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We Shall Refashion Life on Earth! the Political Culture of the Young Communist

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We Shall Refashion Life on Earth! the Political Culture of the Young Communist UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles We Shall Refashion Life on Earth! The Political Culture of the Young Communist League, 1918-1928 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History by Sean Christopher Guillory 2009 © Copyright by Sean Christopher Guillory 2009 To Rodney, Roderick, Dianne, and Maya iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements v Vita viii Abstract x Introduction: What is the Komsomol? 1 Chapter 1 “We were not heroes. Our times were heroic” 44 Chapter 2: “Are you a komsomol? Member of the party? Our guy!” 88 Chapter 3: “He’s one of the guys and if he wants three wives that’s his business.” 131 Chapter 4: “Activists are a special element” 190 Chapter 5: “The right to punish and pardon - like God judges the soul” 246 Chapter 6: “A New Voluntary Movement” 292 Conclusion “Youth it was that led us” 345 Bibliography 356 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Intellectual work is always a collective effort, and the study before the reader is no exception. Several institutions and individuals provided direct or indirect financial assistance, scholarly advice, intellectual influence, and moral and emotional support in this long journey. I would like to thank the History Departments at UC Riverside and UCLA, the UCLA Graduate Division, the UCLA Center for European and Eurasian Studies for academic and financial support. Research for this project was provided by the generous funding from the United States Department of Education through the Fulbright- Hays Program. I wish to thank the archivists in Russia for their patience and aid in finding materials for this study. Galina M. Tokareva at the reading room for Records of the History of Komsomol and Youth Organizations in RGASPI made research a warm and unforgettable experience. Her undying enthusiasm for the Komsomol and its history was inspiring. Oleg V. Naumov and Nadezhda V. Muraveva deserve recognition for their personal assistance at the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History. Lidiya S. Naumova at Central Archive of Social-Political History of Moscow and Elena N. Pozyakin at State Archive of Ryazan Oblast gave their time and assistance. I would also like to thank Pavel Trebunskii and Irina, Nadia, and Aleksandr Uskov for their help and hospitality in Ryazan. I am also grateful to Elena S. Drozdova for her tireless schlepping around Moscow to deal with my visa registration. There were several professors and graduate students that deserve recognition and thanks. Georg Michels, Ivan Berend, Perry Anderson, Aamir Mufti, and Gabriel v Piterberg provided intellectual engagement, influence, and support. Lynn Mally and Julie Cassidy were kind enough to provide a stranger with vital source material. David Sabean deserves thanks for his seminars, and, in particular, all the dinners and discussions he hosted at his home. I thank Sara Brinegar, Sung Choi, Nancy Getty, Jenna Gibbs, Brigitte Le Normand, Brigid O’Keeffe, Kelly Kolar, Steve Maddox, Jared McBride, Tom Mertes, Daniel Newman, Ritika Prasad, Daniel Ryan, Tami Sarfatti, Josh Sternfield, Mesrob Vartavarian, Claudia Verhoeven, Sevan Yousefian and the bratishki and fighting komsomolki from SRB for their encouragement, friendship and support. My gratitude goes to Heather, Lynn, and Reinhardt Metzger for their love and support in the early stages of this project. They will never be forgotten. Finally, Shizuka Suzuki, Mary Johnson and Hubert Ho at History Department Computer Resource Center gave me the time and supplementary income to complete this project. J. Arch Getty taught me the ins and outs of Russian History. His support of me over the years cannot be thanked enough. His council was vital for seeing this project to completion. Stephen Frank’s interest, expertise, intellectual rigor, kindness and humor served as inspiration. Lewis Siegelbaum deserves many thanks for agreeing to be a last minute addition on my committee. His kindness is unmatched. Igal Halfin’s experience, interest, and advice on how to complete a dissertation proved invaluable. Finally, none of this would have been possible without the help, love, and support of my family. My mother Dianne Guillory proudly stood by me in this long journey. Julian (Najib) Khoury was always supportive and encouraging. The memory of my father Rodney and brother Roderick Guillory always served as inspiration. I hope I have made vi them proud. And last but not least, Maya Haber’s unequivocal love, support, selflessness and patience made this project possible. The importance of her critical, caring eye cannot be put into words. The ideas in this text are just as much hers as they are mine. vii VITA July 24, 1972 Born, Burlingame, California 1997 B.A., History University of California, Riverside Riverside, California 1999 M.A., History University of California, Riverside Riverside, California 1998-2000 Teaching Assistant Department of History University of California, Riverside 2000-2001 Teaching Assistant Department of Ethnic Studies University of California, Riverside 2005 Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Research Fellowship 2006 Teaching Fellow Department of History University of California, Los Angeles 2008 Lecturer Department of History Santa Monica College viii PRESENTATIONS Guillory, Sean C., (November 2006) What is soviet? Participant on a roundtable at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Washington, DC. —, (January 2007) To forage for those pitiful leftovers which still have not perished: Archives and the Formation of the Soviet State. Paper presented at the Interdisciplinary seminar, Aran School of History, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel. —, (November 2007) Bratishki and the Red Invalid: The Traumas of Civil War in the Komsomol” and Participant on the roundtable “Youth’s Janus Face. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, New Orleans, Louisiana. —, (November 2007) What is Youth? Participant on a roundtable at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, New Orleans, Louisiana. —, (November 2008) What is Russia Thinking? The Word from the Last of the Independent Media. Participant on a roundtable Paul Klebnikov Fund Annual Event, New York City, New York. —, (June 2009) Singing to the Madness of the Brave: the Meanings of Death in the Young Communist League, 1918-1928. Paper presented at the Biannual Conference for Society for the History of Childhood and Youth, Berkeley, California. ix ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION We Shall Refashion Life on Earth! The Political Culture of the Young Communist League, 1918-1928 by Sean Christopher Guillory Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Los Angeles, 2009 Professor J. Arch Getty, Chair We Shall Refashion Life on Earth! The Political Culture of the Young Communist League, 1918-1928 examines the struggle over identity and ethics in the Communist Youth League, or Komsomol. The modern perception of youth as the future, combined with the absence of effective Communist Party control gave youth significant power to create and shape the political culture of the emerging Soviet society. The Komsomol served as a space autonomous from adult authority in which young people disciplined each other and defined what it meant to be a young communist. Founded in 1918, the Komsomol was a militant youth organization. Its members were united by a common goal to fight enemies of the Revolution and destroy the old order. In 1921, when the Russian Civil War ended, the League lost its unifying purpose. It was no longer clear x what its function was in the new peaceful post-revolutionary society. Young communists were confused as to what being a communist meant. Rapid growth complicated the situation further as more and more politically raw youth joined the Komsomol’s ranks. The Komsomol which used to be an intimate coterie of like-minded youth became a mass organization diverse in experience, social background, styles, practices, and relations. The 1920s were marked by a constant negotiation over what constituted acceptable and unacceptable communist behavior. Young communists worked out their codes of conduct through public scandals and moral courts which provided models of how a komsomol should not behave. By 1928, the Komsomol was in a state of crisis. Disillusionment, pessimism, and even suicide shrouded the League’s political atmosphere as young communists searched for a way to escape the doldrums of Thermidor. But 1928 was also marked by a revival of communist militancy, romanticism, and class warfare which offered young communists a grand purpose to reunite them. xi Introduction What is the Komsomol? In late October 2008, a lucky visitor to Russia could have stumbled upon a series of commemorative events taking place around the country. The festivities were not the gallant Victory Day parades of medal-chested old men. Nor were they the xenophobic Russian Marches shouting “Russia for Russians!,” the vitriolic “Dissident’s March,” where riot police inevitably clash with defiant National Bolsheviks, or the drunken jaunts of paratroopers through parks and public spaces. Rather, these celebrations would not have been quite so boisterous, flamboyant, or cantankerous but no less jubilant. Their marches were small, mostly consisting of middle aged and elderly Russians dressed in long, dull coats to stave off the October chill. If the visitor were lucky, he or she might witness the marchers bellowing tunes to an accordion at their lead. Songs like “Long Live Youth!” (Da zdravstvuet iunost!), “Let’s be Friends” (Davaite druzhit), and other ballads hailing Russia’s youth would have thrown the visitor back in time. These small processions were not the only celebratory signs. Also scattered across Russia—in its metropolises and provincial backwaters, and in some cases even in some of the Soviet Union’s former republics, a curious visitor could take in a series of parades, lectures, symposiums, and exhibitions on history, politics, and culture of Soviet youth. These events were so many that only the most earnest could attend them all.
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