Komsomol
콤소몰
The youth organisation of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, founded on 29 October 1918 and known from 1926 as the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League (VLKSM); it organised young people aged roughly 14 to 28 as the party’s helper and reserve until it dissolved itself in September 1991.
In depth
Founded at its First Congress in Moscow as the Russian Communist Union of Youth (RKSM), it added Lenin’s name in 1924 and became the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League on 22 March 1926, after the formation of the USSR. Called the party’s “helper and reserve”, it supplied the party with new members, ran the Young Pioneers for children, and mobilised young people for the war effort and for great projects such as Khrushchev’s Virgin Lands campaign and the Baikal–Amur Mainline. Its membership grew from 4.4 million in 1938 to over 36 million by 1977.
In the purges of 1937–1939 many of its early leaders were arrested, and Aleksandr Kosarev, first secretary from 1929 to 1938, was shot in 1939. Later first secretaries such as Aleksandr Shelepin and Vladimir Semichastny went on to head the KGB. After the collapse of the August 1991 coup, the 22nd Extraordinary Congress of 27–28 September 1991 dissolved the organisation.