Swept from the scene in 1991 along with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Communist League of Youth (in its Russian abbreviation, Komsomol), was later reconstituted as a political youth group aligned with the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF).
In a country where most political groups are small "sofa parties" set up to promote individual leaders, the Komsomol is striking for its size and developed structures. With groups of activists in almost all administrative regions, it is among the handful of Russian political formations that have a real life outside of Moscow.
The Komsomol acts with increasing independence of the KPRF. But as the youth organisation defines its own line and takes its own initiatives, what will its political character prove to be? Will the Komsomol figure as part of the left? Or will its leaders make their peace with the regime, discouraging grassroots protest and looking toward cooption into the government apparatus? Alternatively, will the Komsomol find a place in Russia's prominent Stalinist-chauvinist current?
Komsomol first secretary Igor Malyarov is interviewed by Moscow journalist Anatoly Baranov.
Question: What's the state of the Russian Komsomol today?
We've now established branches in practically all the subjects of the Russian Federation with the exception, perhaps, of the national districts. In the provinces, our structure extends all the way to the regional centres.
The total number of Komsomol members fluctuates between 16,000 and 17,000. The organisation's backbone consists of students. There are far fewer members of other social groups, although there are young college graduates, mainly teachers.
Question: Why is this the case? Where are the workers?
Young workers are now a scarce species. Young people aren't being hired, and they're the first to be sacked. Also, far more of their time is taken up by the question of how to survive. The degree of social activity is least precisely among the groups of the population with low incomes and low educational levels.
Poverty in itself doesn't act as a trigger for social activism — if anything, the reverse is true. People hold out the hope that they can pull themselves out of their predicaments on their own. This is the line that gets propagandised.
Question: The Komsomol is one of the largest political youth organisations in the country. But young people on the whole are depoliticised. How do you attract people?
"Head on" politicisation doesn't work and isn't necessary. Young people won't attend political meetings regularly. After our congress in April last year, we made a decisive turn toward addressing social problems — organising work with school students, for example.
Our activists join union committees in the tertiary colleges, and they work from below, through faculty union groups, trying to stir up students to defend their interests. The people who are now joining the Komsomol — I'm amazed by them. They come and work without any prospect of personal advancement. Quite the reverse, in a lot of cases.
Question: We often hear now about a crisis of youth, of the degradation of youth. Even the armed forces are sounding the alarm: before they can put a rifle in the hands of a conscript, they have to put him in a sick bay for two months and fatten him up. Is the Komsomol now linked in some way with military-patriotic training?
We have military-patriotic clubs in almost all provinces. We try to prepare young men to serve in the armed forces. But we didn't support the war in Chechnya. Here we had substantial differences with the KPRF leadership, which opposed the war, but listlessly and from all appearances not very sincerely.
However, we don't support pacifism and we know that legality and our homeland have to be defended when they're really under threat.
We have operational brigades that try to keep order in student hostels. There's a big problem now with rackets in the hostels. It's not wealthy traders who are being robbed, but poor students. The people involved aren't real bandits, of course, just declassed rabble, but still, you have to unite and defend yourself against them.
We work together with the Ministry of Defence. There are decent, professional people there, whom we can and should collaborate with. The country needs an army and police, whatever the social system.
Question: What about the old Komsomol nomenklatura? Do they help you? Former Komsomol chiefs that I know, from the last and next-to-last central committees of the old Komsomol organisation, have done fine for themselves under the present system.
They're one of the sources of finance for our organisation. We exist, on the whole, without receiving so much as a kopeck from the KPRF. And although the people who've gone through the Komsomol include all types, a lot of them help us.
Question: Is it true that the Komsomol's relations with the KPRF have been quite difficult?
Yes, our relations have by no means been unclouded. The party leaders still remember the old Komsomol — very large, disciplined and aware of its place. It's impossible to explain to them that to have 16,000 or 17,000 members under present conditions is already a huge achievement. They'll look at you and say, "I had a single local organisation that was that big".
It's pointless trying to tell such people that times have changed. But what about people who were 13 years old in 1991? For them the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is pure history. They don't even remember Brezhnev. If they join, it's going to be for completely different reasons. They feel and behave quite differently from the veterans.
The party leaders want to have youth, but youth in their own image. On the one side we see young people who've been brought up in post-Soviet times (and have become left wing precisely because of this), while on the other side there are party functionaries who look on a computer as a dangerous monster, and who regard Coca-Cola as a symbol of bourgeois decadence. How are they going to find a common language?
The same thing happens with workers. There are workers in the party, but they aren't typical of their milieu, of their generation, or of the people in their workplace. They aren't in any sense shopfloor leaders. Sometimes they don't even know their work mates. There are real leaders in the work collectives, but they're not in the party.
I'm concerned that there are many people at the top levels of the party who are quite content with this situation.
When the KPRF sets up unions of workers or women, you get the impression that these bodies exist only as "landmarks along the great road" — look, we have a union of women.
It's very simple: you collect the few party members who are workers, and the KPRF members who are a bit younger than most, and the women Communists, and you use them to set up small "interest groups" or sections. Then you bloc with them in the Popular Patriotic Union.
Question: And then, without a hint of embarrassment, you declare that a desire for a consolidation of elites is manifesting itself in society. In the first instance, the ruling elites and those of the opposition.
The trouble is that a consolidation of elites won't solve people's problems, and neither will a compromise between organisations. You have to work with the people who are within these structures.
If you're dealing with real trade unions, then although there's a lot that's reactionary about them, nevertheless they have real potential and real power — we've seen this with the teachers' protests. Working with these people is a lot more difficult than working with a small group of people whom the party has designated, let's say, as youth or as a union of teachers.
You have to solve difficult problems — how do you relate to top-level bureaucrats, if the people at the bottom aren't prepared to throw them out? You need astute tactics and a clear political line. Obviously it's simpler to create a bloc out of buds formed from your own tissues.
Question: The popular-patriotic opposition shows a striking unanimity. It's supposed to consist of various groups and movements, but they all think alike.
It's the same inside the Communist Party. It's essential that the level of discussion be raised. On the threshold of the congress, shouldn't there be some kind of open contest of views, a search for the truth?
By no means everyone likes the enthusiasm for the past, especially since this past isn't even Soviet, but rather tsarist. When we discover that the leaders of the Communist Party are enamoured of Orthodox Christianity, questions inevitably arise.
Instead of a clash of opinions, we're being shown a substitute — a fight between bulldogs under a blanket. What's happening, why and how, we're not supposed to know.
In the present situation, it's no longer possible for us simply to discuss perspectives with the party leadership. We act independently, nominating our own candidates for provincial legislatures and pursuing our own policies. We no longer see ourselves as the reserve forces of the party. We're an independent organisation.
Question: When was the last time you talked so openly and honestly with one of the leaders of the party, with Kuptsov, Shabanov or Zyuganov?
A long time back. With the situation as it is now, the conditions of life are changing people. I don't want to talk about Zyuganov and Kuptsov, but I will say something in general about the State Duma, where there are comfortable offices, personal transport, a buffet — the people there have it okay.
When the Central Committee meets, to look at the parade of cars at the entrance, you'd think we'd won every possible election and that the old times of the general secretaries had returned. That mood is very dangerous.
I'm certainly not an opponent of parliamentary work, but it's one thing when the opportunities the Duma provides are used for the general good, and something quite different when people get soft and start thinking that it's all their doing, that it's somehow due to their personal qualities — and will be for evermore. People's attitude to the world around them changes. Even the way they walk changes.
There's no need to fall into moralising, but in the Komsomol we want to have normal people with normal habits. It's not our business to keep tabs on morals. We're not a monastery and we're not a sect. If we started introducing compulsory restrictions, we'd be on the direct road to turning into a sect.
The present regime has a vital need of sects — it needs to show groups of young people covered in badges, roaming with flags from one embassy to the next and protesting against American imperialism.
Question: In other words, the new Komsomol tries to be a normal organisation for normal people?
Ultimately, this is a key question for our left movement. Nostalgia isn't a program for the liberation of society. You can't build an organisation that strives for change on the basis of nostalgia and fidelity to traditions.
In just the same way, it's impossible to build a movement that proclaims left slogans while it cultivates the values of Russian autocracy. The new generation, however indignant it might be at what's happening now in the country, won't join such organisations. People who live in the past can't lead us into the future.