Wonderful. Albert Rhys Williams meets a Young Pioneer on a street of the Ukrainian village of Dykanka and is invited back to their clubhouse.

‘The Bolshevist Boy Scouts’ by Albert Rhys Williams from The Russian Land. New Republic Publishing, New York. 1928.

It was a gala day when I visited the Dikanka school. There was an exhibition of embroidery–cross-stitch towels by the boys, dresses by the girls. There was chorus singing of “Beyond the Stone Mountains,” “In the Meadows by the Birch Trees.” Then a chant of the Revolution with the words: “Holy army of labor.”

“Stop!” cried Natalie Alexandrovna. “Instead of ‘holy’ it should be ‘battling.’” And so they sang it. The children liked best the song that closed each verse with a shout of Slava! Slava! Glory! Glory! Followed the “Hopak” and “Snowstorm,” danced to the thrumming of the balalaikas. Then out in the yard for a game of cat-and-mouse. The new Volost President and I took our turns, racing in and out of the wide circle, until at last the big American mouse fell into the paws of the little Ukrainian cat, to the shrieking joy of the children, and we were friends for life.

Next day I was merrily shaking hands with all my friends, until in one hand I met a sharp rebuff. It shot straight above the boy’s head, and was rigidly held there, as he said: “With Young Leninists hand-shaking is abolished. It wastes time; it spreads disease.”

Thus I met Panas, my first Young Leninist, or Pioneer, and next night was guided by him to their quarters in an old house beyond the church. To our knock on the door came a challenge:

“Who goes there? Friend of the workers and peasants or enemy?”

“Friends! Let us enter!”

There was a scuffle of feet, voices mumbling, “I’ve lost the key!” “Oh, you ninny!” Then the door opened into a room dimly lit by a smoking lamp and a candle. On the walls were immense portraits of Lenin and the poet Schevchenko and, in big Ukrainian letters, the “Laws of the Pioneers.”

A pioneer is true to the business of the working class, and to the biddings of Ilyich.

A Pioneer is younger brother to the Komsomols and Communists.

A Pioneer does not smoke, drink or swear.

A Pioneer is kind to useful animals against grasshoppers, mice and prairie dogs he wages a merciless fight.

A Pioneer studies hard. He who does not love books is no Pioneer at all.

A Pioneer sits, stands and walks not bending over. Otherwise he will look like a bent, broken old man, and his heart will not work rightly.

A Pioneer washes himself carefully, not forgetting his neck and ears. Remembering the teeth are friends of the stomach, he cleans them daily.

There were five more similar injunctions. They are not the standard Pioneer Laws, but a special version made by Ladyr, the leader, or Vojak as he is called. He was a stocky, swarthy, benign lad of sixteen, lost in an enormous overcoat inherited from a soldier and altered only by cutting off the sleeves at the elbows. His father was killed by the Whites, and he lived with his mother in a house which I might find by “going down the East Lane till you see a lopsided hut with a lopsided goat inside a lopsided fence that’s where we live!” There were no marks of poverty on his wit or imagination.

He led us to a seat behind a table, facing about sixty children, and the interrupted debate on washing the floors for the October holidays was resumed. In the boys’ opinion that had “always been a woman’s job.”

“Yes,” says Vojak Ladyr. “But it will not always be. The boys must not dodge the hard and dirty jobs. If they do they are not Pioneers.”

Ten-year-old Luzenko takes up the cudgel for the girls. He holds that Pioneers should not be divided into boys and girls, but into the big and the little. The former should wash the floors, the latter gather leaves and weave garlands. So it was voted, and the club took up cases of discipline.

“Marfa Lisovik, you have been absent twice. What for?”

She hesitates, and finally blurts out: “I was afraid of the dark.”

“Huh!” snorts Ladyr. “In foreign lands they put Pioneers in prisons and torture them, and our Pioneer is afraid of the dark!”

Marfa protests that prison has no terrors for her, but each night when she was about to set out for the club, babushka told her tales of Baba Yaga, so terrible that when she opened the door it put a shiver in her back. Cunning old babushka! Less resourceful, it seems, were other babas in keeping their children away from the club. The usual device was to take them to church. Such was the excuse given by two Pioneers. This provokes the Vojak to a lengthy discourse on religion. I learn that as long as children are economically dependent on parents, they must obey. If commanded to go to church, the Pioneer must go, but he should strive not to pray or cross himself, and, if possible, not light a candle before an ikon. In the same spirit, at weddings or christenings, if a Pioneer is offered a glass of samogon by his father, he may take it, but must strive not to drink it, but to pour it on the floor or out of the window.

It is evident that to Vojak Ladyr parents are thorns in the flesh. But he accepts them philosophically. None of the usual flippancy of youth in his treatment of them. Carefully he explains to the Pioneers how the elder generation have grown up in religion and drink and private property; that they are not to be blamed for their bad ideas, habits and prejudices, but to be treated with kindly tact. Humor them, don’t antagonize them.

Not in vain his teachings, the fruit of it most apparent in my first Pioneer, Panas. To my question why hand-shaking was abolished, he explains that two hundred thousand Russians had died of typhus, twenty thousand of whom must have gotten the germs by shaking hands.

I point out that, while in the papers there was a campaign against hand-shaking, and in Soviet offices there are signs against it, it goes on just the same, even amongst Communists and Komsomols.

“Yes,” he replies. “But one must be patient with the elder generation. They won’t change very much. They can’t be cured. It is for Young Leninists to show the way.” Critical but tolerant.

Follows now the administration of the oath to a new Pioneer. The Vojak has none of the paraphernalia of the city Pioneers no whistle or drums, or red kerchiefs only the salute, the five fingers of the right hand close clasped together, raised above the head. The fingers are the five continents where there are oppressed, for whose freedom fights the Pioneer. Held above the head to show that their interests are higher than all.

The candidate now repeats the oath: “I give my promise and strengthen it with my solemn word that I will be true to the toilers, will toil hard myself, follow the commandments of Ilyich, the laws and customs of the Pioneers.”

“You are now a Pioneer in the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. In the fight for the toilers be ready!” declares the Vojak impressively.

“Always ready!” replies the boy. Hard for a bashful boy to be so long the focus of all eyes. In the happy relief from the strain he shoves his hands into his pockets.

“He violates Law Eight!” pipes up a boy. The Vojak confirms the young constitutionalist, quoting: “A Pioneer putting his hands into his pockets is not always ready.“

Now the Political Lottery. Orator Luzenko and another favorite are elected judges, and take their places on the bench beside the Vojak. Five pencil stubs are produced, and go scribbling on paper held on walls, knees and neighbors* backs. The slips are rolled, put into a hat and shaken up. Each Pioneer in turn draws one out.

“Well, let’s see what question you’ve got?” says the Vojak to the boy in the front row, and taking the slip he reads:

“What did the October Revolution give the people?”

“Land, factories and freedom,” comes the glib response.

“What is Communism?”

“A society where there will be no war, no rich and poor, but all free toilers,” just as glibly.

“What class does a Pioneer never help?”

“Those who exploit the toil of others rich, bandits and nepmen.”

These are easy questions, studied in the club over and over again. Nearly every Pioneer knows the answers to them by heart.

“Who was Comrade Lib-nit?” mumbles a girl reading her own slip.

“Liebknecht,” corrects Ladyr, “who was he?”

“I don’t know,” falters the girl.

“Judges, judges! Write her down!” cry several voices with satisfaction, and the judges solemnly reply, “She is written!” Another gets written down because he confuses Bakunin and Bucharin. The questions: “Whom should one obey father or mother?” “Which is better an ox or a horse?” are ruled out as nonpolitical. Other questions: “Where was Schevchenko born?” “Who was Kerensky?” And finally, taking a slip from a little girl, the Vojak reads, “Who is Ladyr?”

Great joy, the audience breaking into wild peals of childish laughter, when the little girl stammers:

“Why, it’s you!”

More joy when Judge Magas, himself unable to tell when Lenin was born, has to write himself down. Merriest of all when the Vojak attempts to tell “What is specialization?” One way, then another, he wrestles with it, and finally gives it up, saying it is in his head all right, but he can’t explain it. The merciless judges write him down.

At last the questions are finished. The names of the “written down” are read and the offenders are summoned before the High Court of the Political Lottery. “Pioneer Kalnik!” says Judge Panas sternly. “You didn’t know the answer, you must therefore recite a verse.”

“No, no!” cry several voices. “Make him sing!”

“Pioneers!” interrupts Ladyr. “You chose the judges. Let them determine the punishments.”

The culprit recites a verse from Schevchenko.

“Pioneer Drooshko, a riddle! What is it that has no eyes, but shows the way to others has no brains, but knows how to count?”

“It is the sign-post marking the versts.”

“Next riddle! What has forty coats none of them ever buttoned?”

“A cabbage!”

Another defaulter dances the “Hopak.” Then the judges make up a chorus of several of the “written down.” Among their songs is a ditty of the New Year masqueraders, full of dire threats to houses which do not give them gifts.

If you do not give me eggs, I will break your chickens’ legs!

The Vojak protests that these words violate Law Four. Pioneers should be kind to animals and not break their legs. Moreover the chickens might belong to a poor peasant, and even if they belonged to a kulak, Pioneers must never proceed by acts of individual violence.

On the whole, the Vojak is well satisfied with the Political Lottery. Another night it goes wrong, and he orders a trial. For judges, five children are chosen. The defender is young orator Luzenko. Ladyr himself is prosecutor. He begins:

“We need discipline, Comrade Pioneers! Some members act as if they were not in a club, but a bazaar, and go chattering like babas at a village well. Then there are irrelevant questions. For instance, ‘Who were the gladiators?” Probably the author of this has just read a book about them and wants to make boast of it. Before such a question is given it should be studied. The worst social criminals are the prompters. They often prompt the wrong answers. I ask the judges to rule that every prompter and every one prompted be excluded from the club for two nights. That their names be written down on the blackboard and, for three offenses, declared members of the Counter-Revolution and excluded altogether.”

The defender makes no attempt to ward off the prosecutor’s attack on Pioneers’ discipline and the character of questions. He declares that “His accusations against promptings are unfundamental. Let him say who were prompters and who were prompted. Besides, if a Pioneer knows the answer, it is hard not to whisper it, and the Pioneer who doesn’t know the answer will know if he is prompted a little. The demands of the prosecutor are too hard, and I ask the judges to refuse them.”

“Judges!” shouts the prosecutor, “the defender doesn’t know the first principles of Communism. I tell you prompting is never right. No one ever prompted Lenin, and no one who follows him will depend on somebody else’s brains but on his own. My demands are just and I confirm them!”

The trial closes with the Vojak in great indignation. The judges go out into the corridor to confer. In a half-hour they return with the verdict:

“In order that the work shall pass more organizedly the High Court of the Political Lottery declares that: (1) Pioneers must behave themselves more in conformity with the principles of Communism. (2) Questions must be based only on the subjects studied. Songs, verses and riddles must be learned in advance. (3) Prompters and prompted shall be declared renegade Pioneers in the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics and before the working class of the whole world.”

PDF of original book: https://archive.org/download/russianland010621mbp/russianland010621mbp.pdf