Interfront / Intermovement

Founding and name changes

Interfront was founded on 19 July 1988 in the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic as the International Front of Workers in the Estonian SSR, and it changed its name to Intermovement (Interdvizhenie, Estonian: Interliikumine) in autumn of the same year. Reported membership figures vary widely, from 16,000 to 100,000.

Social base and composition

The movement functioned at factories, mainly military plants and enterprises of all-union importance, that is, the Estonian heavy industry that formed part of an integrated production chain supplying industries in other Soviet regions. These included the engine factory Dvigatel, the Kalinin and Pöögelmann electrotechnical plants and Tondi Elektroonika, and the mining industry of Northern Estonia, especially phosphorite. A major motive was the fear that Estonian independence would mean the loss of jobs. After independence these industries had to restructure and reorient towards new markets, in most cases drastically reducing production and laying off many workers, a large number of them Soviet-era immigrants.

It was aligned with the conservative wing of the Communist Party of Estonia and opposed the Estonian independence movement led by the Popular Front of Estonia and the liberal wing of the CPE. It gathered almost exclusively supporters from ethnic non-Estonians, but it was not an organisation built on nationalist principles and had some ethnic Estonian supporters. Of the 742 delegates attending the first congress on 5 March 1989, however, only 11 were ethnic Estonian. It was supported by Gustav Naan and Vladimir Hütt, and its ranks included Arnold Sai, Lembit Annus and Valter Toots.

Political position and support

The main leader of the movement was Jevgeni Kogan (Russian: Евгений Коган), who was also one of the leaders of the hardline Soyuz faction in the USSR legislature. Other leaders included Vladimir Jarovoi (Russian: Владимир Яровой), director of the Dvigatel plant, Arnold Sai, Vladimir Lebedev and the economist Konstantin Kiknadze.

According to critics, the movement's aim was to protect conservative Soviet values and to do everything possible to block the actions of the Popular Front. According to the former KGB general Oleg Kalugin (Russian: Олег Калугин), it was established in Estonia, as in other parts of the USSR, on the initiative of the KGB as a counterbalance to the Popular Fronts, which were perceived as nationalist organisations. Despite the stereotyping of Russophones as an elite force opposing the Estonian independence movement, the Interfront organisations were mass movements whose membership was made up of people from all walks of life.

Key events and the ban

In the 1989 elections to the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union, pro-Intermovement candidates won 6 of Estonia's 36 seats, against 27 won by the Popular Front. On 15 May 1990 the Intermovement held a mass gathering in front of Toompea Castle that escalated into an attempt to take over the parliament building. After Edgar Savisaar made a radio announcement that "Toompea is under attack", thousands of Estonians responded and forced the unarmed anti-independence protesters to disperse within a few hours.

From 29 August 1990 to 21 August 1991 the Intermovement ran the radio station Nadezhda (Russian: Надежда, 'Hope'). Contrary to the ordinary procedure, the station received its licence from the central authorities of the Soviet Union without informing the local authorities in Estonia, and, following an order by Soviet Defence Minister Dmitry Yazov, it was installed on the territory of the Soviet military base in Keila, near Tallinn.

Parallel organisations and aftermath

In Latvia, the International Front of the Working People of the Latvian SSR was founded on 7 January 1989 as a counterweight to the pro-independence Popular Front of Latvia, created on 8 October 1988. It supported Latvia remaining part of the USSR, and its membership was largely made up of ethnic Russians within Latvia. In the March 1989 elections to the Soviet Congress of People's Deputies, Interfront and the Communist Party of Latvia won in only eight of 42 constituencies. During the January 1991 events in Latvia, several civilians and law enforcement officers were killed in clashes with OMON units loyal to the central government in Moscow. In September 1991, after the failed August coup and the restoration of Latvian independence, the Supreme Council passed a law banning Interfront and the Communist Party of Latvia. Those known to have been Interfront members after 13 January 1991 have faced restrictions on naturalisation as Latvian citizens, and former Interfront activists who hold Latvian citizenship are barred from standing as candidates for the Saeima or municipal councils.

In Lithuania, Yedinstvo (Russian: Единство, 'Unity') was a pro-Soviet movement opposed to Sąjūdis; it was supported by the Soviet military and the KGB and had some success among the Polish minority. It lost influence after the August coup, which its leaders had supported, and has been inactive since 1991. In Moldova, Interfront was formed in July 1989 and renamed the Unity Movement for Equality in Rights (Unitate-Edinstvo) in December 1991; its MPs refused to sign the Moldovan Declaration of Independence in 1991 and pushed for a federation within the Soviet Union. In the Donbas of Ukraine, the International Movement of Donbass was founded in 1990.

In Estonia, the state adopted a citizenship and residency law based on jus sanguinis in 1993, under which former Soviet citizens who had never held Estonian citizenship and were not descended from citizens, including approximately 500,000 ethnic Russians, were to be regarded as foreigners. Ostensibly in response, Juri Mišin and other former Intermovement activists demanded regional autonomy for Estonia's Russian minority in the predominantly ethnic Russian areas of North-East Estonia. An unconstitutional plebiscite on the matter took place in the Narva region on 16-17 July 1993. According to the activist commissions in Narva and Sillamäe, 53.2% of voters participated and 98% in total (97.2% in Narva) voted for autonomy, but the central government determined that the majority of the population had not participated and demanded that the Narva city council, which had provided material support to the separatists, disband.

Historical significance

Along with the other Interfront organisations, Interfront and Intermovement were central to the pro-Soviet opposition to the national movements in the Soviet republics during the late perestroika years. Committed to the USSR's territorial integrity, they forged alliances with Russian nationalist organisations, and were banned in the Baltic states after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The demands raised by former activists also intersected with the broader question of how the Baltic states' citizenship and language policies would treat Soviet-era immigrants and their descendants.