The Propaganda Story
The most popular account of the story is as follows: born to poor peasants in Gerasimovka, a small village 350 kilometers north-east of Yekaterinburg (then known as Sverdlovsk), Morozov was a dedicated communist who led the Young Pioneers at his school, and a supporter of Stalin's collectivization of farms. In 1932, at the age of 13, Morozov reported his father to the political police (GPU). Supposedly, Morozov's father, the Chairman of the Village Soviet, had been "forging documents and selling them to the bandits and enemies of the Soviet State" (as the sentence read). The elder Morozov, Trofim, was sentenced to ten years in a labour camp, and later executed. However, Pavlik's family did not take kindly to his activities: on September 3 of that year, his uncle, grandfather, grandmother and a cousin murdered him, along with his younger brother. All of them except the uncle were rounded up by the GPU and convicted to "the highest measure of social defense" - execution by a firing squad.
Thousands of telegrams from all over the Soviet Union urged the judge to show no mercy for Pavlik's killers. The Soviet government declared Pavlik Morozov a glorious martyr who had been murdered by reactionaries. Statues of him were built, and numerous schools and youth groups were named in his honour. An opera and numerous songs were written about him. Gerasimovka's school, which Morozov attended, became a shrine and children from all over the Soviet Union went on school excursions to visit it.
During the investigation of Trofim Morozov's case his wife, Tatyana Morozova, Pavel's mother, stated that Trofim Morozov used to beat her and also brought home valuables received as payment for selling forged documents. According to this testimony, Pavel, who was only 13 at that time, merely confirmed evidence given by his mother.
Read more about this topic: Pavlik Morozov
Famous quotes containing the words propaganda and/or story:
“I am writing to resist the view that Europe and civilization are going to Hell. If I am being “crucified for an idea”Mthat is, the coherent idea around which my muddles accumulated—it is probably the idea that European culture ought to survive, that the best qualities of it ought to survive along with whatever cultures, in whatever universality. Against the propaganda of terror and the propaganda of luxury, have you a nice simple answer?”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book—a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)