page_title: Propaganda in the Soviet Union
section_title: Schools and youth organizations
hierarchical_section_title: Propaganda in the Soviet Union / Media / Schools and youth organizations
caption_attribution_description: English: 1961 Soviet Union 4 kopeks stamp. Pioneers Slogan Русский: Марка, Советский Союз, 4 копейки, 1961. Пионерский призыв
context_page_description: Communist propaganda in the Soviet Union was extensively based on the Marxist–Leninist ideology to promote the Communist Party line. Propaganda was one of the many ways the Soviet Union tried to control its citizens. In the Stalin era, it penetrated even social and natural sciences giving rise to the pseudo-scientific theory of Lysenkoism, whereas fields of real knowledge, as genetics, cybernetics and sociology were condemned and forbidden as "bourgeois pseudoscience".
  The main Soviet Union censorship body, Glavlit, was employed not only to eliminate any undesirable printed materials, but also "to ensure that the correct ideological spin was put on every published item". In the Stalin era, deviation from the dictates of official propaganda was punished by execution and labor camps. In the post-Stalin era, these punitive measures were replaced by punitive psychiatry, prison, denial of work and loss of citizenship. "Today a man only talks freely to his wife – at night, with the blankets pulled over his head", said writer Isaac Babel privately to a trusted friend.
context_section_description: An important goal of Communist propaganda was to create a new man. Schools and the Communist youth organizations, like the Young pioneers and Komsomol, served to remove children from the "petit-bourgeois" family and introducing the next generation into the collective way of life.  The idea that the upbringing of children was the concern of their parents was explicitly rejected.
  One schooling theorist stated:
  We must make the young into a generation of Communists. Children, like soft wax, are very malleable and they should be moulded into good Communists... We must rescue children from the harmful influence of the family... We must nationalize them. From the earliest days of their little lives, they must find themselves under the beneficent influence of Communist schools... To oblige the mother to give her child to the Soviet state – that is our task.
  Those born after the Revolution were explicitly told that they were to build a utopia of brotherhood and justice, and to not be like their parents, but completely Red. "Lenin's corners", "political shrines for the display of propaganda about the god-like founder of the Soviet state" have been established in all schools. Schools conducted marches, songs and pledges of allegiance to Soviet leadership.  One of the purposes was to instill in children the idea that they are involved in the World revolution, which is more important than any family ties. Pavlik Morozov, who denounced his father to the secret police NKVD, was promoted as a great positive example.
  Teachers in economic and social sciences were particularly responsible for inculcating "unshakable" Marxist–Leninist views.
  All teachers were strictly prone to follow the plan for educating children approved by top for reasons of safety, which could cause serious problems dealing with social events that, having just happened, were not included in the plan.  Children of "socially alien" elements were often the target of abuse or expelled, in the name of class struggle.  Early in the regime, many teachers were drawn into Communist plans for schooling because of a passion for literacy and numeracy, which the Communists were attempting to spread.
  The Young Pioneers were an important factor in the indoctrination of children.  They were taught to be truthful and uncompromising and to fight the enemies of socialism.  By the 1930s, this indoctrination completely dominated the Young Pioneers.
caption: Young Pioneers, with their slogan
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