I mentioned that topic several times, and now I want to focus on it. Child molestation was very widespread, and at the same time, nobody mentioned it back then and does not mention it now.

With me, it started when I was about eleven, and it would go on at least until I was fifteen, maybe sixteen, but the pick was during my pre-teen years. You would get on the bus or a train, which were very crowded pretty much all the time, so you had to swirl yourself into the crows just to stay in. And then somebody would start touching your private parts. And it will continue for the whole duration of your trip.

Why would you not dare to stop a molester? Because you are in a crowd, and everybody is touching everybody, and even if you look around, you can’t tell who is doing it to you. Actually, the only time in my life when I dared to stop a molester, the man was looking aside as if he was not even there, so I hesitated for a moment but then said: Hands! He quickly moved his hands away from my body and disappeared into the crowd. Also, it felt overwhelmingly embarrassing. You just couldn’t accuse an adult of doing such a horrible thing. And, of course, whatever happens to you, it’s all your fault!

Overall, nothing about sexuality was explicitly said, but somehow, by the age of eight or nine, you would come to the conclusion that there is something really bad related to your private parts (which, by the way, were never called “private”). If a boy happened to see your underwear (when you were playing together, climbing a tree, jumping a rope – and remember, girls wore dresses, shorts were rarely worn) – that was one of the worst humiliation you could experience. When you were at the overnight camp, your counselor would walk the bedroom, commanding everyone to have “hands on top of your blanket.” And it’s worth mentioning that my mom, like many other moms, did the same thing: coming to check on me when I was in bed and saying: where are your hands?

A word about male teachers. I was never molested by any of the male teachers, but as I learned later, some of my friends were. I learned it many years later because, once again, it was impossible to say it out loud. It meant admitting the shame, it meant that nobody would believe you, and it meant that “it was all your fault.”

The most horrific and never spoken about was the opposite effect. By the age of twelve, most girls would firmly believe that their worth was exclusively defined by how attractive they were to the opposite sex. By the time we were in the seventh grade, stories were whispered about some girls in our class who “had abortions.” We listened to these stories in horror, but at the same time with the strangest sense of jealousy: these girls were attractive enough for adult men! I am writing it, and I can’t make sense of why we felt this way, how we could think this! And that’s while we knew almost nothing about our bodies, including how you could get pregnant. Even though my mother preemptively explained to me that in a couple of years, I may start menstruating, she somehow managed to avoid an explanation of what exactly it was. I had my first period earlier than anybody in my class when I was just eleven, and I had no idea what was happening to me. My best friend had her first period three years later, and her parents explained to her and gave her a book to read. She gave this book to me, and it was only then that I learned the facts. It was a great trust crisis in my relationship with my mom, but not the first one and not the last one.

I don’t know how to finish this post. I do not know why nobody talks about it. Why do so many people talk about “happy young pioneers’ childhood, clean and pure and innocent” as if none of the things I described were there? I do not know whether these are the tricks the memory plays on people, forcing out the things we would rather forget, or that’s something else …

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.

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.

At the end of the third grade, “the most deserving” of us became “young pioneers.” Same as with Octobrists, everybody eventually would become young pioneers, but for this first group of “the most deserving,” it was a big deal. The earliest date for joining the Young Pioneers organization was April 22 – Lenin’s birthday. We had a classroom meeting a couple of weeks before that date, during which our room teacher would carefully guide a discussion about which students were “the best” and “deserve to be nominated to become Young Pioneers.” We would judge our classmates based on their academic records, whether they were “active” (actively participated in extracurricular initiatives), and whether they were “good comrades” for their classmates.

At the end of the discussion, everybody in the room raised their hand to vote for each of the candidates. The first “young pioneers” group was small – less than ten students. The ceremony was held in front of our school (fortunately, the day was sunny and not very cold. Our school’s “official supporter” was a leading ship-building plant. I am unsure what “supporter” means in this context. I wanted to translate it as a “sponsor,” but it was not about money. Although I believe that the plant would help the school financially in some cases, like paying for field trips, the true meaning was “ideological support” and demonstrating that “the school is connected with the working class.” To demonstrate that connection, the representatives from the plant (shock workers and the Komsomol leaders) took part in the ceremony of taking the Young Pioneer’s oath, and after we recited the words of the oath, the line of the plan representatives walked close to the line of newly minted young pioneers. Each of them tied the red tie on the neck of a student standing in front of them. From that day until we turned fourteen, we were supposed to wear a red tie and a young pioneer pin to school every day.

Subsequent groups of my classmates joined young pioneers during May Days, and the last group – in November, close to the Great October Revolution celebration day. I was not at school on the day of the last meeting (I believe I had a cold and stayed at home), but my friends told me that only Natasha Panasenkova was voted to be “not deserving” to become a young pioneer, but she cried, and the class decided to let her join.

By the beginning of the fourth grade, the class would become “a pioneer squad” divided into three “links.” The division was decided in the simplest possible way: based on each student’s desk location. Each link chose its link leader, and everybody voted for the “squad char person.”

We had regular meetings after school (hated by the “inactive majority”) and planned many activities; I will describe them in the next post.

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.