Figure 1.--The photograph here show boys and girls at a Soviet Young Pioneers camp in 1932. They came from Ushakovka a village near Stalingrad (Volgograd). The children went to a site near the Volga River. None could have realized that their city would be the sight of one of the most horific battles in history. Maurizio

Soviet authorities begin giving more attention to the Pioneetr movement in the 1930s. We have collected a few images illustrating Young Pioneer SActivities during the 1930s.

!932 Image

A Russian reader writes about the photograph here, "There is a probability, that the photograph of the Pioneers here (figure 1) was taken in Moscow or Petrograd (later Leningrad, now St. Petersbourg). I think so, because clothes of these chidren is very good (for that times) and has a "big town-style" - the photos of young pioneers from province or country areas show bare-feet boys in very bad clothes, just with a red scarf. I know a few facts about Young Pioneers organization of that times. Boy Scout groups weren't sitll forbidden in USSR (it was made in 1925), and YP organization taken a lot of symbols from Boy Scouts, although always considered scouts as "class enemies" and "contr-revolution spies". Young pioneers taken some uniform elements - short pants, stockings (in cold Russia long over-the-knee instead of traditional scouts' just below the knee socks), attributes like trumpets, drums and traditional camp-fire from scouts. But there were some differences also. YP didn't used scout staffs and hats. The Scouts tied their scarves with a knot, it had a symbolic meaning: if scout didn't do any good thing during the day, he couldn't tie his scarf off when he go to sleep. Young Pioneers didn't use knots, they plugged a scarf with a small red sign with a portrait of Lenin. Much more later, in the 190's, when even a memory about Boy Scouts vanished in USSR, young pioneers began to wear these signs on their shirts, on the heart-side, and to use a knot for a red scarf."

Undated Image

A reader writes, "This photo was taken in the Soviet Union during 1930s. Unfortunately we don't know the exact location. Some children wear Young Pioneers uniform (better the Young Pioneers neckerchief), but I don't think that is a camp. Perhaps this is a school photo. The young woman in the middle could be the teacher, but I don't understand who could be the older boy." HBU is more likely to see this a camp photograph, I don't think boys would hsve worn singlets to school.