Peasants into Soviets : Reconstructing Komsomol Identity in the Russian Countryside of the 1920s
Growing up in the village of Bogorodskoe, Penza province, Aleksei Soldatov loved school, but he had to quit when he finished grammar school to help support his family. After six years of war and revolution, Aleksei’s household was unexceptional: it had no father or older brother. The fourteen-year-old described his oppressive isolated life as that of a “monk,” filled with hard work and devoid of friends and fun. In his narrative, his dismal life took a turn for the better when, following his sister’s footsteps, he joined the local Politprosvet. At first, he couldn’t understand what they were discussing. A few weeks later, he joined a new Komsomol cell established five versts from his home. There, he began to understand the new language and rediscovered reading. Soon, he organized a village reading room and became its librarian (izbach). To his family’s dismay, throughout 1924 and 1925 he did little farming; instead, he read magazines and newspapers and familiarized himself with current events and with Party and Komsomol life in order to answer the many questions readers asked him. While continuing to work as village librarian, when a Komsomol cell was founded in his own village, he became its secretary, head of its political reading circle, and Pioneer group leader. At the ripe age of eighteen, he could say:
CLASS ASCRIPTION AND CLASS IDENTITY: KOMSOMOL′TSY AND THE POLICY OF CLASS DURING NEP
This article explores how successful the Bolsheviks were in ascribing class identity to adolescents organized in the Komsomol. It presents an analysis of how class identity was constructed through a dialectical process of self‐identification and external identification and to what extent Komsomol′tsy adopted and internalized the class terminology of the regime, using it to perceive and describe the contradictory environment of NEP and to formulate demands addressed to the Bolshevik regime and their own organization. The question is raised of whether class was solely a category of Bolshevik analysis of NEP society or whether it assumed the power of a category of social practice. In answering this question the article will argue that there was an immanent interrelationship between the perception of class and the organizational evolution of the Komsomol.
Judicial politics in Britain: Patrolling the boundaries
This study considers judicial policy‐making in Great Britain by noting the peculiarly British institutional restraints on judicial action of parliamentary sovereignty, the resulting subordination of all courts to the legislative branch and the absence of a codified charter of rights or constitution. Though there is no judicial power to annul legislative or executive actions, British courts and judges still play a small, but significant, role in policy‐making through the common law and, in particular, through judicial review of adminstrative actions. A written bill of rights would likely draw courts further into the the political arena and politicise the appointment of judges.