Anti-Sovietism (Russian: антисоветчина|translit=antisovetchina) or anti-Soviet sentiment refers to persons and activities that were actually or allegedly aimed against the Soviet Union or government power within the Soviet Union.[1]
Three common uses of the term include the following:
During the Russian Civil War that followed the October Revolution of 1917, the anti-Soviet side was the White movement. During the Interwar period, some resistance movements, particularly in the 1920s, were cultivated by Polish intelligence in the form of the Promethean project. After Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, anti-Soviet forces were created and led primarily by Nazi Germany (see Russian Liberation Movement). During the Cold War, the United States led the anti-Soviet and anti-communist Western Bloc.
During the Russian Civil War, whole classes of people, such as the clergy, kulaks and former Imperial Russian officers, were automatically considered anti-Soviet. More categories are listed in the article "Enemy of the People". Those who were deemed anti-Soviet in this way, because of their former social status, were often presumed guilty whenever tried for a crime.[2]
The Soviet Union made extensive use of the term "enemy of the people" (Russian: link=no|враг народа, vrag naroda). The term was first used in a speech by Felix Dzerzhinsky, the first chairman of the Cheka, after the October Revolution. The Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee printed lists of "enemies of the people", and Vladimir Lenin invoked it in his decree of 28 November 1917:[3]
Other similar terms were in use as well:
In particular, the term "enemy of the workers" was formalized in the Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code),[4] and similar articles in the codes of the other Soviet Republics.
At various times these terms were applied, in particular, to Tsar Nicholas II and the Imperial family, aristocrats, the bourgeoisie, clerics, business entrepreneurs, anarchists, kulaks, monarchists, Mensheviks, Esers, Bundists, Trotskyists, Bukharinists, the "old Bolsheviks", the army and police, emigrants, saboteurs, wreckers (вредители, "vrediteli"), "social parasites" (тунеядцы, "tuneyadtsy"), Kavezhedists (people who administered and serviced the KVZhD (China Far East Railway), particularly the Russian population of Harbin, China), and those considered bourgeois nationalists (notably Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Armenian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian nationalists, Zionists, Basmachi).[5]
Since 1927, Article 20 of the Common Part of the penal code that listed possible "measures of social defence" had the following item 20a: "declaration to be an enemy of the workers with deprivation of the union republic citizenship and hence of the USSR citizenship, with obligatory expulsion from its territory". Nevertheless, most "enemies of the people" suffered labor camps, rather than expulsion.
Later in the Soviet Union, being anti-Soviet was a criminal offense, known as "Anti-Soviet agitation". The epithet "antisoviet" was synonymous with "counter-revolutionary". The noun "antisovietism" was rarely used and the noun "antisovietist" (Russian: антисоветчик|translit=antisovetchik) was used in a derogatory sense. Anti-Soviet agitation and activities were political crimes handled by the Article 58 and later Article 70 of the RSFSR penal code and similar articles in other Soviet republics. In February 1930, there was an anti-Soviet insurgency in the Kazak Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic village of Sozak.[6]
After the end of the Second World War, there were Eastern European anti-Communist insurgencies against the Soviet Union.
See main article: Decommunization.
In August 2022 Estonia began removing Soviet monuments, beginning with a T-34 tank in Narva, claiming it was necessary for "public order" and "internal security".[7] [8]
On 6 May 2022, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Latvian Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš announced that the removal of the controversial monument to the Red Army was inevitable.[9] Five days later a public fundraising campaign was launched and more than 39,000 euros had been donated by 12 May[10] when the Saeima voted to suspend the functioning of a section regarding the preservation of memorial structures in an agreement between Latvia and Russia.[11] By 13 May, the total amount of donations had almost reached 200,000 euros.[12]
A rally "Getting Rid of Soviet Heritage" taking place on March 20 was attended by approximately 5,000 people,[13] while a counter rally by Latvian Russian Union was prevented from taking place by security forces, claiming threat to "public security".[14]
A list of 93 street names still glorifying the Soviet regime (such as 13 streets named after the Pioneer movement), as well as 48 street names given during the Russification at the end of the 19th century (like streets named after Alexander Pushkin), has been compiled by historians of the Public Memory Center and sent to the corresponding municipalities who were recommended to change them.[15]