In Soviet times, supporters of Tajikistan independence were harshly persecuted by the KGB, and most were either shot dead or jailed for many years. After the beginning of the ''Perestroika'' era, declared by Mikhail Gorbachev throughout the USSR, supporters of the independence of the republics began to speak openly and freely. In Tajikistan SSR, the independence movement has been active since 1987. Supporters of independence were the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan, the Democratic Party of Tajikistan and the national democratic ''Rastokhez'' (Revival) Movement. On the eve of the collapse of the USSR, the population of Tajikistan SSR was divided into two camps. The first wanted independence for Tajikistan, the restoration of Tajik culture and language, the restoration of political and cultural relations with Iran and Afghanistan and other countries, and the second part of the population opposed independence, considering it the best option to remain part of the USSR. During the 1991 Soviet Union Referendum (the first internationally observed referendum in the country's history) on continuing the Soviet system and the Soviet Union itself, nearly 97% of voters in Tajikistan approved of Question 1: "Do you consider it necessary to preserve the USSR as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics, which will be fully ensured of human rights and freedoms of any nationality?", though by dissolution in December of the same year, a significant proportion of Tajikistan's population supported what was by then the fait accompli of independence for the union-level republics of the Soviet Union.