Like a communist party, the communist youth movement is a politically functioning organization. It accepts the political leadership of the adult organization, but remains organizationally independent within the spheres of youth functions. Its relations with the adult organization are developed on the basis of mutual exchange of representatives between the units of both organizations and through the greatest possible degree of collaboration in all fields of work. But the communist youth organization does not make a demand upon the youth who wishes to join, that he be already a communist before he is accepted. What is required is a readiness to learn the principles, theory and practices of a communist organization and to carry out the tasks assigned.
Membership is, hence, for the youth who want to learn to become communists.
In this sense, together with the broader scope of activities than is the case with the adult organization or Party, the young communist organization is a broad movement, sufficiently so for any youth who accepts the class struggle and the necessity to participate in it, and who is ready to learn the problems and needs of the revolutionary movement. But while broad in these respects, it is not a loose, amorphous body open to consciously hostile political elements of the youth. The activities of the communist youth organization are varied. Born into the era of world-wide military conflicts, observing daily the race for huge armaments by the capitalist powers in preparation for war, as well as noting the necessary building of the Soviet Red Army, the proletarian youth is not prone to kid himself with pacifist syrup about disarmament by capitalist banditry. What the working class youth, with greater or less consciousness of the problem of war and militarism, wants to know is what he can do about these most menacing of all dangers - involving his very life . . .