[1] The idea of the movement was borrowed from the popular novel for youth Timur and His Squad by Arkady Gaidar.
The youngster Timur and his squad clandestinely did good deeds: helped the families of the Red Army soldiers and combated the local gang of young hooligans headed by Mishka Kvakin.
It was written in 1940 first as a newspaper serial and quickly gained popularity, as other Gaidar's books.
The same year a movie was released based on the novel as well as a radio drama version.
When the German invasion of the Soviet Union started in 1941, teams of Timurites all over the country, in addition to helping the families of soldiers, did large amounts of unskilled work: cleaning railways from snow, preparing firewood, loading/unloading cargo, etc.