The potters herald. [volume] (East Liverpool, Ohio) 1899-1982, 1949-10-20
Comment On
World Events

Every country has it's child
heroes and so has Soviet Russia.
S ONE years ago Pionerskaia
Pravda, the organ of the Young
Pioneers Of Leninism, Soviet coun-
terpart of the Hitler jugend, ann
ounced that the party and the gov
ernment of the USSR had appro-
priated a large sum for the rails
ing of a monument to the Pioneer
Pavlik (PauD Morosov. In 1949
this monument, set up in the
"Children's Park" of Morosov, was
at last unveiled with speeches from
representative of the Central
Committee of the Communist
Party, the Central Committee Of
the League of Young Communists
and the Central Committee of the
Young Pioneers of Leninism.
Pavlik Morosov is familiar fg
ure to every child in the USSR.
His portrait hangs in every school
and Pioneers Club, the school of
which he was a pupil, the kolkhoz
where his family worked, and two
streets, in Svordlovsk and Moscow
respectively, have been named for
him. On the first page of the
Soviet primers is the legend; "Try
to follow the example of Pavlik"
X X !.
Who was Pavlik MoroSov
Seventeen years ago the village
of Cherasimovka, as well as the
whole of Russia, was being col
lectivized. Special commissions of
trusted Bolsheviks requisitioned
agricultural implements, horses,
and cattle for the future collec-
tivized farms and grain to be sent
to Moscow. These commissions
walked from house to house and
conducted searches for hidden
grain. They tore down stoves and
ranges, knocked at the walls to
see if they sounded hollow, tore up
floors and dug around in gardens
and yards. Every handful of grain
was taken from the peasants, even
if it was the last. "The struggle
for bread Ito the towns) is the
struggle for Socialism," wrote the
papers.
Famine ragged in the Ukraine
and hundreds Of thousands died
from starvation but the commits
sions who took the last reserves of
the rural population never asked
themselves what the peasants and
their families were to eat on the
very night of the requisition. They
were termed "kulaks" and the
regime had decided to liquidate
them. While long trains with grain
rolled towards Moscow, other and
longer trains carried several mill
ion peasants to forced labor at
Kolyma, Verkuta, Ukhta, Pochora,
etc. because they had not willingly
resigned themselves to death by
starvation.
In the village of Cherasimovka
the 13-year-old Pioneer Pavlik
Morosov guided the commission
from cottage to cottage and point
ID out where the inhabitants had
hidden their meagre store of pro-
Last of all he took the
to the cottage of his
,wn father. A few days previously
le had denounced his own parents
Is counter revolutionaries and en-
,mies of the people for helping the
,ther peasants to resist the auth
,rities, which Pavlik's father was
n a position to do to some extent
S he was chairman of the village {
ouncil.
The whole village was incensed i
t Pavlik's act. A few days later t
he boy disappeared and his corpse f
vas found many weeks after in a v
ollow in the woods. Almost all the
illagers were arrested and al t
hough there was no evidence as
D who had killed Pavlik, the n
TKVD court sentenced Pavlik's q
ather, his mother, his two uncles h
nd all the people who lived in the /"
anne lane with the Morosovs to s
cath by shooting. r
To this perverse and unnatural a
lild the Soviet authorities have o