Herasymchuk
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| Prof. Vladimir Herasymchuk |
Every September 1, as was the case last month, and as was the case for many years during the Soviet Union era, in the schools of our country, the beginning of a school year started. During Soviet times this was a holiday and celebration for the children and all their parents. Excitement, school uniforms and the first graders received presents. Parents thanked all the teachers for the care and upbringing that their children shall receive and to the Soviet State for doing all for the benefit of the young generation. The feeling of proudness, of dedication to their Motherland, to socialism and the benefit of mankind... all these feelings were expressed on this, the first day of the school year.
"Only the best for the children!" - this was the motto! With every year the schooling improved, the necessary assistance was growing and all this was free! Goods and books, plus meals and other necessary help was given to children either free or at a very nominal sum, a symbolic payment. All over the country, in every region there were functioning Pioneer Camps. There the youth, the citizens of the
USSR had a holiday free. The Pioneer movement grew and blossomed in the Soviet Union.
What does the former Pioneer State show us now?
This former Pioneer State where the young people were our pride and joy is turned into the dictatorship of the pseudo-democrats and the abolition of the free education, school closings and privatization of the educational system. After public school, higher education is very costly. This is what the present "Independent Ukraine" has brought to the young generation. It has given birth to lost children, vagrants, street children and absolute poverty. This is verified below by the photographs that were published in our newspapers.
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Take a good look into the faces of these children forgotten by the present state. Here they are, these lost and vagrant children, that found their temporary home in a telephone booth (photo #1 from "Evening News" of June 10, 1999). Maybe these children were dreaming of finding themselves at the Pioneer Camp of "Artek"? Or maybe about hundreds of other Pioneer Camps that were all over the USSR? Yes, during Soviet times even the word "bums - vagrants" was hardly known in the USSR. With young vagrants, this malady was liquidated during the first years of the Soviet Union. About this period after the revolution and civil war A.S. Makarenko wrote extensively.
Unfortunately today's youngsters very often must do this in order to live - in the best of cases they work, if they can find it, but in most cases they have to rob, to beg and to use their wits in order to exist. About how these youngsters are forced to work for "dry bread", is written in the Ukrainian newspaper called "Tovarish" (photo #2) and "Avers-Press" (Lutsk, photo #3 - the author is Alexander Chekmanev - "Center for Journalistic Research").
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The statistics shows us, that practically every third youngster, from 10-17 years of age in our republic is working periodically, while every 6th is working full-time. Because of this horrific problem, the Ukrainian state allows these young people to be exploited at very low pay, and there are now over 660,000 youngsters working and exploited by the private companies.
Influencing this tragedy as allowed by the present bourgeois state of Ukraine is the dictate of IMF, the dollar force (photo #4). It is often that young mothers, not having the means to bring up their children, give them up to those who can afford to bring them up (unnumbered photo - photo's captions states: 'Where is my real mother?) or - unfortunately these young mothers sell their babies to foreign agencies for dollars in order to live. In every city you can see young mothers begging on the streets with their children (photo #5-6).
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In Ukraine the catastrophic situation is such that there are less and less children being born. From 1991 to 1998 in 2,673 villages there wasn't one baby born (?!). In 2,595 villages there are no children that are under 5 years of age. (Larisa Shakhova - Village News, June 2, 1999).
A catastrophic situation is growing in the moral-psychological atmosphere amongst children. As was reported by the Kiev newspaper "Evening News" (Larisa Vyshinskaya), in Ukraine every second person using narcotics is a youngster. All narcotics are being used constantly by 4% of school children. Not even 10 years ago in the USSR hardly anyone could even explain what narcotics were, or who were narcotics! Today narcotics are becoming an epidemic, they are changing young people in character. The growth of crime is on the rise. Children's Armageddon is growing in all of the former Soviet republics.
Leonid Kuchma is appealing to keep on with these reforms!
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It looks as if he managed to accumulate wealth and is now rushing to get elected to a second term as president. When he was in Lugansk on his election tour, he met the local assembled students, in front of the student surprised body, he picked up a guitar and sang: (photo #7) "My heart, you do not want peace..." But in the second verse of the song, this head of Ukraine yelled out, "How beautiful to live now on this earth" (?!)
We must return the children - this is the task of the Bolsheviks!
Yes, a very hard future has fallen on our children. The more our country is going on the capitalist road, the more we're going into a blind alley, the situation is becoming more and more critical for the children. This parliamentary mirage that is being propounded by these pseudo-democrats is the Krawchuk-Kuchma instigated "reforms".
But, in spite of all of the above, the Pioneer movement is growing even under such unfavorable conditions. As an example, in the city of Novovolinsk (Western Ukraine) 18 students of Grade 7 in school #7, where there teaches Alla Kosinskaya, they established a Pioneer Organization. The parents agreed. This small Pioneer group scared the government to such an extent that they barred the school children from joining this Pioneer Organization (!?).
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But you cannot keep the sunshine out of this fog being perpetrated by the present bourgeois government. You cannot turn back the wheel! The land is going on its course and in Ukraine now there already exists hundreds of Pioneer groupings and other young Leninists. In May of this year, a celebration was held on the 75th Anniversary of the birth of the Lenin Pioneer Organization. (photo #9)
The organizers are looking after these Pioneers and the Young Communist League was reborn.
Around 300 children filled the ranks of the Komsomol marchers during the 5th Gathering in the Crimea by the Eternal Flame in Gagarin Park. During this important gathering there took part members of the government of Crimea. Crimea now has over 12,000 members in the Pioneer Organization. (Evening News, #93-94, May 21, 1999).
There is a marked growth of political activity amongst the Pioneers. On the pages of the newspaper "Sovietskaya Rossia" the First of May celebrations were written up by Aza Lazurenko from Donetsk, Rostov Region (Russia) who explained how the pioneers and other young people marched together with their parents and all were carrying red flags of the USSR.
That means that Victory shall be ours! The sun of revolution shall rise high over our Motherland. But this victory shall not come by itself. For the happiness of our children, for their future, we must struggle and fight. We must return the Sun back to our children - for a happy youth - this is the main task of all Bolsheviks, all communist and socialist parties and movements... all of those that believe that labor must overcome and defeat capitalism.
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