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Romania Union of Communist Youth
Founded in 1949, the Union of Communist Youth
(Uniunea
Tineretului Comunist--
UTC, see Glossary)
was modelled after
Komsomol (the Soviet communist youth organization). Having
essentially the same organizational structure as the PCR,
the UTC was both a youth political party and a mass organization.
Its mission was to educate young people in the spirit of
communism and
mobilize them, under the guidance of the PCR, for the
building of
socialism. The UTC organized political and patriotic
courses in
schools, among peasant groups, and among workers and
members of the
armed forces. It also guided and supervised the activities
of the
Union of Communist Student Associations.
In the 1980s, the UTC remained one of the most powerful
mass
organizations in the country, having a membership of some
3.7
million in 1984 compared with 2.5 million in early 1972.
Membership
was open to persons between the ages of fifteen and
twenty-six; UTC
members over eighteen could also become members of the
PCR. The
Tenth Party Congress in 1969 introduced the requirement
that
applicants under the age of twenty-six would be accepted
into the
party only if they were UTC members.
The structure of the UTC underwent a number of changes
in the
decades following its creation. In early 1984, the
organization
functioned on the national level with an eight-member
Secretariat,
including the first secretary, who was also the UTC
chairman, and
a bureau of twenty-one full and ten candidate members. The
first
secretary of the UTC also held the position of minister of
youth.
In the late 1980s, Ceausescu's son, Nicu, functioned as
UTC first
secretary. In each of the forty judete and the city
of
Bucharest, UTC committees were patterned after the
national-level
organization. The UTC had its own publishing facilities
and
published its own propaganda organ, Scinteia
Tineretului
(The Spark of Youth).
A second youth movement, the Pioneers, was created for
young
people between the ages of nine and fourteen. The
organization's
responsibilities paralleled those of the UTC and involved
political
and patriotic training. Until 1966 the Pioneers functioned
as an
integral part of the UTC, but thereafter it was under the
direct
control of the party Central Committee.
Data as of July 1989
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