Word: komsomols
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Although there is a great deal of academic work--undergraduates must write theses and pass state examinations, while graduates work independently under the guidance of an adviser--Russian students find adequate time for outside activities. In addition to Komsomol, the Communist youth organization to which everyone belongs (membership is not compulsory but so desirable that few fall to join), Moscow has a large number of extracurricular activities rather similar to those found in American schools...
While Party Boss Nikita Khrushchev sat approvingly on the same platform, Komsomol Leader Vladimir Semichastny cried that Pasternak was a "pig" who "dirties the place where he sleeps and eats, dirties those with whom he lives and by whose labor he exists." A mass meeting of 800 "intellectuals" in Moscow's Cinema House demanded unanimously that Pasternak be stripped of his citizenship and thrown out of the country. In the village of Peredelkino outside Moscow, where Pasternak lives in a dacha given him by Stalin,* the local writers' colony complained: "We cannot continue to breathe the same...
...Stalin's annihilation of many military commanders . . . beginning literally at the company and battalion commander level and extending to the higher military centers [brought] grievous consequences . . . Large scale repression undermined military discipline because for several years officers of all ranks and even soldiers in the party and Komsomol cells were taught to 'unmask' their superiors as hidden enemies . . . During this time the cadre of leaders who had gained military experience in Spain and in the Far East was almost completely wiped...
Extra-curricular activities for the students center around the Komsomol--the Communist Youth Organization. This group arranges most meetings and even posts signs in the halls afterwards listing those who did not attend, "shame and dishonor." The Komsomol also inspects students' rooms and sees that each person is tidy and has cut his fingernails. It also sponsors soul-searching sessions...
...past will be buried. Everyone will be drinking; I'll not. I'll behave. I'll be almost a saint. No one will say that Marochka is almost a hooligan . . . I'll live alone without anyone, without cards. I'll be reborn within the Komsomol...