Russian liberation movement

The main idea of ​​this movement was that Bolshevism could not be overthrown from within the USSR. Numerous previous attempts by white - emigrant organizations (the Russian All-Military Union , the Brotherhood of Russian Truth , and the People's Labor Union of Russian Solidarity ) have demonstrated the futility of waging a direct war against the Soviet state security organs ( OGPU and NKVD ). The ideologists of the movement hoped to use the war between the USSR and the Third Reich to start a civil war in the USSR, relying on the experience of using the First World War to bring the Bolsheviks to power as a result of the October Revolution ( “Let's turn the imperialist war into a civil war!” ) ^{[2 ]} .

Skeptical of this movement, people claimed that Adolf Hitler intended to destroy the Russians as a nation, indicating that his ideas of conquering and subjugating or assimilating were clearly set forth in Mein Kampf . They did not believe that Hitler “distinguished the Russians from the Bolsheviks,” and believed that it was better either to maintain neutrality (the position was popular among many figures of the White movement, for example, A. Denikin ), or support the Red Army during the war (the position was very popular among many Social Revolutionaries , for example, Alexander Kerensky ) ^[3] .

The movement began spontaneously with the outbreak of World War II in June 1941. A number of White Emigration figures tried to get help from the German command in creating armed groups to be used on the Eastern Front (such as the Russian Corps ).

Meanwhile, some Soviet citizens in the occupied territories , as well as captured Soviet officers, decided to go over to the side of Germany and engage in battles with the Red Army. The most famous collaborator was the Red Army Lieutenant General Andrei Vlasov , who, along with Colonel Vladimir Beyersky sent a letter (" Smolensk Declaration ") to the German command with a request to create the Russian Liberation Army . The army was declared as a military formation created for the "liberation of Russia from communism"

Based on propaganda considerations , the leadership of the Third Reich reported on this initiative in the media, however, without undertaking anything organizationally. From that moment on, all the soldiers of Russian nationality in the structure of the German army could consider themselves military personnel of the Russian Liberation Army, which, however, existed then only on paper ^[4] .

Volunteer units

From the beginning of the war, German commanders began recruiting from the local population in the occupied territories of the USSR and Soviet prisoners of war the so-called. "Voluntary assistants" of the Wehrmacht (" Khivi ") ^[5] .

By 1942, on the side of Germany, there were a number of armed formations, the fighters of which were predominantly Russian:

• The Russian Liberation National Army is a formation created by Bronislaw Kaminsky on the territory of the Lokot Republic . It was the only force that had complete independence of action in the region. It counted up to 20,000 troops.
• The Russian security corps is a corps formed of Russian emigrants and citizens of the USSR, acting on the side of Nazi Germany during the Second World War. In particular, he fought against the NOAU partisans in Yugoslavia. In total, 17090 people went through the service in the corps, of which about 11.5 thousand were emigrants, and the rest were Soviet citizens.
• The Russian National People’s Army is an armed paramilitary group under the command of two white emigrants, S. Ivanov and K. Kromiadi , formed on the territory of occupied Belarus and taking part in the Second World War on the side of the Third Reich.
• SS brigade "Druzhina" - a union of SS troops from the Great Patriotic War, consisting of volunteers from camps of Soviet prisoners of war of up to 8,000 people. In August 1943, the unit sided with the partisans and was renamed the Anti-Fascist partisan brigade.
• Various Cossack units under the command of several former white officers, such as Peter Krasnov and Andrei Shkuro , the former commander I. Kononov, and the German commander Helmut von Pannwitz . Unlike other projects for the formation of national units from former Soviet citizens, Hitler and his inner circle favorably looked at the idea of ​​forming Cossack units, as they adhered to the theory that Cossacks were descendants of the Goths , and therefore belonged not to the Slavic , but to the Aryan race .

In total, more than a million former Soviet citizens joined the Wehrmacht , the SS, and various collaborationist groups (including other national groups, such as Ukrainians , Belarusians , Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians , Chechens , Kazakhs , Georgians , Armenians, and others) ^[6] .

Third Force

The People's Labor Union of Russian Solidarists (NTS) became the only political group that tried to act against the Soviet regime, without relying on the help of the Third Reich. This principle was proclaimed in 1938 by Chairman Viktor Mikhailovich Baidalakov , who declared that in the light of the impending military conflict: “Who shall we go with? Russian conscience can be only one answer. Not with Stalin, nor with foreign conquerors, but with the whole Russian people. ” The hope was to create a fully independent Third Force that would become both anti-communist and anti-Nazi and would act as a guerrilla resistance movement .

Shortly before the attack on the Soviet Union, the NTS decided to close its branches in Germany and the Axis countries and go underground to avoid German influence. The NTS leadership also banned its members from joining any collaborationist formations.

Members of the STC began to arrive in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union, often as translators of the Wehrmacht , in order to establish contacts with the local population (which they tried to do before the war). However, due to the presence of a huge number of NKVD agents in the partisan movement, as well as the activities of the SD, the idea of ​​"Third Force" became impossible to realize. As a result of the attempted functioning of the Third Force, many NTS members were arrested by the Gestapo at the end of 1944 and placed in the Dachau concentration camp ^{[7] [8]} .

Russian Liberation Army

On December 27, 1942, Lieutenant General A. A. Vlasov and Colonel V. G. Baersky became the authors of the Smolensk Declaration , in which they invited the German command to organize the ROA. The army was declared as a military formation created for the "liberation of Russia from communism." Based on propaganda considerations, the leadership of the Third Reich reported on this initiative in the media, however, without undertaking anything organizationally. From that moment on, all the soldiers of Russian nationality in the structure of the German army could consider themselves military personnel of the Russian Liberation Army, which, however, existed then only on paper ^[4] .

The formation of ROA units began in 1943, they were involved in the security and police service and the fight against partisans in the occupied territory of the USSR ^[9] .

At the time of the creation of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia, the main goal of Andrei Vlasov and his entourage was to become as strong as possible militarily, so that after the collapse of Germany , which, according to his calculations, was to happen in late 1945, to appear in the inevitable, as he believed , the conflict of the Western powers with the Soviet Union as a "third force" and try to carry out their political tasks with the help of Great Britain and the USA ^[10] . On January 28, 1945, the ROA received the status of the armed forces of an allied power that remains neutral towards the United States and Great Britain ^[8] .

Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia

The participants in the liberation movement did not have their own political center until the Committee on the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia was created on November 14, 1944. At the solemn meeting held in Prague, the main document of KONR was adopted and signed - its political platform - the Manifesto of the Liberation Movement of the Peoples of Russia . KONR unexpectedly received massive support among many opponents of the USSR - both among white emigrants and among former Soviet prisoners of war. The committee received the blessing of Metropolitan Anastasius from the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad , as well as the Paris Exarchate .

After the creation of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia, a number of collaborationist formations were formally included in the Russian Liberation Army .

Guerrilla units

In 1943 - 1951, in the forests of the Bryansk region, against the military personnel of the Red Army , internal troops of the NKVD of the USSR , law enforcement and security services, Soviet and party workers, collective farm activists and members of the detachment themselves, suspected of supporting or loyalty to the Soviet regime , there were several partisan detachments ^[11] . The first insurgent force against the Red Army was a group of a former employee of the SD Vojtenko SD , operating in the years 1943-1944 on the border of the Krasnogorsk region and Belarus until the death of Vojtenko himself in a shootout with parts of the rear guard forces of the Red Army in 1944. After the death of the group commander, a small part of the fighters managed to escape under the leadership of Nikolai Kozin . Subsequently, a significant percentage of the squad members were people who had not fought on the German side before, were not part of the RONA, the eastern volunteer battalions and the police ^[11] . These were ordinary residents of the Lokot Republic , former Red Army men and partisans, who hated Soviet power no less than the Nazis, and decided to fight it after the Germans left the USSR ^[11] . As a strategy, the group decided to use the experience of the partisans and hid in the forests of Surazh district.

The detachment of Nikolai Kozin hoped for the start of the Third World War and the arrival of troops of the former allies of the USSR . Expectations were not unfounded: after Winston Churchill ’s speech at Fulton , the relations between the newly formed Soviet bloc and the Western Allies bloc began to aggravate. By 1948, the detachment was almost completely liquidated, one of the last partisans was convicted and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment , since the death penalty was temporarily abolished. The last clash between the Soviet government and the rebels occurred in December 1951 , as a result of which a group of partisans in the amount of 8 people were destroyed ^[12] .

Representatives of the Russian liberation movement encountered a number of obstacles that continued until the very end of the war:

• In Russophobia of the Nazis. Adolf Hitler and many of his closest associates were avid Slavophobes, like many adherents of Nazi ideology. Hitler was furious when he found out how many German generals and officers supported the creation of the Russian army, and even forbade the mention of the idea in his presence. Russian patriotism was suppressed, and Russian white emigrants were kept as far from Nazi-occupied Russia as possible to prevent the growth of Russian nationalism ^[13] .
• In "Eastern politics." The behavior of the Nazis towards the Soviet population was so inhuman that any mention of support for Nazi Germany was impossible.
• Collaborators. Political, economic and military cooperation of Soviet citizens (as well as emigrants from among the subjects of the former Russian Empire ) with the German authorities during World War II. The behavior of these collaborators towards their compatriots caused widespread anger and distrust of anyone who worked in alliance with the Germans.
• Separatism . Nazi policy was aimed at sponsoring national separatism among those peoples who lived in the USSR. The military units created from Cossacks , Ukrainians , Georgians , Armenians , Kazakhs , Chechens , Crimean Tatars and other peoples were headed mainly by people who refused to work with anyone who did not guarantee their independent statehood from the very beginning.
• Political clash. Serious disagreements existed between former Soviet prisoners and white emigrants, largely because both sides fought against each other during the Civil War .

Hitler at first categorically refused to consider any proposals for the Russian liberation movement and allowed these ideas only for propaganda purposes. The revision of the situation with Russian military units began when the Germans lost the battle of Stalingrad .

Even before the surrender of Nazi Germany on May 8, 1945, supporters of the Russian liberation movement turned their hopes to Western countries , in particular the USA and Great Britain : on the one hand, the countries of Western democracy were much closer ideologically to the Russian liberation movement than the Axis countries , on the other - these countries were hostile to the communist regime in the past and, as it seemed to the supporters of the ROD, would not want the spread of communism throughout Europe. Vlasov wanted to record a radio message to the Allies during the last month of the war, but this was prohibited by the Germans ^[8] .

The Allied High Command was in a difficult position: on the one hand, many officers and generals sympathized with the idea of ​​the Russian liberation movement (including George Patton ). On the other hand, they did not want to worsen relations with the Soviet side and personally with Stalin , to whom they promised at the Yalta Conference the forced repatriation of all citizens of the USSR. Subsequently, the allies handed over to the Soviet authorities the majority of the representatives of the liberation movement (example: Extradition of Cossacks in Lienz).

• Russian collaborationism in the Second World War
• Russian liberation army
• Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia
• White movement
• Intransigence

• (1994) Mission of the Russian emigration M. century. Nazarov. Moscow: "Spring". ISBN 5-86231-172-6
• (1986) Novopokolentsy, B. Prianishnikoff. Silver Spring, Maryland. ISBN 0-9616413-1-2
• RONA. Brigade of Bronislaw Kaminsky
• Anti-Soviet resistance
• “Russian Emigration in Nazi Germany” - the “Not So” rubric on Echo of Moscow radio, aired on December 25, 2010
• “Ideological collaboration during the years of World War II” - the heading “Not so” on the radio “Echo of Moscow”, broadcast on June 4, 2011; continued on June 11, 2011
• Russian collaborationism - a series of programs on Radio Liberty (Vladimir Abarinov, 2012)
• "Stalin's Falcons" in the service of the Luftwaffe
• General Vlasov Aviation