Scouting in Russia

Scouting in Russia comprises several dozen Scout associations, based on religion, politics and geography.

In 1908, Baden-Powell's book Scouting for Boys came out in Russia by the order of Tsar Nicholas II. It was called Young Scout (Юный Разведчик, Yuny Razvedchik). On April 30 [O.S. April 17] 1909, a young officer, Colonel Oleg Pantyukhov, organized the first Russian Scout troop Beaver (Бобр, Bobr) in Pavlovsk, a town near Tsarskoye Selo, St. Petersburg region. From 30 December 1910, Baden-Powell was in Russia for a week or more, and visited Nicholas II in Tsarskoye Selo; they had a very pleasant conversation, as the Tsar remembered it. In 1914, Pantyukhov established a society called Russian Scout (Русский Скаут, Russkiy Skaut). The first Russian Scout campfire was lit in the woods of Pavlovsk Park in Tsarskoye Selo. A Russian Scout song exists to remember this event. Scouting spread rapidly across Russia and into Siberia, and by 1916, there were about 50,000 Scouts in Russia. Nicholas' son Tsarevich Aleksei was a Scout himself.

With the advent of communism after the October Revolution of 1917, and during the Russian Civil War from 1917 to 1922, most of the Scoutmasters and many Scouts fought in the ranks of the White Army and interventionists against the Red Army.

In Soviet Russia the Scouting system started to be replaced by ideologically-altered Scout like organizations, such as "ЮК" ("Юные Коммунисты", or young communists; pronounced as yuk), that were created since 1918. There was a purge of the Scout leaders, many of whom perished under the Bolsheviks. Those Scouts who did not wish to accept the new Soviet system either left Russia for good, like Pantyukhov and others, or went underground. However, clandestine Scouting did not last long. On May 19, 1922 all of those newly created organizations were united into the Young Pioneer organization of the Soviet Union, which existed until 1990. From that date, Scouting in the USSR was banned.

However, some features of Scouting remained in the modified form. The Scout motto "Bud' Gotov" ("Be Prepared") was modified into the Pioneer motto "Vsegda Gotov" ("Always Prepared"). Mention of God was removed, replaced by Lenin and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. There were no separate organizations for girls and boys, and many new features were introduced, like Young Pioneer Palaces.

The organization then went into exile, and continued in many countries where fleeing White Russian émigrés settled, establishing groups in France, Serbia, Bulgaria, Argentina, Chile, and Paraguay. A much larger mass of thousands of Russian Scouts moved through Vladivostok to the east into Manchuria and south into China.

Colonel Pantyukhov, Chief Scout of Russia, first resided in France and then moved to the United States, where large troops of Russian Scouts were established in cities such as San Francisco, Burlingame, California, and Los Angeles. He returned to Nice, France where he died.

Russian Scouting was recognized as a member of the World Organization of the Scout Movement, in exile, from 1928 to 1945.