Soyuz was a faction in the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR. The faction was critical of Perestroika

Perestroika

Perestroika was a political movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during 1980s, widely associated with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...

 and liberal reforms; it was opposed to de-centralization of the Soviet Union. The group was founded on 14 February 1990, some of its leaders were Viktor Alksnis

Viktor Alksnis

Viktor Alksnis is an ethnic Latvian Russian politician and former Soviet Air Force colonel. He is the chairman of Russian Center of Free Technologies, an organization intended to promote Free Software and open standards in Russia...

 (from Latvian SSR), Yegor Ligachev

Yegor Ligachev

Yegor Kuzmich Ligachev is a Russian politician who was a high-ranking official in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . Originally a protege of Mikhail Gorbachev, Ligachev became a challenger to his leadership.-Early life:...

, Nikolai Petrushenko, Yevgeny Kogan (Estonian SSR), Anatoly Checkoyev (Georgian SSR, South Ossetian autonomous region). The faction claimed to have 500 members in the USSR Supreme Soviet. The group managed to oust Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze

Eduard Shevardnadze

Eduard Shevardnadze is a former Soviet, and later, Georgian statesman from the height to the end of the Cold War. He served as President of Georgia from 1995 to 2003, and as First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party , from 1972 to 1985. Shevardnadze was responsible for many top decisions on...

 for 'giving up' Eastern Europe, in February 1991, it asked for 'state of emergency'

Martial law

Martial law is the imposition of military rule by military authorities over designated regions on an emergency basis— only temporary—when the civilian government or civilian authorities fail to function effectively , when there are extensive riots and protests, or when the disobedience of the law...

 to be introduced in the USSR. The Soyuz faction did not formally support the August coup of 1991, an event that had devastating consequences for the faction. Many of the group leaders joined Sergei Baburin's movement Russian All-People's Union

Russian All-People's Union

Russian All-People's Union was a Russian nationalist political party, formed in October 1991, in 2001 it merged into Narodnaya Volya. Its leader was Sergey Baburin....

 and the related Rossiya faction in the RSFSR parliament (sometimes called the sister faction of the Soyuz group ). An organization with the same name - Soyuz - continued to exist as a political movement in the post-Soviet Russia, featuring communist/Neo-Stalinist views. That organisation took part in the 1995 legislative election within the bloc Power to the People, led by Baburin and Nikolai Ryzhkov

Nikolai Ryzhkov

Nikolai Ivanovich Ryzhkov was a Soviet official who became a Russian politician following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. He served as the last Chairman of the Council of Ministers or Premier of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991...

. In the 1999 legislative election, the Soyuz movement, then led by Georgy Tikhonov, took part within the Stalin Bloc — For the USSR coalition.