In the Soviet Union of about 300,000 people in 1988, condemning the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
Sąjūdis was a movement which led to the
restoration of an Independent State of Lithuania in 1990. 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. The Soviet Union made extensive use of the term "enemy of the people" (). 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: Other similar terms were in use as well: •
enemy of the labourers () •
enemy of the proletariat () •
class enemy (), etc. In particular, the term "enemy of the workers" was formalized in the
Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code), 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). 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. , the city of Prague placed a Soviet-era
T-55, a symbol of the
Soviet invasion of 1968, on its central square as a target for public ridicule. 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" () 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. After the end of the
Second World War, there were
Eastern European anti-Communist insurgencies against the Soviet Union.
In Post-Soviet countries Estonia 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".
Latvia to remove a
Victory monument to the
Red Army, May 2022 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. Five days later a public fundraising campaign was launched and more than 39,000 euros had been donated by 12 May when the
Saeima voted to suspend the functioning of a section regarding the preservation of memorial structures in an agreement between Latvia and Russia. By 13 May, the total amount of donations had almost reached 200,000 euros. A rally "Getting Rid of Soviet Heritage" taking place on March 20 was attended by approximately 5,000 people, while a counter rally by
Latvian Russian Union was prevented from taking place by security forces, claiming threat to "public security". 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. == See also ==