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Concept
Smenovekhovtsy
Summary
The Smenovekhovtsy (Сменовеховцы), a political movement in the Russian émigré community, formed shortly after the publication of the magazine Smena Vekh ("Change of Signposts") in Prague in 1921. This publication had taken its name from the Russian philosophical publication Vekhi ("Signposts") published in 1909. The Smena Vekh periodical told its White émigré readers:
"The Civil War is lost definitely. For a long time Russia has been travelling on its own path, not our path ... Either recognize this Russia, hated by you all, or stay without Russia, because a 'third Russia' by your recipes does not and will not exist ... The Soviet regime saved Russia - the Soviet regime is justified, regardless of how weighty the arguments against it are ... The mere fact of its enduring existence proves its popular character, and the historical belonging of its dictatorship and harshness."
The ideas in the publication soon evolved into the Smenovekhovstvo movement, which promoted the concept of accepting the Soviet regime and the October Revolution of 1917 as a natural and popular progression of Russia's fate, something which was not to be resisted despite perceived ideological incompatibilities with Leninism. Smenovekhovstvo encouraged its members to return to Soviet Russia, predicting that the Soviet Union would not last and would give way to a revival of Russian nationalism.
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 the Soviets, since the whole Russian "White diaspora" included 3 million people. The leaders of smenovekhovstvo were mostly former Mensheviks, Kadets and some Octobrists. Nikolay Ustryalov (1890–1937) led the group. On March 26, 1922, the first issue of Nakanune ( Накануне , the Smenovekhovtsy newspaper) was published; Soviet Russia's first successes in foreign policy were praised. Throughout its career, Nakanune was subsidised by the Soviet government.
Official source
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