Schoolchildren revive old Soviet traditions
Published: 17 May, 2009, 18:02
Almost 3000 schoolchildren from across Russia have gathered at Moscow’s Red Square to enroll in the “pioneer movement”, which was the Soviet Union's answer to the cub scouts.
The Communist Party of Russia is on the right track. It needs to insaill among the youth of Russia the value system and the ideology that wrote the most glorious history of the twentieth century. It is about time the youth learned what their forefathers, Lenin, Stalin, Zhukov, Gagarin achieved by the Soviet Union.
The Pioneer movement instilled many values that societies, not just Russia are severely lacking today. It is a good thing to revive the Pioneers, and I wish Russia the best in doing so. Soviet society, in general taught people decent morals.
Does even a one of those children have the slightest idea of the suffering, the pain, the injustice, the death and torture and slavery and the numbing tragedy of the Soviet entity whose victims together number tens of millions? Do any of them grasp the fear and terror and impoverishment experienced for generations by everyone else where the Red Flag flew? No doubt a Scouts type activity would be great for Russian youth. It would be great for German youth, too. But it would never be contemplated there under the banner of Hitler Youth – for precisely the very same reasons why it should never be contemplated in Russia under the banner of Pioneers. Russia insists on conditioning its population to forget the horrors of its Soviet experience. It glosses over, indeed justifies, Stalin’s crimes in school text books, and point blank refuses to bring even one person who committed crimes against humanity to answer for their crimes in a Russian court of law. Each May 9 it makes a mega production of heroizing Stalin’s Red Army, which oppressed half of Europe for half a century. And now it conditions the youngest Russians into an idealized, boy-scout view of things Soviet. I greatly fear that in time Russia will eventually again end up with just the kind of regime that it so assiduously courts. Surely Russians and their long-suffering neighbours 09deserve better.
Defintely a great idea to bring back a voluntary movement for children. Teaching them respect and core values, and also letting us admire them as they develop and surprise us, with their own developmental accomplishments. I think a common purpose, and a feeling of belonging to our great country, is a definite benefit, both for the children involved, but also for us a nation. We should however, go even further, and develop this love of our country, into an undertanding for the wider world, though language development and the touching and respect for other cultures. A respect yourself and a respect others approach. With exchanges and visits and even foreign board members from different countries, to provide transparency and maybe new input. This will foster a good nationalism and allow the children to see the whole picture. Children with a love for their country,culture and their own citizens, who also understand a respect cultural and national diversity, would be a huge achievement for such a movement. However, the children must want to be part of it themselves, we must treat them and their parents as customers, and build step by step in a thoroughly moraly orientated way.
I opine, that the Pioneer Organization abolished back in 91/92 was a big mistake, and was not replaced by a large type of Russian Scout'ism, ( a foreign imported idea) , or the National Vitiaz Organization (as in France), under a National Patriotic sponsorship, such as the Churches, Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, etc... It seems that the Russian "actual" Communist Party, has understood the situation of the Russian teens, and their needs, after school hours and vacation months, and is trying to do something about it!!! Privet vam vsem!
If the soviet union lost the great patriotic war, the only perceptable difference between living under hitler versus stalin would have been that german would become compulsorary as a second language. As a wise squirrel once noted, one nut is the same as another, and I believe that between the two of them there were only three, nuts that is.
I had experience of being one of them and was very proud to wear a red tie, becaurse it was a honor to be a pioneer. And you could be the one if you are a good student with an excellent behavier. You could be the one if you help your family, your friend or just people who is in need. You could be the one if you treat older people with respect giving them seats in the public buses or just helping veterans to do their groceries and clean their houses. You could be also the one by voluteering cleaning the school yard or plant trees in the town park....Is it "communist ideology" ...??