The Komsomol Diagnosis

Report of the Central Committee of the VLKSM on the Tasks of the Komsomol for the Further Strengthening of the Communist Upbringing of Youth in the Light of the Directives of the Twenty-Seventh Congress of the CPSU. Delivered by the First Secretary of the CC VLKSM, Comrade V. I. Mironenko. April 15, 1987

Viktor Mironenko, first secretary of the Komsomol from 1986, used his report to the Twentieth Congress in April 1987 to deliver an unusually frank accounting of institutional failure: bureaucratic centralism had replaced democratic practice, the organization had twice doubled its membership since the 1940s while losing its grip on youth, and passivity, consumerism, and skepticism had spread among young people.

Original Source: XX съезд Всесоюзного Ленинского Коммунистического Союза Молодежи, 15–18 апреля 1987 г.: Стенографический отчёт. Т. 1. М.: Молодая гвардия, 1987. С. 38–43.

Many Komsomol organizations strengthened their authority during this period, and a good number of useful achievements stand to their credit.

Unfortunately, this did not halt the growth of negative tendencies. The pre-congress discussion laid bare serious problems in the upbringing of youth and in the work of the Komsomol. Deep contradictions emerged — between the democratic character of the organization and bureaucratic methods of leadership, between youth's striving for the new and forms of work frozen in place for decades.

Formalism has taken root in many Komsomol organizations.

The paramount task of strengthening the Komsomol's influence over broad masses of youth was frequently reduced to numerical growth of the organization at any price. From the late 1940s to the mid-1980s, the Komsomol twice doubled its membership rolls.

Every effort was made to preserve the pace of growth at any cost. Admission quotas appeared, with their inevitable consequence — a lowering of standards for new members. Komsomol committees proved unable to provide the necessary work with new recruits. Internal discipline weakened.

Every year more than a million Komsomol members left their organizations without being formally removed from the rolls. Tracking them down consumed time in ineffective clerical work, in endless correspondence between Komsomol committees.

The task set by the Nineteenth Congress of the VLKSM — to break the tendency to conceal shortcomings in the work behind membership growth figures — was not fully accomplished during the reporting period.

Many of the Komsomol's problems were directly generated by the working style of the leading Komsomol organs — above all, the CC VLKSM itself.

The Komsomol grew and developed. Its tasks grew more complex, its internal and external links more numerous. Over a quarter century, the number of primary Komsomol organizations increased by 140,000; organizations with the rights of primary ones tripled; the number of Komsomol groups grew significantly.

Leading such a youth organization became an ever more difficult matter. The impossibility of grasping from the center all the variety of Komsomol life became obvious, yet the stake was placed as before on further centralization of leadership.

Instead of developing initiative and self-activity, uniformity was affirmed in the life of the Komsomol. Organizations came to resemble one another like twins: identical plans, identical events, identical agendas for meetings — even identical shortcomings.

What was intended, in the minds of its office inventors, to bring Komsomol committees closer to the grassroots and to living people was, in practice, removing them ever further from both.

Rushing headlong, the desire to succeed at everything at once, the mania for initiatives and the craving for a quick triumphant report, the inability to see a task through to completion, the demand for new rights while failing to use those already granted — these combined in bizarre fashion with red tape, paper-shuffling, and the fussiness of endless meetings.

In many places, rank-and-file Komsomol members and primary Komsomol organizations found themselves effectively shut out from the formulation of decisions, the distribution and use of Komsomol funds.

Not infrequently, the apparatus of Komsomol committees substituted itself for the elected organs, while their members regarded their obligations as honorary rather than real. Conferences and meetings, plenums and sessions of committee bureaus gradually turned into well-rehearsed performances.

The mechanisms of democratic norms in internal organizational life — criticism and self-criticism, openness, accountability from below, collective and collegial leadership — were weakened or shut off entirely.

Democratic centralism was increasingly acquiring the character of "bureaucratic centralism."

The statutory right to elect and be elected was in practice limited by formal requirements as to the composition of cadres and activists. Not infrequently in such conditions, "leaders" were literally imposed on Komsomol members — chosen by questionnaire.

As a result, some Komsomol workers and activists felt themselves not elected but appointed; they displayed arrogance and ignored the opinions of rank-and-file Komsomol members. By their lack of principle they discredited themselves and cast a shadow over genuine Komsomol workers, who are, beyond doubt, the majority. Let us say plainly: nothing has done greater damage to the Komsomol's authority than the degeneration of part of its cadres.

In the past five years, more than 3,000 Komsomol workers were removed from their posts for these reasons. Regrettably, some members of the CC committed transgressions for which they were expelled from its membership. For shortcomings in their work or as having compromised themselves, a secretary of the CC, a number of workers of the Bureau of International Youth Tourism "Sputnik" and the Department of Affairs of the CC VLKSM, the first secretaries of the Maryisk oblast committee of the LKSM of Turkmenistan, the Bukhara oblast committee of the LKSM of Uzbekistan, and certain others were relieved of their posts. For drunkenness, the first secretary of the Ural oblast committee was stripped of his delegate's credentials at the Sixteenth Congress of the LKSM of Kazakhstan and was denied the trust to represent the Komsomol of the republic at the Twentieth Congress of the VLKSM.

Above all, bureaucratism and formalism struck hardest at the city and district level. The city and district committees

of the Komsomol weakened their attention to the primary organizations. In such a situation many primary organizations were unable to hold to principled positions in the upbringing of youth and began to lose influence in the youth environment. It was precisely here that the living connection between Komsomol committees and Komsomol members and youth was severed.

All of this led to a situation in which haste and bustle reigned at the top, while passivity and apathy took root below. The trust of rank-and-file Komsomol members in the leading Komsomol organs fell. The flywheel of decisions, plans, and events turned ever more frequently in idle.

For the many miscalculations under discussion today, responsibility is borne by the Central Committee of the VLKSM, its Bureau, the secretaries of the CC, the members of the central elected organs, the apparatus of the CC VLKSM. The Central Committee did not always assess the situation correctly; it showed indecisiveness and inconsistency in its actions.

Many members of the CC did not take a firm and principled position, frequently failing to respond to evident miscalculations or to press for their correction. The standing commissions of the CC worked without initiative and formally; they almost never introduced constructive proposals or recommendations for improving the work of Komsomol organizations.

The Bureau and Secretariat of the CC at times lost sight of the long-range questions of the development and improvement of the VLKSM's activity.

The departments and subdivisions of the Central Committee spent a great deal of time on bureaucratic bustle, provided insufficient assistance to local Komsomol organizations, to cadres and activists. In the work of the CC apparatus, artificiality in forms and methods and estrangement from real life were in evidence.

[…] Only in an atmosphere of indifference and passive disregard by Komsomol members themselves toward their own organization could the rights of the primary organization be trampled, could leaders be appointed rather than elected, could the statutory norms of internal organizational life be violated.

Only in such an atmosphere could incapable and unworthy individuals reach leadership posts in the Komsomol — could careerists and bureaucrats make their way in, at times forcing entire organizations to serve their personal ambitions.

Many wanted to change everything without in substance changing anything — neither their thinking nor their lives. For the person who is concerned not so much with the interests of our common cause as with his own personal tranquility, perestroika, let us say it plainly, is beside the point.

No rights, no guarantees of their observance, however important they may be in themselves, can replace the readiness and ability to make use of them, can replace responsibility and civic courage.

In a word, comrades, many Komsomol organizations and Komsomol committees found themselves "disconnected" from life, cut off from the real problems of youth and its upbringing during a difficult period of the country's existence.

Of course, the effect on youth of the slowdown in economic growth also made itself felt — as did the suppression of shortcomings, the residual principle of allocating resources for social needs, the peculiar ideology and psychology of stagnation, the gap between word and deed.

More strongly than before, elements of deformation of socialist consciousness appeared among some young men and women. Passivity, consumerist attitudes, skepticism, and an uncritical attitude toward petty-bourgeois psychology were, on one hand, the consequence of stagnation in social life and, on the other, of serious shortcomings in the upbringing of youth.

The severing of the connection between the measure of labor and the measure of consumption, poorly organized production, and indifference to youth and its upbringing in many collectives influenced youth's attitude toward work.

Many Komsomol members and young workers do not meet their production plans, produce defective goods, and violate labor and technological discipline.

Among young people a stratum has emerged for whom the goal of life has been reduced to material well-being alone.