Komsomol Functionaries in the 1970s as Agents for Change?

The paper presents a quantitative and qualitative analysis of biographies of 317 Komsomol functionaries of the 1970s, with a view to identifying changes in the public attitudes toward involvement in the Soviet system, as well as toward the demands of the system of its agents. The purpose of the paper is to analyse the social and ethnic background of the Komsomol functionaries, their motivation to pursue this career, and to establish whether they could be perceived as the agents of liberalising youth policy in Latvia in the 1970s.