Tear Komsomol: How did the main female archetype of the USSR
Dmitry Kurkin
The other day celebrated its centenary VLKSM, without exaggeration, a cult organization, a unique hybrid of a subculture, a lower span of the party ladder and a showcase of idealized Soviet youth. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Komsomol tried to revive and clone more than once, but without much success: counterfeit copies didn’t closely possess the mythological potential of the original, which, among other things, led to the appearance of the most recognizable Soviet archetype of a young woman - a Komsomol member. Let us recall how it appeared in popular culture, how it lived and what the poster girl of the world proletariat dreamed about.
The image of a short-haired girl striving into the future in a red scarf took shape in the mid-twenties and by the end of the decade had already become recognizable: for the watercolor Explanation (1929), as art critics suggest, he partially rewrote his own painting Spring in the Country, replacing the peasant couple by two Komsomol members. For the visual form, the ideological stuffing was also tightened.
Komsomolskaya Pravda is a controversial figure. She is a political activist, but she is completely devoid of reflection. She is also an approved sex symbol (for a country where it’s not customary to talk about sex outside of specialized literature and, later, youth magazines), a focus on beauty and health, and a woman with almost monastic integrity — which she does not keep for reasons. ” sinfulness, "but to be an example to those around you. Socialist competition begins already at this stage, and in moving towards a brighter future, it was impossible to be too distracted by personal life: the family is a social unit, but this brick is intended for great construction.
The list of "student, Komsomol, athlete and just beautiful" from the "Caucasian Captive" was probably the most famous formula for describing the standard of the Soviet girl, and he took, of course, not from the ceiling. Gaidai and his co-authors liked to ironic over the language of propaganda, and she, in turn, tried as hard as she could to reconcile the years spent in the Komsomol with the most vivid impressions of youth. Another good example of such linguistic programming is the song "Love, Komsomol and Spring". It was necessary to put the Komsomol into a figurative row: admission to the organization began as early as adolescence (from fourteen), it was possible to remain in it until twenty-eight, and the official course did not offer any other trajectory. The lack of a recommendation by the Komsomol District Committee closed many doors: for example, it made it almost impossible for MGIMO to enter, and therefore, besides other bonuses, it also went abroad.
Perhaps for this reason the Komsomol almost never has a past - only the present and the future. But there is a dramatic depth that at the same time denotes a gender role and mission: a Komsomol member is an avatar of the Motherland, she should inspire feats, carry out explanatory work, lead those who turned away from it to the path of truth. Thus, in the comedy "The Intractables," Nadya Berestova, performed by Nadezhda Rumyantseva on behalf of her Komsomol comrades, takes on bail two razdolbays from the working brigade. The high school student Iskra Polyakova from Boris Vasilyev's story “Tomorrow was a war” and the same-name film by Yuri Kara are trying to re-educate their peers in the spirit of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine. The late Soviet and therefore already much less cardboard heroine is not without contradictions. She has a love interest, but this interest goes hand in hand with the desire to make a person out of a hopeless Losers. It leads an implacable ideological struggle, but it is not devoid of purely human empathy, which at a critical moment takes precedence over party attitudes.
The controversial Spark appears at the moment when the deconstruction of the ideal image has already begun (not least because by the end of the seventies it became clear that the Komsomol had ceased to be the forge of personnel for the party elite), and the Komsomol member slowly became a secret meme (in the honor of her gets the name of one of the hearty cocktails in the poem "Moscow - Petushki", "Tear of Komsomol"). Activist Katya, who heads a comradely trial of former boyfriend Melsom in Valeriy Todorovsky’s “Stiliazh” (for the sake of inversion, accompanied by “Chained together”, in the original of which Ilya Kormiltsev scourged including the Komsomol leveling), this is the final transition of a brave girl in a red kerchief to the category of a post-Soviet camp, at the same time well recognizable and no longer quite realistic.
At the same time, the Komsomol member paradoxically survived the Komsomol. The archetype of a woman in Russian politics, from Valentina Matvienko to Irina Yarovaya, is in many ways a continuation of just the same veelkaesam asset: substitute a stencil - and almost any candidate will fit into it without any problems. Yes, and the current state of the request for a young woman in general, similar to the requirements of the Komsomol. Be a moral model, inspire and re-educate.
Photo: Studio them. M. Gorky, Mosfilm, Central Partnership