Author Archives: Anton Markin

The Patriotic Education in USSR. Part 2 — Pioneers, Soviet Boy Scouts

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pioner1 The Patriotic Education in USSR. Part 2 Pioneers, Soviet Boy Scouts

We are the pio­neers, sons of work­ing class (a pop­u­lar song)

As you remem­ber from the pre­vi­ous post, at the age of 9 the Soviet Kids grew out of their Octo­ber Kids affil­i­a­tion. The next ide­o­log­i­cal rite of pas­sage was pio­neer­ing which the Soviet coun­try placed a huge impor­tance on. Loosely based on the Amer­i­can Boy Scout’s move­ment, pio­neer­ing cov­ered all kids till the age of four­teen and worked in close rela­tion with schools. Just like any­thing else Soviet style, it had its idiosyncrasies.

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The Patriotic Education in the USSR. Part One: the October Kids.

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0 de34 9660ec72 XL 500x361 The Patriotic Education in the USSR. Part One: the October Kids.

Only those who like to work get suc­cess­ful in this world.

The young Soviet coun­try could not grow and flour­ish with­out the sup­port and patri­o­tism of its peo­ple. From the early days of the Soviet Union, the ide­ol­ogy organ­i­sa­tions aimed to tar­get cit­i­zens of all ages, oblig­ing them to belong in order to do well in life. So the pes­ter­ing had to start early: when kids start school (the school age 7 years old in the USSR), the school ide­ol­ogy organ­i­sa­tion would take them under the wing, with the prospect of nur­tur­ing the future mem­bers of the Com­mu­nist Party.

The very first move­ment every child would belong to was called the Octo­ber kids, after the Great Octo­ber Rev­o­lu­tion of 1917, after which the new gov­ern­ment came into power.

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