Pavlik Morozov
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Pavel Trofimovich Morozov (November 14, 1918 - September 3, 1932), better known by diminutive Pavlik or Pavka, was a Soviet youth glorified by the Soviet Union propaganda as a martyr. His story, dated to 1932, is that of a 13-year old boy who denounced his father to the authorities and was in turn killed by his family. It was a Soviet morality tale: opposing the state was selfish and reactionary, and state was more important than family. His story was a subject of compulsory children radings, songs, plays, a symphonic poem, a full-length opera and six biographies. There is very little orginal evidence related to the story, much of it a hearsay provided by second-hand witnesses. According to modern research, the story (denauciation, trial) is most likely a fictional tale, although there is little doubt that Pavlik was a real child who was murdered in some domestic quarrel.
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The story
The most popuar account of the story is as follows: born to poor peasants in Gerasimovka, a small village near Yekaterinburg, Morozov was a dedicated communist who led the Young Pioneers at his school, and a supporter of Stalin's collectivization of farms. In 1932, at age 13, Morozov reported his father to the NKVD. Supposedly, Morozov's father had been forging documents, selling them to rich peasants. The elder Morozov was sentenced to ten years in a labor camp, and although his fate thereafter is unknown, it is thought that he did not long survive. However, Pavlik's family did not take kindly to his activities: on September 3 of that year, his uncle, grandfather, grandmother and a cousin murdered him, along with his younger brother. They were rounded up by the NKVD and convicted in a trial.
Thousands of telegrams from all over the Soviet Union urged the judge to show no mercy for Pavlik's killers. The Soviet government declared Pavlik Morozov a glorious martyr who had been murdered by reactionaries. Statues of him were built, and numerous schools and youth groups were named in his honour. An opera and numerous songs were written about him. Gerasimovka's school, which Morozov attended, became a shrine and children from all over the Soviet Union came on school excursions to visit it.
Fabricated?
It has been suggested since the collapse of the Soviet Union that Pavlik Morozov may not have been as perfect as it was supposed. Catriona Kelly in her 2005 book Comrade Pavlik: The Rise and Fall of a Soviet Boy Hero makes it clear that the official version of the account is almost wholly bogus, the evidence sketchy and based mostly on second-hand reports by alleged witnesses, and that Pavlik did not snitch on his parents and was murdered after a mundane squabble. Kelly also shows how the official version's emphasis shifted to suit the changing times and propaganda lines: in some accounts, Pavlik's father's crime was not forging the documents, but hoarding grain; in others, he was denounced not to the secret police, but to the school-teacher. The one surviving photograph of him shows a malnourished child, who bears almost no resemblance to the statues and pictures in children's books. It has also been said that he was nearly illiterate and was coerced to inform on his father by his mother, after Pavlik's father deserted the family.
There is, however, no doubt that Pavlik was a real person. According to Dmitry Prokupyanko, an 86-year-old war veteran, who went to school with Pavlik, "he was a hero, very brave, very clever. He was perfect. We used to pick mushrooms and catch fish together. Now everybody just wants to spit on his memory."
Yuri Druzhnikov performed an investigation, met with surviving eyewitnesses, and wrote a documentary book about Pavlik in mid-1980s. It was printed by samizdat and translated into several languages. (Юрий Дружников, Доносчик 001, или Вознесение Павлика Морозова)
Reference
- Death in Taiga: Soviet Childhood (http://economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=4032697), The Economist, Jun 2 2005, last accessed on 18 Jun 2005
- Yuri Druzhnikov, Informer 001: The Myth of Pavlik Morozov, Transaction Publishers, 1996.
- Catriona Kelly, Comrade Pavlik: The Rise and Fall of a Soviet Boy Hero, Granta Books, 2005,
External links
- Soviet Hero Pavlik Morozov Still Mysterious (http://english.pravda.ru/main/18/90/363/10951_morozov.html)
- Squalid truth of Stalin's little martyr (http://hnn.us/readcomment.php?id=27304)