The Fifth Main Directorate evolved out of the Main Secret Political Administration. It was responsible for regulating and repressing real or imagined dissent within the party apparatus and Soviet society. This involved supervising almost every aspect of Soviet life, including the intelligentsia, bureaucracy, general administrative agencies, cultural organizations, educational institutions, and even the party apparatus itself. They investigated the political reliability of the entire population of the Soviet Union, with particular attention to the Party and Soviet apparatus, up to the highest leaders of the Party and government. They also secretly supervised the activity of the entire administrative and economic apparatus of the state and all scientific, public, church, and other organizations. The goal was to hunt down "deviations from the general line," "opposition leanings" within the party to ferret out and eliminate "bourgeois nationalism" in the Soviet satellites, i.e., anti-Soviet movements under the guise of nationalism.