ABSTRACT
One of the crucial features of Communist propaganda in the early Soviet period was that it included elements of civil society and thus offered opportunities for collectivist expressions. The regime-sponsored voluntary organizations (dobrovol'noe obshchestvo) and social organizations (obshchestvennye organisatsii), in particular, became a focal object and agent in this process of constructing the Soviet public (sovetskaia obshchestvennost). The year 1917 was of course a watershed in Russian history, but this should not permit us to overlook the fact that many pre-revolutionary associations and societies continued their work under the new regime. The creation of the obshchevennaia nomenklatura was at the centre of a mounting web of new social organizations under the guidance of the regime. During the 1920s the Komsomol continued a rather independent development on the ground, encouraged by the often very weak relations between Komsomol cells and the party organization in rural areas.
