Peaching Pioneers

The vast Congress of 500 Soviet poets and prose writers that assembled fortnight ago (TIME, Aug. 27) in Moscow's famed Hall of Columns under the guidance of walrus-mustached Maxim Gorky turned their attention last week to Russia's children. A 13-year-old girl known as Alia Kanshin marched into the hall at the head of 13 Siberian moppets under a big red banner proclaiming themselves "THE CIRCLE OF THE PUG-NOSED." The Circle had just completed a cooperative book on child life in Siberia. They demanded more and better books for Soviet children, books about "the struggles and sufferings of Young Pioneers living abroad."

As every Russian child knows, the Young Pioneers--Bolshevik boy and girl scouts--have had plenty of suffering and struggling in Russia, largely at the hands of oldsters unable to understand the ideals of Young Russia. In December 1932, there was the case of little Pavel and Fedor Morosov. Pavel & Fedor were Young Pioneers and they knew that their father, president of a local Soviet, was secretly in league with village kulaks. As a good Pioneer, Pavel promptly peached on papa but other villagers did not appreciate the children's rectitude. They tracked Pavel & Fedor to the woods, hacked their bodies to bits (TIME, Dec. 5, 1932).

Russia was startled last week by an even more harrowing case of Pioneer peaching. Some months ago in the village of Fadeevka, 14-year-old Pioneer Mischa Dyakov peached on his parents for grain stealing, confidently expected to be the hero of their trial. But so backward was the local Soviet court that both parents were acquitted. Last week their second son,11-year-old Vanya, peached on them not for grain stealing but for murder. "My brother Mischa didn't just disappear after my parents were acquitted. They killed him!" testified the dauntless Pioneer. Resolved to make an example of the parents, Moscow authorities swooped down on the village of Fadeevka, prepared to put through a typical Soviet propaganda trial.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.