A time for the young, or How the Komsomol came into existence in Moscow

In the spring of 1917, unions of the young workers began to be established in many Russian cities. In Moscow, one such organisation was the Youth Union at the Moscow committee of the Bolshevik social-democratic workers’ party, RSDRP(b). Smaller local groups were set up in Zamoskvoretsky, Presnensky, Butyrsky and other districts of Moscow, where most of the activists were under the age of 18.

The development of the Bolshevik youth movement in Moscow led to the foundation of a city-wide organisation. On 8 (21) October 1917, the Moscow III International Union of Working Youth was established. By 1 (14) January 1918, it had as many as 3,600 members.

The Bolshevik youth organisation was given an all-Russian status at the 1st All-Russian Congress of Workers’ and Peasants’ Youth on 29 October 1918, and this date is considered the birthday of the Komsomol. The new association was named the Russian Communist Youth Union (RKSM). According to the adopted document, it was an independent organisation with a mission of spreading the ideas of communism and involving the worker and peasant youth in activities to develop the Soviet Russia. The RKSM charter stipulated the upper age limit for membership was 23. Older people could stay as non-voting members.

The conference was the governing body of the Moscow city unit of the RKSM. Its members, delegates from the local Komsomol units, listened to a report made by the secretary of the city committee of the Komsomol on the committee’s performance and elected the committee for the next period. Those conferences were not a standing body and were held at various intervals. For example, from November 1918 to May 1920, they were convened seven times. The number of Communist Party members among the Komsomol was also growing and by November 1918 had reached 2,500.

The activities of the Moscow Komsomol unit were supervised by the Moscow Committee, which was elected at city conferences. The bodies of the committee changed over time. At the end of 1918, it included three commissions – political, cultural and educational, and economic and legal. In May 1919, a school department was also added to it. By the beginning of 1920, the committee included a propaganda and a political education department, as well as a press department. Each member was assigned to a district where they spoke to young people, delivered reports, discussed newspaper articles and recited poems by proletarian poets.

The Komsomol members made a huge contribution to the construction of industrial facilities included in the first five-year plans and the reconstruction of Moscow in the 1930s. Young people played an important role in national defence fighting at the front and working in the rear during wartime; they also helped to restore the national economy after the Great Patriotic War, participated in the development of virgin and fallow lands, as well as in the development of oil and gas fields in Western Siberia. Komsomol teams also helped build the Baikal-Amur Mainline.