The Soviet Peace Committee (SPC, also known as Soviet Committee for the Defense of Peace, SCDP, russian: Советский Комитет Защиты Мира) was a state-sponsored organization responsible for coordinating

peace movement A peace movement is a social movement which seeks to achieve ideals, such as the ending of a particular war (or wars) or minimizing inter-human violence in a particular place or situation. They are often linked to the goal of achieving world peac ...

s active in the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

. It was founded in 1949 and existed until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.Soviet Peace Committee
/ref>

History and activities

The Soviet Peace Committee was founded in August 1949. It was a member of the

World Peace Council The World Peace Council (WPC) is an international organization with the self-described goals of advocating for universal disarmament, sovereignty and independence and peaceful co-existence, and campaigns against imperialism, weapons of mass ...

(an organization that was also founded in 1949). The inaugural meeting was called the First All-Union Conference of the Partisans of Peace or the all-Soviet Peace Conference. The Soviet Peace Committee supported anti-war campaigns against the wars or militarization of the non-communist, Western countries, but failed to condemn similar actions originating from the USSR or its allies. For example, in 1962 during a World Peace Council conference in

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...

, the Committee strongly objected to criticism of Soviet resumption of nuclear testing and threatened with deportation non-aligned activists who wanted to distribute leaflets. In the early 1980s, it criticized the

European Nuclear Disarmament European Nuclear Disarmament (END) was a Europe-wide movement for a "nuclear-free Europe from Poland to Portugal” that put on annual European Nuclear Disarmament conventions from 1982 to 1991. Origins The founding statement of END was the Eur ...

(END) for its portrayal of the Soviet Union on the same level as NATO and the United States, arguing that while

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...

deployment of nuclear missiles in Europe was "an aggressive policy", the Soviet Union had the right to deploy such weapons defensively.Matthew Evangelista, ''Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War'', Cornell University Press, 2002,
Google Print, p.163
/ref> Some even saw the Committee as a front for the

KGB The KGB (russian: links=no, lit=Committee for State Security, Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), a=ru-KGB.ogg, p=kəmʲɪˈtʲet ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ, Komitet gosud ...

. Independent peace movements in the USSR which operated without permission of the Committee were seen as suspect. It gained some independence during the liberalization of the Soviet Union ( perestroika) in 1985–1991. In the last years of its existence, in the early 1990s, the organization's official publication, ''Vek XX i Mir'' (''20th Century and Peace''), previously seen as a "reliable propaganda instrument",Herman Ermolaev, ''Censorship in Soviet literature, 1917-1991'', Rowman & Littlefield, 1997,
Google Print, p.224
/ref> addressed issues controversial in the USSR, such as the death penalty,

liberalism Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality and equality before the law."political rationalism, hostility to autocracy, cultural distaste for c ...

human rights Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hu ...

totalitarianism Totalitarianism is a form of government and a political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual and group opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high if not complete degree of control and regu ...

and the

Katyn Massacre The Katyn massacre, "Katyń crime"; russian: link=yes, Катынская резня ''Katynskaya reznya'', "Katyn massacre", or russian: link=no, Катынский расстрел, ''Katynsky rasstrel'', "Katyn execution" was a series of m ...

. The Soviet Peace Committee ceased to exist with the

fall of the Soviet Union The dissolution of the Soviet Union, also negatively connoted as rus, Разва́л Сове́тского Сою́за, r=Razvál Sovétskogo Soyúza, ''Ruining of the Soviet Union''. was the process of internal disintegration within the Sov ...

in 1991. In 1992, remnants of the Soviet Peace Committee were reorganized into the Federation for Peace and Conciliation.

Chairmen

Soviet Peace Committee had four chairmen: * Nikolay Semenovich Tikhonov (1949–1979) *

Yevgeny Konstantinovich Fyodorov Yevgeny Konstantinovich Fyodorov (russian: Евгений Константинович Фёдоров; 10 April ( O.S. 28 March), 1910, Bendery – 30 December 1981) was a Soviet geophysicist, statesman, public figure, academician (1960), and ...

(1979–1981) * Yury Zhukov (1982–1987) * Genrikh Borovik (1987–1991)

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Soviet Peace Committee Organizations established in 1949 Organizations disestablished in 1991 Civic and political organizations based in the Soviet Union Foreign relations of the Soviet Union 1949 establishments in the Soviet Union Peace organizations by country World Peace Council Peace movement in the Soviet Union

History and activities

Chairmen

See also

Notes