The peasant-youth world at the time of the “Great break”

Abstract

The article, written with the use of archival materials, party and Komsomol press, and ethnographic research, analyzes the development of the peasant-youth world, within its main sex and age groups within the peasant world, on the eve and during collectivization. The main emphasis is placed on the dynamics of transformation of such aspects of youth life as participation in various forms of farming, family, culture, everyday life, and religion. The question of the effectiveness of attempts to influence the party and Komsomol bodies in the use of various forms of youth life in the formation of the socialist village through cooperation and collectivized farms is raised. The author concludes that there is considerable resilience of the youth world in the face of the intervention of the Soviet organs in the internal life of the youth, the steady development of such aspects of the modernization of this group as the restructuring of the family on personal grounds, the rationalization of consciousness, the secularization of culture and everyday life. The policy of the Party and Komsomol organizations in the countryside objectively contributed to the modernization of all aspects of the life of rural youth as part of modern society in its “socialist” form.