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.

Almost all Octo­ber Kids made it to the next level – not to be accepted, one had to really mis­be­have and do some­thing wrong on sev­eral occa­sions. How­ever, the process of ini­ti­a­tion was organ­ised in a smart ide­o­log­i­cal way: usu­ally it was sched­uled close to some Soviet days of impor­tance: Novem­ber 7^th (The Great Octo­ber Social­ist Rev­o­lu­tion), 22^nd April (Vladimir Lenin’s Birth­day), 19^th May – the Pio­neer­ing day. As the ini­ti­a­tion cer­e­mony was bro­ken down into sev­eral parts, every­body had the impres­sion that only the most “wor­thy” of the lot were accepted. In real­ity, a class of school kids would make it to pio­neers in full over a period of time of less than two years.

The ini­ti­a­tion process involved a vow:

I am (full name, eg Anton Markin) enter­ing the team of the Soviet Union Pio­neer Organ­i­sa­tion, in front of all my com­rade mates, I solemnly declare: to love and to pro­tect my coun­try, live as the great Lenin advised, as the Com­mu­nist party guides, as the Pio­neer Laws require.

Then the neo­phyte would receive a tie, which was just like any other scout’s type of a tie. There were rules on how to tie a knot, and the colour was, of course, bloody red. A badge with the burn­ing fire of Pio­neer­ing and Lenin’s pro­file was also pre­sented. The badge bore the slo­gan of all pio­neers – Always ready! – which was meant to be a reply to “Pio­neer, be ready for the mutual action of the Com­mu­nist Party of the Soviet Union!”

Usu­ally each school class would con­tain up to three pio­neer teams. Each team had a des­ig­nated cap­tain, a dis­ci­pline watcher, a note taker and other posi­tions ensur­ing the smooth organ­i­sa­tional process of the every day life of pioneers.

It was pio­neers’ job to curate the Octo­ber Kids by pro­vid­ing guid­ance and men­tor­ing, organ­is­ing their leisure time. The “older broth­ers” were respon­si­ble for tak­ing the Octo­ber Kids not only to the movies or muse­ums: as they had to be the “right” influ­ence, they often organ­ised meet­ings for kids of all ages with remark­able cit­i­zens or excel­lent pro­duc­tion line work­ers to keep the young ones keen on learn­ing and working.

A pop­u­lar activ­ity, which any mod­ern ex-pioneer would find nos­tal­gic now, was the col­lec­tion of paper from the neigh­bour­hood for the recy­cling pur­poses. This was organ­ised as a com­pe­ti­tion between the pio­neer teams: kids had to go knock on doors and ask for old news­pa­pers, books, unused boxes etc. The win­ners – who­ever col­lected most – were enti­tled to a “thank you” let­ter from school or the Kom­so­mol organisation.

So in fact, no mat­ter how hard they denied it, the pio­neer organ­i­sa­tion took a lot after the Amer­i­can Boy Scout move­ment. Start­ing with the uni­form and right through to the organ­i­sa­tional struc­ture, it was a copy and paste scheme of work. Need­less to say, the pro­pa­ganda lines went as “Amer­i­can kids liv­ing the dan­ger­ous life of crass con­sumerism, whereas us, Sovi­ets, bring up our younger gen­er­a­tions in accor­dance with the rules of good behav­iour, well­be­ing, respect­ing the elderly and so on”. Well, as the Iron Cur­tain was hang­ing up strongly, nobody had the means of com­par­ing– even though it could have been a great way to learn off the Amer­i­can coun­ter­parts. But a typ­i­cal for the Sovi­ets “Ours is best, is West­ern is rot­ten” atti­tude was adopted.

The mass media catered well for the pio­neer mar­ket seg­ment. The teen mag­a­zines, such as “Friendly Kids”, “A Soviet Schooler”, “Pio­neer”, “Burn­ing Fire”, “Young mod­eller – con­struc­tor” etc., were extremely pop­u­lar. Well, pro­vid­ing this was almost it – there was noth­ing in print, which would cover music, or inter­per­sonal rela­tions, or sex, or any­thing of the inter­est of those approach­ing puberty as it was con­sid­ered inap­pro­pri­ate. The pro­pa­ganda had its sprout ten­ta­cles reached out to even to the teen Russians.

Sum­mers – June to August – was the time to take off the tie and enjoy the well-earned school break. Many kids would be sent to the pio­neer sum­mer camps – the places to stay for a few weeks, play, rest, do sports, meet new friends.

Alto­gether the pres­sure was con­stantly on: being a pio­neer was not only an hon­our, it was also a respon­si­bil­ity, and the adults, know­ing it was an easy sub­ject to manip­u­late, would demand good behav­iour, good marks, house­hold help etc. Noth­ing unrea­son­able, cer­tainly, but still – the pos­si­bil­ity of being expelled from the pio­neer organ­i­sa­tion was a con­stant threat, and so in order to do well in the Soviet Union, one had to belong.

That was what kids were doing until the age of 14, when it was a new rite of ide­o­log­i­cal pas­sage – the Komsomol.

To Be Continued.

Related posts:

1. The Patri­otic Edu­ca­tion in the USSR. Part One: the Octo­ber Kids.
2. Soviet Brands: The Scent Of Com­mu­nism. Part 1 of 2
3. Soviet Cars: His­tory of the Copy-and-Paste Indus­try  —  Part 3 of 3
4. Soviet Auto­mo­bile Indus­try  —  Part 1 of 2
5. Soviet Auto­mo­bile Indus­try  —  Part 2 of 2