Vign12(5) Compulsory Steps (13 of 15)

 When you enter the first year of studying and you are only seven years old, you are 'admitted' to 'oktiabriata' (October children) and presented with little badge with the blond little boy - small portait of  Lenin as a kid, inside the red star. It seems to be a kind of childish game, but this is only the beginning of the general childish game.

When you are 10 years old and you study well, you are admitted to pioneers and presented with red neck tie (pionersky galstuk) and also a badge (pionersky znachok), you are glad and proud untill you become 14 years old. The same very neck tie is the evidence of your age, and you want to look older, like every teenager wants, though everybody hides it coming out of the school.

In the early 1920s the pioneer organisation had been copied from scouting organisation with the strong addition of communist ideology.

Then at the age of 16 you are admitted to Comsomol (good studying is needed here, too). Now at last you can have some option - to enter or not.

Propagandistic nursery rhyme (from my kindergarten, in russsian)

Я маленькая девочка
Играю и пою
Я Ленина не видела
Но я его люблю

(I am the little girl,
Playing and singing
I have never seen Lenin
But I love him)

Teachers at school always said:
УYou must always write Communist with the capital letter, and god with small letterФ. Such a kind of the ideological paradox :)

(c) Victor Sergeyev, 2012