‘It isn’t easy to be
young’ Komsomol finds

By FRED WEIR
MOSCOW — The 40-million member Soviet Young
Communist League, which is commonly known by its
Russian acronym — Komsomol — last week ex-
Perienced its most animated and turbulent central con-
vention in several decades.

The 20th Komsomol Congress, which brought some

5,000 Soviet delegates and foreign guests (including
Chris Frazer and Line Chabot representing the Canadian
YCL) to the Kremlin’s Palace of Congresses, was
Marked by harsh criticism of the youth league’s work
during the last decade, and saw a tough debate over its
Tole-and relevance in the current drive to restructure
Soviet society.

In a scathing review of past work, First Secretary
Victor Mironenko, 33, noted that although the Kom-
somol has twice doubled its membership since 1950, and
has been deeply involved in all of the great phases of
socialist construction, over recent years it has lost touch
with a growing number of Soviet youth.

This reality has been slow to sink in with the Kom-
Somol’s mostly over-30 leadership. During the run-up to
the congress, nearly everyone was startled by television
interviews with a wide variety of Soviet young people
that revealed a pervasive indifference — even among
Members — to the activities of the Komsomol.

For many, membership in the youth league has be-
come an empty formality. Its ponderous, over-cen-
tralized structure has consistently swamped impulses
from below, while leaders have been more concerned
With preserving the appearance of things than with ad-

dressing the genuine concerns of the young.

The film depicts a generation in
deep conflict with its parents
and with the social mores of the
past.

Revelations of widespread youth cynicism and aliena-
tion in the Soviet media have produced a shock-wave in
recent months. The Soviet public has been stunned by a
new documentary film, /s it Easy to be Young?, now play-
ing to mass audiences around the country. All of the
Komsomol’s carefully sculpted images of uncom-
Plicated Soviet youth marching forward with unity and
determination, and nary a self-doubt, into the future
Simply dissolve in the face of the real thing.

The film depicts a generation in deep conflict with its
Parents and with the social mores of the past. There are
Tockers, punks, ‘‘hooligans’’, drop-outs, drug-users,
and Afghan war vets who cannot manage to re-integrate
themselves into Soviet society. Their common lament Is
that all the worthwhile goals of the past have already
been realized and ‘there is nothing left to struggle for’’.

This is reflected in the proliferation of what Komsomol
leaders primly refer to as ‘‘informal groupings’’ of youth.

ese include gangs of heavy metalists, punks, and the
thug-like “‘lyubers’’ — named after the Moscow dormi-
tory town of Lyubertsy, where they originated — who
are into physical culture and gang warfare.

hese are very painful facts for many Soviets to face,
especially after so many years of official denial and
Soothing bromides from the Komsomol. When I saw/s It

Easy to be Young? at a crowded Moscow cinema one
evening last week, there was an almost constant stir of
people getting up and walking out.

Just listen to the searing, brutally frank tone of the
young voices in this film: “‘Nobody seems to under-
stand,”’ says one, ‘‘that we have put on these leather
jackets and appropriated the group names of ‘punks’ and
‘heavy metal fans’ just to tell you this: Look, we are
dirty, haggard and awful — but we are your own chil-
dren. It is you who have made us what we are through
your lies, duplicity, and high-sounding words and ideals
that you profess, while in actual fact ...”’The Kom-
somol’s efforts to come to terms with these realities have
not always turned out well.

An exhibition of work by young Moscow artists, co-
sponsored by the City Committee of the Komsomol last
winter experienced numerous summary bans and cancel-
lations of planned events when organizers became
alarmed by both the works submitted for display and the
young people who showed up to see them.

The most starkly symbolic exhibit was a canvas by
Yuri Albert, titled, ‘‘Text, 1983’, which simply had
these words scrawled across it: ‘*A crisis has come about
in my work. I am troubled, confused, and don’t know
what to do now”’.

The show was closed after 18 days, despite many pleas
to keep it going, and the director of the exhibition hall,
Tamara Bedoyeva, made her position clear. “‘It's the
wrong sort of youth that comes here,” she said.
“They're not our youth’’.

With the 20th Congress, all of these things are at last
out in the open, and there is a sharp debate over how to
deal with them.

The Kosomol has recognized that many of the prob-
lems, the bureaucratism, formalism and even corruption
that have seeped into its work, were part and parcel of a
more general economic malaise and social drift that
began to beset Soviet life in the 1970's.

Now there are broad efforts, initiated by the Commu-
nist Party two years ago, to overcome the inertia and
infuse Soviet socialism witha more profound democratic
content. The Komsomol is belatedly getting behind this
drive. ‘‘To participate actively in the re-organization of
society, the Komsomol must also re-organize itself,”
Mironenko told the congress.

This means, in the first place, turning the organization
onits head, to shift power and initiative to the grassroots.
Local Komsomol branches will now elect their own
leaders — by secret ballot, from a field of multiple can-
didates. In many areas this process has been underway
for months and, as the overwhelmingly young delegates
to the congress confirmed, it produces a whole new type
of Komsomol activist. In the past, those who were ap-
pointed — usually from above — to fill positions at all
levels, tended to be the ‘‘ideal youth leader” as pictured
by higher-ups and elders. Under the new system, the
choice of the rank-and-file is final, and leaders owe their
positions only to those who elect them.

Nevertheless, the new central leadership of the Kom-
somol was elected at the congress in the old way, from a
single slate and by a show of hands.

A new set of rules was adopted to grant far more
independence to local branches, both in financial matters
and in deciding the nature of their activities. The role of
central bodies will be increasingly to render guidance
and assistance, and less to interfere and give orders.

A hard look has to be taken at social problems involv-

Federation of Russian Canadians

greets the employed and unemployed
workers of our province this May 1,
the international holiday of working people.
Our wishes are for full emplo

country — for peace throughout the world.

yment in our

M
GREETINGS

to all workers and fighters for peace

ov
,

Canadian YCL leader Chris Frazer along with Line Cha-
bot, leader of the Young Communist League in Quebec,
attended the turbulent and animated Komsomol con-
gress in the Soviet Union.

ing the youth, Mironenko told the press after his re-elec-
tion as First Secretary. ‘‘We realize that the growth of
informal groupings of young people has much to do lith
the lack of recreational facilities and other outlets for
them,” he said. ‘‘Instead of condemning, we need to
work with these young people, to find ways of interesting
and involving them in Komsomol activities”’.

The shortage of housing, perhaps the single most frus-
trating, agonizing problem for Soviet youth — particu-
larly young married couples — is being addressed by the
Komsomol in a novel and hopeful way. Local Branches
are being encouraged to set up housing co-operatives in
which Komsomol members build their own apartment
buildings — with credits and materials supplied by state
enterprises — and then move into them. The idea is
catching on like wildfire among Soviet youth: Komsomol
housing communities have sprung up in 156 cities, and
are multiplying rapidly.

The Komsomol also decided to press for the adoption
of a special ‘‘Law on Youth”’ by the Soviet parliament.
This is necessary, the congress decided, ““because the
current legislation does not define with sufficient clarity
the place, role, possibilities and rights of young people in
Soviet society’’.

The results of the congress clearly represent a quali-
tatively new stage for the Komsomol, the only organiza-
tion which is capable of reaching Soviet youth, address-
ing their concerns, and firing them. with new vision.
Nevertheless, some young people are describing the
congress as ‘‘anti-climactic’’ and the results “‘disap-
pointing” — an attitude reflected in the lack of unanim-
ity, for the first time in living memory, when it came to
the final vote.

Indeed, there were times when it seemed that the most
militant radical on the presidium at the 20th congress was
not a member of the Komsomol at all, but Mikhail Gor-
bachev, leader of the Communist Party. Said Gorbachev
to the congress:

‘*You know that the debate on whether there’s too
much criticism, on whether we need such broad open-
ness and whether democracy might produce ill effects, is
still continuing. We do not see this controversy as some-
thing negative. People are showing concern for the sta-
bility of our society. But we must not allow democracy to
be turned into a talking-shop. There are people who
seem to be advocating the new, but when it comes to
practice they hedge the extension of democracy, criti-
cism and openness with all sorts of conditions and re-
servations.

‘*Criticism and openness must stand on guard of the
political and moral health of our society. As to democ-
racy, it is time for all to understand that there simply can
be no socialism without a real democracy. Socialism is
the system of working people, socialism is democracy’.

AY DAY

CANADIAN
YUGOSLAV
COMMUNITY
ASSOCIATION

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, APRIL 29, 1987 e 19