Russian Scouting as a School for Liberalism

Abstract

The subject of this article is the relationship between liberalism, scouting and childhood in late Imperial Russia and among the Russian diaspora from 1920. It is a study of liberalism as an emotive tie rather than a political phenomenon – a community of sentiment metonymically tied to the emotional content of “the idyll of gentry childhood,” as this was first expressed in Leo Tolstoy’s Childhood. Through O.I. Pantukhoff (1882–1973), the founder of Russian scouting, it traces the development of Russian scouting within Russia before 1917 and among the Russian political diaspora after 1920 as an institutional vehicle for such liberal values as self-development, initiative and individuality (lichnost’). Today, Russian scouting continues to exist in the major centers of Russian emigration, and has reappeared in Russia itself, testifying to the liberal sentiment as a continuing aspect of Russian norms for childhood. The institution of Russian scouting, as reflected in the personal papers and memoirs of Pantukhoff, gives us an entry into the emotional culture of liberalism; helps us expand our historical perspectives beyond the parameters of its study as a failed political movement, and acknowledge its continuing presence in the Russian cultural semio-sphere.