Komsomol Colonialism

...in many respects, each has tended to become simply another propaganda tool of its regime, controlled by the national Communist party...

...When the outbreak of the War split European Socialism into Leftist anti-war and Rightist nationalist factions, many of the youth organizations remained loyal to the former...

...The postwar period saw their further expansion, as well as successful moves by the Communists to take over newly created groups...

...The roots of the Communist youth movement, however, go deeper than the Russian Revolution...

...traces the historical development of one of these, the Communist youth movement, since the latter part of the 19th century...

...From the beginning, the International was tightly controlled by the Comintern, and the Soviet's own youth organization, the Kornsomol, carried much weight in it...

...Indeed, the various Communist-sponsored youth festivals, forums and other meetings have been aimed at this vital segment of world youth...

...But that history is no less revealing than it is remarkable...

...In the Soviet Union, young people have been attacked for "bourgeois" tendencies, and outside the Soviet bloc, Communist student organizations have been involved in other varieties of deviations...

...In the years before World War I, Leftist youth groups were among the most militant elements of the various Socialist and Communist parties on the Continent, frequently providing the spearhead for labor campaigns and other radical activity...

...nonetheless, these non-historical factors are basic to any full understanding of the subject...

...In the early '20s, at about the same time that the Soviets established the Comintern, a Communist Youth International was established which succeeded in winning the affiliation of most of the existing Left-wing youth organizations in Europe...

...Professor Richard Cornell, perhaps for the first time...

...Professor Cornell notes that the youth organizations of the USSR and its satellites have been less successful within their own countries than they have been in the international arena...

...and the Soviet Union, prior to the break-up of the monolithic Communist world, could exercise considerable control over it...

...For a time, non-Communist youth organizations attempted to work within these international units...

...Cornell has also paid only scant attention to the reasons for the success of the Communist effort, and to underlying factors which have attracted young people to radical causes in the 20th century...

...Cornell is guilty of one serious omission from an otherwise comprehensive book: He neglects almost entirely the role of the Communist youth movement in the developing areas...

...Moscow's "hard" line also hampered recruitment for the Communist youth movement, particularly in the developing areas, through the early '50s...

...The War and the Revolution in Russia, though, resulted in profound changes...

...Only in the unindustrialized new states of Asia, Africa and Latin America do student movements still have the power to overthrow a government or cause severe political dislocation in the society...

...But the increasing militancy of Stalin's post-1945 foreign policy drove them out and parallel international youth organizations came into being, reflecting the divisions of the cold war...

...World War II found the European Communist youth groups taking an active part in the struggle against the Nazis, and later, in the European resistance...

...In fact, by demonstrating that the Soviets have practiced "neocolonialism" on their international youth organization and used it to help achieve their political ends, Youth and Communism offers an invaluable lesson to the generation of the '60s...

...Recognizing this, the non-Communist Left and the pro-Moscow and pro-Peking factions of the Communist youth movement are today struggling for the allegiance of young people in the new states...

...Moreover, the dependence of the Communist youth movement on the dictates of a parent Communist apparatus, emphasized by Cornell, constitutes its own warning to youth movements which hope to maintain independence from all sides in the cold war...

...While the Hungarian rebellion and the Sino-Soviet split have been embarrassing and divisive to the Communist youth movement, its emphasis on anti-colonialism and world peace has continued to prove fairly successful...

...In France, Communist student groups have openly attacked the Communist party for its retention of some Stalinist elements...

...Thus, in India the "official" Communist party has all but destroyed its youth affiliate for pro-Peking leanings...

...The youth movements in most Communist countries have ceased, despite impressive membership statistics, to be organs of militant social change...

...More recently, students have toppled governments in Turkey and Korea and have caused political crises in Japan, Vietnam, and any number of other countries...

...But Youth and Communism provides at least a starting point for a thorough consideration of the role and function of youth movements...

...less concerned with the psychological factors behind this movement than with the history of its growth, both internationally and in the USSR...

...Most, although not all, youth movements are drawn to Leftist ideologies...

...The International Union of Students, for example, was a blatantly Communist organization during Stalin's later years, yet it has managed to attract various non-aligned student groups recently even though it remains under the firm control of the Komsomol...

...His book is less analysis than survey...

...The heady desire to create a new society, coupled with inevitable generational conflicts, seem to make the attraction of revolutionary movements especially powerful for young people...

...At the opposite end of the spectrum, Communist student groups in many of the developing areas have been key strongholds of pro-Chinese sentiment...

...Reviewed by PHILIP G. ALTBACH Former president, Student Peace Union The protest politics of the young are very much in the air-which makes the origins and traditions of those politics something more than relevant...

...The arrival of Nikita Khrushchev and Moscow's subsequent adoption of a "coexistence" policy somewhat revitalized the movement...

...Both the International Union of Students and the World Federation of Democratic Youth, initially set up as "non-ideological" organizations, fell under Communist control...

...It was, after all, the youth journal Po Prostu which sparked the Polish uprising in 1956...

...Perhaps he could not include a full-fledged sociological and psychological analysis in what is essentially a history...

...Yet while student participation in political affairs and influence on government policy (particularly in the developing nations) are facts widely noted, there has been very little scholarly study until now of the various youth movements which have developed during the present century...

...There have been signilicant exceptions, however, and in several Eastern European nations the youth movement has retained some of its old spirit of independence...

...In less than 50 years, a move was established encompassing millions of young people in almost all nations...

...Well before 1914, too, the European Socialist and Communist youth organizations had gathered for their own international conferences, and taken the first steps toward a youth international...

...More recently, Communist youth groups have­ occasionally been a source of severe tactical problems for the leadership of the Communist parties...

...Thus manipulated, the movement actively reflected the various twists and turns of international Communism during the '30s...

...Various events along the way are familiar: Students helped to create the ferment that led to the Russian Revolution of 1917...

...The launching of the "united front" policy against Fascism in the mid-'30s spurred the growth of the Communist movement in most countries, and produced a rather spectacular rise in its influence in the United States...