The Youth Guard Chapter 3 Summary

What follows Chapter 3 is an analysis of the youth acceptance of contemporary heroic literature represented by The Youth Guard. The protagonists in this novel were widely welcomed because of their devotion to the motherland and their shared background with the majority of readers. Although the state planned to use this novel to create the image of perfect Soviet heroes, the youths were more interested in the romance among the major figures. The state was also alerted to the importance of private organizations, the role of female fighters, the absence of the party, and the wartime trauma in this book. The state-directed editions that addressed the issues mentioned above never enjoyed the popularity as the original one. The author stresses that the USSR frequently adopted the strategy of mystifying heroic facts to fictions. Such propaganda was “not static, but, much like media in Western societies, evolved and developed” (165). Although the youths did not resist the regime’s inculcation in the novel, they still pursued their own agenda from reading the Soviet heroes (165-166).
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As the regime believed that one’s specific behaviors to his or her peers, friends, family, and loved one defined a real Soviet person, the youth’s introduction of new interpersonal relationships broached a new battle between individuals and the state. Sex and love posed a particular threat to the Soviet leadership. Individual friendship also challenged comradeship that was essential to the Soviet ideology. The chapter shows that the war introduced new behavior codes in the postwar Soviet. While the state intervened more frequently in personal relations during the war, more unsupervised interpersonal connections emerged. The officially unacceptable social values, gender identities, and sexual behaviors continued to grow in the following decades