Working-Class Youth in the Vanguard: Youth Surveys and their Implications

Abstract

Between 1935 and 1936 the party conducted a series of surveys to ascertain Soviet youths’ cultural and political upbringing, political activism, and material condition. Although ostensibly random, the survey targeted youth, who attended the best schools and who worked or studied at the most technologically advanced factories, the goal being to revel in the success of Soviet education and the high cultural, political, and material level of young workers in the USSR. The survey’s results revealed the horrid conditions in which most youth lived and their surprisingly low material and cultural level. Following the 1935–1936 survey, the party spearheaded projects to overhaul and democratize youth organizations (Soviet schools and universities and the Komsomol) and to transform young Soviet workers’ living conditions, particularly in dormitories and barracks in working-class districts.