Maltsev, Victor Ivanovich

Born into a peasant family. In 1918, he voluntarily joined the Red Army , graduated from the Egorievsky school of military pilots ( 1919 ), a participant in the Civil War . In 1918 - 1921 , 1925 - 1938 and 1940 - 1941 - member of the Communist Party . In 1921 he was expelled on suspicion of kinship with a large businessman Maltsev, in 1938 - in connection with the arrest.

He was an instructor at the Yegoryevsk school of military pilots; according to some reports, he was one of the instructors of V.P. Chkalov . In 1925 - 1927 - the head of the Central airfield near Moscow, in 1927-1931 - the assistant chief, since 1931 - the head of the Air Force Directorate of the Siberian Military District, then was in reserve. Since 1936 - Colonel. Since 1937 - Head of the Turkmen Department of the Civil Air Fleet.

March 11, 1938 was arrested by the NKVD on charges of involvement in the "anti-Soviet military conspiracy"; he was detained in the Ashgabat department of the NKVD, where he was tortured, pleaded not guilty. On September 5, 1939 he was released, rehabilitated, but did not return to significant leadership work, and in December 1939 he was appointed head of the Aeroflot sanatorium in Yalta .

In November 1941, after the occupation of Yalta by German troops, he appeared in the form of a colonel of the Red Army Air Force in the German commandant’s office and declared his desire to fight the Bolsheviks ^[1] . He spent some time in a prisoner of war camp (as a senior reserve officer), after his release he refused to tackle the identification of Soviet and party workers who remained in the city. Then the German authorities instructed him to check the work of the Yalta city council - during the check, he found out that there were big flaws in her work. After that, in March 1942 he agreed to become the burgomaster of Yalta, but already in May he was removed from this post as a former member of the Communist Party. Since September 1942 he was a justice of the peace in Yalta . Since December of that year he was engaged in the formation of anti-Soviet military units. A large print run (50 thousand copies) was published by him, the book The GPU Conveyor, which was dedicated to his arrest and imprisonment and was actively used in German propaganda work.

In 1943 he began to engage in the formation of the Russian Eastern Aviation Group. In particular, he visited prisoner of war camps, urging pilots to join this military unit. In 1944, he delivered anti-Stalin speeches on the radio and in prisoner of war camps. In the same year, he led the formation of several aviation groups from among captured Soviet pilots for the distillation of aircraft from German plants into active units of the German army.

Since the fall of 1944, he led the formation of the aviation unit in Cheb ( Czech Republic ), which in February 1945 formed the basis of the Air Force of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (CONR) . In the same month, he became Commander of the Air Force KONR with the assignment of the military rank of Major General. By the spring of 1945, the KONR Air Force consisted of up to 5 thousand people, including an aviation regiment staffed with flight personnel and materiel (40-45 aircraft), an anti-aircraft artillery regiment , a parachute airborne battalion , and a separate communications company . Command posts in the aviation regiment were occupied by both emigrant pilots and two captured Hero of the Soviet Union - Semyon Bychkov and Bronislav Antilevsky . Air Force KONR headquarters was located in Marianske Lazne .

On April 30, 1945, together with his subordinates, he surrendered to the representatives of the 3rd American Army , was held in American prisoner of war camps in Germany and France (in Cherbourg ). In August 1945 he was handed over to representatives of the Soviet command, tried to commit suicide and inflicted a serious wound - cut his throat ^[2] .

Since 1945 he was held in Butyrskaya prison in Moscow (originally in a prison hospital). The historian K. M. Alexandrov , who studied the materials of the case of Vlasov and his entourage, wrote that “there are practically no Maltsev materials, there is a date, several questions, answers, no evidence. This says that in the process he practically did not give any evidence ” ^[2] . The unpredictability of Maltsev’s behavior, as well as of some other “Vlasovites” (there were fears that the defendants might start to express their views, “objectively coinciding with the moods of a certain part of the population dissatisfied with the Soviet regime ”), led to the fact that the trial of them was declared closed . At trial, pleaded guilty. Sentenced to death by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR . August 1, 1946 hanged in the courtyard of Butyrskaya prison. The remains of the executed were cremated and buried in the nameless moat of the Donskoy Monastery ^[3] .

• Alexandrov K. M. Officer corps of the army of Lieutenant General A. A. Vlasov. Biographical reference. - M .: Sowing , 2001. - ISBN 978-5-85824-186-7
• Alexandrov K. M. Army of Lieutenant General A. A. Vlasov. 1944-1945. - M .: Yauza , Eksmo , 2006 .-- 592 p. - (On the side of the Third Reich) - ISBN 5-699-15429-9

• Biography
• Romanko O. V. On the issue of the ROA and the fate of Viktor Ivanovich Maltsev
• Mikhail Antilevsky. Broken sky