Smenovekhovstvo
스메노베호프스트보
An ideological-political movement originating from the 1921 Prague émigré collection Smena Vekh (Change of Signposts), which called on the White diaspora to accept the October Revolution as a natural step in the restoration of the Russian state and to collaborate with the Soviet regime. Led by Nikolai Ustryalov, it predicted that the NEP would lead to a nationalist 'rebirth' of Bolshevism. Ustryalov described the USSR as 'a radish: red on the outside, white on the inside.' Lenin, at the Eleventh Party Congress (1922), said the Smenovekhovtsy 'express the moods of thousands of bourgeois and Soviet officials,' while Stalin publicly attacked the movement at the Fourteenth Congress (1925) in his polemic against Zinoviev. Most leaders of the movement were executed by the NKVD by the end of the 1930s.
Related people
Related historical events
Sources
- Wikipedia (EN) general article on the Smenovekhovtsy movement, its ideology, leaders, Lenin's comments, and fate of its members
- Wikipedia (RU) Russian article: historical stages, Ustryalov as first ideologue, NKVD executions of leaders
- cyberleninka.ru academic review (Vakhitov 2022) of the 2021 re-edition of Smena Vekh: Ustryalov as creator of National Bolshevism, the Thermidor concept, tragic fate of participants
- Marxists Internet Archive Lenin at the Eleventh Congress (March 1922): 'The Smena Vekh people express the moods of many thousand bourgeois and Soviet officials who are participating in our new economic policy'