Komsomol Participation In The Soviet First Five Year Plan

Since the political whirlwinds of the mid-1980s and the fall of communism in 1991, Russia has undergone dramatic social change, much of which has escaped the attention of Western media. In her new book, Hilary Pilkington applies the methods of cultural studies research to the study of Russian youth. She does this by `deconstructing' the social discourses within which Russian youth has been constructed and by providing an alternative reading of youth cultural activity, based on an ethnographic study of Moscow youth culture at the end of the 1980s. The book also charts the passage of western youth cultural studies in the twentieth century and suggests some new ways forward in the light of the Russian experience. Hilary Pilkington traces the cultural themes of youth culture in the Anglo-American tradition and within the Soviet Union, before examining the impact of perestroika on the media and its ramifications for the discussion of youth. The book ends with a study of young people in Moscow and youth cultural groups; the product of field work and interviews in the city.

Placing Stalinism in its international context, The Stalinist Era explains the origins and consequences of Soviet state intervention and violence.

Solnick argues that the Soviet system fell victim not to stalemate at the top nor to revolution from below, but to opportunism from within. In case studies on the Communist Youth League, the system of job assignments for university graduates, and military conscription, he tells the story from a new perspective, testing Western theories of reform.

The study of Soviet youth has long lagged behind the comprehensive research conducted on Western European youth culture. In an era that saw the emergence of youth movements of all sorts across Europe, the Soviet Komsomol was the first state-sponsored youth organization, in the first communist country. Born out of an autonomous youth movement that emerged in 1917, the Komsomol eventually became the last link in a chain of Soviet socializing agencies which organized the young. Based on extensive archival research and building upon recent research on Soviet youth, this book broadens our understanding of the social and political dimension of Komsomol membership during the momentous period 1917–1932. It sheds light on the complicated interchange between ideology, policy and reality in the league's evolution, highlighting the important role ordinary members played. The transformation of the country shaped Komsomol members and their league's social identity, institutional structure and social psychology, and vice versa, the organization itself became a crucial force in the dramatic changes of that time. The book investigates the complex dialogue between the Communist Youth League and the regime, unravelling the intricate process that transformed the Komsomol into a mere institution for political socialization serving the regime's quest for social engineering and control.

When the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) took power after the Second World War, it had a vision for a new and better society in which all humans would live together in peace and prosperity and in which their mutual exploitation would be eliminated. That vision required changes not only in the country's political and economic structure, but in its citizen's values, morals, goals, aesthetics, and social behavior. Based on extensive archival research, Lilly's study describes the CPY's struggle to realize that social and cultural transformation by means of oral, written, and visual persuasion in the first nine years after the war.Lilly's descriptions of party policies in such media as newspapers, journals, educational curricula, group activities like parades, workplace competitions, and volunteer labor brigades, and the production of both high and popular culture depict the evolving form and content of the party's persuasive rhetoric. Her archival work, moreover, reveals both societal reaction to such rhetoric and the extent to which party leaders adapted their persuasive policies in response to feedback from below. In this respect, Lilly places her work at the intersection of cultural history, cultural studies and politics by discussing how individuals and different groups perceive, digest, and remake culture from above in their own image.Ultimately, then, this study not only modifies current understandings of Yugoslavia's postwar history but informs us about the nature of state-society relations in dictatorial regimes and the complexities of cultural change. Moving beyond an interpretation of Yugoslavia's political and cultural history in the 1940s, it addresses broader questions like: How do dictatorial regimes maintain power and support? How do subject populations express their views and exert influence even under oppressive conditions? When and how does persuasive rhetoric work and what are its limits?

'Stalin's last generation' was the last generation to come of age under Stalin, yet it was also the first generation to be socialized in the post-war period. Its young members grew up in a world that still carried many of the hallmarks of the Soviet Union's revolutionary period, yet their surroundings already showed the first signs of decay, stagnation, and disintegration. Stalin's last generation still knew how to speak 'Bolshevik', still believed in the power of Soviet heroes and still wished to construct socialism, yet they also liked to dance and dress in Western styles, they knew how to evade boring lectures and lessons in Marxism-Leninism, and they were keen to forge identities that were more individual than those offered by the state. In this book, Juliane Fürst creates a detailed picture of late Stalinist youth and youth culture, looking at young people from a variety of perspectives: as children of the war, as recipients and creators of propaganda, as perpetrators of crime, as representatives of fledgling subcultures, as believers, as critics, and as drop-outs. In the process, she illuminates not only the complex relationship between the Soviet state and its youth, but also provides a new interpretative framework for understanding late Stalinism - the impact of which on Soviet society's subsequent development has hitherto been underestimated, including its role in the ultimate demise of the USSR.