Russia pt. 2

Last year I started investigating Russia and the idea of "spiritual perfection". In that post, I gave myself a series of questions to answer:

Focus questions:

1. What was Russia like in 1909? Who was Russia friends with?

2. Who are the Young Pioneers and what are their values?

3. What attitudes and beliefs accompanied perestroika?

4. Who gave Russia aid during the Chernobyl disaster?

5. What is the FSR promise, and is it any different to the one WAGGGS has published for RADS?

6. Are UK Guides' and RADS' ideas about religion as outlined in their promises related?

7. What nationalities and ethnic groups exist in Russia and does this inform the RADS' statement on attaining spiritual perfection?

Luckily for me, my Faith Awareness assessor and former Guide leader Gaye Wilson is a big history buff and took tertiary-level courses in Russian things! So in May, I Zoom-ed her to ask her some questions to help me untangle the world of Russian history. Some of it was clarifying some of the information I had read to check that I understood the sequence of events, and some of it was new to me!

Focus Q1: What was Russia like in 1909? Who was Russia friends with?

1917 was the Russian Revolution. Prior to this, Russia was a serfdom, the practice of the peasantry serving land-owning nobles. According to this article serfism(?) was actually abolished in 1861 but presumably poverty doesn't vanish just because the law removed the conditions that created peasantry. The Russian Orthodox Church was the official religion when the Tsar in 988 decided to baptise his entire population(!) , , d and from what I can tell it stayed that way until the Revolution (with some bumps along the way - it was 1000 years!), at some point even being considered a branch of the government.

The ruling heads in Europe are biologically related - my Zoom notes say "Queen Victoria had several daughters and farmed them out to the heads of Europe". Perhaps this influence and the wish to emulate more developing countries in an attempt to "catch up" after the revolution included the introduction of Guides and Scouts.

Focus Q2: Who are the Young Pioneers and what are their values?

According to Gaye, the Youth Pioneers were a "youth communist party, creating people who don't think and do what they're told". They came about when Scouts, Guides, and all religion was banned as being outside influences uncontrollable by the state. Religion was considered an "opium of the masses" and promptly went underground - since it's "impossible to get everyone to stop believing just because you were told".

There's a fantastic brief-ish article that sums up the Young Pioneers here, but essentially it took the structure of Scouts and reworked it with the ideals of communism. The "Be Prepared/"Always be Ready" motto was retained but its Promise was as follows:

“I, (last name, first name), joining the ranks of the V. I. Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organization, in the presence of my comrades solemnly promise: to love and cherish my Motherland passionately, to live as the great Lenin bade us, as the Communist Party teaches us, and as required by the laws of the Young Pioneers of the Soviet Union.”

One of its laws: "- is a young communism builder, labors for the welfare of the Motherland and prepares to become its defender."

While the purpose of the Young Pioneers was highly political, it seems to have made a lasting impact on Russian culture, and has even experienced revivals. It seems as if the return of Guides and Scouts has not made it defunct, and it seems to exist alongside them like the Pathfinders do here.

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Two questions down! Tune in next time for the next lot of investigation!