young Russians & 1917 Revolution

Andy Willimott wrote an excellent journal article on a generation of young Russians who embraced new ideals of socialist living. I have added my own family’s experience in this amazing era.

Communist Youth League/Komsomol, 

The youth were healthy, ideological and proud

1924 poster

The October Revolution, which started when the Bolsheviks seized the Winter Palace on 25th Oct 1917, promised a new future. It became a radical break with the past of Tsarist aut­ocracy, exploitation and misery. Bolsheviks were later willing to use viol­ence in pursuit of their goals but import­antly, the Bol­sh­eviks galvanised hopes that had gained momentum during 1917. Socialist visions offered an attractive altern­at­ive to the horrid rest­r­ictions of tsarist autocracy, monarchy, nob­il­ity, Church, private ownership and worker exploitation.

The new social and political order of Oct 1917 offered an escape from the inherited world for the oppressed. This is why the Soviet Union continued to be held up as an alternative historic path throughout the C20th, even after its earliest ideals were later corrupt­ed. It offered an alternative to the injustices of the old imperial order, to the cruelties of modern capitalism.

As the Bolsheviks came to power, factory workers rejected the clearest symbol of exploitation: bosses. Awful managers were carted out of the factory doors and dumped. Some workers went on to form factory committees, replacing sym­bols of old authority and implem­enting workers control. At home and work, citizens of the newly formed Soviet republic drank tea and discussed social­ist enfran­chisement.

One section of society was most susceptible to the promise of a new future: youths belonged to the future and had the tend­ency to reject their parents’ old ways. Soviet youth literature prom­ot­ed the idea that life could be rationally redesigned to foster social­ism, reshaping culture and society, with Soviet youths in the vanguard.

My grandfather was a perfect example. Born in 1898 as the third last of a very large group of Russian siblings, he was 19 during the Russian Revolution. He and his siblings were mesmerised by the rise of socialism and the free­dom it offered their impoverished, working class, Jewish family who remembered the pogroms so clearly. He ded­icated the rest of his life to volunteerism, equality of all citizens, provis­ion of community services to ordinary families, and educational facilities for the Jewish community. In Australia he was a core member of the Labour Party.

The communes, in university dormitories or elsewhere, were res­id­ential spaces in which young radicals sought to establish living social­ism. All moneys were placed communally and shared; all possess­ions be­came common property; and each inhabit­ant vow­ed to live in a comradely fashion. By the mid-1920s, many thousands of young activists were ins­p­ired to replicate communal living, mainly in the cities of central Eur­opean Russia. By the later 1920s Komsomol/Communist Youth League saw more and more youths becoming engaged in commune life, providing a space for act­ivist initiative.

The young socialists allocated rooms for collective events, and for leisure activities. Sexism in the alloc­at­ion of tasks had to end. Hence each commune also allocated the cleaning and cooking fairly between the sexes. Replacing private kitchens with mun­icipal canteens in every city and workplace provided better nutrit­ion, released women into the workforce and fostered a fairer social order.

The communes also discussed and experimented with sexual equality and open relat­ion­ships. The issue of children was raised at the weekly discuss­ions, de­ciding that it was best to use contraception for the time being. It was agreed that if children were conceived, they should be considered the offspring of the group. The biol­og­ical parents would have to forego privileged parental over­sight. But after a few months, the commune de­cided that relations between inhabitants should not be entered into lightly, lest personal divisions and animosity set in.

Striking women workers kick-started the Feb 1917 revolution. 

Then, after the Oct revolution, gained full legal equality.

1920 poster 

This was all part of a struggle for new morals which, across the 1920s, was being referred to as a Cultural Revolut­ion in the press. Leon Trotsky also drew attention to the con­cept of cultural revolution with his publication Questions of Everyday Life 1923; new standards of behaviour and social norms were crucial to the long-term health of the new revolut­ionary state.

The October Revol­ution stimulated a range of social and cultural act­iv­ism in the opening decade of the new Soviet state. The Prolet­ar­ian Cultural-Education Association was a movement of local groups and work­ers clubs that promoted artists & poets, as well as a new working-class aesth­etic in art more generally. The movement peaked in 1920. 

The revolution's emotional energy remained an important cornerstone of the Soviet state, bringing grand utopian visions to life. The best ex­­am­ple outside Russia was Israel's kibbutz movement. Those kibbutz­im founded in the 1920s tended to be larger and more Russian-oriented than those kibbutzim founded prior to WW1, so the issues the members debated were exactly those raised in Willimott’s journal article: shared incomes, shared clothing, who does the cooking, who does the child care, volunteerism, army service etc. When I did my Gap Year in Israel in the mid 1960s, the kibbutz meetings each month were still discussing the same ideological debates that arose in the Russian communes after the 1917 Revolution.