The Border Troops of the German Democratic Republic (Grenztruppen der DDR) were the border guards of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and until October 1949 of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, tasked with preventing the mass outward migration of East Germans to the West known as Republikflucht. The issue was a major political concern for the East German government, as the idea that any citizen of communist East Germany would voluntarily defect to the capitalist West was a source of ideological embarrassment, and preventing such defections was a longstanding objective. Originally the Border Troops were not formally integrated into the regular armed forces, the National People's Army (NVA), but typically carried military-level small arms such as Kalashnikov assault rifles or SKS semiautomatic carbines.