East BerlinA MILE or two to the east, on the other side of Berlin, sat Andrei, guarding a pile of luggage that belonged to a small group of Russian ‘Pioneers’, teenagers like him but all a couple of years younger. The group’s holiday in East Germany was nearly over.
Almost all children in Soviet schools joined the Pioneer organisation. The Soviet state allowed no other youth groups. Cubs and brownies, scouts and guides had all been banned by Lenin. Their promises to serve God and humanity in general, regardless of class, did not suit his ideology of class war. All but the working class he regarded as subhuman. The Russian Orthodox Church was not allowed to organise any activities for young people. In the 1950s Khrushchev closed two thirds of the few hundred churches still open.
During th
