Rebellious Youth Behind the Curtain
MEYER, PETER
Despite Communist indoctrination, the young generation in the Soviet bloc is highly individualistic and finds numerous methods of expressing its independence Rebellious Youth Behind the Curtain By...
...small hills along the Vltava and Sazava Rivers became the Rockies and Sierras...
...Accustomed to looking for substitutes for almost everything, the subjects of a "people's democracy" are inventive...
...Their mere existence is a constant torment to Communist leaders...
...Therefore, Coca-Cola, Chiclets and be-bop, all the official symbols of "American decadence," are celebrated as the most wonderful things in life...
...Surely there must be fire to produce so much smoke...
...But on weekends or at vacation time they hiked to the woods, camped in tents or shacks, sang, drank and made merry...
...A large number of buttons is de rigueur —some experts say the minimum is 28...
...And, again, the trouble is that they do not believe Communist propaganda and do not want to submit to the drudgery and endless boredom of totalitarian life...
...In those days, every one of the numerous political parties had its organized youth movement...
...These individuals were seen not only in Leningrad and Moscow but also in Tiflis in Soviet Georgia and Erivan in Soviet Armenia...
...the songs were mostly about America...
...They learned to hate organization...
...youth groups, and often even burial societies of its own, with one Weltanschauung, one political ideology Nationalist, Catholic, National Socialist, Social Democratic or Communist, as the case might be...
...The words "sheriff," "tramp" and "squaw," the last one describing the tramp's female companion, were used in the original...
...People were born, educated, entertained, married and finally buried in a particular "movement...
...Their costume and vocabulary are a little different, but the idea is the same...
...There were also powerful gymnastic organizations and Boy Scout associations, most of them also split along political lines...
...Nejedly, the Czech Minister of Education, rightly observed, "not so easily deceived...
...There is ample evidence that large sections of the adult population despise the regime and oppose it by a thousand devious forms of passive resistance...
...Children are far more sensible, more critical, and are not so easily deceived as adults...
...The Communist press stressed that it was only a step from wearing a "beltie" costume to organizing burglary and murder...
...Those few who were caught were brutally beaten, but later they were released into the custody of young Communists who were supposed to "reeducate" these "petty-bourgeois elements...
...Interestingly enough, this movement was intimately connected with American lore...
...Wild" tramps prevailed against the "class-conscious" ones...
...Party instructors who tried to expel tramps for right or left deviations were themselves kicked out of the camps...
...They were against everything organized—the state power, official religion, the political parties, the Weltanschauung-hound youth movements, the Boy Scouts...
...Exotic costumes and haircuts, the use of slang, jitterbugging, the singing of old tramp songs—all these are manifestations of opposition to Communist-imposed uniformity...
...This raises an interesting question...
...But, curiously enough, the Communists complain about youth all the time: Youth is "undisciplined...
...The "belties"—a word whose Czech equivalent is derived from the word belt—are what we would call zoot-suiters...
...When I go to America, to the land of fame, I will try to get myself a pretty dame...
...Like the "tramps" in the Thirties, the "belties" today find in America the inspiration for their love of freedom, and in American products the most provocative symbols of happiness...
...They existed in the period between the two World Wars, under the democratic Czechoslovak Republic...
...I will buy a Cadillac and marry me a Miss, And then live in happiness and bliss...
...The "tramps" were by no means tramps in the American sense...
...Despite Communist indoctrination, the young generation in the Soviet bloc is highly individualistic and finds numerous methods of expressing its independence Rebellious Youth Behind the Curtain By Peter Meyer "When I come to a meeting of intellectuals, I can tell them whatever I want...
...We will re-open the bars, and be-bop we won't miss, We will live in happiness and bliss...
...Then we see that the "material" of Communist education is not as malleable as expected, and that youth puts up a surprisingly good fight...
...The industrious Stakhanovites somehow did not have as much appeal as the adventurous cowboys, and even the Communist cells among the tramps did not relish the theory and practice of "democratic centralism...
...The "belties" look back on several generations of spiritual ancestors...
...As the nationalized industry does not supply this product of Western decadence, the few Chiclets obtained from Western food packages are chewed over and over, and very complicated conservation techniques are developed to make them last longer...
...At the recent Communist Youth Congress in Moscow, A. N. Shelepin, National Secretary of the Komsomol, complained of Stilyags (zoot-suiters) who "wear Tarzan haircuts and dress like parrots...
...Today's "belties" are the younger brothers of the participants in this wartime movement...
...Freedom was individual, and friendship personal and selective...
...What about the new generation, the children who have never known anything but Communist education, who have grown up under totalitarian rule...
...But try it with the children...
...The diminutive suburban railroad which took them to the woods south of Prague was baptized the Pacific...
...Open propaganda for the ideal of absolute freedom became impossible...
...Speculation on how this generation must think and feel usually ends on a rather pessimistic note...
...Under the Nazi occupation, tramps' settlements often became refuges for persecuted patriots, but soon the Gestapo got wind of it and raided the woods...
...The praise of everything American is, of course, most of all a protest against Communist propaganda...
...The parade stopped and the participants listened, some of them not without signs of the happiness and bliss mentioned in the verses...
...They are adolescent boys and girls who dress in a certain way, talk a special slang, behave in a particular provocative manner, and stubbornly refuse to conform to the views and mores extolled by the Communist party and youth organization...
...They wanted to live their own lives, according to their own rules...
...It runs something like this: "In America, men are happy and life is gay...
...Nevertheless, there is a connection with America...
...it is "unreliable" and "irresponsible...
...The Communists, who always try to infiltrate everything from narcotic gangs to Sunday schools, attempted to substitute Pamirs and Turksibs for the Sierras and Pacifies, but without much luck...
...The officially attributed source of this corruption of youth is, of course, Wall Street...
...The idea was to manifest freedom in all the freakish ways not yet completely blocked by the dictatorship...
...But sometimes a small window opens in the Iron Curtain, and we catch a glimpse of the Devil's workshop where children's wills and minds are supposed to be molded...
...every brook flowing through a ravine harbored settlements called Colorado or Yellowstone Canyon, while Klondikes were too numerous to count...
...The article in Ceskoslovensky Prehled quotes a "beltie" song which was composed collectively and acquired great popularity...
...However, the most frequent "crimes" mentioned in propaganda trials of several such gangs in 1953 were acts of vandalism, collective spitting on unsympathetic passersby from a high wall in a park, and participation in street brawls...
...Their settlements were "free communities," and their only executives were elected or self-appointed "sheriffs" who were respected only by those who wanted to recognize their authority...
...The sentences were harsh: 3 to 7 years in prison for boys and girls between 16 and 20 years of age...
...It seems that children are, as Mr...
...They were accused, among other horrors, of loafing in the streets and chasing girls...
...They certainly are not the most advanced or dangerous group of youth opposing the Communist regime, but they are the most conspicuous and provocative...
...Hence the Communist leaders' frantic efforts to exorcise this horrifying specter...
...The wartime zoot-suiters in Czechoslovakia had really been mostly of lower-middle-class origin...
...Each "movement" included a political party, labor unions, consumers' cooperatives, gymnastic organizations, Peter Meyer, co-author of The Jews in the Soviet Satellites, writes frequently on Eastern European politics...
...Little reliable first-hand information is available...
...But the participants in these movements are people who have seen or at least glimpsed freedom, who have lived and been educated under non-totalitarian regimes...
...individual friendship and the voluntary solidarity of the gang was set against the impersonal totalitarian organization...
...Again, most of them are the children of workers...
...When the boys from America come to our lands, They will come in gorgeous cars, with baskets in their hands...
...They smoke Camels and drink Coca-Cola every day...
...An interesting illustration is found in a recent article in Cesko-slovensky Prehled, a publication of the National Committee for a Free Europe, dealing with the exploits of the so-called "belties...
...On May Day, 1953, when the Communist parade in Prague reached the corner of Wenceslas Square and Prikopy (a spot corresponding to the corner of Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street in New York), a group of several dozen "belties" began to sing this song...
...They ridiculed the "bourgeois philistines," but they did not like the "organizers of the proletariat" either...
...While the old-time tramp fought for his existence, a new type of individual resister was born...
...In sombreros and ten-gallon hats, checked shirts, broad belts and moccasins, they tried to look like the cowboys in dime novels...
...This weekend community recognized, above all, two basic values: freedom and friendship...
...The imaginary world in which the "tramps" spent their weekend life of freedom was America...
...But, according to all available information, today's "belties" are mostly manual workers, many of them from old working-class families...
...Petty-bourgeois...
...The purpose was still to "provoke the philistines," in this case the Nazi and collaborationist bureaucrats...
...During the week, they worked in factories, department stores, shops and offices like everybody else...
...official periodicals are filled with sermons and complaints about "beltie-ism...
...This was in democratic Czechoslovakia, and fighting against totalitarian ideologies was easy...
...Official propaganda tries to depict the "beltie" gangs as juvenile delinquents...
...An original and provocative costume was still his hallmark, but the exotic cowboy outfit was replaced by the eccentric "zoot suit...
...Nor does this specter haunt only Czechoslovakia...
...In a few minutes, Communist activists and policemen came running to the place of the disturbance, but most of the "belties" had disappeared into the crowd as quickly as they had appeared...
...it has "no respect" for State and Party...
...The "belties" want to get as far away as possible from the overalls of the "proletarian," from the open shirt and enthusiastic look of the Kom-somolets...
...The factory slowdowns, the sabotage of agricultural deliveries, the disintegration of kolkhozes, last year's strikes, and the June 17 uprising in East Germany leave little doubt about that...
...Zdenek Nejedly, Czech Minister of Education (in Literarni Noviny, Prague ) One grave question troubles everyone who follows the signs of resistance to totalitarian rule in the countries behind the Iron Curtain...
...Long, conical-shaped jackets, tight, pipe-like trousers, and very thick soles are now basic ingredients of the uniform to end all uniforms...
...many "belties" are seen chewing small droplets of paraffin, gathered from candles used during the frequent electricity breakdowns...
...And chewing gum is essential...
...without it, the "beltie" does not feel complete...
...His habitat was not in the woods and valleys but in the city streets...
...But many young people did not like it...
...The individualistic, semi-anarchistic revolt of youth against accepted mores and imposed morality, against over-regulation and over-organization of life, did not begin under the Communist regime...
...The first of these were the "tramps...
Vol. 37 • July 1954 • No. 29
