Pavlik Morozov, supposedly killed by "kulak" relatives for denouncing his father to Stalin's secret police (OGPU-NKVD), was adopted as a patron saint by the "Young Pioneers," the Soviet equivalent to the "Boy Scouts." His life exemplified the duty of all good Soviet citizens to become informers, even at the expense of family ties.

The photo (right) shows a famous statue of Pavlik Morozov, in a park named for him in Moscow, in the Krasnaya Presnya district about 2 kilometers west of the Kremlin. He is holding a flag. When the photo was taken in 1990, the park was immaculately maintained. I do not know if it has since been renamed, or if Pavlik's statue has been removed. More recent information would be welcome.

Contents

Yuri Druzhnikov's account, Informer 001 (1994)

Catriona Kelly's account, Comrade Pavlik (2005)

Additional references

at this site
at other sites

Druzhnikov claims that surprisingly few hard facts about Morozov are generally known. Original source documents do not exist; even museums had only "pictures, books and newspaper clippings" [p. viii]. Below are some points selected from Druzhnikov's book:

(1) Uncontroversial: Pavlik Morozov lived and died in the agricultural village of Gerasimovka, 60 kilometers [p. 22] from the district center Tavda. Tavda itself is in westernmost Siberia, a half day's train ride on a branch line ENE from Ekaterinburg.

(2) Nicknamed "Pasha" during his life, Pavel Trofimovich Morozov only received the nickname "Pavlik" from Soviet government propagandists after his death [p. 16].

(3) In 1932, Pavel was the oldest child (age 14?) of Trofim Sergeevich Morozov, elected chairman of the village council, and Tatyana Morozova. Other children were Aleksei (age 10), Fyodor (age 8), and Roman (age 4) [p. xi]. After about 10 years of marriage, Trofim had moved out to live with a mistress, Nina Amosova [p. 18]. This was unusual, but many villagers sympathized with the popular Trofim (thrice elected village chairman [pp. 27-28]), rather than Tatyana, widely disliked [pp. 18, 152].

(4) Pavel denounced only his father Trofim to Soviet authorities, not his mother Tatyana. Indeed, Druzhnikov makes the surprising revelation that Tatyana herself was the mastermind of the denunciation. She wanted to pressure her husband to leave his mistress, and return to her and the children [p. 19].

(5) It is unclear for what "crime" Trofim was denounced and sent to prison [pp. 20-24]. The story varied according to the needs of Collectivization and other Stalinist campaigns against the people. One version is that he provided documents to exiled peasants ("kulaks"), that allowed them to return home to European Russia [p. 20].

(6) Pavel's killing did not directly follow from the arrest and deportation of his father Trofim to a prison camp [p. 35]. Pavel lived for another year or two. Supposedly, he heroically set up a Bolshevist informer network against "kulak" activity in Gerasimovka, but the stories of both his informing and the investigation of his killing are full of contradictions [pp. 36-43]. Druzhnikov even considers it possible that a Soviet agent might have killed him, for use (like Sergei M. Kirov two years later) as a timely martyr [pp. 89-95].
Pavlik's younger brother Fyodor was killed with him [pp. 5-6], but was not widely publicized as a second martyr.

(6) On 25 November 1932 [p. 1], a 4-day [p. 11] show trial of Pavlik's accused murderers (Trofim's relatives) was held in Tavda [pp. 1-11]. Pavlik's grandfather Sergei was tortured by interrogators [p. 74], but perhaps not systematically enough to stick to his scripted admission of guilt through the trial [pp. 74-75]. Four defendants were found guilty (despite what Druzhnikov considers a complete lack of solid evidence) and quickly shot [p. 11]. Pavlik's father Trofim seems to have been quietly done away with in his remote labor camp soon after [pp. 31-32], but there is no hard evidence.

(7) Pavlik's mother Tatyana was and still is disliked in her native Gerasimovka [p. 152]. Stalin gave her a pension and a resort home in the Crimea, where she lived until her death in 1983.

(8) One of her surviving sons, Roman, died of wounds from World War II [p. 152]. The other, Aleksei, was convicted of espionage and imprisoned 1941-1951. The charge sounds implausible to Druzhnikov, who reports a relative's belief that Aleksei had made himself thoroughly unpopular among his Soviet Air Force comrades as a pushy "brother of a Pioneer hero." Supposedly they got him drunk, planted him with secret photographs, and called in SMERSH counterintelligence investigators [p. 153]. Whatever the facts of the case, this embarrassing deviation was carefully concealed by the Soviet press [p.153].

Russian security organs (the FSB) allowed Catriona Kelly to research the official case file (two fat volumes) of the Morozov murders and prosecution. To locate it, she needed a long period of both "sleuthing" and "good luck" (p. xxviii). When FSB finally invited her in to see it (and even publish extracts from it), they set no conditions (though they had been made aware through "friends of friends" that she had no obvious agenda to mock this part of the Soviet past). She surmised FSB decided that since Druzhnikov's anti-Soviet interpretation was already in the public domain, there was nothing to lose by telling what they knew.
Transcription of the cover of Volume 2 of the Morozov case file: morozov-file.html.

Among Kelly's conclusions:

(1) Pavlik Morozov (and his brother Fedya) were murdered by locals, as Soviet authorities claimed.
(a) Kelly dismisses Druzhnikov's suggestion a CheKa-OGPU provocateur did the murders to created an artificial martyr. Although the KGB was capable of such subtlety in Druzhnikov's own time (the 1970s), their Chekist predecessors acted more directly in the early 1930s.

(b) The description of the crime scene, with no proper attempt to hide the evidence, suggests the impulsive act of a teenager. Kelly apparently suspects Pavlik's 19-year-old cousin Danila Ivanovich Morozov, one of those who confessed, was tried, and executed. While Stalin's OGPU-NKVD would routinely torture if necessary to get confessions, Danila's confession sounded plausible.

There had been some bitter quarreling among different branches of the Morozov clan, though Kelly does not see it as a "kulak" issue of political significance. She notes that the Tavda area was habitually violent, even murderous. Kelly is doubtful about (late-arising) claims that Pavlik was running a "Young Pioneer" cell.

(2) Kelly shares Western disdain for Stalin's Collectivization (1929-32), a murderously destructive war on the peasantry. In particular, poverty was universal in the Tavda area, rendering the concept of "kulaks" (rich peasants, who exploit their poorer neighbors) meaningless.

(3) The case file, while weak on forensics to pinpoint the guilty, was well-padded with denunciations for "kulak" propensities, hearsay, and letters from Young Pioneer organizations demanding the supreme measure.

(4) The decision to make Pavlik a national martyr for Collectivization (and other revolutionary struggles) came from the center (Moscow), from both the "Young Pioneer" bureaucracy and celebrated author Maxim Gorki. Comrade Stalin had little to do with it.

Kelly took issue with a simple equation of Pavlik Morozov's cult with informing and Stalinist repression.
(1) Those ex-Soviets who admitted to admiring Pavlik put him in a larger context of sacrifice to defend one's country. His cult would fade somewhat, however, after the Great Patriotic War (1941-45) provided child martyrs in a more unambiguously heroic context.

(2) Kelly notes that child-denouncers are sometimes admired in the West (pp. 9-10), eg:

(a) Sex crimes: child pornography; also child abuse of the denouncer.
In this context, I (HSC) can't resist noting that some such denunciations (eg "repressed memories" of repeated traumatic abuse) turn out to be false, generated by destructive varieties of quack psychotherapy.

(b) drug offenses: Here Kelly failed to note that child-informers are often an embarrassment for government Drug-Warriors, allowing libertarians to point out the analogy to Stalinism.

Kelly compared Pavlik's cult with that of some other child-martyrs:
(1) Hitlerjunge Quex --

A fictional hero-child of the Hitler Youth. A film directed by Hans Steinhoff (1933) was even more popular than the original book by Karl Aloys Schenzinger (1932).

12(?)-year old Heini Völker defies his drunken, abusive Communist father to join a Hitler Youth chapter, even warning them of a planned Communist bomb attack. He still loves his mother, but she turns out to be weak-willed, ducking family tensions by poisoning herself and her child (but he survived). Only in the Hitler Youth does Heini find the fellowship and direction he needs.
He becomes a valued courier, so fast delivering messages that he is compared to quicksilver ("Quecksilber"), hence his Party nickname "Quex." He is finally ambushed and mortally wounded by Communists. Found by Hitler Youth comrades, he is heard humming the Hitler Youth anthem with his dying breath.

Kelly points out that Moscow-based drivers of the Pavlik Morozov cult were certainly aware of Hitlerjunge Quex. But both Nazis and Soviet Communists may have borrowed a child-martyr tradition of German Communists in the 1920s.

(2) The Tsarevich Dmitry, allegedly murdered by Boris Godunov ca. 1591 CE.

(3) The Romanov children shot by the Bolsheviks in 1918, especially Tsarevich Aleksei.

Kelly recognizes that all authorized publications in Soviet Russia reviled the Romanovs. Nevertheless, there was an unofficial martyrology that the Pavlik cult, in part, might counter.

(4) The Beilis case
In 1911, 13-year-old schoolboy Aleksei Yushchinsky was murdered in Kiev. Local police found local criminal suspects, but antisemites in the Tsarist government took over the case, concocting an absurd "ritual murder" charge against an innocent Jew, Mendel Beilis.

Pavlik Morozov's home village of Gerasimovka still has a Pavlik Morozov museum, though now it is only open on appointment. A monument was also raised in the woods outside, near where he was murdered, though it shows signs of neglect.

Kelly's book provides an extensive bibliography of Soviet literature about Pavlik. Among notable references were:

(1) Pavel Solomein
Solomein, a young journalist, extensively covered the Morozov murders for the Sverdlovsk Pioneer organ Dawns of the Commune. He actually came to Gerasimovka and conducted extensive interviews, used both in his articles and in a later (1933) book, the first biography of Pavlik.

(2) Sergei Eisenstein's film Bezhin Lug ("Bezhin Meadow") (1936).
Kelly notes that the child actor playing Pavlik was a glowing blonde cherub, much like Hitlerjunge Quex. Most accounts claim the actual Pavlik had dark hair.

"Theories of totalitarianism are not so much incorrect as simply irrelevant to most of what went on in Germany or the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Each government wanted to control its people, totally if possible. But that desire must not be confused with what actually happened. ... Developing respectable adults meant placing responsibility for children's upbringing in the hands of the family, and this in turn meant that loyalty to the family had to be encouraged."
--Robert W. Thurston (a moderate "Revisionist"), "Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934-1941, Yale University Press, 1996; pp. xvii-xviii.

at this site

Make your own denunciation here!

A seventh-grade textbook warns students to beware of a "wolf in sheep's clothing."

A laudatory Stalin-era review of a children's play about Pavlik Morozov.

Alexandrov and Alymov, "Song About a Hero-Pioneer" (Pavlik Morozov). [So far, only the words are provided. We hope to add the music later.]

Visit the Pavlik Morozov Fan club (still under construction)

at other sites

Pekka Lehto and Beatrix A. Wood made a file documentary about Pavlik in 1997, titled "Boy Hero 001." A description of the film is given in the "Human Rights Watch International" website:
http://www.hrw.org/iff-98/films98/boy.htm

On 21 Jan 2003, we found a Russian version of Druzhnikov's book posted at URL:
http://lib.ru/PROZA/DRUZHNIKOV/morozow.txt
We do not know if it had the author's permission.

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