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Class Dismissed? New Elites and Old Enemies among the “Best” Socialist Youth in the Komsomol, 1934–41
Author(s) -
BERNSTEIN SETH
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
the russian review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.136
H-Index - 24
eISSN - 1467-9434
pISSN - 0036-0341
DOI - 10.1111/russ.10758
Subject(s) - proletariat , communism , meritocracy , elite , socialism , league , population , political science , sociology , politics , political economy , law , physics , demography , astronomy
This article focuses on important facets of recent literature in Russian and Eurasian studies–the impact of Stalinism on Soviet socialism, the role of class in the USSR, and youth. The immediate topic of the paper is membership policy in the Young Communist League (Komsomol) in the early period of Soviet socialism. It argues that the introduction of meritocratic, supposedly class‐blind membership policies in 1935–36 created significant tensions in Soviet political culture about the role of class and reinforced the power of class categories to distinguish elements of the population. The advent of socialism in 1934 was supposed to herald the gradual disappearance of class differences. Instead of a league of young proletarians, youth leaders claimed the Komsomol would become an organization of the “best” Soviet youth of all classes. However, the uncertain definition of the “best” youth reflected and facilitated the creation of a new social hierarchy in the Soviet Union. As young professionals and students joined the Soviet elite, they displaced proletarians as the ideal young subject. At the same time, Komsomol admissions reified old divides, in particular the marginal place of special settler youth in Soviet society. The article asserts that the Komsomol's membership policies in the 1930s reflected the broader nature of Stalinism, combining idealistic belief in progress with pragmatic, reactive and historically contingent practices.