Komsomol Udarnik Lenin pin, USSR, 1974

Details

Pin from the USSR, 1974

What do these letters depict?

The All-Union Leninist Young Communist League (Russian: Всесоюзный ленинский коммунистический союз молодёжи (ВЛКСМ), usually known as Komsomol, a syllabic abbreviation of the Russian Коммунистический Союз Молодёжи (Kommunisticheskiy Soyuz Molodyozhi), was a political youth organization in the Soviet Union. It is sometimes described as the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), although it was officially independent and referred to as "the helper and the reserve of the CPSU".

The Komsomol in its earliest form was established in urban areas in 1918. During the early years, it was a Russian organization, known as the Russian Young Communist League, or RKSM. During 1922, with the unification of the USSR, it was reformed into an all-union agency, the youth division of the All-Union Communist Party.

It was the final stage of three youth organizations with members up to age 28, graduated at 14 from the Young Pioneers, and at nine from the Little Octobrists.

An Udarnik was a so called "shock worker"; a super-productive worker in the Soviet Union and the other countries from the Eastern Bloc.

So, someone at the Komsomol was a real hard worker in 1974 to get this pin!

Found this little piece of history in Bulgaria.

Tags: pin, lapel pin, znachki, badge, collectible