Always ready to fight for the cause of the pioneers – Kommersant

On Saturday, another plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation was held in the Moscow region. The main theme of the event was the patriotic education of youth. The leader of the Communist Party, Gennady Zyuganov, advocated the revival of the pioneers, the use of Soviet experience in working with youth, and also announced the task of doubling the party ranks. The participants of the plenum took this proposal with a bang, which cannot be said about Vladimir Putin’s earlier initiative to name representatives of the Russian movement of children and youth “The Movement of the First” as pioneers. According to the communists, in this way the authorities are trying to take away another brand from them, as it already happened with the Young Guard.

Before the start of the plenum, party members were shown a film about how Gennady Zyuganov, chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, accepts children as pioneers on Red Square. And the event began with a moment of silence in memory of 32 communists who died in a special military operation (SVO) in Ukraine, after which new members were admitted to the party. Among the latter were electricians, managers, students and one 11th grade student. “18 years old,” Ivan Melnikov, the first deputy chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, hastened to explain.

The interlocutor of the Kommersant correspondent on the sidelines of the plenum at that moment said that the young people who come to the Communist Party often do not know Stalin and Lenin, and explain their desire to become communists by protesting against United Russia.

Then Gennady Zyuganov presented several associates with the Lenin Prize. Among them were the editor-in-chief of the Pravda newspaper Boris Komotsky, the chief conductor of the Rossiya ensemble Dmitry Dmitrienko and the leader of the Communists of Transnistria Oleg Khorzhan, whom Ivan Melnikov called “a political prisoner of the oligarchic regime” (in 2019, Mr. Khorzhan was sentenced in Moldova to 4, 5 years in prison for “use of violence against a representative of the authorities”, was released in December 2022).

Then Gennady Zyuganov made a report “On the tasks of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in the fight against fascism and the patriotic education of the younger generation.” He noted that the revival of the Pioneers and the Komsomol, as well as the doubling of the party ranks, was the subject of special concern of the party – in solving this problem, the leader of the Communist Party, according to him, hopes for his first deputy in the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Yuri Afonin. Mr. Zyuganov called on party members to use the experience of the Soviet school in matters of patriotic education. He recalled that in the 1970s, “forms of work included lessons in basic military training, military sports games, trips to places of revolutionary and military glory, civil defense competitions, and corners of glory.” Gennady Zyuganov believes that now it is those who went to school in the 70s who form the backbone of the SVO participants.

However, neither in battle nor in civilian life should one forget about the precepts of Vladimir Lenin – from an early age “to educate a person in conscious work, in the spirit of camaraderie and communist organization, in readiness to subordinate their interests to the interests of the collective.”

“This is the fundamental difference between our pedagogical tradition and the many bourgeois practices of leadership and personal growth that have flooded public life today,” the leader of the Communist Party emphasized.

Gennady Zyuganov could not avoid the topic of the historical and cultural development of Russia and the role of the USSR in this process. He criticized the authorities for “officially propagating the Russian world under aggressive anti-Sovietism,” which, according to Mr. Zyuganov, “is both stupidity and a crime.” The leader of the Communist Party traditionally expressed indignation at the “shamefully boarded up on the day of May 9, Lenin’s Mausoleum” and “the Yeltsin’s viper smoking in the Urals, poisoning the youth” (the Communist Party advocates the closure of the Yeltsin Center in Yekaterinburg). Falsifications in the elections also got it: Gennady Zyuganov recalled that the Communist Party of the Russian Federation had developed an electoral code that “is capable of putting an end to the provocative “three days”, adventurous “electronic” and voting “on stumps””.

Gennady Zyuganov’s report received a standing ovation. Another speaker received a similar ovation – a member of the NVO, the first secretary of the Donetsk Komsomol Vadim Popkov. He said that on the front line, soldiers wear chevrons with the Soviet coat of arms, and the image of Joseph Stalin is popular among the troops. At the plenum, people in camouflage with “Stalin’s Guard” stripes were also noticeable.

The theme of the revival of the Pioneers found a special response among the participants of the plenum. As Larisa Noskova, second secretary of the city committee of the Communist Party of the Istra city district, told Kommersant, people involved in this work are facing problems in the field. So, according to her, there are pioneer detachments in Istra, but the educational authorities do not allow the creation of a pioneer squad. Ms. Noskova also remembered how the birthday of the pioneer organization (May 19) was celebrated in Tomsk: “We came out with white flags. Is it pioneer? This is some kind of gay parade! Our color is red, it is the color of the spilled blood of our fathers and grandfathers.”

President Vladimir Putin also showed interest in the theme of the revival of the pioneers: he recently offered think about renaming the members of the Russian movement of children and youth “Movement of the First” as pioneers. Many communists have mixed reactions to this idea.

“The Young Guard has already been taken away from us, now it is the youth organization of United Russia. Now they are also taking away the pioneers, ”explains Larisa Noskova. The coordinator of the Left Front, Sergei Udaltsov, believes that giving the new organization the name Pioneer without filling it with Soviet content will confuse people: “This is a subtle dialectic. If everyone is called pioneers, if red flags are hung up, it will, of course, be pleasant for people with our views. But the main thing is the changes in the basis. I believe that if the form is Soviet, and the content is current, it will be a perversion,” Sergei Udaltsov told Kommersant. “They will think that a left turn has already taken place. Our authorities love to play with symbols, but you won’t be fed up with just the name.”

Ksenia Veretennikova