Komsomol in the context of Youth organization

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet and Russian politician who was the last leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 until the country's dissolution in 1991. He served as General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1985, and additionally as head of state from 1988. Ideologically, he initially adhered to Marxism–Leninism, but moved towards social democracy by the early 1990s.

Born in Privolnoye, North Caucasus Krai, into a peasant family of Russian and Ukrainian heritage, Gorbachev grew up under the rule of Joseph Stalin. In his youth, Gorbachev operated combine harvesters on a collective farm, before joining the Communist Party, which then governed the Soviet Union as a one-party state. Studying at Moscow State University, he married fellow student Raisa Titarenko in 1953 and received his law degree in 1955. Moving to Stavropol, he worked for the Komsomol youth organization and, after Stalin's death, became a keen proponent of the de-Stalinization reforms of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

The Komsomol of Ukraine, officially the Leninist Communist League of Youth of Ukraine (ЛКСМУ, Ukrainian: Ленінська Комуністична Спілка Молоді України, romanized: Leninska Komunistychna Spilka Molodi Ukrainy; Russian: Ленинский Коммунистический Союз Молодёжи Украины, romanized: Leninskiy Kommunisticheskiy Soyuz Molodyozhi Ukrainy), was a youth organization in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic under the Communist Party of Ukraine, a component part of the All-Union Lenin's Communist League of Youth (Komsomol). It was first established in 1919 as the youth wing of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine and later revived in 1997 as the youth wing of the modern Communist Party of Ukraine; that party was banned in 2015 and terminated in 2022.

Between the two World Wars, the Komsomol of Ukraine closely cooperated with the Young Communist League of Western Ukraine, which was a component part of the Young Communist League of Poland.

The Komsomol direction (Russian: комсомольская путёвка, romanized: komsomolskaya putyovka) or Komsomol travel ticket was a mobilization document of in the Soviet Union issued by a Komsomol committee to a Komsomol member, which directed the member to temporary or permanent shock construction projects or military service. Usually the Komsomol direction was associated with relocation to new, poorly settled remote locations: new construction sites ("Komsomol construction sites", комсомольская стройка), army service, etc.

During the 10th five-year plan more than 500,000 young volunteers were assigned to shock construction projects with Komsomol travel tickets. Komsomol organizations formed and directed 100 All-Union squads consisting of 80,000 people.

Shock construction projects (Russian: ударные стройки, romanized: udarnyye stroyki) also Komsomol shock construction projects was a Soviet propaganda term used for certain construction projects by Komsomol shock brigades in the Soviet Union.

Although often associated with Komsomol, shock construction projects in more general term also included the Great Construction Projects of Communism.

Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko (24 September [O.S. 11 September] 1911 – 10 March 1985) was a Soviet politician who served as the de jure leader of the Soviet Union from February 1984 until his death in March 1985.

Born to a poor family in Siberia, Konstantin Chernenko joined the Komsomol in 1929 and became a full member of the ruling Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1931. After holding a series of propaganda posts, in 1948 he became the head of the propaganda department in Moldavia, serving under Leonid Brezhnev. After Brezhnev took over as First Secretary of the CPSU in 1964, Chernenko was appointed to head the General Department of the Central Committee. In this capacity, he became responsible for setting the agenda for the Politburo and drafting Central Committee decrees. By 1971 Chernenko became a full member of the Central Committee and later a full member of the Politburo in 1978.

"On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences" (Russian: «О культе личности и его последствиях», romanized: “O kul'te lichnosti i yego posledstviyakh”) was a report by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, made to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on 25 February 1956. Though popularly known as the Secret Speech (Russian: секретный доклад Хрущёва, romanized: sekretnïy doklad Khrushcheva), "secret" is something of a misnomer, as copies of the speech were read out at thousands of meetings of Communist Party and Komsomol organizations across the USSR. Khrushchev's speech sharply criticized the rule of the former General Secretary and Premier Joseph Stalin (died March 1953), particularly with respect to the purges which had especially marked the later years of the 1930s. Khrushchev charged Stalin with having fostered a leadership cult of personality despite ostensibly maintaining support for the ideals of communism.

The speech produced shocking effects in its day. Reports state that some listeners suffered heart attacks and that the speech even inspired suicides, due to the shock of all of Khrushchev's criticisms and condemnations of the government and of the previously revered figure of Stalin. The ensuing confusion among many Soviet citizens, raised on panegyrics and permanent praise of the "genius" of Stalin, was especially apparent in Georgia, Stalin's homeland, where days of protests and rioting ended with a Soviet army crackdown on 9 March 1956. The Israeli intelligence agency Mossad received a copy of Khrushchev's speech from the Polish-Jewish journalist Wiktor Grajewski and leaked it to the West.

The Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (TASSR; Russian: Туркестанская Автономная Советская Социалистическая Республика, romanized: Turkestanskaya Avtonomnaya Sovetskaya Sotsialisticheskaya Respublika; Uzbek: Turkiston Avtonom Sovet Sotsialistik Respublikasi), originally called the Turkestan Soviet Federative Republic, was an autonomous republic of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic located in Soviet Central Asia which existed between 1918 and 1924. Uzbeks were the preeminent nation of the Turkestan ASSR. Tashkent was the capital and largest city in the region.

Eduard Ambrosis dze Shevardnadze (Georgian: ედუარდ ამბროსის ძე შევარდნაძე; 25 January 1928 – 7 July 2014) was a Soviet and Georgian politician and diplomat who governed Georgia for several non-consecutive periods from 1972 until his resignation in 2003 and also served as the final Soviet minister of foreign affairs from 1985 to 1991.

Shevardnadze started his political career in the late 1940s as a leading member of his local Komsomol organisation. He was later appointed its Second Secretary, then its First Secretary. His rise in the Georgian Soviet hierarchy continued until 1961, when he was demoted after insulting a senior official. After spending two years in obscurity, Shevardnadze returned as the First Secretary of a Tbilisi city district, and was able to charge the Tbilisi First Secretary at the time with corruption. His anti-corruption work quickly garnered the interest of the Soviet government and Shevardnadze was appointed as First Deputy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Georgian SSR. He would later become the head of the internal affairs ministry and was able to charge First Secretary (leader of Soviet Georgia) Vasil Mzhavanadze with corruption.