Memoirs of the Starlet Commander
By Michael Idov

Late this spring, I caught the news that thousands of schoolchildren in Moscow had celebrated the 85th anniversary of the Young Pioneer organization. They marched in formation, sang Pioneer songs, built a bonfire, and swore loyalty to whatever Pioneers swear loyalty to. Odd, I thought, but par for the course. Perhaps they changed the oath's Lenin references to Putin. Or "ancestors," like the old-new state anthem does. Or the event's sponsor. Who knows?

The whole Pioneer business, to quickly clue some of you in, was the Soviet Union's second stage of kiddie indoctrination. Think less Hitler-Jugend than politicized and mandatory boy scouts — the Pioneers were, in fact, a direct result of, and a hastily assembled alternative to, the scouts' popularity in Russia after the latter were banned in 1922. To get into the Pioneers, you had to do time in the Oktyabryata (translatable as "Li'l Octoberists" or "Octobrikins" or the Bergman-esque "October's Children" or, simply, "Octobrats"). The Octobrat stage lasted from first through third grade and stood for next to nothing. They'd hand you a star-shaped pin with an angelic relief of baby Lenin in the center and pointlessly reorganize the class into groups of five referred to as "little stars" (starlets? The Russian language teems with diminutives). Each starlet had its own Starlet Commander, and I, in my first and last brush with politics, was appointed one. As I recall, the job was a complete sinecure.

The Pioneers, from third to seventh grade, were a bit more serious. There was more gear, for one thing: a red ascot and a different pin, with an adult Lenin. In theory, Pioneer activities included marching, singing, doing random good deeds (of the help-an-old-lady-across-the-street variety) and a militarized outdoorsy game called zarnitsa that actually sounded really cool, like paintball. Needless to say, none of this took place. There was a huge and very symptomatic discrepancy between what the Pioneers were said to do and what they actually did. By the mid-1980s, the Pioneers, like the Octobercrumb Tinies or whatever, did nothing save the occasional wreath-laying. In my school, at least, the only ongoing Pioneer activity was a dull chore called politinformatsiya, wherein one student had to read out an item from the day's papers during homeroom. I remember tremulously informing my classmates about U.S. provocateurs sneaking banned literature into a Moscow book fair.

Around 1989 or so, fulfilling its metaphorical fate as the munchkin Soviet Union, the Pioneer organization croaked two years ahead of the real thing.  We drew "peace" and "anarchy" signs and AC/DC logos on our ascots, then stopped wearing them altogether. I had hardly ever worn mine to begin with, not for any ideological reasons but because I couldn't be taught how to tie one. My peers and I were thus, to be oxymoronic about it, the last Pioneers. The moment we turned ripe for the Komsomol — the next step up the Commie ladder that actually required a certain loyalty to, or at least a stomach for, the regime — the vile thing had ceased to exist.

Interestingly, even with the minuscule amount that's passed since the decline of the Pioneers, the Russian newspapers covering their weird May resurgence bought into the marching-and-singing myth: the official notion of what the Pioneers were supposed to be but hardly ever were. This goes for both the opinion-free central press and the terrified liberals. As tempting as it is to read the sudden, clumsy, fake, and above all deeply idiotic celebration of the Pioneers as, say, an attempt to organize schoolchildren into a Wee Loyalist League — the junior division of "Ours" or "Young Russia" — this would require ignoring the awesome and crucial extent to which nobody involved with that organization ever gave a shit. This is, simply put, brown-nosing on autopilot. As with every public happening in today's Russia, it's impossible to determine whether the poor kids fell victim to an executive order from on high or some sycophantic vice principal's bright idea, but everything points to the latter. The problem with staffing a system with yes-men is that they'll inevitably try to divine the leader's will, and just as inevitably overdo it. One can see how the resurrection of the Pioneers would be a natural next step after reviving the Soviet Union's other zombie legacies, but it's also a bit too natural. It smacks of a flack's unimaginative zeal. Whoever put together the event, the kids themselves sure as hell didn't volunteer for it. That's all that matters.

After pondering this for a while, I caught my thoughts drifting off into a more practical direction. As I flipped through online photos of the children — their 21st-century hands, made for texting and Wii sticks, raised in that silly salute — a more ominous query occurred to me.

Who tied all the kids' ascots?