Why are pioneer camps remembered with such warmth?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Almost a hundred years ago, the blue nights in the first pioneer camps erupted with bonfires. Since then, every summer millions of children have gone to the country "Pioneer" - to live a special camp life, learn independence, reveal talents and, of course, get better and gain strength after a tiring school year.

The unique network of pioneer camps, which covered the entire country from Moscow to the very outskirts, is perhaps the main achievement of Soviet social policy. Nowhere in the world was organized children's recreation so accessible and so widespread.

START. Weight taken

The first camps appeared immediately after the creation of the pioneer organization in May 1922. City children went to villages, lived in army tents and "strengthened the link between town and village" - agitated rural children to become pioneers. The pioneers were exhausted "in an adult way", so much so that in the mid-1920s they started talking about their physical overload at the level of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b).

In 1924, the Deputy People's Commissar of Health Z. P. Soloviev put forward a fundamentally different concept of summer recreation: "All life in the camp, social work and labor processes should be built in such a way as to promote the health of children."¹… He also created a new type of camp-sanatorium, the main task of which was to bring home a healthy and strong child.

The prototype was "Artek", which initially recruited only children with tuberculosis.

Outwardly, the advanced children's health resort did not stand out in anything - the same canvas tents. But here a completely different life was flowing: medical examinations, exercises, sun and air baths, sports games, swimming, a quiet hour, a strict daily routine. And most importantly - enhanced nutrition! For the half-starved children of the city outskirts - a real luxury. “There is a lot of water in the sea. They lived in "Artek" for a month. We were fed well, "the pioneer of the first shift wrote home.².

So for many years, the main criterion for summer recreation was formed - the average per capita weight gain. The children went to the camp to recover. They were weighed at the beginning and at the end of the shift, and by weight were reported to the higher authorities. The head physician of "Artek" reported to ZP. Solovyov in July 1925: “Today I calculated the average weight gain per person for 2, 5 weeks, it is equal to 1 kg, which, in my experience, is a sufficient gain for a hot time. Some guys, poorly matched, added little, and therefore with regard to selection, it is absolutely necessary not to send nervous children to the camp … "³.

This indicator became especially relevant after the war. In 1947, the pioneer camp of the Kovrov plant named after K. O. Kirkizha reported: “The percentage of children who gained weight is 96%, no change is 4%. The average increase per person based on the results of 3 shifts is 1 kg 200 g "⁴… But in the relatively well-fed 1960s, measuring the increase in the live weight of children became the subject of jokes. Let's remember the hero of the comedy "Welcome, or No Unauthorized Entry!" Comrade Dynin: “The total weight of the detachment is 865 kilograms. That way, by the end of the shift, they will overtake a ton! This is food!"

WAR. Interrupted shift

Already in the 1930s, the pioneer camp took shape as a special social institution. Everywhere the children of workers, collective farmers and intellectuals were taken to summer camps. And since only large defense and machine-building enterprises had their premises, the rest were content with the buildings of rural schools. “On the street, under a canopy, there were three field kitchens, and they ate here. The guys brought with them to the camp pillows, mattresses, blankets, bed linen, bowls, spoons, mugs ⁵.

The alarming situation in the world predetermined the agenda: the pioneers were trained to defend the Motherland. Children walked in formation, attended shooting clubs and participated in massive military-sports games, the most popular of which was the Red and White, the forerunner of the legendary Zarnitsa. Later, the "colors" of the players were replaced with neutral "blue" and "yellow", in order to exclude the victory of the class enemy. The goal of the game was to capture the enemy's banner. By the start of the war, every pioneer had participated in these impromptu military exercises at least once.

The war caught millions of children in the camps. Thousands of pioneers had to evacuate further and further from home, to the east, like the Artekites of the second shift, which opened on June 22, 1941 - and the war was on their heels. But the pioneer camps did not stop working - on the contrary, during the war, when adults stood at the bench for days, their role increased. First of all, vouchers were given to orphans and children of front-line soldiers, defense workers. It is noteworthy that immediately after the blockade was broken, in January 1943, when the enemy was still at the city walls, the Leningrad authorities decided to take 55 thousand children out of the city. 1500 of the weaker ones were accommodated in the former lordly dachas of Kamenny Island, the rest - in abandoned private houses in the nearest suburbs, many of which were in the front line.

In 1944, pioneer camps accepted more than 2.370 million children⁶… And long after the war, it was not easy to get a preferential ticket to a health camp - times were hard, hungry, and there the child was waiting for enhanced nutrition.

The conflict between Kostya Inochkin and the head of the camp, comrade Dynin, is in the center of the film "Welcome, or No Unauthorized Entry".

ONLY NUMBERS

In 1973 40 000pioneer camps took on vacation 9, 3 million children

In 1987, 18.1 million children, or 45.4% of schoolchildren in the USSR!⁷

FLOWER. From "Artek" to "Stars"

The real flourishing of the pioneer camps was in the 1960s-1980s. They began to take older preschoolers to the camps, and there appeared “labor and rest camps” for high school students - boys and girls themselves provided for their stay, working for several hours in receiving collective and state farms. In the same years, student camps opened their doors.

PIONEER'S DICTIONARY

Horror stories

The tradition to scare each other after lights out with mystical stories about a red spot, a black-black room and a white sheet was probably born in the very first "blue nights". Already in the 1940s, "after-lights talk about all sorts of horrors" ⁸ were typical camp entertainment. But the “horror stories” gained particular popularity and variety in the 1960s, when children had nothing to really fear.

In 1990, Eduard Uspensky, based on popular plots of "horror stories", wrote the story "Red hand, black sheet, green fingers."

Camp number one remained "Artek", but new camps of federal and republican significance were opened - Tuapse "Eaglet", Minsk "Zubrenok", Far East "Ocean". And in the outskirts of each city there were "Stars", "Friendship", "Sunrise", "Scarlet Sails", which belonged to enterprises and departments. Their construction, maintenance, most of the costs fell on the trade unions. They also "recruited" camp staff from among production workers and students. The latter, having become counselors, were often indignant: "All the work is proceeding according to a template, and the main concern of the camp chief, senior educator and senior pioneer leader is as if something did not work out."⁹… But there were only two fundamental prohibitions - to leave the territory and swim unaccompanied by adults. The violator was expected to receive sanctions up to and including expulsion from the camp, and the violation was considered a special bravery.

And in all other respects, the obscure "Zvezdochki" were not much different from "Artek": four meals a day, water procedures on a whistle, the hated quiet hour, circles and sections, dancing "at a pioneer distance", pranks after lights out - pillow fights, smearing sleeping pasta and indispensable "horror stories", hikes, sports days, a concert for parents' day, the release of a wall newspaper, a farewell fire …

Not everyone found round-the-clock cooperation easy. There were also those who "could not sleep in a ward with 40 beds and not a single fold on the blanket, did not want to march and sing"¹⁰… Therefore, it happened, after the parental day, the ranks of vacationers thinned. But there were more of those who today would gladly return to the pioneer summer!

^{1. Bugayskiy Y. For the health of the pioneer. M. 1926. S. 3.}

^{2. Kondrashenko L. I. Artek. Simferopol, 1966, p. 30.}

^{3. Shishmarev F. F. Pioneer camp-sanatorium of the Red Cross in Artek // Camp in Artek. M., 1926. S. 81.}

^4.

^{5. Astafiev B. E. From the memoirs.// Metalist N6 of 2013-11-07. P. 3.}

^{6. National care for the children of front-line soldiers // Izvestia. May 18, 1944, p. 3.}

^{7. Documents of the Central Committee of the Komsomol S. 133. M., 1988.}

^{8. Titov L. We grew up near the Sea of Okhotsk. Issue 1. M., 2017. S. 32.}

^{9. Komissarov B. My life in the USSR in the 1960s. Novel diary.}

^{10. Zlobin E. Zlobin E. P., Zlobin A. E. Bread of retention. SPb., 2012. S. 218.}