ABSTRACT
In repressive times, children may be recruited by the state to serve as informers. When they do so, they may even denounce their own family members. School children may also be harnessed to condemn accused in politically staged show trials. This chapter considers case-studies from the Soviet Union and Communist Czechoslovakia. This chapter thereby interrogates forms of fights – other than soldiering in armed conflict – in which children and youth become engaged (or marshalled and used by adults) as props to support authoritarian regimes. This chapter explores the use of children in propaganda and informing networks as forms of violence. It sheds light on the imagery and iconography of youth in public life and the porousness that inheres between ‘childhood’ and ‘adulthood’.
