Smenovekhovtsy

The Smenovekhovtsy (Russian: Сменовеховцы, IPA: [smʲɪnəˈvʲexəftsɨ]) is the name for a political movement in the Russian émigré community that began 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 thoughts published in 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 [the Soviet regime's - ed.] 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 as a natural and popular progression of Russia's fate, something which was not to be resisted despite perceived ideological incompatibilities with Leninism. The Smenovekhovstvo admonished its members to return to Russia predicting that the Soviet Union would not last and would give way to a revival of Russian nationalism.

They supported co-operation with the Soviet government in the hope that the Soviet state would evolve back into a "bourgeois state". The 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. The leader of the group was Nikolay Ustryalov. On March 26, 1922, the first issue of Nakanune (smenovekhovtsy 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 Summer 1921. In April 1922 he published an open letter to émigré leader N.V.Chaikovsky, and defended Soviet government for ensuring Russia's unity and preventing attacks from the neighbouring countries, especially the Polish-Soviet War.

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