The state-public movement of children and youth cannot come up with a name for itself

“Up”, “Forward”, “Movement named after Gagarin” and other “new pioneers”

The first congress of the movement of children and youth (RDDM) is taking place in Moscow. Apparently, the main problem of the new organization today is its name: the former working name “Big Break” is dissonantly reduced, and the delegates did not like the new one proposed to the congress “Movement of the First”.

The State Duma voted for a new public organization for children and youth at the end of May, and in July it was already established. Grigory Gurov, Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, became Chairman of the Board of the All-Russian Public-State Movement of Children and Youth, although the project is under the patronage of the Ministry of Education. The President instructed to annually allocate 21.3 billion rubles from the state budget for the needs of the “great pioneers”.

At the congress, the ideological pillars of the future movement were solemnly presented. There are five of them in total, Gurov said (maybe this is a reference to the Octobrists, remember the “stars”?). Five “missions”, anyway, and five shared values. Values ​​are “Patriotism”, “Goodness and Justice”, “Strong Family”, “Dream” and “Creative Labor”. And the creators of the movement believe that their mission is such postulates: “To be with Russia”, “To be a man”, “To be together”, “To be in Motion”, “To be the first”.

The last two directions are associated with the name, because of which the fuss flared up. Gurov’s team proposed the name “Movement of the First”. And almost half of the delegates did not like it. 648 congress delegates voted for the “dvizhperov”, 527 voted against, 98 more abstained. Therefore, the head of the RDDM announced another “electoral stage of voting.”

Meanwhile, the head of the Ministry of Education managed to declare that “as early as Tuesday, cells of the new movement will begin to open in Russian schools.”

The problem with the naming of the New Pioneers was tried to be solved by an open competition, including in schools. But everything that the children could create did not shine with novelty: “Spark”, “Up”, “Forward”, “Movement named after Gagarin”. And, accordingly, did not inspire the organizers. Then it was decided to assign responsibility for the adoption of the final name for the RDDM to the congress.

– Indeed, the selection of a name, naming is a very difficult task, – says philologist Irina Koneva. – For example, in commercial use, branding, naming is paid separately and very often a good name is more than half the success. And for organizations, of course, this is also important. Among other things, the name should be successfully abbreviated and not have negative or funny connotations, either in full or in a truncated form. (Let’s remember “bumps”, “bolpers” and “bepeshki” – such abbreviations from wits began to walk around the Web when they wrote that they wanted to call the children’s organization “Big Break”. What organizations have good names? “Salvation Army”, for example. Or the same pioneers moving forward.What other difficulties can await the new children’s and youth organization?

“Modern children and teenagers are almost without exception bright individualists,” says Marianna Razumovskaya, a child and family psychologist. – And in order to captivate, unite and lead them, one desire is not enough. And it is very difficult to “mirror” the pioneers today. Yes, in the 1920s a new children’s organization was created almost from scratch (after all, there were already scouts). But also powerful ideological campaigns and movements were going on all over the country: illiteracy eradication, industrialization, electrification and even sanitary brigades traveled … Large segments of the population were captured by all this, and children were the younger detachment of adults – the creators of these changes. Then there really was a movement, an impulse, don’t say anything. And talented, inspired artists and ideologists worked on the creation of Soviet ideology and symbols, including names. Now there is no such unity, passionarity in society.