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For the opposition to communism, see Anti-communism.
"Down with the Bolshevism!" Nazi propaganda poster in Russian for occupied Soviet territories

Anti-Sovietism and Anti-Soviet refer to persons and activities actually or allegedly aimed against the Soviet Union or government power within the Soviet Union.

Three different flavors of the usage of the term may be distinguished.

Soviet Russia[edit]

During the Russian Civil War that followed the October Revolution of 1917, the anti-Soviet side was the White movement. Between the wars, some resistance movement, particularly in the 1920s, was cultivated by Polish intelligence in the form of the Promethean project. During the Second World War, anti-Soviet forces were created and led primarily by Nazi Germany (see Russian Liberation Movement).

In the time of the Russian Civil War, whole categories of people, such as clergy, kulaks, former Imperial Russian police, etc. were automatically considered anti-Soviet. More categories are listed in the article "Enemy of the people".

For many people the major evidence of their guilt was their social status rather than actual deeds. Martin Latsis, chief of the Ukrainian Cheka, explained in a newspaper:


Later in the Soviet Union, being anti-Soviet was a criminal offense. The epithet "antisoviet" was synonymous with "counter-revolutionary". The noun "antisovietism" was rarely used and the noun "antisovietist" (Russian: антисоветчик, antisovetčik) was used in a derogatory sense. Anti-Soviet agitation and activities were political crimes handled by the Article 58 and later Article 70 of the RSFSR penal code, and similar articles in other Soviet republics.

See also[edit]

