Back to where I left: what were the Young Pioneers activities we were doing? The thing which we thought was the most fun happened rarely. Now that I think about it, it was mostly due to the fact that it required a lot of additional work from adults. One of the most anticipated activities was scrap metal collection. I think it was way more popular during my parent’s young pioneer’s youth when there was more scrap metal lying around. However, we had it in my school a couple of times, and we would find some old pipes in the corners of the courtyards and triumphantly bring them to school. And, of course, there was a “socialist competition” between classes (or, to be more precise, between different pioneer detachments). Retrospectively, I suspect that there was a big hassle of taking this scrap metal away from the schoolyard to the processing facility, which is why it was not a very popular activity. Also, the need for scrap metal was not as dire in the 1970s as it was in the 1930s-1950s.

Less exciting but still moderately adventurous was recycling paper collection. That involved ringing the doorbells of innocent citizens and asking: do you have some recycling paper by any chance? With a relatively high probability, they would give us a stack of old newspapers. And then again, there was a “socialist competition” between detachments. In case it is not obvious to the next generations, we were running around, looking for this scrap metal and knocking on people’s doors completely unsupervised, starting from the age of ten (that’s when you would become a young pioneer).

Other activities were way more boring. Nobody liked to “clean the territory” during “subbotniks”—voluntary-obligatory cleaning work on Saturdays or other days whenever they were announced. Nobody liked to stay after school for voluntary-obligatory meetings. A big part of the meetings was scolding our classmates who fell behind with their grades. As I mentioned earlier, everybody’s grades were public knowledge, and all teachers, even those whom we liked and who were genuinely better than others, would announce everybody’s test grades and even comment on specific mishaps of students in front of the whole class.

Then “class active” which included the detachment council chairperson and a couple of others, obtained addresses of those who were “falling behind” (otherwise called “tailers” as “tail’), and then the whole group of us went to these addresses to “talk to the parents.” Almost all apartments in our neighborhood were “communal,” with many families living in one apartment with the big communal kitchen being the center of the social life. We would walk in, call for “Misha’s parents” or “Natasha’s parents,” and tell them that their son or daughter was “holding the whole class behind.” They would, in turn, yell at their son or daughter, “You should be ashamed that your own classmates came to tell us about your behavior!” We would ask parents “to take appropriate measures” and leave, never thinking what those appropriate measures were going to be.

Yet another activity was making wall newspapers: there were articles, cartoons, etc., as in the real newspaper, but everything was mounted on a big poster paper that was in turn mounted on the wall in the class so everybody could read and comment out loud. Unfortunately, I didn’t save any of those from my middle school years, but I have a couple from my mom’s time (I didn’t scan them yet!).

Usually, very few students in each class were interested in doing any of these things. Our teachers and “pioneer leaders” used to say that most of the students were “inertial” and “not active,” and to be honest, I do not even think that the lack of desire to do anything was related to the politicized agenda. I think that by the beginning of the fourth grade, most of my classmates really didn’t want to do anything. 

My historical posts are being published in random order. Please refer to the page Hettie’s timeline to find where exactly each post belongs and what was before and after.