Epress.am News from Armenia
During his speech at the 12th conference of the Pan-Armenian National Movement (HHSh) Youth Union yesterday, Armenian National Congress (HAK) leader Levon Ter-Petrossian said that the party (HHSh) doesn’t view the youth wing as the “Komsomol.” The Komsomol, formally, the Communist Union of Youth, was the youth wing of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
“Today all the coalition parties have their Komsomol, their [Young] Pioneers, [Little] Octobrists [Soviet term and name of a youth organization for children aged 7–9], their KGB. We too went to that school. And probably the most shameful phenomenon of the former Soviet Union and socialist camp was this Komsomol, when being trained were half-educated, fanatical zombies who later were to become the backbone of the system.
“By the way, if you look at the history of the Soviet Union, say in the 20s, 30s or 40s, yes, there were fanatics in the party, but there were very advanced, intelligent people [too]. Because they had received a Tsarist education; they had received a specialization at that time. Communism was a contagious idea, many were infected by that idea, sincerely infected…. But when they came to power, it created a convenient platform for criminals, bureaucrats, thieves,” he said.
Those who received their education in the USSR in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, according to Ter-Petrossian, were half-educated, pseudo-experts with provincial thinking — the only exception being cadres of the party that came from “production.”
“The Communist Party had two sources of power: one was the Komsomol (the main) and the other, production. And the cadres that came out of production were essentially different from those that came from the Komsomol. Because they all had a foundation, they had a profession, they had organizational capabilities… So you are not and will not be Komsomol, and you will be never be used as the Komsomol. [So] who are you? For us, you have two missions. First, to ensure the ideological legacy of the party, and second, to breathe down our backs, do not allow us to stagnate,” said the HAK leader.