Young Pioneers: Russian Children Sign Up On Red Square

Russian children march under a flag featuring the communist hammer and sickle on Moscow’s Red Square on May 22.

Some 5,000 schoolchildren became “All-Russian Pioneers” during a ceremony organized by the country's Communist Party on May 22, replete with symbology from Russia’s socialist past.

A 1977 ceremony of the Vladimir Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organization takes place in Ulyanovsk.

The Young Pioneers was a youth organization in the Soviet Union whose members were obligated to “build communism, labor for the welfare of the motherland, and prepare to be its defender.” The organization was seen as an on-ramp to eventual membership in the Communist Party.
 

Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov (left) ties a red neckerchief to a boy being inducted into the All-Russian Young Pioneers on May 22. 

It is unclear what purpose the new youth organization will serve, but a Communist Party leader told Russian media that "maximum attention" would be paid to the initiative. 




 

Girls in red neckerchiefs dance on Red Square.

The Moscow ceremony was staged to mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Young Pioneers organization.

Children march with blank red flags in front of the Kremlin's Spassky Tower. 

The Communist Party initiative comes as children in schools across Russia have been coerced into showing "support" for the invasion of Ukraine, often without the knowledge of parents.

Children from Podolsk, a town just south of Moscow, during the induction ceremony. The placard says: “Always ready!”

According to senior Communist Party member Yuri Afonin, the Young Pioneers will be a separate entity from another youth organization called Big Change that is being planned by the Kremlin.

Schoolchildren give the Pioneer salute on Red Square on May 22. 

Afonin says of the Kremlin's Big Change initiative, which plans to enlist millions of children into the Pioneer-like youth group: "There is no need to unite. It is important that different organizations develop."

A boy holding a communist-style flag on Red Square. 

Critics of the Kremlin say the current move to revive state-organized youth movements is aimed, in the long term, at raising "a new generation of soldiers."

An unnamed war veteran greets children on Red Square under a flag of Lenin. 

Russian commentator Fyodor Krasheninnikov told RFE/RL's Russian Service that the purpose of Soviet-era youth movements was to make sure "young people had as little free time as possible that was not controlled by the state."

The May 22 ceremony on Red Square

The emerging Russian youth groups appear to have caught the eye of another Soviet-era authoritarian. On May 20, Belarusian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka told the media that his country's state-backed youth movements "should be ubiquitous and cover all youth groups, including young people living in the countryside, students, young workers, and so on, like it was in the times of the Komsomol (Soviet-era youth group).”