How Lenin banned the Boy Scouts and replaced them with a state-run cult—now rebuilt by Putin

When Vladimir Lenin outlawed the Boy Scouts in 1920, he was eliminating more than a youth organization. He was erasing an idea—that young people could learn to think independently, act with conscience, and serve their communities outside the control of the state. The Boy Scouts, with their emphasis on self-reliance, moral development, and public service, were everything Lenin feared: a foundation for free citizens, not obedient subjects.

The Scouting movement had reached Russia in the early 1900s and quickly gained popularity. Inspired by the global movement founded by British Army officer Robert Baden-Powell, Russian Scouts embraced values like independence, cooperation, and non-political service to society. They learned survival skills, teamwork, first aid, and leadership—not ideology.

That was unacceptable to Lenin. The Scouts fostered civic spirit; he wanted class loyalty. The Scouts taught critical thinking; he demanded doctrinal obedience. In 1920, the Bolsheviks banned the movement, labeling it a tool of the bourgeoisie. In its place, they created something far more insidious: the Young Pioneers.

Formed in 1922, the Young Pioneer Organization was a mass indoctrination machine disguised as a youth group. It borrowed the structure and outward symbolism of the Scouts—uniforms, salutes, pledges—but its mission was entirely political. Children as young as nine were conscripted into the Pioneers to be raised not as citizens, but as servants of the Communist Party.

The Pioneers taught loyalty to Lenin and Stalin, glorification of the Soviet state, and suspicion of independent thought. Children were trained to report anti-Soviet behavior—including from their own parents. Instead of helping the community, they learned to help the regime. Red neckerchiefs replaced Scout scarves, symbolizing not service, but ideological blood sacrifice.

The Pioneers served as a feeder system into the Komsomol (Young Communist League), and from there into the ranks of the military, the Party, and the repressive apparatus of the Soviet state. Youth weren’t prepared for life—they were prepared for obedience, for war, for the suppression of others.

This was not accidental. Lenin understood that to control the future, you must first control the minds of the young. The Pioneers weren’t about development. They were about control. They existed to destroy individuality, to silence dissent before it could even form.

The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, but its methods did not vanish. Under Vladimir Putin, the logic of the Pioneers has returned. In 2022, the Kremlin launched a new youth movement called the Movement of the First (Движение первых), designed to replicate the structure and purpose of the Pioneers for the 21st century.