The community of pioneer counselors in the representations of normative documents and periodicals (1922–1970)

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Introduction
The introduction of a new position of advisor to the director for education and interaction with children's public organizations raises the question of the range of job responsibilities, functions, professional tasks, and ethical standards for the activities of this category of persons. Some of these characteristics have already been defined in regulatory documents, but most of them are the result of the processes of professionalization (institutionalization) of the community. As sociologists note, this results in "an increase in the power, economic, and cultural resources of the professional group" [19, p. 321]. One of the professional tasks of the advisor is to coordinate the activities of children's organizations. In the Soviet school, this was done by pioneer counselors, so a study of the process of formation of the professional community of counselors in 1922 ̶ 1970 will allow not only to characterize the new historical plot, but also to highlight successful practices and determine the risks of professionalization of the created professional and pedagogical group. In defining the theoretical and methodological foundations of the study, the authors were guided by the position that professional communities are an important part of the social structure of any society, they participate in public discussions, act as experts, and organize interaction between a professional group and government bodies. One of the ways to understand the dynamics of community formation can be to study everyday life. This is also written about by the developers of the theory of social construction of reality P. Berger and T. Luckmann. Everyday life, due to repetition and typification, participates in the institutionalization of phenomena and processes. The conceptual apparatus of social constructivism includes the following concepts: "everyday world", "language of everyday encounters" (social interactions); "typical everyday actions", etc. [6]. Social constructivism distinguishes three stages of institutionalization. In relation to the subject of our study, they can be interpreted as follows: at the first stage, a community is formed under the influence of social and cultural processes; at the second stage, the community acts as an objective reality (part of the socio-professional structure); at the third stage, the community begins to actively influence a person, members of the professional community and society as a whole.
The stated theoretical framework allowed us to define the purpose of the article: to identify the features of the institutionalization of the pioneer counselor community in the representations of regulatory documents and periodicals (1922-1970). The upper limit of the study is set by the year of the creation of the pioneer organization (1922), the lower limit (1970) refers to the completion of the process of institutionalization of the community. The sources of the study are regulatory documents governing the requirements for counselors, the level and forms of education, areas of activity, and to study everyday life, the media will be used, which are undoubtedly part of everyday life, since they are characterized by repetition, mass character, speed of reflection of events, etc. To understand the specifics of the periodical press of the Soviet period, it is necessary to take into account that it was built (especially in the early years) on Leninist principles: class, party, Marxist ideology, nationality and truthfulness. Since these principles often conflicted with reality, the authors of the texts had to choose between ideology and truthfulness, class and nationality. Therefore, when analyzing the periodical press, we must consider this information in a scientific and socio-cultural context. The specified research framework defines the objectives of the article: disclosing the content of the process of formation of the camp counselor community under the influence of socio-cultural factors; describing its specifics and characteristics (as an objective reality); identifying the methods, means and results of the influence of the camp counselor community on the individual, group, society.
Research results:
The prospect of building a socialist society in a peasant country set the Bolshevik Party the task of educating a new person. One of the mechanisms for solving this problem was the communist organizations of youth (Komsomol) and children (Pioneers). The authority of scout organizations, interesting forms of work, their popularity among children and young people, led to the fact that these organizations served as an example for the creation of a pioneer organization (despite the fact that almost all the values, ideals and principles of activity underlying scouting were in conflict with the Bolshevik ideology). People's Commissar of Health N.A. Semashko in an interview in 1921 called scout leaders "a transmission mechanism between the adult part of society and the youth itself. These are the most talented young men and women who quickly learn "adult things" and transmit them in their native "youth" language to the masses of young people" [21, p. 1]. N.K. Krupskaya noted another important feature of the leaders: "despite all the regulation of the organization"The scout leaders leave a lot of room for children's independent activity" [18, p. 35]. The noted characteristics of the counselor community were attempted to be preserved in the pioneer organization.
At the V All-Russian Congress of the RKSM, the organizational framework, structure and psychological and pedagogical foundations of its activities were defined in the report on the children's movement. The resolution of the congress noted that "the wide development of the new movement is possible only with the preparation of communist leaders by organizing special courses and introducing RKSM members to practical work and life" [1, p. 345.].
The long-term nature of the institutionalization of the professional community of counselors was determined by the fact that, just like in scout organizations, the majority of pioneer counselors worked on a voluntary basis; this activity was a Komsomol assignment. Therefore, the stages of institutionalization of the community stretched out over decades. At the first stage (1922-1936), the specifics of the professional activities of pioneer leaders were determined by the objective conditions of the new organization's existence. Pioneer detachments were created at factories and plants that provided them with financial assistance. Detachments were assigned to Komsomol cells, which simplified the task of finding pioneer leaders; the principle was: "a pioneer detachment for every cell!" Later, it was transformed: "a pioneer for every Komsomol member!" [14, p. 47].
The results of the two-year work of the pioneer organization were presented in the resolution of the VI All-Union Congress of the RLKSM in 1924. In addition to the growth of the authority and number of members of the organization, some contradictions can be found in the text: the orientation towards the extra-curricular principle of forming detachments was maintained, it was stated that "the desire to merge the work of pioneers with school work in its current forms should be decisively rebuffed" [31]. However, the task set by the party - to make the children's organization mass, led to the creation of outposts in the school, which united pioneers of different detachments. The district department of the Komsomol appointed the leaders of these associations, who were necessarily included in the school council, participated in the management. In addition, the resolution of the congress defined the rules of uniformity (organizational forms, texts, rituals, symbols) of all regional and national branches, which in just a few years led to the bureaucratization and formalization of the organization's work. At the first stage, there was no effective system for finding suitable leaders for pioneer detachments. The professional community was small, vague and unstable. Therefore, the country's main newspapers joined in the propaganda of the camp counselor profession. A model camp counselor was a person close to the new government - ideologically (a Komsomol member) and socially (a proletarian). An article about such a camp counselor was published in the Pravda newspaper in 1925: “Worker Kindigeyeva is 19 years old. A Bashkir. A slender, beautiful girl. She works as a glassblower. Previously illiterate, now she reads and writes, conducts discussions, listens to lectures. The pioneers love their camp counselor very much. Children find it interesting with her…” [33, p.3]. The main method of education was an example (of real and mythological heroes). And a pioneer camp counselor had to not only involve children in various activities, but also become a model of acceptable (cultural, social, pedagogical) behavior and activity. What should a good camp counselor be able to do? In the summer, pioneer detachments set up tent camps in rural areas, where they not only rested, but also worked: “They expect pioneers to promote agricultural labor and innovations. The detachment leader, while working among the pioneers, is obliged to unite and attract to help the pioneer detachment all the cultural forces of the village: teachers, the hut, the delegate, the agronomist, the leading peasants, the paramedic, etc.” [26, p. 5]. That is, the pioneer leader himself had to show an example of cultural management in the village and be able to organize all the forces close to the Soviet power. The leader contributed to the involvement of children in socially approved activities, such activities included physical education and sports: “Physical education, like any other education in a detachment, in a link, is carried out by the leader who leads this primary cell, and depends on the training of the leader” [9, p. 1]. Despite the initial assumption that the main thing for a pioneer leader is ideology, already in the first decade of professional activity the media began to write about the need to organize special training for leaders: “It is necessary to develop a network of one-and-a-half-month courses for training leaders in cities and district centers. Include in the curriculum of all educational institutions (communist universities, Soviet party schools, pedagogical universities and pedagogical technical schools) a course on the theory and practice of pioneer work [28, p. 3]. Considering the importance of physical education of pioneers, they proposed: “Where it is possible to organize evening courses for training leaders, physical education councils should allocate good teaching staff for them,"providing the courses with premises and the necessary equipment" [9, p. 1].
At the first stage, the need for extensive specialized (pedagogical) education was not yet realized by the Komsomol leaders and the counselors themselves. The resolution of the Komsomol congress of 1926 spoke of two extremes in work - empty "chatter" and the rejection of bright forms, "dryness". The work often takes the form of a conversation, and adult forms of work (meetings, conferences) are transferred to the children's organization. This is confirmed by the story of Galina Mikhalchuk. In 1930, an employee of the editorial board of the magazine "Counselor" V. Usvetov contacted the Zapoblburo DKO YUP about helping the counselor in obtaining a referral to study at a pedagogical technical school or pedagogical university [12, L. 33]. The leadership of the district committee of the Komsomol did not support her request.
The need for special education was also pointed out by pioneer counselors. In 1931, the counselors of the city of Roslavl wrote in a collective appeal to the regional committee of the Komsomol: "We still do not know how to organize reasonable leisure for the pioneers, and this is extremely important" [13, p. 65]. The main idea of the authors is clearly traced in the extensive text of the letter - they are not taught to work with children.
In the absence of special education for most counselors, methodological materials acquired special importance. They appeared already in the first years of work. The peculiarity of these texts is direct and often naive propaganda, which they tried to integrate into all types of activity. For example, in 1923, a manual on games with pioneers in the winter was published, which included such games as "Pursuit", "Trial of a revolutionary", "Escape from hard labor", "Factory owners and workers", etc. [14, p. 32]. In addition, the pioneers took part in all "adult" affairs of the Komsomol. The report of the Yartsevo District Committee of the Komsomol on work with pioneers for August-September 1924 listed the types of activities of pioneer detachments, including: reading newspapers, staging plays, publishing wall newspapers, anti-religious propaganda among pioneer families, a living newspaper, excursions, work in the village, etc. [14, p. 43]. The report also mentions another area of work of the counselors - introducing pioneers to hygiene standards (collective washing in the bathhouse). That is, pioneer counselors were part of a modernist project, as a result of which the agrarian society had to master new cultural norms. Psychological and pedagogical education of counselors was carried out by the magazine "Counselor", created in 1924. In conditions of a shortage of methodological materials, it played an important role in the activities of the counselor community [20]. The peculiarity of the texts in the mass media in the 1920-30s was that they not only promoted the best counselors and their practices, but also necessarily pointed out the problems of counselors, the most common of which were the social composition was blurred, turnover, and the lack of people willing to work as counselors. This situation was also associated with financial problems. E.A. Tsygankova provides excerpts from letters to the editors of the magazine "Counselor", in which counselors wrote about their difficult financial situation (magazine "Counselor". 1926, No. 18; No. 20) [53]. This is also confirmed by archival materials [14]. The second stage of institutionalization (1936-1950) for pioneer counselors is associated with the transition of the children's public organization to schools, which made it possible to significantly increase the number of both the organization and the community of counselors. At the 10th Congress of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League (April 11-21, 1936), a resolution was adopted "On the Work of Komsomol Organizations in Primary and Basic Schools." The resolution not only established the practice of creating pioneer detachments on the basis of schools as a norm, but also placed the fight for good studies and exemplary behavior of pioneers and schoolchildren at the center of pioneer work. The resolution acknowledged the shortage of pioneer leaders in many detachments and proposed selecting for this work: "advanced Komsomol members familiar with the basics of pedagogy, who love physical education, know literature, technology and who show examples of behavior for children by their personal example" [34, p. 557]. In order to improve the professionalism of the leaders, the task was set to create permanent regional, territorial, and republican schools for training pioneer leaders.
The arrival of the pioneer organization on the basis of schools led to rapid quantitative growth. In his speech, S.E. Zakharov, the second secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, provided data on the size of the pioneer organization at the 18th Party Congress (1939): “If by the 17th Party Congress we had 154,414 pioneer detachments, which included about 7 million pioneers, then by the 18th Party Congress we already had 350,402 pioneer detachments with 11 million pioneers” [4, p. 126]. Almost every detachment had a leader, so it is easy to count the army of leaders at that time. As we have proven in our works, the main factor in the formation of the pedagogical community of Western Siberia was professional education [36]. This conclusion is confirmed by the history of pioneer leaders. It is at the second stage that the need for a special psychological and pedagogical system is realized. ical training of counselors, decrees, decisions and numerous texts are published in the media.
The first and most common form of training and advanced training of counselors were seminars, but the public was not satisfied with the methods of their implementation, for example in the Moscow region, which was recorded in the regional press: “The main form of work with counselors is seminars, where issues of creative work of the detachment and link are resolved, in most cases turn into ordinary meetings on “pumping up”. And seminars should really become a school in which the counselor would receive practical advice and qualified instructions. The best pioneer workers and teachers should be involved in conducting seminars, it is necessary to widely expand the exchange of experience, pedagogical propaganda” [25, p. 1]. Similar complaints were made in the Urals: “The practice of training senior pioneer leaders at seminars at district committees of the Komsomol, which existed until now, has turned into drilling leaders for “another campaign” and does not ensure a systematic increase in knowledge and acquisition of skills necessary for working with young pioneers” [24, p. 3]. Despite the obvious shortcomings, seminars remained the most popular platform (the easiest to organize, mass). At the second stage, their work was made permanent. For example, in 1939, a decision was made by the Smolensk regional committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League to hold seminars with senior city leaders twice a month, with freed detachment leaders - once a month [14, p. 140]. Another traditional form of training (longer in duration) were schools for leaders, which at the second stage became a regular occurrence. Back in 1936, a decision was made to reorganize the permanent regional, territorial and republican schools for senior counselors into schools with a one-year training period, and to open additional such schools in large cities. Despite these decisions, it was not possible to seriously improve the situation with the counselor staff. The lack of pedagogical education and the frequent turnover of counselors led to the search for ways to continuously train this group. In 1942, the Central Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League issued a resolution on the shortcomings of the pioneer organization. The Central Committee proposed a new program for working with counselors. It was believed that a counselor should be an example, so control and daily care for them were necessary. As part of the implementation of this resolution, counselor training sessions were held in various cities. As noted in one of the articles: “In Omsk, 99 counselors were trained, and lectures were given to them by propagandists and responsible party workers.” And then the correspondent writes that in addition to training sessions, a daily exchange of experience is needed [27, p. 3]. In 1944, the 12th Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League once again decided that permanent schools for pioneer group leaders should be created without interruption from work. Unified programs for training leaders were approved at the all-Union and regional levels. The newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda cited data that in the fall of 1944, according to unified programs, the following were held: “10-day training camps for senior pioneer leaders; regional, republican and inter-republican schools for training and retraining senior leaders should begin by October 15” [23, p. 1]. In addition, newspapers and Komsomol forums voiced proposals and discussed options for training senior leaders in correspondence and evening pedagogical institutes and technical schools. The regional media proposed to minimize the lack of systematic training of leaders organized during this period through self-education. The newspaper correspondent even cited the names of the leaders who “do not work on raising their political level, do not study military affairs, do not engage in physical education and sports” [24, p. 3]. A special magazine, “Leader,” was oriented toward the self-education of pioneer leaders. The magazine had a special section, “To help the novice leader.” For example, in issue 7-8 for 1939, three articles were published in this section: “Young Pioneers,” “On detachment gatherings,” and “Detachment Council” [11]. But that same year, the head of the Moscow Komsomol criticized the magazine for “insufficiently covering the issues of pioneer leaders’ leadership in the communist education of children in connection with the decisions of the 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), and providing little help to them in mastering the art of pedagogy” [25, p. 1]. As we have already noted, at the second stage of institutionalization, the professional community acts as a community, it takes its place in the social structure. This is confirmed by the analysis of the media: the editorial of the newspaper Pravda on July 20, 1939 noted: “Comrade Zhdanov, speaking at the extraordinary congress of the CPSU, said that in a pioneer detachment the leader is the central figure in the communist education of children” [7, p. 3]. Such words about the leader at the level of the party elite raise the question: to what extent did the ordinary leader correspond to this high rank? In Zhdanov’s speech, in addition to the potential educational resources of the leaders, criticism is expressed. The speech was about summer camp leaders, but his words fromalso applied to pioneer counselors: "senior counselors and even the heads (of the camps) are people who have not yet reached the age of majority; many of the pioneer counselors are people with insufficient general educational, pedagogical and political training, therefore "they often cannot answer the basic questions that pioneers have" [7, p. 3]. In an article by the leader of the Moscow Komsomol M. Pegov, claims were also made not only to the counselors, but also to the Komsomol organizations: "at the 1st State Bearing Plant named after L. M. Kaganovich, out of 75 pioneer counselors allocated by the Komsomol committee, 23 did not work in schools at all. The counselors say that it is difficult for them to work, since the Komsomol committee does not help. In the Gaivoronovskaya school in the Moscow region, there were no detachment counselors throughout the year. Collective conversations in the detachments were not held. Mass political work at school is unsatisfactory. However, the Leninsky District Committee of the Komsomol has not been interested in the state of work at school until recently” [25, p.1]. Similar problems were pointed out by authors of articles from different regions. E.O. Kolpakova, a teacher at the Lipetsk school, confirmed the shortage of counselors and the lack of attention to this problem on the part of regional Komsomol organizations: “since the beginning of the school year, the principal of School No. 13 has been looking for a counselor, but there is only a full school for counselors, so there is hope for Komsomol production workers.” Such counselors should be sought by the city committee of the Komsomol. But as she notes: “Previously, the city committee of the Komsomol resolved issues of pioneer work in a meeting. This did not produce the desired results. But after the restructuring of Komsomol work, the city committee of the Komsomol unexpectedly stopped doing pioneer work altogether” [16, p.2]. I. Andreev from Tula wrote about the problems of his region in 1943: “The instruction of the Central Committee of the Komsomol on the selection, assignment and training of counselors in the Tula region has not been fulfilled. It is here, first of all, that we must look for the reasons for the greatest shortcomings in the work of the pioneer squads. The turnover of counselors has not been eliminated. Of the 163 senior counselors, only 58 have worked for more than a year. The general educational and pedagogical training of counselors leaves much to be desired. Among them, you can find people who are not suitable for working with children” [5, p. 4]. The authors of these articles proposed different ways to solve the problem: ideological: “immediately staff the cadre of counselors, educating Komsomol members in the awareness of the importance and responsibility of the work of raising children entrusted to the Komsomol by the Party. The best, most cultured Komsomol members who respect and love children must be sent to work as counselors” [25, p. 1]. Methodological: "(leaders) need to be systematically trained, equipped with pioneer work methods, taught to use relevant literature, monitored, and the experience of the best disseminated [16, p.2]. Management: "The head of the Tula regional education department, Comrade Savanyuk, who spoke at the meeting, proposed that all leaders who do not have a pedagogical education enroll in the correspondence department of a pedagogical institute or pedagogical school. The regional Komsomol committee should support this proposal and help leaders obtain a pedagogical education without interrupting their work [5, p.4].
Awareness of the importance of improving the pedagogical training of leaders and the limited number of suitable personnel in Komsomol organizations led to the issuance of resolutions on involving teachers in this activity. In the resolution of the bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League of September 15, 1942, "On major shortcomings in the work of pioneer organizations and measures to correct these shortcomings," it was noted that district, city and regional committees of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League did not provide leadership to pioneer leaders. The Central Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League obliged the Komsomol committees of various levels to strengthen the cadre of pioneer leaders by recruiting teachers and the best Komsomol activists. Another way to solve the personnel problem during the war was to involve war veterans: "Komsomol organizations should widely involve military and sports organizations, participants in the Patriotic War, war veterans, in a word, everyone who is able to help educate pioneers in the spirit of strict military ideology" [17, p. 1].
This resolution also defined the areas of responsibility of leaders and teachers: "the pioneer leader of the detachment and the class teacher appoint leaders of links, members of the headquarters and the chief of headquarters of the detachment. The school principal, together with the VLKSM committee of the primary organization, approves the members of the headquarters and the chief of the headquarters of the pioneer squad” [17, p. 1]. This approach made the school principal a participant and organizer of pioneer and Komsomol work at the school. Newspapers began to promote the attitude that “a bad school principal is one who does not care about the work of the senior counselor” [23, p. 1]. Numerous decrees, various forms of training and advanced training could not seriously affect the educational level of the counselor staff. L. Pomerantseva, the director of a Moscow school, wrote in an article in the summer of 1945: “Most counselors are self-taught. Those who train counselors are nobodies. They are graduates of grades 7-8, do not have anypedagogical or general education training, are inferior to high school students, cannot be an authority for them." Ignorance of the methodology of working with pioneers, the peculiarities of child psychology, leads to formalism in work. And the existing forms of training counselors do not solve the problem. The author suggests: "to create departments for training counselors in pedagogical schools. For executives, open departments in pedagogical institutes. For those already working, oblige them to study by correspondence, continuously improve their qualifications" [29, p. 1]. Thus, the result of the second stage of institutionalization of the professional community was its quantitative growth, recognition by the state, society, and the pedagogical community of the importance of this activity and awareness of the need for special (psychological and pedagogical) and systematic training for successful educational work. The network of seminars and schools for camp counselors that had become stable in the regions created a permanent basis for communication within the community, and the development of specialized mass media (primarily the magazine "Counselor") created the basis for the formation of the image of a camp counselor, his functionality, qualification characteristics and principles of activity. At the third stage (1950 - 1970), the professional community began to influence not only the pioneers, but also the Soviet society. The characteristics of the community that developed at the second stage had a destructive effect on the educational effects of the pioneer organization. The popular attitude of the time - "not to wash dirty linen in public" - led to the fact that newspapers largely embellished the picture of everyday school life, creating a myth about pioneer life. The exception was articles that illustrated the conclusions of regulatory documents; they criticized what was said at Komsomol and party forums. The resolution of the 12th Congress of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League "On the Management of Pioneer Work" highlighted the problems of the pioneers, the main one of which was the transfer of forms of educational work to the pioneer organization. The newspaper "Evening Moscow" for 1954 cited excerpts from the resolution of the congress, which, in particular, said that many pioneer leaders give the order to monitor academic performance, check homework; "subject assemblies" have become a practice, at which school topics are studied [3]. In addition, the text also highlighted the traditional problems of the personnel of the leaders: frequent turnover of leaders; their absence in a number of schools; low level of general education. But the options for solving the problems proposed in the resolution were reduced to general words: "select the best Komsomol members to work as leaders of circles and sections. Politically literate Komsomol members, skilled organizers who love working with children should be selected to work as leaders. "The full-time counselors should be people with a pedagogical education" [34, p. 140]. The scale of the problem is confirmed by the only real mechanism: to increase the authority of senior counselors, they proposed to introduce a badge that was awarded to those who worked at the school for more than three years - "To the best pioneer counselor!" That is, a counselor's experience of three years was a unique case. The loss of touch with reality is illustrated by the resolution of the XIV Congress of the Komsomol, held in 1962. In the section on the work of the Komsomol in school, there is no mention of the experience of the communard movement. But it was in 1962 that it gained all-Russian fame and was an original attempt to revive pioneer life, immerse children and adults in a real, interesting, creative work. Nevertheless, already in 1965 the all-Union experiment was completed, the communard clubs stopped receiving support from the Komsomol bodies. An analysis of the materials of the Komsomol congresses and plenary sessions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League held in 1962-70 shows that the resolutions of these forums repeat the contents of the sections on the work of the Komsomol with the pioneer organization, containing many cliches, such as: "it is necessary to persistently improve the content, forms and methods of pioneer work." They contain little substantive information about the work of counselors. Even the special Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League in 1967, the central document of which was the resolution "On further improving the activities of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League in leading the All-Union Pioneer Organization named after V.I. Lenin", naming the shortcomings of the counselor corps, uses the formulas: "in a number of cases", "sometimes": "Until now, the turnover of counselor personnel is high, in a number of cases their general educational level and methodological qualifications are low" [34, p. 408]. The resolution proposed continuing the training of counselors through regular seminars and schools.
The problems noted were voiced at the All-Union Congress of Teachers (1968). In the speech of the senior pioneer leader T. Konovalova from Novokuibyshevsk, Novosibirsk Region, they were expressed in the form of a request: “Ask the Ministry of Education to pay more attention to the training of pioneer leaders. After all, it is impossible to raise a real organizer of pioneer work in year-old classes. And there is a lack of methodological literature on working with pioneers, let them help us!” [22, p.5]. The completion of the institutionalization of the community was confirmed by the emergence of their own platforms for professional communication of pioneer counselors. Publications of the 1970s contain information about various gatherings, congresses of pioneer counselors at the national and regional levels. But these gatherings are presented in the media as festive events, an informational occasion to remind society about this professional group. For example, in 1972, on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the pioneer organization, a gathering of pioneer counselors of the city of Moscow was held. A small note provides the number of counselors: "in Moscow there are 1,200 senior and several thousand squad counselors" [8, p. 1]. In 1976, the First All-Union Meeting of Pioneer Counselors was held, the Izvestia newspaper traditionally notes that there are already 120,000 counselors in the country [15, p. 2]. The welcoming speeches at the congress were made by the Minister of Education of the USSR, and a greeting from L.I. Brezhnev was read, in which the leader was called a "children's commissar". Information texts about the congress confirm the increased social status of the leaders: "among the delegates of the meeting there are leaders who have been awarded government awards "For Labor Distinction" and "For Labor Valor". It was noted that "almost all the leaders of the Moscow squads have secondary or higher pedagogical education. Many are studying" [32, p. 1]. The search for interesting forms of professional training continued. The newspaper "Evening Moscow" stated that classes of the University of Pioneer Leaders had begun in the city palace of pioneers and schoolchildren, the university has 15 faculties. It was organized by the Komsomol, the Research Institute for Problems of Education of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR and the Higher Komsomol School under the Central Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League [10, p. 1]. In addition, in order to attract the best Komsomol members to work as counselors, initiation into counselors was held in Moscow, and counselors were given Komsomol vouchers [30, p. 1].
Research conclusions
The conducted retrospective analysis of the history of the formation of the professional community of pioneer counselors showed that in 1922-1970 it went through the process of institutionalization (professionalization). In the logic of social constructivism, three stages were distinguished in this process: at the first stage (1922-1935), the professional community was formed, the composition of counselors was unstable, poorly trained, poorly understanding the tasks, methods and means of educational activities. At the second stage (1936-1950), due to the final consolidation of the pioneer organization in the school, there was a rapid quantitative growth of the community, a professional core of freed counselors began to form within it, forms of professional training (seminars, counselor schools) were established and became permanent, opportunities for continuous professional growth and exchange of effective practices expanded (activation of the journal "Counselor", development of methodological literature). At the third stage (1950-70), the significance of pioneer counselors in the education of children and youth was finally recognized at the state and societal level. As a special professional group (pedagogical and ideological), it received its own platforms for professional communication (congresses, camp counselor meetings), professional distinctions, etc. Disclosure of the content of the process of institutionalization of the professional community of camp counselors, based on regulatory documents and materials of the periodical press, allows us to assert that many problems of the pioneer organization were determined by the generic features of the camp counselor community (instability of composition, intermediate position in the pedagogical community, insufficient psychological, pedagogical and methodological training, gradual bureaucratization and formalization of activities).

About the authors

Mikhail K. Churkin

Omsk State Pedagogical University

Author for correspondence.
Email: proffchurkin@yandex.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-1122-0928

Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor

Russian Federation, Omsk

Natalia I. Churkina

Omsk State Pedagogical University

Email: n_churkina@mail.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0001-7722-2427

Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences, Associate Professor

Russian Federation, Omsk

References

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