The Smenovekhovtsy Movement as the First Historical Attempt to Reconcile the Reds and the Whites: Achievements and Failures

Abstract

The history and results of the famous Smenovekhovtsy movement, which started with the Change of Signposts (Smena Vekh) publication in 1921, are observed. The paper states that the Smenovekhovtsy movement dropped off the field of public attention in the post-Soviet period, but now it is time to return to this phenomenon. The author considers the Smenovekhovtsy movement as the first historical attempt to reconcile the Reds and the Whites after the Civil War. From this point of view, the positive and negative sides of this movement are evaluated, as well as what lessons can be drawn from those events for today. The papers highlights the relevance and nonrandom popularity of the the Smenovekhovtsy movement’s ideas at the time of their very emergence. However, quite quickly this movement became extremely corrupt (messed up and fake) due to its leading participants. That way, the custommade nature, which it acquired quite soon, became obvious to many people. The Bolsheviks were not ready to make any serious compromises, except for tactical reasons — that was the initial mistake of the Smenovekhovtsy. The tragic fate of the leader of this movement Nikolay Ustryalov, and many other prominent participants was conditioned by the fact that their view and analysis did not involve the philosophical and metaphysical plane, being limited mainly to sociopolitical and economic reality. Therefore, their hopes for an early evolution of the regime did not come true. In case of such an ideocratic state as the USSR, it was essential to take into account both the philosophy of Marxism and its metaphysics. The historical results, which would allow to evaluate the Smenovekhovtsy movement, turned out to be twisted and ambiguous. It is impossible not to recognize the restoration of the state and the army, the international prestige of the USSR, which became the world’s leading power in the XX century. On the other hand, the Soviet great power ended with the collapse. The Smenovekhovtsy overestimated the state potential of Bolshevism. A take on the Soviet period of history, its pros and cons through the prism of the Smenovekhovtsy movement is quite useful. It is no coincidence that the features of historical Russia suddenly bled through the red contours of the USSR. This was exactly what the Smenovekhovtsy movement highly appreciated. But to what extent they bled through — this remains a subject for discussion until today.