and helped her to become a woman whom everybody respects.
On the first day Nina came to the plant, she saw an announcement inviting people to join a parachute-jumping group. Nina enrolled in the aviation club, began to train and took part in competitions.
She reached the age when young people are allowed to do parachute jumping and began to wait impatiently for her first jump. But every time something went wrong--- either the visibility was poor or the wind was too strong for the beginners.
Finally came July 6, 1962, the day Nina will never forget. Later there were to be other happy or sorrowful days she would never forget, but July 6 was a special event, the day when her dream came true.
The AN-2 took them up to an altitude of 800 metres--- the altitude for beginners.
There were eleven of them. Yes, only eleven out of the twenty-five who started two years ago. These eleven were the most resolute and tenacious of them. Nina was the youngest.
Nina Shnyakova was in Leningrad's city team.
Then she was selected for the USSR national team.
When the elections to the local Soviets came round, Nina 143 Shnyakova was nominated as a candidate first by the workers in her shop and then by the workers of the whole factory.
Their hopes were justified. Two years of work as deputy crystallised Nina Shnyakova's character.
Formerly, her feats in sports brought joy and satisfaction mostly to herself, but the work of deputy concerns the welfare of others, and if people are satisfied, that makes her happy.
In the executive committee they knew about Nina's hobby and achievements, and so they decided to elect her to the standing committee on sport and physical culture. She was made responsible for school sports. In the two years of her term Nina inspected all the schools and discussed the possibility of adding new gyms with the architects and builders. These gyms are already operating in schools Nos. 82 and 86, and another one is nearing completion in school No. 87.
The committee members are all energetic and serious. They helped to set aside 78 playgrounds and 18 sports grounds in the yards and squares. Moreover these are all capital projects. In the yard of house 8-10 in Lenin Street, the playground resembles a stadium in miniature.
Nina Shnyakova often meets her constituency. Usually such meetings are attended by elderly people who, so to speak, represent the busy younger members of their families. They listen attentively to the report of their young deputy, who seems to meet with their approval.
Now the employees of the Vibrator Plant have nominated Nina Shnyakova, a member of the Komsomol, as their candidate to the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR.
[144] __ALPHA_LVL1__ THE PART OF SOVIET YOUTHUnder socialism the economy and the organisation of social production are the principal fields of public affairs managed by the masses. Here, too, just as in the organs of Soviet power---the Soviets of Working People's Deputies--- a major role is played by Soviet youth.
The problems of democracy, in particular that of getting the masses to participate in the administration of society's affairs, are the principal fields of ideological and political struggle between socialism and capitalism.
Some bourgeois ideologists paint bourgeois democracy as the government of the people. Others openly denounce democracy, producing arguments to the effect that democracy is bound to wither away and that power will inevitably be concentrated in the hands of a small elite. They regard the slogans of democracy and sovereignty of the people as Utopian and wishful thinking. This theory actually reflects the real situation in the capitalist world, where the economic and political power is in fact concentrated in the hands of a narrow circle of monopolists. Imperialism, as Lenin noted, marks the general onslaught of reaction, and the tendency to negate bourgeois democracy, curtailed as it is, is growing. The masses are increasingly debarred from the administration of society's affairs. Yet contemporary bourgeois sociologists claim that this is a general phenomenon, typical both of capitalism and socialism; they argue that with the scientific and technological revolution in progress, it is impossible to ensure the participation of the 145 masses in the management of production. On these grounds they insist that the respective functions (and all the other functions, for that matter) should be transferred into the hands of specialists.
Bourgeois sociologists and propagandists spread the myth that the management of the highly complicated production on scientific principles is the function of specialists and managers---the technocrats. There are several goals behind these conceptions. Firstly, they suggest the idea that management in production and economy has ceased to express merely the proprietor's self-interest, and is now a purely technical regulation of the technological process, an expression of production necessity, born of scientific and technological progress and the growing scope and complexity of production. The technical specialists who concentrate the management in their own hands supposedly stand outside the sphere of class antagonism. Secondly, they seek to prove that the idea of the working masses managing production is preposterous. Thirdly, since the productive forces develop on the same lines under socialism as under capitalism owing to the character of the scientific and technological revolution, bourgeois sociologists claim that the socialist society requires the same machinery and the same principles of management as the capitalist countries, and that the producers, the working people, can act only as servants, as cogs in the machinery.
Actually, there are no changes in the nature of production that can justify the exclusion of the masses from management. But if they are in fact excluded, the blame lies with the nature of the social system. In production, based on private property, the working people have always been excluded from management even at times when there were no technical specialists and no need for them. Under socialism and communism, however, the management of production is the business of the working masses even though the role of technical specialists grows.
If we were to make a detailed examination of the entirety of functions which make up the management of production at all levels---from single sectors to the economy as a whole---we should see that they can easily be divided into two groups.
__PRINTERS_P_145_COMMENT__ 10---411 146The technical group comprises the control functions, technical instructions to employees, material and technical supply of production, current planning, etc. These functions are required by the very nature of social labour; their specialisation and intricacy depend on the development of the productive forces. They can be easily performed by the one-man administrative activities of a qualified specialist both in capitalist and socialist (communist) society. Lenin wrote: "Large-scale machine industry---which is precisely the material source, the productive source, the foundation of socialism---calls for absolute and strict unity of will, which directs the joint labours of hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands of people.''^^1^^
The social side of management comprises, first and foremost, labour discipline, the solution of problems related to production goals and conditions, distribution of the products of labour and control over those who perform the technical functions of management. Insisting on the need of firm leadership, Lenin, however, pointed out that "the masses must have the right to choose responsible leaders for themselves. They must have the right to replace them, the right to know and check each smallest step of their activity.''^^2^^
The social functions touch on the lives and interests of all people engaged in production; they are such that they can be performed by all who are directly involved in production. But the technical functions, naturally, must be performed by a qualified specialist. In bourgeois society the working people are barred from management not because they are tied to their work-bench, or are not qualified enough, or have no practical opportunity to take up the management or because advanced production requires qualified supervision by a specialist, the manager. We are speaking not of the technical but of the social functions, the performance of which cannot be impeded by any scientific and technological progress or its requirements. In capitalist society the working people cannot perform the social functions of management simply because it is the capitalists and _-_-_
^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 268.
~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 212.
147 not they who own the means of production. "The leadership of industry is an attribute of capital, just as in feudal times the functions of general and judge were attributes of landed property.''^^1^^Even bourgeois scientists are compelled to admit this fact. For example, the French lawyer F. Seller writes: "Based on private property the principles of our jurisprudence recognise the absolute right of the head of an enterprise to conduct its affairs.''^^2^^
True, recently the commanders of big capital, their ideologists, and official government circles have been compelled to take into account the growing demands of the masses. In the attempt to divert the dissatisfaction into a safe channel, they all began talking about the need to attract the working people to the management of production. This idea is one aspect of the notorious and demagogical doctrine known as "humane relations''. They began to elaborate and implement all kinds of programmes supposedly designed to enlist workers in the management of production. But all these programmes and some of the ensuing practical measures are nothing but demagogical traps. The most unbiased bourgeois scientists admit this. The American sociologist W. Marrs, for instance, says that "land and capital are in a strategic position, and can usually enforce their demands upon the enterpriser.''^^3^^
Only the victory of socialist revolution and the elimination of capitalist relations can create the essential conditions, the possibility and the necessity for all working people---the direct producers of material benefits---to participate in the management of production. Under socialism and only under socialism the working people themselves can become the owners (co-owners) of production; the functions of management, as we know, belong to those who own the means of production.
Socialism comes about only when the management of the social means of production is in the hands of the working _-_-_
~^^1^^ Karl Marx, Capital, Moscow, 1905, Vol. 1, p. 332.
~^^2^^ F. Seller, Strategic dc la luttc suciale, Paris, 1961, p. 6.
~^^3^^ W. Marrs, "The Man on Your Back.'' A Preface lo the Art of Living Without Producing in Modern Society, 1958, p. 159.
148 people and subject to their control on the basis of directives and laws which they themselves or their representatives adopt. There is not, nor can there be any socialism without the participation of the broad masses in the administration of state and society.Socialisation of the means of production, as we know, does not always mean socialism. This process is in fact quite widespread in modern state-monopoly capitalism, but since political and economic power remains in the hands of the state-monopoly upper crust and since there is no genuine sovereignty of the people, capitalism does not cease to be capitalism. "Socialism,'' Lenin wrote, "is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly.''^^1^^ This transformation completely depends on the genuinely democratic nature of the state which exercises this ``monopoly''.
Thus, the management of the economy is an interior element of the economic structure and, therefore, one of the most important factors determining its nature. The socialist character of the economy signifies that the owners of production are the working people.
The Resolution of the International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties (1969) emphasised that "the new social system based on public ownership of the means of production and on the power of the working people is capable of ... creating conditions for genuine democracy, for real participation by the broad masses of people in the administration of society.. . . The building of socialism and its further development rests on the support, participation and initiative of the broadest masses inspired and led by the working class.'' Speeding up economic development and satisfying the needs of all members of society are made possible by "the active participation of workers by hand and by brain in guiding and managing the economy.''^^2^^
Under genuine socialism production democracy _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 358.
~^^2^^ International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parlies, Moscow, 1969, Prague, 1969, pp. 21--22.
149 presupposes the participation of working people in the management of socialist production from primary production units to the national economy as a whole; the primary production collective is only a relatively detached unit of this whole, a unit which is centrally managed by the socialist state on the basis of the Party's policy. This was specified by the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Leonid Brezhnev in that part of the Central Committee's Report to the 24th Congress of the CPSU which dealt with the greater participation of the working people in the management of production. "A broader approach,'' he said, "has to be adopted to this, in view of the role which our Party and the Soviet state play in economic management. Their policy, including their economic policy, is dictated by the basic interests of the working people. It is charted by representatives of the working people in the elective organs, with the broad participation of the masses in the discussion of major plans and decisions. The working people also take an active part in seeing that these decisions are carried out. The Party will continue to promote all these forms of socialist democracy.''^^1^^Thus, the democratic nature of socialist production management is primarily manifested in the very fact that the socialist state is governed by the working class, which rallies all the working people in its ranks and is led by its vanguard, the Communist Party. Lenin said that the Soviet government can administer only if it correctly expresses the will of the people. Under such circumstances, the management of centralised socialist production by the state means that the supreme managing power is exercised by the working class even though some of its representatives do not directly perform the functions of management. This is one of the most important expressions of the working class' guiding role in the socialist society.
At the same time socialism constantly improves the mechanism of direct participation by actual representatives of the working class and all other segments of working people in the management of production. This participation is effected via the institutions of representative democracy. The _-_-_
^^1^^ 24th Congress of the CPSU, Moscow, 1971, p. 85.
150 state laws which regulate and guide the development of the national economy are enacted by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and the other Soviets. These bodies incorporate the finest representatives of the Soviet people, who express the will of the masses and their constituencies. The same principles are manifest in the work of the GPSU congresses which elaborate the directives for the development of the USSR national economy. At the closing session of the 24th Congress of the CPSU Leonid Brezhnev said: "Comrade delegates, you represent all our republican, territorial and regional Party organisations. You represent all the branches of our national economy, all walks of social life, all sections of communist construction. You represent all the generations of Soviet Communists. All this made it possible for the Congress to discuss thoroughly the problems posed, to find solutions which to the greatest possible extent accord with the tasks in hand, with the interests of the Party and the people.''^^1^^The working people participate in the management of the national economy either directly or through their representatives, using various institutions and forms of so-called direct democracy to this end.
As an example, let us see how the national economic plans of the USSR---the most important instruments of centralised economic management---are being worked out. The drafts, of course, are prepared by competent state organs and approved as acts of the supreme state power. The supreme organs of Party and state are striving to make them reflect as fully as possible the interests of the Soviet people. But that is not all. The drafts of the plans are submitted for general discussions which involve millions of working people, primarily workers and peasants. This is what we mean by direct participation of working people in the management of the economy.
Let us examine how the supreme state organs adopted the legal acts on the introduction of the new system of planning and economic incentives in industry and building, and on the measures to make state farms fully self-- sufficient. These acts were of exceptional importance for the _-_-_
~^^1^^ 24th Congress of the CPSU, Moscow, 1971, p. 335.
151 management of the Soviet economy. Of course, they were not just the handiwork of the state organs. The `` mechanism'' of their elaboration was as follows. The principal ideas on the changes in management were advanced by the Communist Party which had, so to say, absorbed the views and opinions of millions of working people expressed at workers' meetings, in the press, etc. The Communist Party polished these ideas into an integral whole on a scientifically substantiated basis. Implementing the decisions of the Communist Party, its 23rd Congress and the Plenary Meetings of its Central Committee, the state organs worked out concrete means of organising economic activity along new lines. At first the new methods of management were experimentally introduced at a small number of factories, building organisations and state farms. The employees of these enterprises assessed the advantages of the new system in practice. The results were thoroughly discussed by workers and peasants throughout the country. The positive sides of the new forms and methods of management were approved, and the shortcomings criticised. Thus the content of what was subsequently enacted in the form of state laws, binding on all, was polished into shape by the collective wisdom of millions.The 24th Congress of the CPSU noted that in the interim period the Party organisations of many republics, territories and regions had made important economic suggestions of nation-wide significance to the Central Committee. These were studied and taken into account when framing national economic decisions.^^1^^
The nation-wide discussion, that ensued on the draft Directives on the Ninth Five-Year Economic Development Plan on the eve of the 24th Congress of the CPSU is a brilliant example of the way millions of working people are participating in working out the most important national economic decisions. Hundreds of thousands of young workers made suggestions at meetings, in the press, etc. As an illustration we can quote some suggestions received by Izvestia.
V. Ivanov, a worker from Taganrog, suggested ( _-_-_
~^^1^^ 24th Congress of the CPSU, Moscow, 1971, pp. 46--47.
152 substantiating his point with valid arguments) that the production of self-propelled chassis be drastically stepped up "even if it requires lower rates of production of self-propelled harvesters''; V. Stepanov, a taxi-driver, suggested the introduction of a new system of urban traffic control; K. Sviridov, a miner, pressed for speedier modernisation of old mines "which still have quite a lot of coal''; a group of Tyumen oilmen urged the utilisation of by-gas at oil deposits etc.In his Report to the 24th Congress of the CPSU, Alexei Kosygin, the Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, said that many useful and important suggestions on questions relating to economic, social and cultural development were made and that they would be carefully studied and taken into consideration in the drafting and the practical implementation of the five-year plan.^^1^^ In his concludingspeech, Alexei Kosygin said: "Thus, the new Five-Year Plan will, in line with the principles of socialist democracy, express one united will of the people, and embody the collective wisdom of the Party and the people.''^^2^^
In the course of building communism the direct participation of working people in the management of social production will increase. The Programme of the CPSU states: "Discussion by the people of draft laws and other decisions of both national and local significance must become the rule. The most important draft laws should be put to a nation-wide referendum.''^^3^^ It goes without saying that other organisational forms will be worked out to permit millions of working people to take part in managing the country's economy.
The working people's collectives play an important role in the centralised state management of the socialist national economy, which, under socialism, is conducted on genuinely democratic principles.
The labour collectives must exert a significant and regular influence on the management of production, because it is in the labour collectives that the primary organisations _-_-_
~^^1^^ 24th Congress of the CPSU, Moscow, 1971, p. 132.
~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 206.
~^^3^^ The Road to Communism, Moscow, p. 550.
153 of the Party, the trade unions, the Komsomol and other organs function and because it is precisely these organisations through which working people carry out corresponding activities, ensuring the maximum development of production democracy.It must be stressed that both now and in the future---in the foreseeable future, at any rate---the production collectives must be directed by qualified specialists under one-man leadership. The founders of Marxism-Leninism said that advanced machine production requires one-man management with an authoritative executive whose orders in the course of production should be obligatory for all.
This, however, does not preclude broad democracy in production. In contrast with capitalist industrial production, one-man leadership under socialism goes hand in hand with the democratic participation of the working masses in the management of production. How is it done in practice? Firstly, the working masses can and must check administration and economic management, i.e., see that the heads of production correctly perform their functions; but it is stipulated that during the actual process of production their orders are to be binding on all. Lenin pointed out: "The more resolutely we now have to stand for a ruthlessly firm government, for the dictatorship of individuals in definite processes of work, in definite aspects of purely executive functions, the more varied must be the forms and methods of control from below in order to counteract every shadow of a possibility of distorting the principles of Soviet government.''^^1^^
Secondly, Lenin pointed out the need to combine unconditional submission to the will of the executive in the process of work with the democratic (involving the indispensable and decisive participation of the masses) solution of problems "about the conditions of work".^^2^^ In expounding this idea with due regard for the experience accumulated in the course of the socialist society's evolution, we must note that the participation of working people in direct management implies the joint solution, along with the _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 275.
~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 270.
154 administration and techno-economic services, of such cardinal problems, affecting the process of work and the viability of the collective, as those of improving production and labour organisation (including norm-setting, economic accounting, etc.), and living and working conditions, elaborating the most effective forms of remuneration, determining ways of developing and improving engineering facilities and raising the quality of output; and, finally, enforcing and strengthening labour discipline, which includes stimulating or reprimanding individual members of the collective.Much has been achieved in this respect over the years of Soviet power, particularly in recent years.
In each collective there is a network of democratic institutions which help the working people to take part in the management of production. These institutions comprise the primary cells of the numerous public organisations which, guided by the Communist Party, constitute a system of socialist democracy in our society.
Along with the administration, the public organisations and bodies, by drawing the broad masses of the workingpeople into their everyday work, participate in the planning of production and the social development of the collective, material and moral stimulation of workers and office employees, distribution of various funds, improvement of living and working conditions, maintenance and strengthening of discipline in production. They look for reserves to raise labour productivity and production efficiency, help to introduce scientific and engineering innovations, check the economic activities, etc., of the administration.
In the Soviet Union the biggest socio-political organisation of young people is the Komsomol, which has more than 29 million young men and women in its ranks. Primary YCL organisations function in almost all, even very small production collectives. Their basic task is ideological work among young people, but they also participate in the management of production. YCL organisations arrange competitions of professional skill among young people and encourage them in their scientific and engineering pursuits. YCL organisations help to deal with many problems connected with labour organisation among young men and women--- hiring and discharging, vocational training, labour 155 protection, promotion, hostel accommodation, moral and material incentives, distribution of living quarters and funds for cultural and sports purposes.
In recent years Komsomol organisations have been granted greater powers in the execution of these rights.
Many Komsomol activists are members of the farm's board, and more than 130 YCLers are deputies of the local Soviets. Here are a few examples of how Komsomol organisations adopt and implement decisions on problems of management. In the Pridneprovsky collective farm YCLers decided, on the suggestion of Nadya Nosko, a milkmaid and Komsomol committee member, to assist in fully mechanising all dairy farms. Young people in the Thalmann collective farm organised a two-shift work of all harvesting machines. Volodya Belyavsky came up with an interesting idea. For the past few years he has been competing with his father in harvesting. So on his suggestion the boys set up Komsomolyouth harvesting teams and challenged the veterans.
All Komsomol organisations in the district pursue definite goals. The general aim is to make full and efficient use of all machines working in the fields and dairy farms.^^1^^
It should be noted that the Komsomol's ideological work is positively tied up with the management of production. It is aimed at the cultivation of a communist attitude to labour, discipline and responsibility. All this develops subjective prerequisites---readiness, desire and ability to participate in work connected with the management of production.
The participation of young people in the management of production is manifested in the so-called Komsomol-youth collectives which exist in nearly all enterprises, collective and state farms, the transport system, etc.
Sometimes the collectives are small teams or crews working in transport, and sometimes they represent big shops, construction sites and even building trusts. Their very names imply that such production collectives are made up fully, or nearly fully, of young people.
Here is an example. A little while ago a Komsomol-youth team of coal-hewers was set up at the Maganak mine in _-_-_
^^1^^ Komsomolskaya Pravda, June 19, 1970.
156 Prokopievsk, the Kuznetsk coal basin. Since work was complicated, the administration asked M. Gelbutovsky, an honorary miner, to head the team.When they were done with one layer they took up another one, much thicker and with a greater angle of incidence. They had to employ a new and more efficient technology--- the shield system. Veteran miners declared that the job was beyond the youngsters' capabilities. Gelbutovsky himself, although he liked the young coal-hewers, went to the Komsomol committee and said: "Take all the newcomers away. They can't work under the shield. We are through with the Komsomol-youth team, I'm going to recruit experienced miners.'' The sector chief backed Gelbutovsky, but the Komsomol committee refused to comply. The question was examined at a Komsomol meeting. Anatoly Kozlikin, a coalhewer, talked for a long time and in great detail about the mine's future, about the young miners and their desire to master the advanced technology. Yes, he said, in Prokopievsk and even throughout the Kuzbass only veteran miners work under the shields, but the time will come when they will have to give way to younger men. "Maybe it's a good idea to let the young miners with adequate general and technical training master the skills of veterans,'' he said. The meeting supported Kozlikin and instructed the Komsomol committee to retain the team.
The members of the committee talked with many people and weighed all the circumstances. They decided to ask the administration to trust the young people with shields, and to retain the team in full. They also asked that every young miner be given an experienced partner.
A year later Gelbutovsky once again came to the Komsomol committee and said: "I recommend Kozlikin as team leader. Take my word, he's fit for the job. Since this is a Komsomol-youth team, the leader must also be a YCLer!''
Subsequently, Kozlikin was made the team's leader. The team is doing fine, working just as well as many of the veteran teams. On the eve of the 16th Congress of the YCL they bettered the target figures by thousands of tons of coal.
The boys in the team are well-educated, persistent, 157 tolerate no shortcomings, and know their own minds. They conduct themselves like real proprietors of the mine.^^1^^
Another important form of mass participation in production management under socialism is public control over the activities of the administration and over production and economic affairs in general. This control is exerted along several lines, and young people are very active in it.
In the first place, primary Party organisations exercise broad rights of control over the administration of industrial enterprises, transport, construction sites, trade, collective farms, state farms, design bureaus and research institutes. The 24th Congress of the CPSU further extended these rights. Special commissions, elected at Party meetings, check the production activities of enterprises, ensure that the plans are fulfilled and supervise the enforcement of state and Party discipline. Trade unions possess considerable control functions, as we have already noted. Trade union control helps to improve the work of enterprises and safeguards the direct interests of collectives. Other public organisations and bodies also enjoy control rights in special forms.
In addition, there is a special system of people's control. Its public organs---groups and posts---which function in all collectives, supervise many questions connected with state and economic administration, and enlist many public activists for this purpose. They check material and financial expenditure, enforce labour laws and discipline, eradicate bureaucracy and red-tape, assist in the introduction of scientific methods of work, and mobilise working people in the struggle for thrift and economy. In line with the principles advanced by Lenin, these organs are also engaged in organisational work connected with the solution of certain problems of production and economy.
For example, along with public activists, the Sverdlovsk Regional Committee of People's Control checked the utilisation of electric and thermal energy and fuel in the national economy. Besides eliminating instances of squandering and mismanagement, the Committee also popularised the achievements of advanced enterprises and organisations. This work involved more than 30,000 activists, at least one-half _-_-_
^^1^^ Komsomolskaya Pravda, June 19, 1970.
158 of whom were workers, office employees and specialists under 30. They made more than 2,000 suggestions, the implementation of which saved millions of kilowatt-hours of electricity and thousands of megacalories of heat.All in all there are about 7 million voluntary public controllers, of whom a large number are young people. In addition, there are special youth control groups, detachments and headquarters of the so-called Komsomol Searchlight in all enterprises, research institutions, educational establishments and other organisations. The Komsomol Searchlight detachments are intended to pry into all aspects of production activities, uncover neglect, mismanagement, bureaucracy and other shortcomings, and help to eliminate them. They check the efficiency of production, recruiting masses of young people for that purpose.
Addressing the 16th Congress of the YCL, Leonid Brezhnev said: "The creative energy and the healthy critical attitude of young people, which one must likewise be able to support, must be directed towards improving production, everyday life and the conditions for recreation, and towards intolerance of shortcomings, of all kinds of backwardness and manifestations of bureaucracy. It is important to value in young people their knack of carrying out assignments with enthusiasm and their ability to react keenly to shortcomings and surmount them.''^^1^^
The Komsomol Searchlight provides young people with the opportunity of implementing all these fine qualities in practice. In exploiter societies the inherent aptitude of youngpeople for criticism inevitably leads to antagonism with the existing social system. It is not so under socialism where any consolidation of the social and economic system is of benefit to young people. Their criticisms are therefore levelled at various shortcomings which hinder the development of the socialist society. It is of particular importance to eliminate shortcomings in production, the principal field of social life. This is where the Komsomol Searchlight is most vigorous and this is where it provides young people with wide opportunities for social activity.
During the Eighth Five-Year Plan more than ten million _-_-_
~^^1^^ L. I. Brezhnev, Following Lenin's Course, Moscow, 1972, p. 312.
159 young enthusiasts received training in economic management in the Komsomol Searchlight detachments, helping to save millions of rubles for the national economy. In 1972 some two million, i.e., one out of every five YCLers at work in the national economy, were elected to Komsomol Searchlight posts and headquarters.In 1972 at least 3.G million young production workers--- almost twice as many as in posts and headquarters---took part in Komsomol Searchlight campaigns against losses and inefficiency. The 630,000 suggestions they made saved the national economy more than 500 million rubles. Here are a few examples.
On the instructions of the Komsomol Searchlight headquarters a group of young economists of Chirchikgesstroi (Chirchik hydro-electric power station project) investigated the utilisation of building materials. Having discovered that in one section the builders had used more than 4,000 cubic metres of timber for planking instead of 3,000 as envisaged in the norms, they organised a team of 20 YCLers and, every day after the shift, checked the assignment orders and verified the amount of timber utilised. The Komsomol committee and the Komsomol Searchlight headquarters insisted that a Komsomol-youth team of carpenters and concrete workers be set up. The team strictly kept to the norms and even saved a considerable amount of timber.
The following story was told by Victor Mochalin, an electrician and secretary of the Komsomol organisation in the Rodina collective farm (Orenburg Region), at a regional Komsomol conference.
``When 1 was leaving for the conference, our milkmaids, Maria Lopanova, Maria Terpugova, Alexandra Sarimova, Valya Sidneyeva and others, instructed me to tell the conference about the work of our Komsomol Searchlight. Not to boast of our performance but to make you, at the conference, discuss the question of how to improve our work.
``I believe that the Komsomol Searchlight should occupy a prominent place in the youth movement for shock work and efficiency.
``There are nine YCLers in the headquarters of our Komsomol Searchlight. We selected them in such a way as to have all sectors in the collective farm represented. We 160 wanted them to be in the know in regard to everything. So the headquarters includes Alexandra Sarimova, a milkmaid, Grigory Portnov, a tractor driver, Lidia Ushakova, a teacher, Valya Ivanayeva, a pigtender, Mikhail Babenko, a mechanic, and Alexander Dzharlikaganov, the supervisor of a veterinary station.
``The first job was to check the dairy farms. The situation there was far short of what might be desired. The raiders investigated what was wrong, checked the work of the milkmaids and reported their findings in the Komsomol Searchlight bulletin. Then we took the matter up with the collective farm board. Ever since the fodder has been coming on time and in sufficient quantities. The organisation of the milkmaids' work also underwent a change. The board of the collective farm relieved the former manager, a poorly educated and weak-willed man, and appointed in his stead Nikolai Sidneyev, a YCLer and a recent graduate from a secondary technical school. Soon Nikolai Sidneyev was elected chief of the Komsomol Searchlight headquarters.
``And that was an opportune decision, because it became clear that the dairy was the most vulnerable section in the collective farm. It had the lowest labour productivity and the least output. Though all the milkmaids had fulfilled their plans, they were all dissatisfied with the results. The dairy gave us nothing but losses, while crop-growing brought in the profits.
``So far we have only succeeded in installing a milking machine, but the advantage is already evident---we have saved the milkmaids about two hours of work a day. Now, at long last, we hope to provide the dairy with regular workers and, perhaps next year, to organise work in two shifts. But as yet this is only a dream.
``We want to establish close ties with the groups of the "people's control. We do the same job and working together will benefit us all. We have much to learn from people's controllers, who are proficient in their field.''^^1^^
The Komsomol Searchlight at the Leninist Komsomol Car Plant in Moscow works hand in hand with the local people's control group. Its activity illustrates how young people participate in the management of production.
_-_-_~^^1^^ Komsomolskaya Pravda, February 2, 1972.
161
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Deputies to the USSR Supreme
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Reception hours of Mikhail
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Weaver Valentina Pletneva, deputy
International get-together of working youth, Moscow, 1972
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[Missing?]
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Alexander Milchakov, General
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Celebrations of the 50th anniversary
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Young pioneers of Yaroslavl are
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YCLers building an electric
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Akstinas Birutc, Srcbalyun works in
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YCLer Anna Zemlyak is an expert
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The YCLers of the assembly shop
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Early harvest
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Zulfiya Karimullina, a
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Sorting shops at a poultry farm in
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Milkmaid A. Chupina is
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The Kedainiai agricultural
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Lessons in a Moscow vocational
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The award of the banner of labour
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Laboratory experiments in the
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S. Gonchukov, a student, winner of
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Boris Levin, member of the student
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The amateur film studio of the
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The 20-year-old expert Tolib
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Valenr Amir, a young artist from
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Mikhail Sholokhov and young poets
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Dmitry Tolstoba, a worker from
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The club is popular with the young
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Lessons at the riding school of the
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Olga Korbut, world gymnastics
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A cross-country race in May 1972
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Sportsmen of the motor works in
The headquarters of the Komsomol Searchlight at the factory is incorporated as an independent section in the group of people's controllers, and 156 YCLers are working in the organs of people's control. Between January and July 1971, they made 100 raids jointly with people's controllers, 27 of which were carried out to investigate the utilisation of electricity and materials. They helped to achieve a 10 percent reduction in the losses on all types of power compared with the preceding year.
The Komsomol Searchlight headquarters works out its plans independently, but along the same lines as the group of people's control. A group consisting of the ten best and most qualified KS commanders from the biggest shops are always in mobile readiness.
The KS has a body of 700 activists. "Formerly,'' says Yury Lenin, the KS chief of staff, "we accepted them on the principle 'if he's a good man, that's enough'. But now that we have worked out a clear method of making raids and found the right ways of fighting shortcomings, we are more demanding in our selection. A member of the KS must be first of all a qualified specialist, capable of penetrating into the essence of the matter, giving a competent advice and making a deep analysis.''
Incidentally, Yury Lenin himself is an engineer in the electric laboratory and a communist shock worker. He directs young workers in their persistent fight against the irrational and uneconomical expenditure of all types of energy.
The factory daily consumes thousands of kilowatt-hours of electricity, and large quantities of compressed air and water. Their consumption is placed under the strict surveillance of KS members and people's controllers.^^1^^
From the foregoing it follows that it would be wrong to assume that young people participate in the management of production only through the agency of specifically youth organisations independently of senior age groups of working people.
Trade unions play a big role in the management of production. For they are responsible for attracting the masses into production management. With a membership of more than 93 million, the trade unions are the most mass public _-_-_
^^1^^ Moskovsky Komsomolets, August 26, 1971.
__PRINTERS_P_161_COMMENT__ 11---411 162 organisations of working people in the Soviet Union, incorporating the whole of the working class and the intelligentsia, as well as most farmers. Approximately a half of the total membership consists of young people.Trade unions enjoy great rights in economic management. They plan the development of production in all enterprises and in the economy as a whole, as well as controlling all aspects of economic and production activities. Only in conjunction with trade unions or with their consent can the administration take decisions on questions of labour organisation and remuneration, incentives, reprimands, distribution of funds, and promotion to responsible positions. Trade unions can also insist on the removal or punishment of executives who violate the interests of working people, etc.
An important organisational aspect of production management is the collective agreement between the administration and the collective, as represented by its trade union organisation. Before the collective agreement is signed, the employees discuss a wide range of problems of concern to the entire collective, plan rational work, indicate the most correct and best substantiated measures, uncover shortcomings in the work of the collective and the administration, and put latent reserves into motion. The agreements are drafted with the participation of numerous activists of the trade union and other public organisations, including Komsomol organisations. Subsequently, the agreements are supplemented by amendments which define the plans more specifically. Nearly two million additional suggestions and amendments are made every year by Soviet working people.
Trade unions have the greatest possibilities of all public organisations to ensure the interests of all categories of working people. In view of this, the Komsomol organisations, which represent the interests of young people, work in close contact with trade unions. Many Komsomol activists are elected to all the leading trade union bodies, from shop locals to the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions. Komsomol committees and trade unions jointly work out plans to improve the living and working conditions of young people and satisfy their material and cultural needs more fully. In conjunction with trade unions the Komsomol ensures that laws and government decrees concerning the 163 life, work, and education of young people are carried out.
Trade unions guide the work of standing production conferences (SPCs) which manage the work of production and construction sites on a voluntary basis. By the middle of 1971 there were more than 160,000 SPCs with a total membership of 6.5 million. In 1970 some 42 million workers and office employees took part in the work of SPCs, a good third of whose membership are young people.
SPCs focus their attention on the improvement of engineering facilities and technological processes, the commissioning of new capacities, reduction of production costs, better quality, labour protection and safety engineering, enforcement of discipline, etc. The SPCs present their recommendations to the administration which then issues orders for their implementation. A study of SPCs work in the Sverdlovsk Region revealed that the best of them are concerned with no less than 40 different production problems, from the introduction of new machines to the enlistment of students for young workers' evening schools. Most of the people who answered the questionnaires confirmed that the decisions taken by the SPCs helped to improve production; 47 per cent of those questioned believe that the SPCs help to improve the organisation of production; 30 per cent, that they strengthen production discipline; 31 per cent, that they improve labour organisation; 23 per cent, that they help to raise labour productivity; and 20 per cent, that they improve the quality of goods. These figures indicate that the SPCs exercise great authority among the masses.
A fine example of efficient work is furnished by the SPG at the Chelyabinsk Pipe Mill. The mill's head SPG and the 20 SPCs in the shops involve more than a thousand employees, of whom 60 per cent are advanced workers. The head SPG includes leading designers, economists, shop and section superintendents, foremen, rate setters, leading workers in the principal professions, and active public workers. Many of them are under 30. A representative and authoritative organ like this has all the opportunities to solve important problems of management. During the last three years the SPCs examined many important problems, such as the transfer to the five-day work week, modernisation of the Mill 1020, labour protection and safety engineering, the implementation 164 of the decision of the CC CPSU and the USSR Council of Ministers on measures to ensure high development rates in the iron and steel industry, etc. One of the most fruitful sessions was that in which the SPG discussed the plan of technological progress. The SPG mapped out a whole complex of organisational and engineering measures, most of which have already been carried out. As a result, the mill increased its annual output by several million rubles and reduced its consumption of metal and electricity.
General meetings in collectives also present a very important opportunity for trade unions to mobilise both activists and the working masses for the management of production. At these meetings young people discuss with veteran workers the results of work and the tasks faced by the collectives, problems of production organisation, protection of socialist property, and material and moral incentives. Directors of enterprises, their deputies, superintendents of shops and sectors, and leaders of public organisations report to the meetings about their work. The titles "Shock Communist Worker" are also awarded at these meetings.
The meetings also discuss cases of absence without leave, unconscientious attitude to work and misbehaviour in nonworking hours. Thus the violators of labour discipline and rules of public behaviour are censured by public opinion. The meetings generate an atmosphere of mutual comradely trust and exactingness, as well as a high sense of responsibility for assignments, workers' honour and concern for the common cause.
Analysis of the results of workers' meetings in 20 shops of various enterprises in Sverdlovsk revealed that they discussed and solved cardinal problems of production. It is the workers who are the most active in discussing these problems.
During one mass interview of workers, 66.2 per cent of those questioned said that as a rule they attended all meetings, made suggestions on the improvement of production and economic activities, and production organisation, on strengthening labour discipline, on quality and elimination of spoilage, on the improvement of material and technical supply, on rate-setting, and on the quality of equipment and tools.
165It must be noted according to the research data, which are not however intended to provide large-scale generalisations, that the most active people at the meetings are workers of the senior age groups. There is nothing wrong in that, up to a certain point. Many young workers and office employees explain their passiveness by the fact that they do not know much about production and its needs, and therefore have little to suggest in the way of improvements.
Some public organs and associations in production collectives mobilise working people for the acceleration of technological progress. These comprise science and engineering associations (SEA) and the USSR Society of Inventors and Rationalisers (SIR). In addition to creative engineering pursuits the SEA has a certain influence on the management of production. The recommendations of its conferences are examined by the administrations of enterprises and put into practice.
The SIR's basic job is to assist production management bodies in raising labour productivity by mobilising for the purpose the broadest masses of working people engaged in inventions and rationalising work. Local SIR organisations take part in arranging reviews and competitions for finding additional production reserves, introducing new machines, i.e., they are connected with activities related to the management of production. In addition, they control the introduction of recommended inventions and suggestions, and take measures to eliminate shortcomings.
Most of the SEA and SIR members are, of course, workers and office employees of senior age groups with great experience in production and public life. They do their best to recruit as many young people as possible, and in fact, as much as a quarter of these organisations' total membership consists of young men and women. The same can be said about the activities of numerous public associations which perform specific management functions. These include various public bureaus concerned with economic analysis, ratesetting, scientific and technical information, as well as councils of foremen, etc. Some of them are specifically youth organisations---councils of young specialists, Komsomol public bureaus and committees, and so on. They all mobilise huge armies of young workers, engineers, technicians 166 and office employees in the cause of scientific and technological progress.
Labour discipline and measures to prevent fluctuation of personnel are an important field of activity for public organisations. Enforcement of labour discipline is essential for the normal functioning of production. Lenin always underlined the radical and basic difference between labour discipline under socialism and under capitalism. Under socialism labour discipline is voluntary self-discipline of working people who know no other authority than that of their own community. So it is only natural that in the evolution of socialism and in the course of building communism, the public should assume a decisive role in the enforcement and strengthening of labour discipline.
All public organisations in the Soviet Union are concerned with labour discipline and the fluctuation of manpower. They are guided in this work by the primary Party organisations, and in addition, some public organisations are endowed with specific functions, like organising comrades' courts, public personnel departments, etc. Workers, office employees and specialists are very widely represented in these organisations.
During a sociological research at 5 enterprises in Sverdlovsk, three-quarters of the young workers interviewed said that they were doing something to enforce and strengthen discipline, i.e., they were fully exercising this exceptionally important function of production management.
During the research it was also found that most young workers perform other functions in the management of production---planning, improvement of the technical base and organisation of production, etc. More than 70 per cent of young workers took part in solving problems and implementing measures connected with the improvement of labour organisation and management. This involved the elimination of idle time, promotion of rhythmic work in shops, quality improvements, improvement of working conditions, sanitation, hygiene and safety engineering.
Approximately one half of those questioned said they took part in planning.
The organisational work of Party committees is the decisive factor in ensuring the successful work of public 167 organisations and, consequently, in promoting the role of every labour collective in the management of production.
The Communist Party is the nucleus of the entire system of socialist democracy. This is true of every Party organisation as far as the scope of its activities is concerned. The Party organisation is the soul of the labour collective, and plays a leading role in the development of production democracy. It is precisely the Party organisation's vigorous activity that mobilises the members of the collective for the management of production. It controls the administration, mobilises in the first place Communists and then the whole collective for the joint solution of the most important production and social problems. It also mobilises the collective to look for and utilise reserves of efficient production.
The role of the Party organisation in the system of production democracy is manifested in its work. It organises the control of administrative and economic work by Communists, the vanguard of the labour collective; it takes part in the solution of the most important production problems. During the meetings which preceded the 24th Congress of the CPSU, more than 3 million Communists addressed Party election meetings all over the country. The Congress noted that the meetings were mainly devoted to problems of production. So there is every ground for asserting that the local Party organisations ensure the management of production by the working people both indirectly, by guiding the efforts of all public organisations to this end, and also directly, by providing the opportunity for millions of advanced segments of working people, which they unify, to take part in the management of production. Once again it should be noted that more than one-third of the members of Party organisations, particularly in production enterprises, are young people.
Consequently, though the bulk of socialist enterprises are managed by the central state machinery in the name of the whole people, there is a comprehensive system of institutes of socialist production democracy which provides the broad masses, young people inclusive, with direct opportunities for exercising managerial functions.
Besides the people's or state property, there is also cooperative and collective-farm property in the USSR. There are enterprises, mostly collective farms, which are managed 168 by the members of the corresponding co-operative associations and their public institutions under the direction of Party organisations. In this case, too, functions of routine management are exercised by special officials, who are however elected by the collectives directing their work. In the course of the socialist society's evolution the role of the collective and its public organs is being gradually enhanced. It is not only the administration, but also the entire collective that is responsible for management; the work of the administration and even the selection of the executive leaders is placed in the hands of the collective under the guidance of Communists. In this case, too, young people play just as weighty a role as in the production collectives.
As an example we can mention a few facts from the history of the Zarya Kommunizma collective farm in Tambov Region. At an open Party meeting the members of Team No. 3, which had lagged behind for many years running, analysed the causes and worked out measures to improve their work. (Three years later the team achieved good results.) Their first concern was the personnel problem. Formerly the team's leaders used to come and go; as soon as a leader was elected, the farm's board would relieve him of his duties, frequently without consulting the Party organisation or the collective. It was decided to put an end to such practices. The collective recommended sending N. Frolov, a young Communist, who enjoyed general respect, to the regional one-year school for junior executives. On graduating from the school, Frolov, himself one of the best tractor drivers in the team, was put at the head of the collective. With the support of his workmates, he soon succeeded in making the team one of the best in the collective farm. This success was mainly due to the fact that the team's Party organisation assumed strict control over all aspects of production and economic work, and mobilised the collective for efficient production and timely fulfilment of plans.
The collective, headed by Communists, also solved the shortage of technical personnel, which was a very sharp and pressing problem. They sent a few farmers who were doing unqualified work (unqualified work, by the way, is one of the reasons why young people leave villages for towns) to 169 technical courses where they acquired interesting trades which are so necessary on the farm. The shortage of personnel was thus overcome, and indeed the time came when machines were given only to the best workers. The right to sow the fields is no longer granted simply by the leader; now it has to be confirmed by a special committee. That was a heavy blow to laggers.
Here is what happened on the Serp i Molot collective farm. Having checked the spring work in the fields, the farm's chairman and the agronomist said that the work had been badly done, and ordered those guilty to be immediately transferred to unqualified work. The Party organisation, however, decided that this decision was incorrect. The Communists claimed: "Before removing the machine operators, you should have asked our advice because we know the men, and we are convinced that it was an accidental mishap. Just bring their error up at a team meeting, and the men will never repeat it.'' The collective farm's Party bureau backed the Communists in the team, and so the chairman and the agronomist were compelled to reverse their order. The guilty men were reprimanded by their own collective, but they were given the chance to correct their mistake, which they did.
There are many similar instances which illustrate the essence of democratic participation by the masses in the management of production both in state and co-operative enterprises.
These are all earmarks of genuine production democracy in labour collectives where the leading force is the Party organisation. As we see, such democracy does not preclude one-man management, but the work of the chief executive is directed by the democratic will of the collective under Communist leadership.
It is true that as yet not all veteran and young workers, farmers, specialists, office employees or working people in general take a regular and energetic part in management. Lenin pointed out that a very long time, many years are needed to bring about such total activity on the part of the masses. But even today, when a developed socialist society has been built in the USSR, this complicated problem has been substantially solved.
[170] __ALPHA_LVL1__ YCL---THE MASS INDEPENDENT PUBLICMore 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.
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.
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.
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.
``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.''^^1^^
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.
``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.''^^2^^
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.
The Party supported the initiative of the revolutionary youth and directed its efforts into the general channel of the proletarian struggle.
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.
Lenin's "Letters From Afar'', "The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution'', "On Slogans" and " _-_-_
^^1^^ 24th Congress of the CPSU, Moscow, 1971, p. 97.
~^^2^^ S. M. Kirov. On Youth, Moscow, 1938, p. 23 (in Russian).
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.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.
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".^^1^^
_-_-_~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 7, pp. 44, 45.
173The 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.
``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".^^1^^
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.
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 _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 11, p. 354.
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".^^1^^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:
``We shall always be a party of the youth of the advanced class!''^^2^^
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.
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.
``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.''^^3^^
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.
The Party draws up its policy towards youth, indicates the principal fields of activity for youth organisations, defines _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 4, p. 223.
~^^2^^ Ibid., Vol. 11, p. 355.
~^^3^^ Ibid., p. 412.
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.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".^^1^^
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''.^^2^^
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.
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.
``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 _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 6, p. 471.
~^^2^^ Ibid., Vol. 8, p. 218.
176 magnitude of its own power, widens its horizon, enhances its abilities, clarifies its mind, forges its will.''^^1^^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.
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.
``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."^^2^^
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.
In such an organisation young people, relying on the _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 23, p. 241.
~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 164.
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.''^^1^^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.
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 _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 23, p. 164.
__PRINTERS_P_177_COMMENT__ 12---411 178 socialist revolution, establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the building of socialism.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Communist Parties are waging a resolute struggle against the splitting tactics of anarchist and revisionist elements.
``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.''^^1^^
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.
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.
By distorting and juggling with historic facts, the two authors attempt to prove that during the democratic _-_-_
~^^1^^ International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, Moscow, 1969, Prague, 1969, p. 26.
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".^^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.''^^2^^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.
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:
``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.''^^3^^
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 _-_-_
~^^1^^ R. Fisher, Pattern for Soviet Youth. A Study of the Congresses o\ the Komsomol. 1918--1954, New York, Columbia University Press, 1959.
~^^2^^ H. Seton-Watson, The Decline of Imperial Russia. 1855--1914, pp. 145--146.
~^^3^^ Proletary, No. 20, September 27, 1905.
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.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.
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.
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.
During the class battles young workers matured politically and ideologically.
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.
``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.''
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.
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.
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.
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".^^1^^
Lenin insisted on strengthening the Party's mass work "in new ways, by new methods of training".^^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!''^^3^^
_-_-_^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 8, p. 217.
^^2^^ Ibid., p. 218.
^^3^^ Ibid., p. 218.
183With 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.
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.
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.
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.
In the famous letter to A. Bogdanov and S. Gusev, Lenin insisted on the bold and wide mobilisation of youth into Party ranks.
``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....''^^1^^
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".^^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".^^3^^
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.
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.
In an earlier letter to Bogdanov (dated January 10, 1905) Lenin advanced some exceedingly important ideas on Party _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 8, p. 146.
~^^2^^ Ibid., p. 219.
~^^3^^ Ibid., Vol. 34, p. 296.
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.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)".^^1^^
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."^^2^^
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.''^^3^^
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.
_-_-_~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 8, p. 44.
~^^2^^ Ibid.
~^^3^^ Ibid.
186On 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.''
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''.
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.''^^1^^
Young proletarians heroically fought on the barricades in Moscow, Rostov, Novorossiisk, Donbas, Krasnoyarsk, Chita and many other towns.
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.''^^2^^
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.
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.
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.
During the imperialist war the Bolsheviks organised and directed underground revolutionary circles of young workers. In 1917 these circles produced such prominent organisers _-_-_
~^^1^^ Proletary, No. 9, July 3, 1905.
~^^2^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 11, p. 175.
188 and leaders of the first unions of proletarian youth as Vasily Alekseyev, Pyotr Smorodin, Sergei Afanasyev, Mikhail Dugachev, Alexei Zlatopolsky and Mikhail Ratmansky.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.
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.
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.
In 1917 the young worker movement for economic and political rights was spreading in close unity with the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat.
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.
189Through 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.
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.
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.
``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.''^^1^^
_-_-_~^^1^^ Pravda, May 17 (30), 1917.
190Krupskaya expressed the hope that guided by the Bolshevik Party the revolutionary youth would take the first road, the road of the revolution.
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.
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.
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.
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''.
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:
``If possible, send out all materials (instructions, Rules. . .) you have concerning 1) youth organisations, 2) domestic servants, 3) clubs.''
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.''
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.''
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.^^1^^ He adds that before the October Revolution the Moscow union of the working-class youth remained outside the sphere of Bolshevik influence.^^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.
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.
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.
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 _-_-_
~^^1^^ R. Fisher, Pattern for Soviet Youth. A Study of the Congresses of the Komsomol. 1918--1954, New York, 1959, p. 6.
~^^2^^ Ibid.
193 of its class, and, therefore, of mankind, altogether depends upon the formation of the rising working generation.''^^1^^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.
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.
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.
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".^^2^^
_-_-_~^^1^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, Moscow, 1969, Vol. 2, p. ,80.
^^2^^ The CPSU in Resolutions and Decisions of its Congresses, __NOTE__ Footnote cont. on page 194. __PRINTERS_P_193_COMMENT__ 13---411 194
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 _-_-_ __NOTE__ Footnote cont. from page 193. Conferences and CC Plenary Meetings, Part 1, Moscow, 1954, p. 386 (in Russian).
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.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.
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.
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.''^^1^^
_-_-_~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 324.
196Lenin 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.''^^1^^
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.
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.
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).
Supporting and encouraging the youth in its striving to _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 324.
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.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.
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.
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.
During the Civil War priority concern was given to the military training of young workers and peasants.
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.''^^1^^
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.
In 1918 youth organisations raised more than 50 detachments which fought on the battlefields of the Civil War.
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.
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.
The main and common tasks of youth organisations in town and countryside was the struggle for Soviet power.
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.
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 _-_-_
^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 28, p. 95.
199 principles of internationalism; it indicated that the road to the Youth International lay through an All-Russia League.``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!''
The appeal was warmly approved by young people, who began to prepare for the congress.
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.
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.
Local Party organisations also played an important role in preparing for the congress.
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.
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" __EMAIL__ webmaster@leninist.biz __OCR__ ABBYY 6 Professional (2007.12.15) __WHERE_PAGE_NUMBERS__ top __FOOTNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ __ENDNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ youth union. The decision instructed "all Party members under 20 to join the youth union and take an active part in its work''.
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.
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''.
These sponsoring groups of Communists, the resolution said, should rally young people and assume leadership "in the class education of youth''.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The work of the Congress was directed by Communists.
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.
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.''^^1^^
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.
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.
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. _-_-_
~^^1^^ Records of the 1st Congress of the RYCL, Moscow, 1934, p. 76 (in Russian).
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.''^^1^^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.
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.
Before the congress adjourned, Lenin received a delegation of youth. He dwelt at length on the tasks of the new Young Communist League.
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.
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.
The history of the Komsomol shows that at all stages of _-_-_
~^^1^^ Records of the 1st Congress of the RYCL, Moscow, 1934, p. 24 (in Russian).
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.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.
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.
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.''^^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.
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 _-_-_
~^^1^^ ,50 Years of the YCL, Documents and Materials, Moscow, 1969, p. 135 (in Russian).
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.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''.
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.''^^1^^
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 _-_-_
~^^1^^ "Rules of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union'', The Road to Communism, Moscow, p. 621.
205 a school for bringing up youth according to lofty ideological and moral principles.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.
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.
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.
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.
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"^^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''.
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.
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.
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.''^^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.
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 _-_-_
~^^1^^ Ibid.
^^2^^ Pravda, March 30, 1968.
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.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.^^1^^
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 _-_-_
~^^1^^ The 15th Congress of the YCL, May 17--21, 1966, Verbatim Report, Moscow, 1966, p. 32 (in Russian).
__PRINTERS_P_209_COMMENT__ 14---411 210 communist ideals, and the Leninist principles and standards of social life.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.
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.
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.
211The 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.''
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.
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.
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.
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.''^^1^^ This advice determined the general line of the Komsomol's entire activity for many years to come.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 298.
217 the country's needs, the Party's assignments and the young people's interests.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In spite of the difficulties, the revolutionary transformation of agriculture inspired young people and filled them __PRINTERS_P_217_COMMENT__ 15---411 218 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.
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.
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.
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.''^^1^^
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 _-_-_
~^^1^^ Y. M. Tyazhelnikov, 50 Years of the Leninist Young Communist League, Moscow, 1968, p. 45 (in Russian).
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.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.''^^1^^
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.
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 _-_-_
~^^1^^ 24th Congress of the CPSU, Moscow, 1971, pp. 323--24.
224 edueating youth and helps to use the time-tested Komsomol experience in ideological and organisational work.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.
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".^^1^^
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.
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.
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.
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 _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 94.
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.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.''
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".^^1^^
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.
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.^^2^^ In the Mass Organisations in the Soviet Union. Trade Unions and the Komsomol,^^3^^ P.~G\'elard attempts an analysis of the Komsomol. But as soon as he arrives at his conclusions, the vulnerability of his positions become self-evident.
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 _-_-_
~^^1^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 41, p. 532 (in Russian).
~^^2^^ R. Fisher, Pattern for Soviet Youth. A Study of the Congresses of the Komsomol. 1918--1954, Columbia University Press, New York, 1959.
~^^3^^ Patrice Gelard, Les organisations de masse en Union Sovictiquc. Syndicats et Komsomol, Paris, Cujas, 1965.
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.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.
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.
Soviet youth is proud that it can learn and build communism. The Komsomol has always regarded Party leadership as the source of its might.
There are great and majestic prospects before Soviet youth and the Leninist Komsomol.
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.''^^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 _-_-_
~^^1^^ 24th Congress of the CPSU, Moscow, 1971, p. 9G.
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. __ALPHA_LVL0__ The End. [END] [229]REQUEST TO READERS ~
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113. RESHETOV P. 'Two Worlds---Two Destinies
Pyotr Reshetov, Cand. Sc. (Hist.), worked for a number of years in Soviet youth organisations and is well informed about the activities of youth organisations abroad.
The author examines modern conceptions of bourgeois ideologists concerning the youth. He analyses the roots of the conflict between the youth and society which is regarded as the conflict of generations in Western literature. Supported by a wealth of factual material, the author states that the crisis in the youth movement in the capitalist countries should be explained by the social system of society and the social relations prevailing there and not by the socio-psychological peculiarities of modern youth, or by the family and school surroundings or even by the consequences of the scientific and technological revolution.
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