From State to Society: The Komsomol in Yeltsin’s Russia

In September 1991, Vladimir Elagin, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Leninist Communist Youth League of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (LKSM RSFSR), was speaking to a sparse audience. It was the first time in the organization’s history that the attendance was so low: only two-thirds of both the Central Committee and the Central Control Committee members had arrived to hear what Elagin had to say about the organization’s future a week after the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) had been outlawed on Soviet territory.1 Contrary to one contemporary interpretation,2 he did not, however, take the floor to confirm the youth league’s liquidation but instead urged his listeners to revive it: “To keep up with the current turbulent time, we need to make serious, responsible, and radical decisions on the transformation of the Union.... We must transform ourselves into a public organization [obshchestvennaia organizatsiia] ... [and] say that we will continue to develop and participate in the youth movement and help revive it.”3 Speaking almost three decades after the meeting, one of the members of the organizing committee of the LKSM RSFSR, interviewed for this study, claimed that the dismantling of the Russian Komsomol organization was never even considered. “It was because they were real organizations that genuinely worked with youth. They were real organizations, projects, and programs. The activity was real.”4