The Pioneer Organization was a pioneer movement

Pioneer movement

A pioneer movement is an organization for children operated by a communist party. Typically children enter into the organization in elementary school and continue until adolescence. The adolescents then typically joined the Young Communist League...

 in Communist Romania

Communist Romania

Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...

, founded on April 30, 1949.

Most students joined the organization while in the second grade and remained pioneers throughout eighth grade, therefore, in practice, the normal age range extended from seven to fifteen, or nearly fifteen.

Mission

The organisation's responsibilities paralleled those of the Union of Communist Youth

Union of Communist Youth

The Union of Communist Youth was the Romanian Communist Party's youth organisation, modelled after the Soviet Komsomol. It aimed to cultivate young cadres into the party, as well as to help create the "new man" envisioned by communist ideologues.-History:Founded in 1922, the UTC went underground...

 (UTC) and involved political (preparing children to become party members) and propagandistic training. Until 1966 the Pioneers functioned as an integral part of the UTC, but thereafter it was under the direct control of the Central Committee

Central Committee

Central Committee was the common designation of a standing administrative body of communist parties, analogous to a board of directors, whether ruling or non-ruling in the twentieth century and of the surviving, mostly Trotskyist, states in the early twenty first. In such party organizations the...

 of the Romanian Communist Party

Romanian Communist Party

The Romanian Communist Party was a communist political party in Romania. Successor to the Bolshevik wing of the Socialist Party of Romania, it gave ideological endorsement to communist revolution and the disestablishment of Greater Romania. The PCR was a minor and illegal grouping for much of the...

. 70 percent of the 9-14 age group, or approximately 1.3 million young people, belonged to the Pioneers in 1981. The organization published Cutezătorii.

The Pioneers ran a variety of summer camps and other activities, also having a number of recreation centres around Romania. For instance, Cotroceni Palace

Cotroceni Palace

Cotroceni Palace is a palace in Bucharest which is the residence of the President of Romania, located at Bulevardul Geniului, nr. 1.On Cotroceni Hill, in 1679, Şerban Cantacuzino built a monastery...

 became the Pioneers' Palace on June 1, 1950.

The Pioneers served an important propaganda function, as a central part of their activity lay in mass demonstrations, held on August 23, May 1

May Day

May Day on May 1 is an ancient northern hemisphere spring festival and usually a public holiday; it is also a traditional spring holiday in many cultures....

, November 7

October Revolution

The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...

, and, starting in the 1950s, on the birthdays of Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...

 and Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

, as well as Youth Day

Youth Day

Youth Day is a holiday dedicated to the youths of a country.-International Youth Day:International Youth Day is an international observance on August 12 officially recognized by the United Nations.-Angola:On 14 April Angola celebrates Youth Day...

. In later years, three to five thousand Pioneers would be brought to Bucharest (7,000 in 1987), training rigorously every day for a month (two hours in the morning and two in the evening) before their moment in the spotlight.

Uniform

Members wore a small triangular red scarf (with the triangle over their backs), with a red-gold-blue strip outside border (red-gold-blue were, and still are, the colours of the Romanian national flag

Flag of Romania

The national flag of Romania is a tricolour with vertical stripes: beginning from the flagpole, blue, yellow and red. It has a width-length ratio of 2:3....

). Both ends of the scarf were passed through a narrow ring of clear plastic. They also had pioneer uniforms that they wore on certain days instead of their regular school uniforms. When in school uniform, students had to wear their pioneer scarves.

Individual awards could be bestowed on members; these included stripes, along with the titles "Pionier de frunte" ("Leading Pioneer"), "Cutezătorul" ("The Brave One"), "Pionier fruntaş în muncă patriotică" ("Leading Pioneer in Patriotic Work") and "Meritul pionieresc" ("Pioneer Merit"), as well as insignia based on the type of activity. Collective awards came in the form of diploma-like scrolls: "Unitate fruntaşă" ("Leading Unit"), "Detaşament fruntaş" ("Leading Detachment") and "Grupă fruntaşă" ("Leading Group"). These were commonly awarded at the school's annual year-end ceremony.