Pavlik Morozov - Later Research and Controversy

Later Research and Controversy

Evidence has emerged since the dissolution of the Soviet Union of the fabrication of the Pavlik Morozov legend.

In the mid-1980s, Yuri Druzhnikov, a dissident writer expelled from the Soviet Writers' Union, performed an investigation, met with surviving eyewitnesses, and wrote a documentary book about Pavlik. Originally circulated in samizdat, it was published in the U.K. in Russian (Юрий Дружников, Доносчик 001, или Вознесение Павлика Морозова) in 1988 and soon thereafter translated into several languages. The first English translation appeared in 1996 under the title "Informer 001: The Myth of Pavlik Morozov." In his book, Druzhnikov disputes every aspect of the Soviet propaganda version of Pavlik's life. For example, different sources in Soviet literature list different ages for Pavlik at death, and show photographs of different boys. Pavlik was not a Pioneer when he was killed. According to the Soviet sources, Pavlik's grandfather was responsible for his murder; according to Druzhnikov, the grandfather was heartbroken about the death of Pavlik, organized the search when the boy went missing, and maintained his innocence during the trial. While not saying it outright, Druzhnikov hints that Pavlik was killed by a GPU officer, whom Druzhnikov met while doing his research.

Catriona Kelly in her 2005 book Comrade Pavlik: The Rise and Fall of a Soviet Boy Hero agrees with Druzhnikov that the official version of the account is almost wholly fictional, the evidence sketchy and based mostly on second-hand reports by alleged witnesses, and that Pavlik did not inform on his parents but was murdered after a mundane squabble. Kelly also shows how the official version's emphasis shifted to suit the changing times and propaganda lines: in some accounts, Pavlik's father's crime was not forging the documents, but hoarding grain; in others, he was denounced not to the secret police, but to the schoolteacher. In some accounts, the method of Pavlik's death was decapitation by saw. The one surviving photograph of him shows a malnourished child, who bears almost no resemblance to the statues and pictures in children's books. It has also been said that he was nearly illiterate and was coerced to inform on his father by his mother, after Pavlik's father deserted the family.

Kelly, who had access to the official archives of the case, states that Druzhnikov's theory that Pavlik was killed by the GPU is unlikely. Druzhnikov accused Kelly of extensive plagiarism from his book, and also of "dependence on those who have admitted her to archives", i.e. from employees of the FSB - successors of the GPU. Kelly published an extensive reply in Russian in the journal Voprosy literatury.

According to the most recent research, Gerasimovka was described in the Soviet press as a "kulak nest" because all villagers refused to join the kolkhoz, a state-controlled collective farm during the collectivization. Pavlik informed on neighbours when they did something wrong, including his own father who left the family for another woman. Pavlik was not a Pioneer, although he wanted to be one. Kelly believes there is no evidence that the family was involved in the murder of the boy, and that it was probably a work of other teenagers with whom Pavlik had a squabble over a gun.