TheSmenovekhovtsy (Russian:Сменовеховцы,IPA:[smʲɪnəˈvʲexəftsɨ]) was a political movement in the Russianémigré community, formed shortly after the publication of the magazineSmena Vekh ("Change of Signposts") inPrague in 1921.[1] This publication had taken its name from the Russian philosophical publicationVekhi ("Signposts") published in 1909.
The ideas in the publication soon evolved into theSmenovekhovstvo movement, which promoted the concept of accepting theSoviet regime and theOctober Revolution of 1917 as a natural and popular progression of Russia's fate, something which was not to be resisted despite perceived ideological incompatibilities[whose?] withLeninism.Smenovekhovstvo encouraged its members to return toSoviet Russia, predicting that theSoviet Union would not last and would give way to a revival ofRussian nationalism.[2]
Smenovekhovtsy supported co-operation with the Soviet government in the hope that the Soviet state would evolve back into a "bourgeois state". Such cooperation was important for theSoviets, since the whole Russian "White diaspora" included 3 million people.[3] The leaders ofsmenovekhovstvo were mostly formerMensheviks,Kadets and someOctobrists.Nikolay Ustryalov (1890–1937) led the group.[4] On March 26, 1922, the first issue ofNakanune (Russian:Накануне,lit. 'On the eve', theSmenovekhovtsy newspaper) was published; Soviet Russia's first successes in foreign policy were praised. Throughout its career,Nakanune was subsidised by the Soviet government.Alexey Tolstoy had become acquainted with the movement in the summer of 1921. In April 1922, he published anopen letter addressed to émigré leaderNikolai Tchaikovsky, and defended the Soviet government for ensuring Russia's unity and for preventing attacks from the neighbouring countries, especially during thePolish-Soviet War of 1919–1921.[5][need quotation to verify]
Conservative émigrés such as those in theRussian All-Military Union (founded in 1924) opposed theSmenoveknovstvo movement, viewing it as a promotion of defeatism andmoral relativism, as a capitulation to theBolsheviks, and as desirous of seeking compromise with the newSoviet regime. Repeatedly, the Smenoveknovtsi faced accusations of ties with the Soviet secret-police organisationOGPU, which had in fact been active in promoting such ideas in the émigré community. On theSmenovekhovstvo movement in October 1921, Soviet leaderVladimir Lenin commented: "The Smenovekhovtsy express the moods of thousands of various bourgeois or Soviet collaborators, who are the participants of ourNew Economic Policy."
Representatives of theSmenovekhovtsy who settled in the Soviet Union did not survive the end of the 1930s; almost all the former leaders of the movement were arrested by theNKVD and executed at a later date.[6][7]
There were other émigré organizations which, like theSmenoveknovtsy, argued that Russian émigrés should accept the fact of the Russian revolution. These included the Young Russians (Mladorossi) and the Eurasians (Evraziitsi). As with the Smenovekhovtsy, these movements did not survive afterWorld War II.Ukrainian émigrés also fostered a movement in favour of reconciliation with the Soviet regime and of return to the homeland. This included some of the most prominent pre-revolutionary intellectuals such asMykhailo Hrushevskyi (1866–1934) andVolodymyr Vynnychenko (1880–1951). The Soviet Ukrainian government funded a Ukrainian emigre journal calledNova Hromada (first published in July 1923) to encourage this trend. The Soviets referred to this movement as a Ukrainian Smena Vekh, as did its opponents among the Ukrainian emigres, who saw it as a defeatist expression ofLittle RussianRussophilia. For this reason, the actual proponents of the trend rejected the label ofSmenovekhovtsy.[8]
According toAnatoliy Golitsyn, a KGB officer who defected in 1961, the movement was controlled by the OGPU.[9]
"[it] was used by the Soviet service to mislead émigres and intellectuals in Europe into believing that the strength of communist ideology was on the wane and that the Soviet regime was evolving into a more moderate, national state."
