Komsomol

For other uses, see Komsomol (disambiguation).

"RKSM" redirects here. For the air base with the ICAO code, see Seoul Air Base.

All-Union Leninist Young Communist League Всесоюзный ленинский коммунистический союз молодёжи
Founded	29 October 1918 (1918-10-29)
Dissolved	28 September 1991 (1991-09-28)
Succeeded by	Russian Communist Youth League
Ideology	Communism Marxism–Leninism
Position	Far-left
Mother party	Communist Party of the Soviet Union (de facto)
International affiliation	YCI WFDY
Newspaper	Komsomolskaya Pravda

The All-Union Leninist Young Communist League — Vsesoiuznyi leninskii kommunisticheskii soiuz molodëzhi — commonly known as Komsomol, was a communist youth organization in the Soviet Union. It is sometimes described as the youth section of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), although it was formally independent and referred to as "the helper and the reserve of the CPSU".

The Komsomol in its earliest form was established in urban areas in 1918. During the early years, it was a Russian organization, known as the Russian Young Communist League, or RKSM. During 1922, with the unification of the USSR, it was reformed into an all-union agency, the youth division of the All-Union Communist Party.

It was the final stage of three youth organizations with members up to age 28, graduated at 14 from the Young Pioneers, and at nine from the Little Octobrists.

History

Background

Prior to the February Revolution of 1917, none of the three primary Marxist political parties of the Russian empire — the Social Democratic Labor Party Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, or Party of Socialist Revolutionaries — had the possibility of establishing or maintaining a formal youth section owing to their illegality and the pervasiveness of state repression. The war did provide the impetus for underground circles of young workers to emerge in Russia's biggest cities as early as 1915 and 1916, however. These organizations, typically organized at the factory level, gathered to read and discuss political literature and did not typically have a "specific youth consciousness," but rather functioned as typical radical study circles, albeit composed of youthful members. There was no common organizational structure to unite these independently functioning groups.

Crowd outside the Tauride Palace in Petrograd during the February Revolution of 1917.

Historian Matthias Neumann indicates that the initial rise of a radical youth movement in the city was "clearly linked to the protests of women workers who brought their grievances onto the streets on 23 February, International Women's Day. With female activists transiting from factory to factory, calling out their peers, "young metalworkers in particular responded" to the women's appeal. Many young workers had been radicalized by three years of bloody world war, and young, urban workers were particularly aggressive in the spontaneous street protests which had overthrown the old regime.

Young workers made up a substantial percentage of armed revolutionaries in the street during the February uprising. About half of the forces defending the Tauride Palace during the revolution were youths, while at the factory level, between a quarter and a third of the participants in the factory Red Guards were young workers. Over the first few months of the revolution, these independent groups of young workers began to think of themselves as a separate, focused subdivision of the revolutionary movement.

Trud i Svet (Labor and Light)

On 13 April 1917 a citywide conference was held in Petrograd attempting to organize these disparate grouplets, with an organization bureau resulting from the meeting. This bureau was given the task of expanding the organization of radical youth from the heavily industrialized Vyborg and Peterhof districts and for establishing youth commissions to monitor occupational safety and provide professional training and education in all factories.

May Day 1917 marked an important turning point for the Russian radical youth movement, with the Petrograd youth movement gaining an organizational identity as Trud i Svet (Labor and Light) and successfully mobilizing 100,000 young workers, who marched in their own separate columns through the streets of the city in honor of International Labor Day. By the summer of 1917, Trud i Svet had emerged as a mass organization, claiming 50,000 members, with Peter Shevtsov the group's outstanding leader. Shevtsov's place was formalized in the middle of May, when he was elected chair of a new All-District Youth Council for Petrograd. This would mark a high water mark for the organized socialist youth movement in the capital city; one year later only 1,500 people would remain in the ranks.

Trud i Svet believed the path for developing a strong organization capable of fighting for its rights revolved in large measure around worker education. The group's program called for the foundation of grammar schools and a university for young workers and for the establishment of polytechnical and industrial trades schools for the training of young workers, who were frequently newly-arrived members of the peasantry. The organization also sought to achieve wage equivalence for young and older workers, the six-hour workday, and for the participation of young workers on the decision-making bodies of factory committees. While identifying itself as socialist, Trud i Svet placed a premumim on class unity across party lines to acieve results — a rigid "non-partyism" (bezpartiinost') that would soon bring it into conflict with the hardline Bolshevik organization.

Street protest in Petrograd being gunned down by troops of the Provisional Government. Although originating spontaneously, the Bolsheviks were blamed for the 4 July 1917 disturbance, leading to the arrest of prominent party leaders.

These moderate goals of the central leadership of Trud i Svet were not accepted by many local groups in the increasingly radical environment of Petrograd in 1917, however, and clear signs of a split of the largely decentralized organization began to be observed. This dissatisfaction grew throughout June, with a number of district branches rejecting the proposed education-first charter of the organization.

The July Days street protests against the Provisional Government over its refusal to terminate Russian participation in World War I market another decisive turning point. In the aftermath of the failed revolt, for which the Bolsheviks were blamed and which generated a sweeping series of arrests of Bolshevik leaders, Trud i Svet head Shevtsov criticized the uprising and defended the organization's controversial proposed charter — a grave political mistake since most members of the organization had participated in the protests. A formal split would result.

Socialist League of Young Workers (SSRM)

At a meeting of the Petrograd All-District Council of Trud i Svet held 27 July 1917, the internal conflict within Trud i Svet came to a head when Shevtsov's opponents voted in a majority for the dissolution of the Council. This new majority group called for a citywide conference of radical youth to be held 18 August. A dissident youth organization known as the Socialist League of Young Workers (Sotsialisticheski soiuz rabochei molodëzhi, or SSRM), based in the Narva–Peterhof district of the city, had already emerged, positioning itself as an uncompromisingly radical alternative to Trud i Svet, which retained loyalty to the Provisional Government. This parallel radical organization was headed by a lathe operator at the Putilov Works, Vasilii Alekseev, a 21-year old member of the Bolshevik organization.

The SSRM drew up its own charter and program in July, calling for a 6-hour day for workers under age 16, establishment of a minimum wage for young workers, and demanding voting rights for 18-year olds. The organization declared its intention to develop class consciousness among young workers and to develop them intellectually and politically in the fight for socialism and in order to better defend their economic interests. The Petrograd-based SSRM declared its formation preparatory to the establishment of a national All-Russian League of Young Workers, with its direction to be conducted by an 11-member Petrograd Committee that would appoint editors, print pamphlets, provide speakers, conduct mass meetings, and pass resolutions binding upon subsidiary organizations.

The Bolshevik-oriented Socialist League of Young Workers, with its strongest support provided by young metal workers, counted about 13,000 members at the end of a conference it held in Petrograd from 18 to 28 August. Unlike Trud i Svet, whose summer membership of 50,000 attenuated rapidly as moderates withdrew from the movement, the SSRM grew as the political situation in the capital city intensified in the summer and fall of 1917, with its membership variously estimated between 20,000 and 32,000 by the time of the October Revolution that brought the Bolsheviks to power. This number would plummet over the year that followed, in tandem with the crumbling of the factory committees in the increasingly disorganized factories. By the time of the 5th Petrograd City Conference in September 1918, the SSRM had dwindled to fewer than 700 members.

It is worthy of note that the Socialist League of Young Workers, while closely oriented to the Bolshevik Party, was not a homogeneous or disciplined organization. During the last month before the October revolution, many of the rank-and-file members of the organization sought to push the SSRM to economic tasks, such as creating factory committees of young workers that would act almost as a youth section of the trade union movement, coordinating workers and management on wage rates, working conditions, and hiring and firing. In addition, these factory committees were to oversee a range of educational activities, including factory schools, shop libraries, and the booking of lecturers. Another part of the organization, including top leaders, contended that the SSRM was a political, not an economic, formation.

Establishment of the Komsomol

With the SSRM at low ebb in the summer of 1918, the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (RKP) stepped in, setting up an organizing committee to host a 1st Congress of Worker and Peasant Youth in the fall. An appeal was made to small local radical youth organizations around the country and the SSRM refused a large infusion of members from the Bolshevik organization proper, culminating in a decision in early October to make participation in the SSRM compulsory for party members up to the age of 20. The Central Committee also instructed its local organizations to help their local youth organizations send delegates to the forthcoming convention, thereby exerting decisive influence on its composition.

Some of the 176 delegates to the founding congress of the Komsomol, Moscow, late October and early November 1918.

On 29 October 1918, 176 elected delegates assembled in Moscow for what would become the founding convention of the Communist Youth League. Of these 88 were card-carrying members of the RKP, with another 38 formally identifying themselves as sympathizers. The remaining delegates were mostly not members of any party (45), with one delegate claiming to be an anarchist, one a member of the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party, and three Menshevik-Internationalists. These delegates claimed to represent some 120 youth groups, with a combined membership of 22,100.

According to the group's initial regulations, membership was open to young people between the ages of 14 and 23. This was a large demographic during the early years of Soviet Russia, comprising some 20 million people in the Russian Federation alone in 1926 — nearly a quarter of the population. Nationwide the 15–25 year old demographic represented 20.4% of the population, of whom 80% lived in the countryside.

As historian of the international young Communist movement Richard Cornell observes:

"From its inception in the fall of 1918, the Komsomol was subordinate to the Russian party. Not having existed in 1917 when the Bolshevik revolution took place, it had no tradition of direct and independent participation in revolutionary activities.... A specific statement on the manner in which the party would exercise its guidance of Komsomol affairs was issued in mid-1919, and ratified by the second Komsomol congress in October."

According to the resolution adopted by the 2nd Congress of the Komsomol, the organization's governing Central Committee was to work under the direct control of the Central Committee of the RKP(b) and its local organizations were to work according to the direction of local units of the adult party. Moreover, members of the Komsomol's Central Committee were to be subject to reassignment to other work by the Communist Party, despite having been elected to their positions by the Komsomol congress. Substantial freedom of discussion remained within the youth organization for several years, but this steadily attenuated under the control of the adult party, with dissidents and non-conformists ultimately forced to recant or face removal.

Komsomol during the Russian Civil War (1918–1920)

The intense struggle for a new socialist future appealed to a substantial segment of young Russians. As historian Mattheus Neumann notes, "young people became involved in historic change, and they really felt it.... Excitement was in the air and adventure was just around the corner in most cities." Ranks of the fledgling Red Army were overwhelmingly youthful, with 68 percent of Red Army volunteers between the ages of 18 and 31 in 1918.

The Komsomol was an adjunct of this formative process of a new army, with the first program of the organization making military training part of the league's activities. This portion of Komsomol activities was further accelerated during the military crisis in the spring of 1919, when 3,000 members of the organization were mobilitzed for the front. Another 1,335 komsomoltsy were brought into Army ranks by the fall. Tens of thousands of Komsomol members wound up joining the fight during the pivotal years of 1918 and 1919.

These young recruits, frequently members of the Communist Party, were enthusiastic true-believers in the revolution, were expected to behave with exemplary levels of discipline, and frequently assumed leadership roles as political commissars. Other Komsomol members provided recruits for the political police, the Cheka. With universal conscription becoming law in May 1918, and the Komsomol worked hand in glove with units of the Bolshevik Party in ongoing recruitment campaigns. The enthusiasm of the young communists in the ranks proved infectuous, improving general morale by their presence.

This close daily connection also helped bring non-party young soldiers into the Komsomol, with the organizing growing between to about 96,000 members in the fall of 1919 before nearly quintupling to 480,000 members in October 1920.

Conceptually, the Komsomol rapidly came to be viewed by Soviet party leaders as a "transmission belt" for centrally-determined policy, a mobilization tool to be used to transform decisions into action.

Outside of military participation, the young communists became key supporters of the movement towards "militarization of labor" during the period of War Communism — the attempt to restart and maintain production of the failing factories through the imposition of quasi-military discipline. They also were organizers and enthusiasts on behalf of the Subbotniks — voluntary unpaid Saturday workdays.

In the countryside, komsomoltsy were mobilized for grain requisitions — hyperinflation and the lack of manufactured goods for exchange having rendered any market-based approach to obtaining grain for the cities imposible. This proved to be a "dirty war" in which force and violence were standard operating procedure and during which brutal excesses were committed against the peasants.

The Komsomol was also given the task of performing cultural work, including development of literacy and educational programs in the countryside, although these were more or less subsumed by the exigencies of the ongoing civil war.

Komsomol during the NEP period

In contrast to the sense of revolutionary enthusiasm spurred by the adventure of the civil war, the New Economic Policy (NEP) implemented in 1921, marking a formal retreat of the nation's economy to private commerce, initially had an opposite effect upon Komsomol members. This was a time of cultural experimentation and a liberalization of sexual mores; the party instead tended to promote more conservative and traditional models of thought and behavior as a means of fostering labor discipline.

This contrast between the "Good Communist" extolled by the party and the capitalism fostered by NEP disoriented many young people. Many rebelled against the Party's ideals in two opposite ways: radicals gave up everything that had any Western or capitalist connotations, while the majority of Russian youths felt drawn to the Western-style popular culture of entertainment and fashion. As a result, there was a major slump in interest and membership in the Party-oriented Komsomol.

Despite the temporary shock associated with the start of NEP, the 1920s proved to be a decade of rapid growth for the Komsomol. Membership in the organizationin the provinces was open to all who wished to join and party propaganda placed a particular emphasis on bringing young people into Komsomol ranks to provide a pool of potential recruits for party membership as well as a tool of policy. As historian Vladimir Brovkin notes, "almost all [Communist Party] cultural campaigns of the 1920s, be they anti-religious, or oriented towards overcoming illiteracy or introducing socialist morality, deeply involved the Komsomol. Hence it is described as an ardent supporter of the new regime."

By 1925, Komsomol, after adding more than 525,000 new members in that year alone, counted more than 1 million young people in its ranks. Many others were in theater groups for younger children. Rapid growth continued throughout 1926 and 1927, with Komsomol membership hitting a NEP-period peak of 1.75 million members.

This rapid growth during the mid-part of the 1920s was driven by the great expansion of rural Komosomol cells. In most rural districts, membership in the Komsomol exceeded that of the Communist Party itself — although the party exercised formal control over its youth section, defining its agenda, supervising members and monitoring Komsomol activity.

Older peasants reacted negatively to the growth of the Komsomol in rural areas. They saw the administrators as intruders who prevented their children from fulfilling their family obligations. The Komsomol needed full-time commitment, and peasant youths, who saw it as a chance for social mobility, education, and economic success, were willing to abandon their traditional duties to join. At the end of NEP, the majority of Komsomol members were peasants, while the administration remained largely urban.

"Long Live the Many-Million Ranks of the Leninist Komsomol" (1932), poster by Gustav Klutsis (1895–1938).

Both the urban and rural populations had problems with the Komsomol's attempts to unify the two demographics. Rural parents believed that because the League's administration was city-centered, their children would be negatively influenced by city dwellers. In addition, land-owning peasants were much more affected by the government's revocation of private ownership, and many were uninterested in allowing their children to participate. For its part, the urban population viewed itself as superior to the peasants. They saw the rural members as backward and uneducated, and were angered by their swelling numbers.

The party attempted to maintain numerical dominance by workers in the organization, even in rural ranks, although this proved difficult if not impossible to achieve in some locales due to the numerical weakness of the Communist Party in the countryside.

One tool the Communist Party pursued in its attempt to maintain working class hegemony over the increasingly rural Komsomol came in the form of mass expulsions. In 1925 alone, more than 141,000 Komosomol members, representing 27% of those newly admitted and mostly rural, were expelled from the organization for various ostensible infractions. As Brovkin notes, such a high churn rate was indicative of dual antagonistic desires being pursued by the party — growing Komsomol membership as rapidly as possible while retaining urban control — "nearly impossible in an agrarian society."

One of the most popular campaigns revolved around Novyi Byt (The New Way of Life). At these assemblies, the leadership of the Komsomol promoted the values they considered to be the most important for the ideal young communist. The New Soviet Man was to be "a lively, active, healthy, disciplined youngster who subordinates himself to the collective and is prepared for and dedicated to learn, study, and work." By establishing strict guidelines to what they expected, the Komsomol was able to denounce the traits and habits they saw as being harmful to the youth. It condemned sexual promiscuity, drinking, smoking and general mischievous behavior, as it posed moral danger to the organization's young members.

Efforts against alcoholism were given particular emphasis, with one Komsomol writer asserting that the abuse of "vodka poisons and destroys the organism, it bears us out of the world of reality into a world of illusion," and therefore was "a violation of our class, proletarian, and communist morality."

The Komsomol also participated in campaigns of an anti-religious nature. The new communist regime wished to dismantle whatever control the Orthodox church had on society, and the young were in the forefront of those seeking to overturn old ways in the building of a radically new society. The Komsomol rallied members to march in the streets, declaring their independence from religion. Open harassment of church members sprang up, and earned the Komsomol a negative image in the minds of older generations. When the League made attempts to draw back on their anti-religious rhetoric, Soviet youth became increasingly disinterested in the organization.

In some locales, Komosomol cells more closely resembled social clubs of hooligans than the clean-cut representatives of New Socialist Man of official myth. One village schoolteacher in Nerekhta uezd complained to Komsomol officials that komsomoltsy were having boisterous drinking and dancing parties in the school library. Another cell in the North Caucasus wrote a note to a local priest threatening to shoot him if he did not stop preaching. From Voronezh came a report of a cell that bombarded a sacred icon with rotten eggs during a religious service.

These and similar widespread abuses led to the isolation and ostracization of Komsomol cells in the villages, rendering them a marginal and numerically insignificant organization in most villages by 1928.

Komsomol during Collectivization and the first Five-year Plan

In conjunction with the War Scare of 1927 and the grain procurement crisis in the fall of that year, met with a return to the violent requisition methods previously associated with War Communism, the Komsomol became increasingly focused the orientation of its members to an aggressive class-based approach to society. While class discrimination had been part and parcel of the regime since the October Revolution, a new campaign against so-called "alien elements" and "social aliens" came to the fore in the press of the Communist Party and the Komsomol after 1927.

In 1928 the First Five-year Plan for the national economy was unveiled — a move toward central planning that is remembered by historians as a veritable "revolution from above." A new radical turn of state policy was soon making itself felt with full force.

The 8th Komsomol Congress in May 1928 was addressed by the two top leaders of the VKP(b) of the day — Joseph Stalin and Nikolai Bukharin. Both of these attempted to revive the heroic ethos of the Civil War period to energized the youth movement behind the new socialist offensive. In his 16 May speech at the final session of the congress, Stalin indicated that five years of "muddling through" in "conditions of peaceful development" were coming to a close, warning:

It is not true that we no longer have class enemies, that they have been smashed and eliminated. No, comrades, our class enemies still exist. They not only exist, they are growing and trying to take action against the Soviet government. That was shown by our procurement difficulties last winter, when the capitalist elements in the countryside tried to sabotage the policy of the Soviet government. It was shown by the Shakhty affair, which was the expression of a joint attack on the Soviet regime launched by international capital and the bourgeoisie in our country. It is shown by numerous facts in the sphere of home and foreign policy... To keep silent about these enemies of the working class would be wrong. To underrate the strength of the class enemies of the working class would be criminal."

The Magnitostroi steel mill, one of the USSR's great construction projects of the early 1930s and a focus of Komsomol activity.

Both Stalin and Bukharin, close allies during 1925 and 1926 with agendas for the Communist Party which still overlapped significantly in 1927 and 1928, saw in Komsomol a potential tool for fighting bureaucracy, inefficiency, and corruption "from below" and made a strong play to mobilize the nearly 2 million members of the organization for this purpose at the May 1928 congress.

In the aftermath of its 8th Congress, admissions to Komsomol, particularly in the countryside, began to fall under closer scrutiny as to the clas origins of new applicants. The policy of easy admission in order to rapidly build a mass base in the countryside was set aside in favor of closer scrutiny of middle peasants seeking admission to the organization combined with an emphasis on recruitment of poor peasants and agricultural wage-workers. A census of the Komsomol was taken in July 1928 showing a total membership of 2,042,245 members, of whom 35.5% hailed from the industrial working class, 44.8% from the peasantry, 8.9% from the ranks of propertyless agricultural workers, 1.7% craftsman, and 8.9% "others."

As scrutiny over class origins was increased for new members, so, too was investigation of existing members of the organization. In the second half of 1927 and first half of 1928, so-called "alien class" origins became the most common reason for expulsion from Komsomol, surpassing hooliganism, drunkenness, and gambling. This policy was given increased emphasis in 1929, with a further purge (chistka) of "alien class" elements directed in March 1929, resulting in the expulsion of 234,667 members by the summer of 1930.

In spite of continuous attempts to make Komosomol a more urban and traditionally working class organization, on the eve of collectivization the Komsomol remained a substantially larger organization than the Communist Party itself in the countryside, with its 48,000 local cells far outstripping the 18,000 cells of the adult party in May 1928. These played an important role in the brutal process of dekulakization and the consolidation of private agricultural holdings into collective farms.

Similarly, in the rush to build new factories and accelerate industrial production, the youthful enthusiasts of the Komsomol provided a critical human resource. In 1929, 7,000 Komsomol cadets were building the tractor factory in Stalingrad (now Volgograd), 57,000 others built factories in the Urals, and 36,500 were assigned to work in the coal mines. The goal was to provide an energetic core group of Bolshevik activists to influence their coworkers in the factories and mines that were at the center of communist ideology.

Large construction projects such as Magnitostroi in the Urals became destinations for komsomoltsy from around the country. In 1930 Magnitostroi was declared the first "All-Union Komsomol construction site and representatives of the national newspaper Komsomolskaia Pravda dispatched journalists to the scene to esablish a local newspaper there. True-believers set up night watches protecting the site, served as local constables maintaining order at night, and conducted literacy classes for local workers. The No. 2 furnace at Magnitostroi was named "Komsomolka" in the organization's honor and virtually everyone working on it joined the organization, with so-called "socialist competition" and shockworker methods put into practice to speed the pace of the facility.

Komsomol membership at Magnitostroi leaping from 3,000 on 1 January 1931 to 14,241 one year later. Total population at Magnitostroi approached 200,000 by the end of 1931, making it the largest construction site in the USSR. Living conditions were dismal at this and other construction sites of the First Five-year Plan period, however, and even the most dedicated komsomoltsy were not immune to the squalor. Komsomol membership at Magnitostroi dipped to about 10,000 at the start of 1933, before plummeting to just 5,400 at the start of 1934.

Komsomol in the late 1930s

About 240,000 collective farms were established during the decade of the 1930s, with an average of about 80 households in each. To these were attached a large auxiliary bureaucracy consisting of chairmen, brigade leaders, accountants, agronomists, and animal specialist, numbering about 2 million people, part of an administrative and support apparatus thataccounted for approximately 30% of able-bodied collective farm workers.

Komsomol members played a significant role in the upper echelons of this rural bureaucracy, accounting for 16.5% of chair and vice-chairs of kolkhozi as well as 31.5% of collective farm accountants by the end of 1937.

Komsomol adopted meritocratic, supposedly class-blind membership policies in 1935, with an associated decline in working-class members and an enlarged place taken by better educated youth.

32-year old Nikolai Mikhailov was named first secretary of the VLKSM following the removal of Alexander Kosarev in the last months of the 1937–38 Terror. He would remain in charge of the organization until 1952.

Membership in Komsomol was an critical conduit for membership into the Communist Party. While during the first years of the Bolshevik revolution the Komsomol was one of multiple ways that an individual could gain a party card and the privileges associated with such, by the late 1930s formal organizations of formal "sympathizers" had gone by the wayside, leaving participation in the Komsomol from age 14 as a key rite of passage for those seeking party membership and a political or administrative career.

In 1937 a massive secret police Terror erupted in the USSR, driven by fear of the rise of aggressive enemy regimes in Europe and Asia and domestic security paranoia in the aftermath of the assassination of top Soviet leader Sergei Kirov. Directed by Joseph Stalin, V.M. Molotov, and hardliners in the Politburo, this campaign focused especially upon perceived enemies within the ranks of the Communist Party and the economic and military institutions of the country.

Initially it appeared that the Komsomol would escape without facing serious investigation and repression. However in July 1937 the leadership of the Komsomol began to be targeted by the NKVD (secret police), with top officials S.A. Saltanov, Dimitry Lukianov, and Evgeny Fainberg among those ensnared through the snowballing process of mass arrest, investigation, and denunciation. A plenum of the Central Committee was held in August 1937 which inserted four new secretaries and eight new members into the bureau of the CC, three of whom had not previously been elected to the CC by the 1936 Congress and were therefore illegally appointed. At the same time, League secretary Alexander Kosarev was elevated in public prominence, elected to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union in December 1937 and chosen to its Presidium the following month. He would stand atop the Lenin's Mausoleum with the Politburo in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the revolution in October 1938.

As the Terror careened out of control, attempts were belatedly made to apply the brakes. In the spring of 1938, instructions came down to the Komsomol to begin to "unmask" a new enemy — "slanderers" and so-called "overinsurers," who sought to preserve their own safety and position through false denunciation of others. This new course correction ultimately embroiled Kosarev, who was deemed to have suppressed criticism of himself and failed to demonstrate adequate vigilence against internal enemies and was removed at the Central Committeee of the Communist Party's behest by the CC of the Komsomol at a plenum held in mid-November 1938. At the 18th Party Congress, a representative of the Komsomol Central Committee would speak thanking the party leadership for having taken steps to destroy the "foul traitorous fascist band of Kosarev."

Between purge and counterpurge during the Terror and the ordinary attrition of members, turnover of the leadership of the Komsomol was almost total between the 10th Congress of 1936 and the start of 1939. From a pool of 93 full and 35 candidate members of the League's Central Committee elected by the congress, only one — E.P. Volkova — was tapped for the 8-person Bureau of the Komsomol in 1938. First secretary Nikolai Mikhailov and the other six members were named to their positions on the Bureau despite not having been previously elected to the CC by the Congress, as the League's organizational rules specified should have been done. After the 10th Congress of the Komsomol in 1936, 13 years would pass until the next gathering of the organization.

Despite the extreme violence involving targeted arrest and executions of Communist Party members during the 1937–38 Terror and the parallel purge of Komsomol leaders themselves, League membership actually rose during the period, increasing from just under 4 million members in 1936 to a shade under 5 million in January 1938. Following the removal of Kosarev and his political associates in the November 1938, admissions to the Komsomol were wildly accelerated, with membership officially reported at 8 million in March 1939.

Komsomol during World War II

Group of Komsomoltsy in Leningrad oblast, 1942.

Through the early 1940s, Komsomol was treated as a non-territorial subsection, with income from its dues contributing directly to the annual budget of the Communist Party. During the war this stream of funds to the general party coffers was attenuated, however, falling from about 5 percent of the total party budget to less than 1 percent in 1943 and disappearing completely by the end of the war. Instead of pooling its dues income with the CPSU, the organization was instead granted permission to maintain its own parallel budget, while remaining under the supervision and direction of the adult organization.

Komsomol during the late Stalin period

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union rebuilt its membership from the ground up in the years after World War II, although the membership "cleansing" (chistka) was in no way comparable to the murderous blood purge of arrests and executions of the pre-war Terror. Entry into the party was made more difficult and the number of new admissions was offset by the steady stream of expulsions during the years 1945–50. This pattern of expulsion and increased scrutiny was even more pronounced in the Komsomol, which saw its ranks chopped from 15 million in October 1945 to just 9 million in March 1949.

Komsomol during the Brezhnev period

At its largest, during the 1970s, the Komsomol had tens of millions of members.

Komsomol membership card from 1983. The right side of the booklet marks off monthly dues payments.

The Komsomol had little direct influence on the Communist Party or on the government of the Soviet Union, but it played an important role as a mechanism for teaching the values of the party to the younger generation. The Komsomol also served as a mobile pool of labor and political activism, with the ability to relocate to areas of high-priority at short notice. In the 1920s the Kremlin assigned Komsomol major responsibilities for promoting industrialization at the factory level.

Active members received privileges and preferences in promotion. For example, Yuri Andropov, CPSU General Secretary (1982–1984), achieved notice through work with the Komsomol organization of Karelia in 1940–1944.

Komsomol during perestroika

During the early phases of perestroika in the mid-1980s, when the Soviet authorities began cautiously introducing private enterprise, the Komsomol received privileges with respect to initiating businesses, with the motivation of giving youth a better chance. The government, unions and the Komsomol jointly introduced Centers for Scientific and Technical Creativity for Youth (1987). At the same time, many Komsomol managers joined and directed the Russian Regional and State Anti-Monopoly Committees. Folklore quickly coined a motto: "The Komsomol is a school of Capitalism", hinting at Vladimir Lenin's "Trade unions are a school of Communism".

The radical Twentieth Congress of the Komsomol (April 1987) altered the rules of the organization to represent a market orientation. However, the reforms of the Twentieth Congress eventually destroyed the Komsomol, with lack of purpose and the waning of interest, membership, and quality of membership. At the Twenty-second Congress of the Komsomol in September 1991, the organization was disbanded. The Komsomol's newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda, outlived the organization and is still published (as of 2026).

Young women in the Komsomol

The ideology of the new Soviet government under Vladimir Lenin strove to break down societal barriers believed to be harmful to the goal of unity. Specifically, it hoped to elevate women to a level of equality with men. The Komsomol pushed hard to recruit young women and raise them in this new consciousness. In the period of the early 1920s, women primarily stayed at home and performed the majority of housework. Membership of the Komsomol seemed to offer a doorway into public life at a level previously unseen by women of the time. Young women enthusiastically joined as they were finally given a chance to detach themselves from the traditional patriarchal structure. Moreover, they were drawn to the Komsomol because it promised them an education during a time when young girls were deprived of a proper one in favor of preparing them for household duties. The Soviets encouraged women to take an active role in the new system and participate in the same activities and work as their male counterparts.

Klim Voroshilov at a meeting with Komsomol members (1935)

Major conflicts surfaced when the government took these new steps. The Bolshevik Party was not the most popular at the time, and much of the rest of the nation wished to hold onto their patriarchal values. Parents hesitated to allow their daughters to join the youth organization, because "the Komsomol seemed like an immoral organization, for it removed young girls from adult control, and then required them to attend meetings held at night." Soviet citizens felt that if they released their hold on their children, they would be corrupted by the Komsomol's influence. They also worried that if their daughters became independent and promiscuous, then no man would want to marry them. Moreover, parents wondered who would take care of the home if all the young women left home to join the Komsomol.

Women, generally, were also unprepared for the realities of the workforce. The ancient structure of female subordination allowed for little in terms of work experience. Men had been given better education and were traditionally raised to take part in military and industry. Therefore, they had a much wider range of opportunity than women whose only role had been caretaking. Here lies the irony of the government's efforts: the Komsomol tried desperately to empower young women to achieve equality, yet women's perceptions of themselves worsened because they were now being directly compared to their much more prepared counterparts.

Even though the Communist Party preached and demanded equality, men dominated both the governing body and the Komsomol's leadership. Upward mobility, contrary to initial belief, was incredibly hard for women to achieve. In addition, the organization openly encouraged its female members to pursue positions of teaching and nurturing of young Soviets.

Recruitment of peasant women

The Komsomol also found it difficult to recruit and motivate young women amongst the rural populations. During NEP, this demographic represented only 8% of the organization. Poor membership numbers from rural areas were the result of several different factors. By 1925, the failure to implement equality in the Komsomol was evident to young rural women, society still perceiving them to be inferior both because they were women and because they came from the peasant class. Various women's organizations criticized the Komsomol for these failures. Chiefly, the Women's Bureau of the Communist Party, known as Zhenotdel, openly criticized the youth organization. Komsomol women were provided little in the way of programs that might encourage their involvement. Annual conferences, where organization leaders gathered to discuss topics of interest to female members, were in fact the only activities in which early Komsomol women took part. The Youth League therefore made concerted efforts to resolve these issues and raise membership amongst peasant women.

Strategies for recruiting women in the 1920s

Representatives were sent to the countryside to reveal to potential recruits that they were being oppressed by male dominance, and that the youth organization provided them with an opportunity to recreate themselves as independent women. However, women did not rally to the League in the numbers that the organization hoped for. The Komsomol turned to the Zhenotdel, which was more favorable to young peasant women, and cooperated with them to achieve better results. Another strategy was the addition of activities suited to the interests of the target demographic. Sewing and knitting classes became popular during the 1920s for rural Komsomol women. Additionally, educational classes, such as health and feminine hygiene were used to both draw more female members and alleviate concerns of rural parents. Peasant families were more inclined to allow their daughters to join the Komsomol since they knew they would be participating in beneficial programs rather than mischievous behaviors such as drinking and dancing.

Honours

Plenary session of the Central Committee of the Young Communist League in 1968, with Communist Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev presiding

The Komsomol received three Orders of Lenin, one Order of the Red Banner, one Order of the Red Banner of Labour, and one Order of the October Revolution. The asteroid 1283 Komsomolia is named after the Komsomol, as is Komsomolets Island in the Arctic Ocean. The Komsomolets armored tractor was a model used during the Second World War, while the first Soviet nuclear submarine was K-3 Leninsky Komsomol; a later submarine was called K-278 Komsomolets.

There are also several towns and cities named Komsomolsky, Komsomolets or Komsomolsk.

Legacy

Pioneering Western Sovietology during the Cold War supposed the Komsomol to be the epitomy of "Youth under Dictatorship." It was something "of an intensity unmatched by its now defunct Fascist and Nazi rivals," opined pioneering American Soviet specialist Merle Fainsod opined in the first edition of his foundational textbook, How Russia is Ruled [1953]. Bearing in mind that these words were written prior to the first Western monograph on the topic, at a time in which key archives were locked up, academic study in the USSR was not yet possible, and no complete run of the Komsomol's newspaper was even available in the United States, such a perspective seems a curious relic of Cold War era.

Congresses

20th Congress Komsomol, Moscow, April 1987.

Event	Date	Delegates	Membership	Footnotes
1st Congress	29 Oct. – 4 Nov. 1918	176	22,100 claimed
2nd Congress	5–8 October 1919	348	96,096 actual
3rd Congress	2–10 October 1920		400,000 claimed
4th Congress	21–28 September 1921	471	400,000 claimed
5th Congress	11–19 October 1922	450	250,000 claimed
6th Congress	12–18 July 1924	730	840,000 claimed
7th Congress	11–22 March 1926	1,177	1,750,000 claimed
8th Congress	5–16 May 1928	656 + 428 advisory	1,968,000 claimed
9th Congress	16–26 January 1931	767	3,000,000 claimed
10th Congress	10–21 April 1936	801	3,981,777 actual
11th Congress	29 March – 7 April 1949	1,362	9,283,289 actual
12th Congress	19–27 March 1954	1,334	18,825,327 actual
13th Congress	15–18 April 1958
14th Congress	16–20 April 1962
15th Congress	17–21 May 1966
16th Congress	26–30 May 1970
17th Congress	23-27 April 1974
18th Congress	25–28 April 1978
19th Congress	18–21 May 1982
20th Congress	15–18 April 1987
21st Congress	11–18 April 1990
22nd Congress	27–28 September 1991

Leaders (First Secretary of the Central Committee)

• Yefim Tsetlin (1918–1919)
• Oscar Ryvkin (1918–1921)
• Lazar Shatskin (1921–1922)
• Pyotr Smorodin (1922–1924)
• Nikolai Chaplin (1924–1928)
• Alexander Milchakov (1928–1929)
• Aleksandr Kosarev (1929–1938)
• Nikolai Mikhailov (1938–1952)
• Aleksandr Shelepin (1952–1958)
• Vladimir Semichastny (1958–1959)
• Sergei Pavlov (1959–1968)
• Yevgeny Tyazhelnikov (1968–1977)
• Boris Pastukhov (1977–1982)
• Viktor Mishin (1982–1986)
• Viktor Mironenko (1986–1990)
• Vladimir Zyukin (1990–1991)

Branches

• Armenian SSR: Հայաստանի լենինյան կոմունիստական երիտասարդական միություն, ՀԼԿԵՄ
• Azerbaijan SSR: Azərbaycan Lenin Kommunist Gənclər İttifaqı (Азәрбајҹан Ленин Коммунист Ҝәнҹләр Иттифагы), ALKGİ (АЛКҜИ)
• Byelorussian SSR: Ленінскі Камуністычны саюз моладзі Беларусі, ЛКСМБ
• Estonian SSR: Eestimaa Leninlik Kommunistlik Noorsooühing, ELKNÜ
• Georgian SSR: ka:საქართველოს ახალგაზრდა ლენინური კომუნისტური კავშირი
• Karelo-Finnish SSR: Ленинский коммунистический союз молодежи Карело-Финской ССР, ЛКСМ КФССР
• Kazakh SSR:
• Kirghiz SSR:
• Latvian SSR: Latvijas Ļeņina Komunistiskā Jaunatnes Savienība, LĻKJS
• Lithuanian SSR: Lietuvos Lenino komunistinė jaunimo sąjunga, LLKJS
• Moldavian SSR: UTCLM (abbreviation)
• Russian SFSR: Ленинский коммунистический союз молодёжи РСФСР, ЛКСМ РСФСР
• Tajik SSR:
• Turkmen SSR:
• Ukrainian SSR: Ленінська Комуністична спілка молоді України, ЛКСМУ)
• Uzbek SSR: Ўзбекистон Ленинчи коммунистик ёшлар союзи, OʻzLKSM

Public safety

• Voluntary People's Druzhina

Children's organization

• Young Pioneer organization of the Soviet Union

See also

• Communist Youth League of China
• Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union

Further reading

• Afanasiev, Iu.S.; Remizova, E.Ia.; and Ivanova, Z.M. (1969). Ocherki Leningradskoi organizatsii VLKSM (Studies of the Leningrad Organization of the VLKSM). Leningrad: Lenizdat.
• Balashev, and Nelepin, A. (1028). VLKSM za 10 let (10 Years of the VLKSM). Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia.
• Baum, Ann Todd (1987). Komsomol Participation in the Soviet First Five-Year Plan. New York: St. Martin's Press.
• Bernstein, Seth (2015). "Class Dismissed? New Elites and Old Enemies among the "Best" Socialist Youth in the Komsomol, 1934–41". Russian Review. 74 (1): 97–116. doi:10.1111/russ.10758. JSTOR 43663853.
• Bernstein, Seth (2017). Raised under Stalin: Young Communists and the Defense of Socialism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Fisher, Ralph T. (1959). Pattern for Soviet Youth: A Study of the Congresses of the Komsomol, 1918–1954. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Gooderham, Peter (1982). "The Komsomol and Worker Youth: The Inculcation of 'Communist Values' in Leningrad during NEP". Soviet Studies. 34 (4): 506–28. doi:10.1080/09668138208411442. JSTOR 151905.
• Gorsuch, Anne E. (1996). "A Woman Is Not A Man: The Culture of Gender and Generation in Soviet Russia, 1921–1928". Slavic Review. 55 (3): 636–60. doi:10.2307/2502004. JSTOR 2502004. S2CID 155443508.
• Gorsuch, Anne E. (1997). "NEP Be Damned! Young Militants in the 1920s and the Culture of Civil War". Russian Review. 56 (4): 564–80. doi:10.2307/131566. JSTOR 131566.
• Gorsuch, Anne E. (1992). "Soviet Youth and the Politics of Popular Culture during NEP". Social History. 17 (2): 189–201. doi:10.1080/03071029208567834. JSTOR 4286015.
• Gorsuch, Anne E. (2000). Youth in Revolutionary Russia: Enthusiasts, Bohemians, Delinquents. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
• Hulicka, Karel (1962). "The Komsomol." Southwestern Social Science Quarterly (1962): 363-373.
• Il'insky, I. VLKSM v politicheskoi systeme sovetskogo obshchestva. (The VLKSM in the political system of Soviet society). Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1981. – In Russian.
• Kirschenbaum, Lisa (2001). Small Comrades: Revolutionizing Childhood in Soviet Russia, 1917–1932. London: Routledge Falmer.
• Pilkington, Hilary (1994). Russia's Youth and its Culture: A Nation's Constructors and Constructed. London: Routledge.
• Tirado, Isabel A (1993). "The Komsomol and Young Peasants: The Dilemma of Rural Expansion, 1921–1925". Slavic Review. 52 (3): 460–76. doi:10.2307/2499719. JSTOR 2499719. S2CID 163978982.
• Neumann, Matthias (2008). "Revolutionizing Mind and Soul? Soviet Youth and Cultural Campaigns during the New Economic Policy (1921–8)". Social History. 33 (3): 243–67. doi:10.1080/03071020802268330. JSTOR 25594258. S2CID 144957625.
• Neumann, Matthias (2011). The Communist Youth League and the Transformation of the Soviet Union. London: Routledge.
• Pedan, A.S. (1979). Partiia i Komsomol (1918–1945): Istoicheskii ocherk. (The Party and the Komsomol (1918–1945): Historical Study). Leningrad: Izdatel'stvo Leningradskogo Universiteta.
• Skorinko, Ivan (1925). Komsomol'tsy Oktiabria (The Communist Youth of October). Moscow: Gosizdat.
• Skorinko, Ivan (1926). Molodezh' v bor'be za Oktiabr' (The Youth in the Struggle for October). Moscow: Gosizdat.
• Tirado, Isabel A. (2001). "The Komsomol and the Bright Socialist Future," in Corinna Kuhr-Korolev, et al. (ed.), Sowjetjugend 1917–1941: Generation zwischen Revolution und Resignation (Soviet Youth 1917–1941: A Generation Between Revolution and Resignation). Essen, Germany: Klartext Verlag, pp. 217–231.
• Tirado, Isabel A. (1996). "The Komsomol and the Krestianka: the Political Mobilization of Young Women in the Russian Village, 1921–1927". Russian History. 23 (1): 345–66. doi:10.1163/187633196X00222.
• Tirado, Isabel A. (1993). "The Komsomol an the Young Peasants: The Dilemma of Rural Expansion, 1921–1925," Slavic Review, vol. 52, no. 3 (1993), pp. 460–476.
• Tirado, Isabel A. (1988). Young Guard! The Communist Youth League, Petrograd 1917-1920. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

External links

• Media related to Komsomol at Wikimedia Commons
• Komsomol Russia
• Komsomol Ukraine
• Komsomol Moldova
• Komsomol Belarus
• Komsomol Kazakhstan