Andrey Vlasov

For another person, see Andrey Vlasov (footballer).

In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Andreyevich and the family name is Vlasov.

Andrey Andreyevich Vlasov
Андрéй Андрéевич Влáсов
Vlasov in 1942
Chairman of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia
In office 14 November 1944 – May 1945
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	Mikhail Meandrov
Personal details
Born	(1901-09-14)September 14, 1901 Lomakino, Nizhny Novgorod Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	August 1, 1946(1946-08-01) (aged 44) Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Cause of death	Execution by hanging
Political party	All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (1930–1942) Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (1944–1946)
Awards	Order of the Red Banner1 Order of Lenin1 1All Soviet awards revoked after defection to Germany. Ostvolk Medal in gold with swords
Signature
Military service
Allegiance	Russian SFSR (1919–1922) Soviet Union (1922–1942) Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (1945)
Years of service	1919–1945
Rank	Lieutenant general
Commands	99th Rifle Division 20th Army 2nd Shock Army Russian Liberation Army
Battles/wars	Russian Civil War Second World War

Andrey Andreyevich Vlasov (Russian: Андрей Андреевич Власов, September 14 [O.S. September 1] 1901 – 1 August 1946) was a Soviet Red Army general and political and military collaborator with Nazi Germany. During the Axis-Soviet campaigns of World War II he fought (1941–1942) against the Wehrmacht in the Battle of Moscow and later was captured attempting to lift the siege of Leningrad. After his capture he defected to Germany and nominally headed the Russian Liberation Army (Russkaya osvoboditel'naya armiya, ROA). Initially this army existed only on paper and was used by Germans to goad Red Army troops to surrender, while any political and military activities were officially forbidden to him by the Nazis after his visits to the occupied territory; only in November 1944 did Heinrich Himmler, aware of Germany's shortage of manpower, arrange for Vlasov to form a real collaborationist army formed from Soviet prisoners of war as armed forces of Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia, a political organisation headed by Vlasov. While for the Nazis the ROA was a mere propaganda weapon, Vlasov and his associates attempted to create a political movement independent of the Nazi control that would present a democratic anti-Stalinist program while attempting to avoid Nazi antisemitism and chauvinism, with "completing the Revolution" of 1917 being the ultimate goal of the movement. In January 1945, Vlasov headed the army as it was declared that it would be no longer a part of Wehrmacht. At the war's end, the 1st division of ROA aided the May 1945 Prague uprising against the Germans. Vlasov and the ROA then tried to escape to the Western Front, but were captured by Soviet forces with the United States' assistance. Vlasov was tortured, tried for treason, and hanged.

Early career

Born in Lomakino, Nizhny Novgorod Governorate, Russian Empire, Vlasov was originally a student at a Russian Orthodox seminary. He quit the study of divinity after the Russian Revolution, briefly studying agricultural sciences instead, and in 1919 joined the Red Army fighting in the southern theatre in Ukraine, the Caucasus, and the Crimea during the Russian Civil War. He distinguished himself as an officer and gradually rose through the ranks of the Red Army.

Vlasov joined the Communist Party in 1930. Sent to China, he acted as a military adviser to Chiang Kai-shek from 1938 to November 1939. From February to May 1939 he was the advisor to Yan Xishan, the governor of Shanxi. Vlasov was also the chief of staff to the head of the Soviet military mission, General Aleksandr Cherepanov. Upon his return, Vlasov served in several assignments before being given command of the 99th Rifle Division. After just nine months under Vlasov's leadership, and an inspection by Semyon Timoshenko, the division was recognized as one of the best divisions in the Army in 1940. Timoshenko presented Vlasov with an inscribed gold watch, as he "found the 99th the best of all". The historian John Erickson says of Vlasov at this point that [he] "was an up-and-coming man". In 1940, Vlasov was promoted to major general, and on June 22, 1941, when the Germans and their allies invaded the Soviet Union, Vlasov was commanding the 4th Mechanized Corps.

As a lieutenant general, he commanded the 37th Army near Kiev and escaped encirclement. He then played an important role in the defense of Moscow, as his 20th Army counterattacked and retook Solnechnogorsk. Vlasov's picture was printed (along with those of other Soviet generals) in the newspaper Pravda as that of one of the "defenders of Moscow". Vlasov was decorated on January 24, 1942, with the Order of the Red Banner for his efforts in the defence of Moscow. Vlasov was ordered to relieve the ailing commander Klykov after the Second Shock Army had been encircled. After this success, Vlasov was put in command of the 2nd Shock Army of the Volkhov Front and ordered to lead the attempt to lift the Siege of Leningrad—the Lyuban-Chudovo Offensive Operation of January–April 1942.

On January 7, 1942, Vlasov's army had spearheaded the Lyuban offensive operation to break the Leningrad encirclement. Planned as a combined operation between the Volkhov and Leningrad Fronts on a 30 km frontage, other armies of the Leningrad Front (including the 54th) were supposed to participate at scheduled intervals in this operation. Crossing the Volkhov River, Vlasov's army was successful in breaking through the German 18th Army's lines and penetrated 70–74 km deep inside the German rear area. However, the other armies (the Volkhov Front's 4th, 52nd, and 59th Armies, 13th Cavalry Corps, and 4th and 6th Guards Rifle Corps, as well as the 54th Army of the Leningrad Front) failed to exploit Vlasov's advances and provide the required support, and Vlasov's army became stranded. Permission to retreat was refused. With the counter-offensive in May 1942, the Second Shock Army was finally allowed to retreat, but by now, too weakened, it was surrounded and in June 1942 virtually annihilated during the final breakout at Myasnoi Bor.

German prisoner

Vlasov and Himmler on the cover of Norwegian Signal

After Vlasov's army was surrounded, he himself was offered an escape by aeroplane. The general refused and hid in German-occupied territory; ten days later, on July 12, 1942, a local farmer exposed him to the Germans. Vlasov's opponent and captor, general Georg Lindemann, interrogated him about the surrounding of his army and details of battles, then "had Vlasov imprisoned in occupied Vinnytsia."

While in prison, Vlasov met Captain Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt, a Baltic German who was attempting to foster a Russian Liberation Movement. Strik-Strikfeldt had circulated memos to this effect in the Wehrmacht. Strik-Strikfeldt, who had been a participant in the White movement during the Russian Civil War, persuaded Vlasov to become involved in aiding the German advance against the rule of Joseph Stalin and Bolshevism. With Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Boyarsky, Vlasov wrote a memo shortly after his capture to the German military leaders suggesting cooperation between anti-Stalinist Russians and the German Army.

In 2016, in his habilitation thesis, Russian historian Kirill Alexandrov analyzed the careers of 180 Soviet generals and officers who joined the Vlasov army. He concluded that most of them personally experienced atrocities committed by the NKVD during the Great Purge and previous purges in the Red Army, which made them disillusioned with the leadership of Stalin and motivated them to defect to the Nazis. Alexandrov's work was reported to the FSB by Russian and Soviet nationalists as "inciting hatred" but his university, regardless of the political pressure, voted in favor of its scientific value.

Defection

Vlasov (left) and Gen. Zhilenkov (center) meeting Joseph Goebbels (February 1945)

Vlasov was taken to Berlin under the control of the Wehrmacht Propaganda Department. While there, he and other Soviet officers began drafting plans for the creation of a Russian provisional government and the recruitment of a Russian army of liberation under Russian command.

In the spring of 1943, Vlasov wrote an anti-Bolshevik leaflet known as the "Smolensk Proclamation", which was dropped from aircraft by the millions on Soviet forces and Soviet-controlled soil. In March of the same year, Vlasov also published an open letter titled "Why I Have Taken Up the Struggle Against Bolshevism".

Vlasov talking to recruits on November 18, 1944

Even though no Russian Liberation Army yet existed, the Nazi propaganda department issued Russian Liberation Army patches to Russian volunteers and tried to use Vlasov's name in order to encourage defections. Several hundred thousand former Soviet citizens served in the German army wearing this patch, but never under Vlasov's own command.

Vlasov was permitted to make several trips to German-occupied Soviet Union: most notably, to Pskov, Russia, where Russian pro-German volunteers paraded. The populace's reception of Vlasov was mixed. While in Pskov, Vlasov dealt himself a nearly fatal political blow by referring to the Germans as mere "guests" during a speech, which Hitler found belittling. Vlasov was even put under house arrest and threatened with being handed over to the Gestapo. Despondent about his mission, Vlasov threatened to resign and return to the POW camp, but was dissuaded at the last minute by his confidants.

According to Varlam Shalamov and his tale The Last Battle of Major Pugachov, Vlasov emissaries lectured to the Russian prisoners of war, explaining to them that their government had declared them all traitors, and that escaping was pointless. As Vlasov proclaimed, even if the Soviets succeeded, Stalin would send them to Siberia. Only in September 1944 did Germany, at the urging of Heinrich Himmler, initially a virulent opponent of Vlasov, finally permit Vlasov to raise his Russian Liberation Army. Vlasov formed and chaired the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia, proclaimed by the Prague Manifesto on 14 November 1944. Vlasov also hoped to create a Pan-Slavic liberation congress, but Nazi political officials would not permit it.

Vlasov Movement

Caricature "General Vlasov - the Russian Quisling" (1943) by Arthur Szyk depicts Vlasov as a far-right reactionary surrounded by the White Guards with the Russian imperial double-headed eagle above him; the drawing is dedicated to the Russian White general Anton Denikin

The creation of a political movement behind Vlasov and the Russian collaboration became a result of the conflicts within the Nazi Party and the Nazi bureaucracy. While Hitler and the supporters of the Generalplan Ost adhered to the idea of the colonization of the Untermenschen and denied any cooperation with the population of the USSR, Alfred Rosenberg proposed the creation of monoethnic nation-states as satellites of the Third Reich ruled by local nationalist collaborators. Hitler rejected this project, but the Soviet defectors were used by Wehrmacht Propaganda. Eventually Hitler agreed to use the Soviet defectors for propaganda purposes. As the reports of the Osstruppen defecting the Soviet partisans reached Hitler, he demanded that all the units be disbanded, and the men sent to the mines and factories, but this order wasn't executed due to the resistance of the OKW. After the 20 July plot, the Eastern troops were handed to the SS, and as Hitler weakened due to physical conditions, Himmler found possible the creation of a collaborationist political organisation with its army.

As he defected, Vlasov became the leading figure of the so-called "Russian Liberation Movement", the main goal of which was the overthrow of Stalinism with the aid of the Nazis; the ROA was thought to be the armed force of the movement. Although the White emigres participated in its formation, the Soviet defectors eventually became its leaders and formulated its political ideals. The Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia became the political body of this movement, and its ideals were described in the Prague Manifesto of the Committee in November 1944. Robert Conquest wrote that Vlasov's "program shows that he was entirely out of sympathy with Nazism, and only concerned with a democratic Russia."

As Vlasov became the undisputed leader of the movement, it became referred to as "the Vlasov Movement", while his Manifesto calls it the "Liberation Movement of the Peoples of Russia", underlying its multinationality.

Although at first Vlasov hoped for an open co-operation of his movement and the Nazis, during his tour at the occupied territories, he emphasised that the Russians, and that National Socialism could not be imposed on Russia, and that "a foreign coat [would] not fit a Russian." In his nationalist speeches, Vlasov promoted the idea of equal partnership with Germany and the idea of an independent Russia; his speeches angered Himmler, and in response, Wilhelm Keitel issued an order that Vlasov must be returned to POW camp and that his name henceforth should be used only for propaganda purposes. Rosenberg stopped supporting Vlasov, but he was placed under virtual house arrest in Dahlem instead of being sent to the POW camp. Disappointed, Vlasov said several times that he would return to the camp, but was dissuaded by his associates, namely Malyshkin and Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt.

Ideologically, the Vlasov movement was between the Russian nationalism of the NTS, as its ideologues surrounded Vlasov with the support of the Nazis, and the other POWs which held to more social democratic views; some of Vlasov's close associates like Milety Zykov described themselves as Marxists, Zykov was also described as a Bukharinist. Despite being captured by the Nazi secret police and killed, ostensibly for his Jewish origins and for his views, before the formation of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia and the creation of its Manifesto, the political organization of the Vlasovites, Zykov was a major ideologue of the Vlasov army and participated in writing of the other Vlasovite program documents. The Vlasovites opposed their programs, the Smolensk Declaration, Vlasov's open letter "Why I Decided to Fight against Bolshevism", the Prague Manifesto of the KONR and Bloknot Propagandista (an important document which was written by rather minor members of the KONR as open for discussion and was not recognized as an official program), both to the Western capitalism and Stalinism, which was called by the word "Bolshevism" and described in the Manifesto not as socialism, but as "state capitalism", and proclaimed their devotion to "completing the Revolution" of 1917 without distinguishing the February Revolution and the October Revolution, and to ideals of either a "Russia without Bolsheviks and Capitalists" (Smolensk Declaration and the open letter), or a welfare state (Bloknot Propagandista); the influence of the NTS on the Manifesto is seen in the description of the future system of Russia as a "national-labour" system, some of Vlasov's chief commanders joined the NTS. All of these documents granted the basic democratic freedoms and rights, including the right of the nations to self-determination and to separate from Russia and did not contain antisemitic remarks and invectives; Bloknot Propagandista also contained an attempt in critique of Marxism and denied both internationalism and national chauvinism. However, antisemitic remarks were made in one of the speeches of Vasily Malyshkin and in and in Georgi Zhilenkov's interview to the Völkischer Beobachter; Vlasov was critical of such remarks and replied to the Nazi concerns that "the Jewish question" "was an internal Russian problem and would be dealt with after they [the ROA] had accomplished the primary aim of overthrowing the existing regime"; however, antisemitism frequently appeared in the pro-Vlasov Nazi and collaborationist newspapers issued before the formation of KONR, including the ones edited by Zykov, often in form of articles reprinted from the Völkischer Beobachter with the citation of the source. The program documents were also written as a compromise with Nazism to various extents: the Smolensk Declaration included some pro-Nazi points ("Germany was not fighting the war against the Russian people and their homeland but merely against Bolshevism"), and the Manifesto included a number of criticims of the Western Allies as a compromise with Himmler's insistence to add antisemitic points.

The Nazis were suspicious of Vlasov, his organisation and his ideological position, and the Gestapo warned about the possibility of the Vlasovites betraying the Reich. The suspicions and criticism of the Vlasovites from the Reich officials was summarised in a document by the Ministry of Propaganda official Eberhard Taubert who described his concerns about the movement being "not National Socialist": "It is significant that it does not fight Jewry, that the Jewish Question is not recognized as such at all"; instead it presented "a watered-down infusion of liberal and Bolshevik ideologies", and Taubert described the concern with "strong Anglophile sympathies" and it "toying with the idea of a possible change of course" while not "feel[ing] bound to Germany".

Commander of the ROA

Vlasov with ROA soldiers

Vlasov's order no. 65 to prevent dedovshchina in the Russian Liberation Army, April 3, 1945.

Only combat of the ROA against the Red Army took place on February 11, 1945, on the river Oder; ot was carried by the First Divison led by General Sergei Bunyachenko. After three days of battle against overwhelming forces, the First Division of the ROA was forced to retreat and marched southward to Prague, in German-controlled Bohemia.

In March 1945, Bunyachenko started disobeying the commands of the Wehrmacht; eventually Ferdinand Schörner (and later Rudolf Toussaint) threatened to use armed force agaist the ROA. Vlasov reprimanded Bunyachenko during their meeting with Schörner in assertion of his loyalty, but privately granted Bunyachenko complete independence in sign of his approval while himself taking care of the rest two incomplete divisions.

During the Prague uprising, the officers of the First Division, Bunyachenko and Vlasov gathered a meeting and discussed whether the First Division should help the insurgents. Vlasov spoke against joining the uprising, but his position was not supported by the others, and the First Division joined the uprising.

Two days later, the First Division was forced to leave Prague as Communist Czech partisans began arresting ROA soldiers in order to hand them over to the Soviets for execution. Vlasov and the rest of his forces, trying to evade the Red Army, attempted to head west to surrender to the Allies in the closing days of the war in Europe.

Capture by Soviet forces, trial, and execution

Vlasov leaving the headquarters of the 16th Armored Division of the US Army in Pilsen (May 9, 1945)

Vlasov's division, commanded by General Sergei Bunyachenko, was captured 40 kilometres (25 mi) southeast of Plzeň by the Soviet 25th Tank Corps, after their attempt to surrender to US troops was rejected. Captain M. I. Yakushev of the 162nd Tank Brigade had Vlasov dragged out of his car, put on a tank and driven straight to the Soviet 13th Army HQ. Vlasov was then transported from the 13th Army HQ to Marshal Ivan Konev's command post in Dresden, and from there sent immediately to Moscow.

Vlasov was confined in Lubyanka prison where he was interrogated. A trial was held, beginning on 30 July 1946 and was presided over by Viktor Abakumov who sentenced him and eleven other senior officers from his army to death for high treason.

Monument dedicated to Andrey Vlasov and the combatants of the Russian Liberation Army in New York

Vlasov was executed by hanging on 1 August 1946. His execution was among the last death sentences in the Soviet Union carried out by hanging, after which executions were conducted only by shooting.

Memorial

A memorial dedicated to General Vlasov was erected at the Novo-Diveevo Russian Orthodox convent and cemetery in Nanuet, New York, US. Twice annually, on the anniversary of Vlasov's execution and on the Sunday following Orthodox Easter, a memorial service is held for Vlasov and the forces of the Russian Liberation Army.

Review of his case

In 2001, a Russian social organization, "For Faith and Fatherland", applied to the Russian Federation's military prosecutor for a review of Vlasov's case, saying that "Vlasov was a patriot who spent much time re-evaluating his service in the Red Army and the essence of Stalin's regime before agreeing to collaborate with the Germans". The military prosecutor concluded that the law of rehabilitation of victims of political repressions did not apply to Vlasov and refused to consider the case again. However, Vlasov's Article 58 conviction for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda was vacated.

See also

• Bronislaw Kaminski
• Constantine Kromiadi
• Engelen des doods (Angels of death)
• Operation Keelhaul
• Russian Liberation Army
• Collaboration in the German-occupied Soviet Union

Literature and film

Books:

• Andreyev, Catherine (1987). Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521389600.
• Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt: Against Stalin and Hitler. Memoir of the Russian Liberation Movement 1941–5. Macmillan, 1970, ISBN 0-333-11528-7
• Russian version of the above: Вильфрид Штрик-Штрикфельдт: Против Сталина и Гитлера. Изд. Посев, 1975, 2003. ISBN 5-85824-005-4
• Sven Steenberg: Wlassow. Verräter oder Patriot? Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, Köln 1968.
• Sergej Frölich: General Wlassow. Russen und Deutsche zwischen Hitler und Stalin.
• Joachim Hoffmann: Die Tragödie der 'Russischen Befreiungsarmee' 1944/45. Wlassow gegen Stalin. Herbig Verlag, 2003 ISBN 3-7766-2330-6.
• Jurgen Thorwald: The Illusion: Soviet Soldiers in Hitler's Armies. English translation, 1974.
• Martin Berger: "Impossible alternatives". The Ukrainian Quarterly, Summer-Fall 1995, pp. 258–262. [review of Catherine Andrevyev: Vlasov and the Russian liberation movement]

Documentaries:

• General for Two Devils 1995
• Europe Central by William T Vollmann
• Angels of Death 1998, director: Leo de Boer.

External links

• "It's Too Early To Forgive Vlasov", The St. Petersburg Times, November 6, 2001
• Władysław Anders and Antonio Muňoz: "Russian Volunteers in the German Wehrmacht in WWII" (describes role of Vlasov)
• Congress of Russian Americans article on Vlasov
• Newspaper clippings about Andrey Vlasov in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW