Lazar M. Kaganovich and Comrade Dorfman

To ensure that young people received the proper education and motivation to "build socialism," the Communist Party organized two youth groups. The Komsomol, or Young Communist League, proselytized among college-age students and young adults, while the Young Pioneers, which was modeled after the Boy Scouts (although it admitted girls and boys), was designed to appeal to pre-teens and teenagers. In the 1920s, the Young Pioneers were led loosely, usually by Komsomol members; the responsibility for planning and executing activities was given mostly to the children. By 1933, however, the adults had taken over, and the movement suffered from overleadership and formalism. These symptoms were the same ones the entire nation suffered from under Josef Stalin, who had assumed control in 1924. Under Stalin, expressions of initiative were often "rewarded" with banishment, imprisonment, or death...