Kelly Catriona. Comrade Pavlik: The Rise and Fall of a Soviet Boy Hero

London: Granta Books, 2005. — 382 p. — ISBN: 1-86207-747-9September 1932. Gerasimovka, Western Siberia. Two children are found dead in the forest outside a remote village. Both have been repeatedly stabbed and their bloody bodies are covered in sticky, crimson cranberry juice. The perpetrators of these horrific murders have never been satisfactorily identified, but the elder victim, thirteen-year-old Pavlik Morozov? was quickly to become the most famous child in Soviet history - statues of him were erected, biographies published, and children across the country exhorted to emulate him. Comrade Pavlik sets out to explore why he rose to fame, and later fell from grace. This is the first fully documented study in any language of the extraordinary legend of Pavlik. Catriona Kelly, who has long been fascinated by the case, has visited Pavliks village and the Siberian forest where he was murdered, and is the first historian to be given full access to the secret police file on the murders in the archives of the FSB (formerly the KGB). Her aim is not only to investigate who really killed the boys, but also to explore how Stalins regime turned Pavlik into a hero designed to produce good Soviet citizens.Pavlik’s story is intriguing and multi-layered. Did he denounce his own father to the authorities? Was he murdered by members of his family? Were the deaths part of a plot by the authorities? And did.he ever belong to the Pioneers, the Communist youth organization which claimed him as member No. 001?Illustrations
Abbreviations
The Morozov Family Tree
Dramatis Personae
MapsIntroduction: Death in the Taiga
Pavlik’s World
Local Hero
Investigating the Murder
Class Warrior, Boy Martyr
All-Soviet Hero
Pavlik Eclipsed
Pavlik after Stalin
The ‘Real Life’ of Pavlik Morozov?
AfterwordNotes
List of Sources
Acknowledgements
Notes