Komsomol

The All-Union Leninist Young Communist League — Vsesoiuznyi leninskii kommunisticheskii soiuz molodëzhi — commonly known as Komsomol, was a communist youth organization in the Soviet Union. It is sometimes described as the youth section of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), although it was formally independent and referred to as "the helper and the reserve of the CPSU".

The Komsomol in its earliest form was established in urban areas in 1918. During the early years, it was a Russian organization, known as the Russian Young Communist League, or RKSM. During 1922, with the unification of the USSR, it was reformed into an all-union agency, the youth division of the All-Union Communist Party.

It was the final stage of three youth organizations with members up to age 28, graduated at 14 from the Young Pioneers, and at nine from the Little Octobrists.

History

Background

Prior to the February Revolution of 1917, none of the three primary Marxist political parties of the Russian empire — the Social Democratic Labor Party Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, or Party of Socialist Revolutionaries — had the possibility of establishing or maintaining a formal youth section owing to their illegality and the pervasiveness of state repression. The war did provide the impetus for underground circles of young workers to emerge in Russia's biggest cities as early as 1915 and 1916, however. These organizations, typically organized at the factory level, gathered to read and discuss political literature and did not typically have a "specific youth consciousness," but rather functioned as typical radical study circles, albeit composed of youthful members. There was no common organizational structure to unite these independently functioning groups.

Historian Matthias Neumann indicates that the initial rise of a radical youth movement in the city was "clearly linked to the protests of women workers who brought their grievances onto the streets on 23 February, International Women's Day.