Smenovekhovtsy

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[whose?]

In April 1922, he published an open letter addressed to émigré leader Nikolai Tchaikovsky, and defended the Soviet government for ensuring Russia's unity and for preventing attacks from the neighbouring countries, especially during the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1921.

[5][need quotation to verify] Conservative émigrés such as those in the Russian All-Military Union (founded in 1924) opposed the Smenoveknovstvo movement, viewing it as a promotion of defeatism and moral relativism, as a capitulation to the Bolsheviks, and as desirous of seeking compromise with the new Soviet regime.

Repeatedly, the Smenoveknovtsi faced accusations of ties with the Soviet secret-police organisation OGPU, which had in fact been active in promoting such ideas in the émigré community.

Representatives of the Smenovekhovtsy who settled in the Soviet Union did not survive the end of the 1930s; almost all the former leaders of the movement were arrested by the NKVD and executed at a later date.