Official" Soviet portrait made of Pavlik Morozov.
He is wearing the Young Pioneers red scarf.
Source: Wikipedia
There are different versions of the Pavlik Morozov story (here and here), but there is no question it had a profound impact on generations of schoolchildren in the Soviet empire. This is the way Klara Sever, who lived in communist Czechoslovakia, remembers the story:
”According to a legend well known to anyone living in the Soviet Union and its vassal States, Pavlik was a 13-year-old Young Pioneer in the Soviet village of Gerasimovka. He observed his father hide a small amount of wheat, probably hoping to plant it in the next season. Hoarding grain was strictly against the law. The country suffered grave food shortages. Hoarding was considered sabotage, punishable without mercy. Pavlik did his Pioneer duty and denounced his father to Soviet authorities. His father was thrown in jail never to be seen again. Members of the family took vigilante justice and killed Pavlik. Pavlik became a hero for whom songs were created, memorials erected, even an opera composed. In 1937, Sergei Eisenstein made a movie that was not released, probably because Eisenstein fell out of Stalin's favor. We, as Young Pioneers in Czechoslovakia, often included a poem in Pavlik’s honor at our meetings. He was our hero, a young martyr, our example.” Pavlik’s school became a shrine, visited by schoolchildren from all over the Soviet Union.
While children denouncing their parents might seem unthinkable in the West, it was a natural outgrowth of the Soviet theory of education and the deconstruction of society to create the New Soviet Man and Woman. Klara Sever: “The school is an instrument of communism. The first and foremost task of communist education is not the teaching of skills, but the destruction of the family and religion. Formerly, education was closely associated with religion, but no such link was permitted in Soviet schools. In normal society, parents have the right to choose how their children will be educated. Under socialism, no such right exists. Socialist education is in the hands of state-controlled teachers. This is a practical method used to produce new generations in a more efficient manner. At the same time, the new method frees millions of mothers for productive work to benefit the state. In the Soviet empire, there were also children's colonies where children lived permanently away from their parents.”
In this context where familial bonds are shredded, it is only a short jump for children to denounce their parents to the state. Such denunciations were encouraged: “One of the most heinous and socially destructive aspects of Soviet policy was the Communist Party's continuing effort to encourage children to report on, or even denounce their parents,” Klara Sever says.
This created a climate of fear and dilemmas for parents who now had to watch their every step and their every word around their children. They had to suspect their own children of just waiting for an opportunity to denounce them. Children lost their innocence and were conditioned by the state to scheme and plot against their own parents. Normal family life could be replaced by trickery: “What do your parents talk about when they think that you are already asleep?,” as Klara Sever remembers one ruse children were taught to use.
The issue came up In Klara Sever’s own household: “As parents of a school-age son, we were approaching the "big conversation". No, it was not about sex. It was about the "inside and outside truth". This was rather serious. We taught our son to always tell the truth, but only to us inside the home. None of the debates that he witnessed in our busy household could be repeated outside, especially not at school. But we never forgot the legend of the brave martyr Pavlik, and this was one of the reasons we decided to leave Czechoslovakia after the Soviet occupation in 1968.”
Soviet authorities embellished and even changed Pavlik’s story to suit their propaganda purposes. It’s not clear that Pavlik was ever a Young Pioneer, and he may have been killed in a fight with another boy over a gun, not by family members. Klara Sever recalls “the part about Pavlik's killers was adjusted for Czechslovak sensibility; they became in our version ‘bourgeois elements’.” In some versions, Pavlik’s father’s forged documents for bandits, with the crime of hoarding grain substituted later when food shortages plagued the Soviet Union.
So Pavlik’s heroism is in doubt. As an old teacher remarked, "you know, there were such terrible times, we needed heroes..." No doubt, given the Soviet Union’s pathetic attempts to remake society from scratch, against the far more powerful forces of human nature.
He is wearing the Young Pioneers red scarf.
Source: Wikipedia
There are different versions of the Pavlik Morozov story (here and here), but there is no question it had a profound impact on generations of schoolchildren in the Soviet empire. This is the way Klara Sever, who lived in communist Czechoslovakia, remembers the story:
”According to a legend well known to anyone living in the Soviet Union and its vassal States, Pavlik was a 13-year-old Young Pioneer in the Soviet village of Gerasimovka. He observed his father hide a small amount of wheat, probably hoping to plant it in the next season. Hoarding grain was strictly against the law. The country suffered grave food shortages. Hoarding was considered sabotage, punishable without mercy. Pavlik did his Pioneer duty and denounced his father to Soviet authorities. His father was thrown in jail never to be seen again. Members of the family took vigilante justice and killed Pavlik. Pavlik became a hero for whom songs were created, memorials erected, even an opera composed. In 1937, Sergei Eisenstein made a movie that was not released, probably because Eisenstein fell out of Stalin's favor. We, as Young Pioneers in Czechoslovakia, often included a poem in Pavlik’s honor at our meetings. He was our hero, a young martyr, our example.” Pavlik’s school became a shrine, visited by schoolchildren from all over the Soviet Union.
While children denouncing their parents might seem unthinkable in the West, it was a natural outgrowth of the Soviet theory of education and the deconstruction of society to create the New Soviet Man and Woman. Klara Sever: “The school is an instrument of communism. The first and foremost task of communist education is not the teaching of skills, but the destruction of the family and religion. Formerly, education was closely associated with religion, but no such link was permitted in Soviet schools. In normal society, parents have the right to choose how their children will be educated. Under socialism, no such right exists. Socialist education is in the hands of state-controlled teachers. This is a practical method used to produce new generations in a more efficient manner. At the same time, the new method frees millions of mothers for productive work to benefit the state. In the Soviet empire, there were also children's colonies where children lived permanently away from their parents.”
In this context where familial bonds are shredded, it is only a short jump for children to denounce their parents to the state. Such denunciations were encouraged: “One of the most heinous and socially destructive aspects of Soviet policy was the Communist Party's continuing effort to encourage children to report on, or even denounce their parents,” Klara Sever says.
This created a climate of fear and dilemmas for parents who now had to watch their every step and their every word around their children. They had to suspect their own children of just waiting for an opportunity to denounce them. Children lost their innocence and were conditioned by the state to scheme and plot against their own parents. Normal family life could be replaced by trickery: “What do your parents talk about when they think that you are already asleep?,” as Klara Sever remembers one ruse children were taught to use.
The issue came up In Klara Sever’s own household: “As parents of a school-age son, we were approaching the "big conversation". No, it was not about sex. It was about the "inside and outside truth". This was rather serious. We taught our son to always tell the truth, but only to us inside the home. None of the debates that he witnessed in our busy household could be repeated outside, especially not at school. But we never forgot the legend of the brave martyr Pavlik, and this was one of the reasons we decided to leave Czechoslovakia after the Soviet occupation in 1968.”
Soviet authorities embellished and even changed Pavlik’s story to suit their propaganda purposes. It’s not clear that Pavlik was ever a Young Pioneer, and he may have been killed in a fight with another boy over a gun, not by family members. Klara Sever recalls “the part about Pavlik's killers was adjusted for Czechslovak sensibility; they became in our version ‘bourgeois elements’.” In some versions, Pavlik’s father’s forged documents for bandits, with the crime of hoarding grain substituted later when food shortages plagued the Soviet Union.
So Pavlik’s heroism is in doubt. As an old teacher remarked, "you know, there were such terrible times, we needed heroes..." No doubt, given the Soviet Union’s pathetic attempts to remake society from scratch, against the far more powerful forces of human nature.