In early 1989, the Soviet Germans established the Wiedergeburt (“Rebirth”) All-Union Society. An umbrella-organization originally designed to protect and advance ethnic-German interests in the USSR, the “Rebirth” Society adopted the most effective legal means by which it could confront the regime—namely, political dissent based on Lenin's notion of national self-determination. The “Rebirth” movement evolved in this context and represented the fifteenth-largest Soviet nationality numbering more than two million in the 1989 Soviet census. By 1993, official membership in the “Rebirth” Society included nearly 200,000 men and women. Ironically, at the very moment the Soviet Germans became more politically conscious, the Soviet Union and the ethnic-German community were disintegrating.