NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Enemy of the people

The term enemy of the people (Russian language: враг народа, "vrag naroda") was a fluid designation under the Bolsheviks' rule in regards to their real or suspected political or class opponents, sometimes including former allies. Similar terms were in use as well: Jump to: navigation, search Russian (Russian: Ñ€ÑƒÑÑÐºÐ¸Ð¹ ÑÐ·Ñ‹Ðº, russkij jazyk, listen â–¶(?)) is the most widely spoken language of Europe and the most widespread of the Slavic languages. ... Jump to: navigation, search Leaders of the Bolshevik Party and the Communist International, a painting by Malcolm McAllister on the Pathfinder Mural in New York City and on the cover of the book Leninâ€™s Final Fight published by Pathfinder. ... Social class describes the relationships between people in hierarchical societies or cultures. ...

In particular, the term "enemy of workers" was formalized in the Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code). Article 58 of the Russian SFSR Penal Code was put in force on February 25, 1927 to arrest those suspected guilty of counter-revolutionary activities. ...

At various times these terms were applied, in particular, to the Royal House, aristocrats, the bourgeoisie, clerics, the intelligentsia, business entrepreneurs, kulaks, monarchists, Mensheviks, Esers, Buddhists, Bundists, Trotskyists, Bukharinists, the "old Bolsheviks", the army and police, emigrants, immigrants, saboteurs, wreckers (вредители, "vrediteli"), "social parasites" (тунеядцы, "tuneyadtsy"), Kavezhedists (people who administered and serviced the KVZhD (China Far East Railway), particularly the Russian population of Harbin, China), those considered bourgeois nationalists (notably Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian nationalists, Zionists, Basmachi), and members of certain ethnic groups (see Population transfer: Soviet Union). The term Royal House refers to the official designation and name of a royal family instead of surname. ... Aristocracy is a form of government in which rulership is in the hands of an upper class known as aristocrats. ... Jump to: navigation, search Bourgeoisie () in modern use refers to the wealthy or propertied social class in a capitalist society. ... A cleric is: A member of the clergy of a religion, especially one that has trained or ordained priests, preachers, or other religious professionals; or A member of a character class in Dungeons & Dragons and similar fantasy role-playing games. ... Jump to: navigation, search The intelligentsia (from Latin: intelligentia) is a social class of intellectuals and social groups close to them (e. ... Kulaks (Russian: , kulak, fist, literally meaning tight-fisted; Ukrainian: , kurkul) is a derogative term extensively used in Soviet political language, originally referring to relatively wealthy peasants in the Russian Empire who owned larger farms and used hired labour, as a result of the Stolypin reform introduced since 1906. ... Monarchism is the advocacy of the establishment, preservation, or restoration of a monarchy. ... The Mensheviks were a faction of the Russian revolutionary movement that emerged in 1903 after a dispute between Vladimir Lenin and Julius Martov, both members of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. ... The Socialist-Revolutionary Party (SRs, or Essaires; ÐŸÐ°Ñ€Ñ‚Ð¸Ñ ÑÐ¾Ñ†Ð¸Ð°Ð»Ð¸ÑÑ‚Ð¾Ð²-Ñ€ÐµÐ²Ð¾Ð»ÑŽÑ†Ð¸Ð¾Ð½ÐµÑ€Ð¾Ð² (ÐŸÐ¡Ð ), ÑÑÐµÑ€Ñ‹ in Russian) were a Russian political party active in the early 20th century. ... Jump to: navigation, search A replica of an ancient statue found among the ruins of a temple at Sarnath Buddhism is a religion and philosophy based on the teachings of the Buddha, SiddhÄrtha Gautama, a prince of the Shakyas, whose lifetime is traditionally given as 566 to 486 BCE... Jump to: navigation, search A Bundist demonstration, 1917 The General Jewish Labour Union of Lithuania, Poland and Russia, in Yiddish the Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund in Lite, Poyln un Rusland (×Ö·×œ×’×ž×²Ö·× ×¢×¨ ×²×“×™×©×¢×¨ ×Ö·×¨×‘×²×˜×¢×¨×¡×‘×•× ×“ ××™×Ÿ ×œ×™×˜×Ö·, ×¤×•×™×œ×™×Ÿ ××•×Ÿ ×¨×•×¡×œ×Ö·× ×“), generally called The Bund (×‘×•× ×“) or the Jewish Labor Bund, was a Jewish political party operating in several European countries between... Jump to: navigation, search Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. ... Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin ( Russian: Николай Иванович Бухарин), ( October 9 ( September 27 Old Style) 1888 – March 13, 1938) was a Bolshevik revolutionary and intellectual, and later a Soviet politician. ... An Old Bolshevik (старый большевик) was a member of the Bolsheviks before the Russian Revolution. ... Emigration is the action and the phenomenon of leaving ones native country to settle abroad. ... Immigration is the act of moving to or settling in another country or region, temporarily or permanently. ... Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening an enemy through subversion, obstruction, disruption, and/or destruction. ... Wrecking, or vreditelstvo (вредительство), was a crime specified in the criminal code of the Soviet Union in the Stalin era. ... The Nazi propaganda poster titled New People reads: This person suffering from hereditary defects costs the people 60,000 Reichmarks during his lifetime. ... The China Far East Railway (a. ... The China Far East Railway (a. ... Harbin (Simplified Chinese: å“ˆå°”æ»¨; Traditional Chinese: å“ˆçˆ¾æ¿±; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Ha-erh-pin; Russian Ð¥Ð°Ñ€Ð±Ð¸ÌÐ½ Kharbin) is a sub-provincial city and the capital of the Heilongjiang Province in north-east China. ... Bourgeois nationalism is a term from Marxist phraseology. ... Jump to: navigation, search For other meanings, please see Zionism (disambiguation) Zionism is a political movement and an ideology that supports a Jewish homeland in the Land of Israel, where the Jewish nation originated and where Jewish kingdoms and self governing states existed at various times in history. ... The Basmachi Revolt, or Basmachestvo as it is called in the Russian language, was an uprising against Soviet rule in Central Asia. ... Population transfer is a term referring to a policy by which a state forces the movement of a large group of people out of a region, invariably on the basis of ethnicity or religion. ...

An enemy of the people could be imprisoned, expelled or executed, and his property could be confiscated. Close relatives of enemies of the people were branded "relatives of an enemy of the people", which effected in restrictions of their rights. Any family members of the victim still enjoying their freedom were not allowed to hold positions of importance, and only in exceptional cases would they be tolerated as members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the key to advancement in the Soviet hierarchy. Being a friend of an enemy of the people automatically placed the person under suspicion. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Russian: ÐšÐ¾Ð¼Ð¼ÑƒÐ½Ð¸ÑÑ‚Ð¸ÌÑ‡ÐµÑÐºÐ°Ñ ÐŸÐ°ÌÑ€Ñ‚Ð¸Ñ Ð¡Ð¾Ð²ÐµÌÑ‚ÑÐºÐ¾Ð³Ð¾ Ð¡Ð¾ÑŽÌÐ·Ð° = ÐšÐŸÐ¡Ð¡) was the name used by the successors of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party from 1952 to 1991, but the wording Communist Party was present in the partys name since 1918 when the Bolsheviks became the All...

A significant fraction of the enemies of the people were given this label not because of their hostile actions against the workers' and peasants' state, but simply because of their social origin or actions before the revolution: those who used hired labor, high-ranking clergy, former policemen, merchants, etc. They were commonly known as lishentsy (лишенцы, derived from Russian word лишение, deprivation), because by the Soviet Constitution they were deprived of the right of voting. This automatically translated into a deprivation of various social benefits, some of them, e.g., rationing, were at times critical for survival. Lishenets (Russian: Ð»Ð¸ÑˆÐµÐ½ÐµÑ†), literally translated as disenfranchised, was a person stripped of the right of voting in the Soviet Union of 1918 â€” 1936. ... The Soviet Union was governed by four versions of its Constitution: 1918 Soviet Constitution 1924 Soviet Constitution 1936 Soviet Constitution 1977 Soviet Constitution The political theory underlying the Soviet Constitution differed from the political theory underlying constitutions in the West. ... For the Finno-Ugric people, see Votes. ... Rationing is the controlled distribution of resources and scarce goods or services: it restricts how much people are allowed to buy or consume. ...

Since 1927, Article 20 of the Common Part of the penal code that listed possible "measures of social defence" had the following item 20a: "declaration to be an enemy of the workers with deprivation of the union republic citizenship and hence of the USSR citizenship, with obligatory expulsion from its territory". Nevertheless most "enemies of the people" suffered labor camps, rather than expulsion.

In 1927, the penal code of the Soviet Union was changed drastically. The update of the penal code turned the country into a police state, full of informants, who were derogatorily called stukach (стукач, lit. "knocker"). According to Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code), everyone was obligated to report all "anti-Soviet activity", including any expression of disagreement with the policy of the Party, even in casual jokes. This policy resulted in significant growth of Gulag camp populations as those who failed to report their relatives or friends were often themselves reported on. State-sponsored propaganda and mandatory (officially voluntary) participation in the Pioneer Movement helped to indoctrinate Soviet youth to follow the example of Pavlik Morozov, a young boy who reported his own father, a kulak. Jump to: navigation, search 1927 was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... Article 58 of the Russian SFSR Penal Code was put in force on February 25, 1927 to arrest those suspected guilty of counter-revolutionary activities. ... Jump to: navigation, search Gulag (Russian: Ð“Ð£Ð›ÐÐ“ listen [â–¶]) is an acronym for Ð“Ð»Ð°Ð²Ð½Ð¾Ðµ Ð£Ð¿Ñ€Ð°Ð²Ð»ÐµÐ½Ð¸Ðµ Ð˜ÑÐ¿Ñ€Ð°Ð²Ð¸Ñ‚ÐµÐ»ÑŒÐ½Ð¾â€” Ð¢Ñ€ÑƒÐ´Ð¾Ð²Ñ‹Ñ… Ð›Ð°Ð³ÐµÑ€ÐµÐ¹ Ð¸ ÐºÐ¾Ð»Ð¾Ð½Ð¸Ð¸, Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitelno-trudovykh Lagerey i kolonii, The Chief Directorate [or Administration] of Corrective Labour Camps and Colonies. Anne Applebaum, in her book Gulag: A History, explains: Literally, the word GULAG is an acronym, meaning Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei, or... Jump to: navigation, search North Korean propaganda showing a soldier destroying the United States Capitol building. ... Czechoslovakian pioneers A pioneer movement is an organization for children operated by a communist party. ... Pavel Trofimovich Morozov (November 14, 1918 - September 3, 1932), better known by diminutive Pavlik or Pavka, was a Soviet youth glorified by the Soviet Union propaganda as a martyr. ... Kulaks (Russian: , kulak, fist, literally meaning tight-fisted; Ukrainian: , kurkul) is a derogative term extensively used in Soviet political language, originally referring to relatively wealthy peasants in the Russian Empire who owned larger farms and used hired labour, as a result of the Stolypin reform introduced since 1906. ...

One might wonder why there were so many enemies of workers left, seemingly contrary to the initial claims of Bolsheviks that the opponents of the proletariat were crushed as a class in the Soviet Union. This was handily explained by Stalinist doctrine, which included the "theory of the aggravation of class struggle under socialism". The theory postulated that class struggle grows more intense during the dictatorship of the proletariat, thus requiring more extreme measures. Anti-Stalinist Marxists, particularly Trotskyists, reject this idea. Jump to: navigation, search Leaders of the Bolshevik Party and the Communist International, a painting by Malcolm McAllister on the Pathfinder Mural in New York City and on the cover of the book Leninâ€™s Final Fight published by Pathfinder. ... Jump to: navigation, search T I AM YOUR KING ME ME ME MEhe proletariat (from Latin proles, offspring) is a term used to identify a lower social class; a member of such a class isproletarian. ... Jump to: navigation, search Stalinism is a brand of political theory, and the political and economic system implemented by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union. ... The theory of aggravation of the class struggle along with the development of socialism was one of cornerstones of Stalinism in the internal politics of the Soviet Union. ... Jump to: navigation, search The dictatorship of the proletariat is a term employed by Karl Marx in his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program that refers to a transition period between capitalist and communist society in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. ... Jump to: navigation, search Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. ...

Since 1937, the ranks of the "enemies of the people" were significantly extended with the Traitor of Motherland Family Members. Jump to: navigation, search 1937 was a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ... The NKVD Order no. ...

The extreme treatment of opponents is one of numerous reasons why the Soviet regime is often considered authoritarian or even totalitarian. The term authoritarian is used to describe an organization or a state which enforces strong and sometimes oppressive measures against the population, generally without attempts at gaining the consent of the population. ... The concept of Totalitarianism is a typology or ideal-type used by some political scientists to encapsulate the characteristics of a number of twentieth century regimes that mobilized entire populations in support of the state or an ideology. ...

-Note: The term "enemy of the people" was used by others besides the Soviets, ex. by the Jacobins during the radical phase of the French Revolution [Reign of Terror].

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