Copyright by Julie Kay Degraffenried 2009
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Copyright by Julie Kay deGraffenried 2009 The Dissertation Committee for Julie Kay deGraffenried certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Becoming the Vanguard: Children, the Young Pioneers, and the Soviet State in the Great Patriotic War Committee: ___________________________________ Charters S. Wynn, Supervisor ___________________________________ Judith G. Coffin ___________________________________ David F. Crew ___________________________________ Thomas J. Garza ___________________________________ Joan Neuberger Becoming the Vanguard: Children, the Young Pioneers, and the Soviet State in the Great Patriotic War by Julie Kay deGraffenried, M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2009 To my own precious children, Will, Reece, and Rhynn, who have dramatically influenced the way I see the children of history. Acknowledgements This project reached a successful conclusion only because of the advice, support, and encouragement of countless people – mentors, colleagues, friends, and family. To offer thanks here seems inadequate, yet supremely necessary. First and foremost, I must thank my kind and long-suffering advisor, Charters Wynn, for his gentle prodding, incisive comments, and meticulous editing. During the research and writing of this dissertation, Dr. Wynn waited patiently while I welcomed one child . and then another . and then one more. For his willingness to support rather than criticize my decision to grow a family AND hold a full-time lecturer position AND write a dissertation, I will be forever grateful. His example, as both brilliant scholar and superb human being, is inspirational to me (and countless others). I am thankful to the members of my dissertation committee for their insightful and helpful comments well as their enthusiastic reception of this project. My sincere thanks to Joan Neuberger, David Crew, Judy Coffin, and Tom Garza. v For the past eight years, I have been fortunate to have a “second home” in the Baylor University history department. No one could ask for better colleagues or a more nurturing atmosphere in which to work. I am grateful to all of my Russian history students for honing my knowledge, helping test my theories, and serving as a constant reminder why I love being in academia. Thanks to Michael Long for friendship, support, and answering panicky Russian language questions. Thanks also to Helen McEwen for her invaluable help in the process of translating what felt like a mountain of documents. Finally, a special, heartfelt thank you to my fellow laborers in the Gulag Archicubicle, David Smith, Dan Greene, Tom Riley, and honorary member, Kimberly Kellison. Anyone writing (or not writing) a dissertation should covet the daily doses of laughter, encouraging words, kolaches (and other healthy food), friendship, and intellectual stimulation I so fortunately received and continue to receive from them. I plan to spend the next several years returning the favor! Thanks are due to Arch Getty and Praxis International for their phenomenal support of a young, inexperienced researcher in Moscow, and to the University of Texas at Austin‟s Department of History for financial support of this dissertation process by way of the Sheffield Fellowship and the John Paul Jones Research fund. Thanks, too, are due to the staff of the Center for Preservation of Documents of Youth Organizations (TsKhDMO) in Moscow for their hospitality and helpfulness over the years. vi Two special individuals were an integral part of my experience in crafting this dissertation. First, I am grateful to Wallace Daniel for instigating my love of Russian history as a Baylor sophomore. His enthusiasm for Russia, history, and scholarship was contagious and life-changing. Second, I am enormously indebted to the head of the reading room at TsKhDMO, Galina Mikhailovna Tokareva, for her aid and friendship. She was herself a child of the Great Patriotic War, and has been gracious enough to share her experiences and her home with me. It was her story that affirmed my interest in children in Russia, and it is her story that continues to inspire me. Last but not least (to coin a phrase), I owe an unredeemable amount of gratitude to my family for their constant love and belief in me. My parents, William and Lucy Burris, share this degree with me. My wonderful, caring extended family and family-in-law have provided just the right amounts of encouragement and expectation. Finally, no amount of words could adequately express the hundreds of ways that my husband, William, contributed to the successful completion of this dissertation. I am so thankful for his support of my stint as professional student, and thankful, too, that he supported my need to set aside academic work – often – in favor of family life, church, and community service. Will, Reece, and Rhynn, who all arrived at various points of the dissertating experience, are a continual source of happiness, wonder, and joy. Their presence in my life enriches all that I do. vii Becoming the Vanguard: Children, the Young Pioneers, and the Soviet State in the Great Patriotic War Julie Kay deGraffenried, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2009 Supervisor: Charters S. Wynn This dissertation combines institutional history and social analysis to provide a more nuanced depiction of the Soviet experience in the Great Patriotic War, a portrait which considers the experience of children, the state‟s expectations of children, and an exploration of the institution responsible for connecting child and state, the V.I. Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organization. It argues that the state‟s expectations for children during the Great Patriotic War were issued primarily in order to save the floundering Young Pioneer organization. Though the Pioneers were supposed to lead children in all sorts of tasks and behaviors – a role they had fulfilled since their inception in 1922 – the organization nearly collapsed under the strain of wartime conditions in the early years of the war. viii In order to resurrect its image and secure its rightful place in the vanguard of children, the Pioneers launched a concerted effort to reassert its leadership. Language, values, and models of heroism were revamped to more accurately reflect the war. The internalization of these standards by children supported the Pioneers‟ claim to leadership. Campaigns of action were launched to allow the Pioneers to claim ownership of children‟s accomplishments. To guarantee success, the organization drew its ideas from preexisting activities – activities children were already doing in 1941-42, largely on local initiative. What had been conceived of and run as a prescriptive organization for two decades became a descriptive organization, subsuming all appropriate acts into the task of reestablishing the Pioneers at the forefront of Soviet childhood. This suggests that children had far more agency than previously assumed, and their many roles complicate the typical “child-victim” normally associated with the Great Patriotic War and its propaganda. The post-Stalingrad turnaround allowed the Pioneers the opportunity to reassert themselves. Becoming the vanguard, the organization established the foundations for a Pioneer-led heroism storied in Soviet history. Though internal problems continued to dog the Pioneers for years, the foundational story was established in the latter years of the war. Beginning in 1943, the organization began writing itself into the post-war victory narrative, alleging successful leadership among children and ignoring the near-catastrophe they had averted. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................1 Chapter 2: The Young Pioneers, 1922-1941 ..........................................................26 Chapter 3: Living the War: The Experience of Children, 1941-1945 ...................65 Chapter 4: The Great Patriotic War and Crisis for the Young Pioneers ..............110 Chapter 5: What Is A Pioneer? Soviet Children and Identity in Wartime ...........129 Chapter 6: What Does a Pioneer Do? Wartime Tasks for Children ....................167 Chapter 7: Becoming the Vanguard: The Resurrection of the Young Pioneers ..197 Chapter 8: Conclusion..........................................................................................229 Bibliography ........................................................................................................241 Vita .......................................................................................................................256 x CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION On June 22, 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, nullifying a tenuous pact between the two nations and launching four years of death and destruction. Physically, mentally, and spiritually consumed by this desperate struggle, the Soviet people endured unbelievable hardship. Some might surmise that they were hardly strangers to adversity, that any semblance of “normalcy” had been forever disrupted two-and-a-half decades before by the Bolsheviks‟ seizure of power in the October Revolution of 1917. Clearly, Lenin and the Bolsheviks intended to destroy the old order in order to replace it with a new socialist society. The dissolution of the Congress of Soviets and sanctioned land seizure by the peasantry marked the initial stages