Andrey Andreyevich Vlasov (, – August 1, 1946) was a Soviet Russian
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...
general. During the
Axis-Soviet campaigns of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, he fought (1941–1942) against the ''
Wehrmacht
The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the German Army (1935–1945), ''Heer'' (army), the ''Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmac ...
'' in the
Battle of Moscow
The Battle of Moscow was a military campaign that consisted of two periods of strategically significant fighting on a sector of the Eastern Front during World War II, between October 1941 and January 1942. The Soviet defensive effort frustrated H ...
and later was captured attempting to lift the
siege of Leningrad
The siege of Leningrad was a Siege, military blockade undertaken by the Axis powers against the city of Leningrad (present-day Saint Petersburg) in the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front (World War II), Eastern Front of World War II from 1941 t ...
. After his capture, he defected to the
Third Reich
Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictat ...
and nominally headed the collaborationist
Russian Liberation Army
The Russian Liberation Army (; , ), also known as the Vlasov army () was a collaborationist formation, primarily composed of Russians, that fought under German command during World War II. From January 1945, the army was led by Andrey Vlasov, ...
(''Russkaya osvoboditel'naya armiya'', ROA), also becoming the political leader of the Russian
collaborationist anti-Soviet movement.
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
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was a German Nazism, Nazi politician and military leader who was the 4th of the (Protection Squadron; SS), a leading member of the Nazi Party, and one of the most powerful p ...
, aware of Germany's shortage of manpower, arrange for Vlasov formations composed of Soviet
prisoners of war
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
Belligerents hold prisoners of war for a ...
as armed forces of
Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia
The Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (, ', abbreviated as , ') was composed of military and civilian Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, collaborators with Nazi Germany from territories of the Soviet Union, mo ...
, a political organisation headed by Vlasov. While for the Nazis the ROA was a mere propaganda weapon, Vlasov and his associates attempted to create an armed political movement independent of the Nazi control that would present an anti-Stalinist program described by
Robert Conquest
George Robert Acworth Conquest (15 July 19173 August 2015) was a British and American historian, poet, novelist, and propagandist. He was briefly a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain but later wrote several books condemning commun ...
as democratic,
while attempting to avoid Nazi antisemitism and chauvinism, with "completing the
Revolution
In political science, a revolution (, 'a turn around') is a rapid, fundamental transformation of a society's class, state, ethnic or religious structures. According to sociologist Jack Goldstone, all revolutions contain "a common set of elements ...
" 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 the ''Wehrmacht''. At the war's end, the 1st division of ROA aided the May 1945
Prague uprising against the Germans. Vlasov and the ROA were captured by Soviet forces with the United States' assistance. Vlasov was tortured, and hanged for treason after a
secret trial
A secret trial is a trial that is not open to the public or generally reported in the news, especially any in-trial proceedings. Generally, no official record of the case or the judge's verdict is made available. Often there is no indictment.
S ...
. After his death, his figure and his movement became objects of various narratives in
memory politics and historiography.
Early career

Born in
Lomakino,
Nizhny Novgorod
Nizhny Novgorod ( ; rus, links=no, Нижний Новгород, a=Ru-Nizhny Novgorod.ogg, p=ˈnʲiʐnʲɪj ˈnovɡərət, t=Lower Newtown; colloquially shortened to Nizhny) is a city and the administrative centre of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast an ...
Governorate,
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...
, Vlasov was originally a student at a
Russian Orthodox
The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC; ;), also officially known as the Moscow Patriarchate (), is an autocephaly, autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodox Christian church. It has 194 dioceses inside Russia. The Primate (bishop), p ...
seminary
A seminary, school of theology, theological college, or divinity school is an educational institution for educating students (sometimes called seminarians) in scripture and theology, generally to prepare them for ordination to serve as cle ...
. He quit the study of divinity after the
Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution was a period of Political revolution (Trotskyism), political and social revolution, social change in Russian Empire, Russia, starting in 1917. This period saw Russia Dissolution of the Russian Empire, abolish its mona ...
, briefly studying
agricultural sciences
Agricultural science (or agriscience for short) is a broad multidisciplinary field of biology that encompasses the parts of exact, natural, economic and social sciences that are used in the practice and understanding of agriculture. Professiona ...
instead, and in 1919 joined the
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...
. He fought in the
southern theatre in
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...
, the
Caucasus
The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region spanning Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is situated between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, comprising parts of Southern Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The Caucasus Mountains, i ...
, and the
Crimea
Crimea ( ) is a peninsula in Eastern Europe, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, almost entirely surrounded by the Black Sea and the smaller Sea of Azov. The Isthmus of Perekop connects the peninsula to Kherson Oblast in mainland Ukrain ...
during the
Russian Civil War
The Russian Civil War () was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire sparked by the 1917 overthrowing of the Russian Provisional Government in the October Revolution, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. I ...
, including against the
White forces of
Anton Denikin
Anton Ivanovich Denikin (, ; – 7 August 1947) was a Russian military leader who served as the Supreme Ruler of Russia, acting supreme ruler of the Russian State and the commander-in-chief of the White movement–aligned armed forces of Sout ...
and
Pyotr Wrangel, and the
anarchist army of
Nestor Makhno
Nestor Ivanovych Makhno (, ; 7 November 1888 – 25 July 1934), also known as Bat'ko Makhno ( , ), was a Ukrainians, Ukrainian anarchist revolutionary and the commander of the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine during the Ukrainian War o ...
. He distinguished himself as an officer and gradually rose through the ranks of the Red Army. In the 1920s and early 1930s he was a company, battalion, and regimental commander, and graduated from an infantry officer course. He was also an instructor at the
Frunze Military Academy
The M. V. Frunze Military Academy (), or in full the Military Order of Lenin and the October Revolution, Red Banner, Order of Suvorov Academy in the name of M. V. Frunze (), was a military academy of the Soviet and later the Russian Armed Forces ...
.
Vlasov joined the
Communist Party in 1930. Sent to China in 1938, he acted as a military adviser to
Chiang Kai-shek until November 1939. From February to May 1939 he was the advisor to
Yan Xishan
Yan Xishan (; 8 October 1883 – 22 July 1960; also romanized as Yen Hsi-shan) was a Chinese warlord who served in the government of the Republic of China from June 1949 to March 1950 as its last premier in mainland China and first premi ...
, the governor of
Shanxi
Shanxi; Chinese postal romanization, formerly romanised as Shansi is a Provinces of China, province in North China. Its capital and largest city of the province is Taiyuan, while its next most populated prefecture-level cities are Changzhi a ...
. Vlasov was also the chief of staff to the head of the Soviet military mission, General
Aleksandr Cherepanov. He received a military decoration from Chiang and a watch from his wife,
Madame Chiang Kai-shek, which were both taken from him after he returned to the USSR. 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
Semyon Konstantinovich Timoshenko (; ; – 31 March 1970) was a Soviet military commander, Marshal of the Soviet Union, and one of the most prominent Red Army commanders during the Second World War.
Born to a Ukrainian family in Bessarabia, ...
, the division was recognized as one of the best divisions in the Army in 1940.
[Коллектив авторов. «Великая Отечественная. Командармы. Военный биографический словарь» — М.; Жуковский: Кучково поле, 2005. ] 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
e"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
Kyiv, also Kiev, is the capital and most populous List of cities in Ukraine, city of Ukraine. Located in the north-central part of the country, it straddles both sides of the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2022, its population was 2, ...
and escaped encirclement. He then played an important role in the
defense of Moscow, as his
20th Army counterattacked and retook
Solnechnogorsk
Solnechnogorsk (, lit. ''sunny mountain town'') is a town and the administrative center of Solnechnogorsky District in Moscow Oblast, Russia, located on the Moscow–St. Petersburg Highway and the Moscow–St. Petersburg railway, on ...
. Vlasov's picture was printed (along with those of other Soviet generals) in the newspaper ''
Pravda
''Pravda'' ( rus, Правда, p=ˈpravdə, a=Ru-правда.ogg, 'Truth') is a Russian broadsheet newspaper, and was the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when it was one of the most in ...
'' as that of one of the "defenders of Moscow". Vlasov was decorated on January 24, 1942, with the
Order of the Red Banner
The Order of the Red Banner () was the first Soviet military decoration. The Order was established on 16 September 1918, during the Russian Civil War by decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. It was the highest award of S ...
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
The 2nd Shock Army (), sometimes translated to English as 2nd Assault Army, was a field army of the Soviet Union during the Second World War. This type of formation was created in accordance with prewar doctrine that called for Shock Armies to ''o ...
of the
Volkhov Front
The Volkhov Front () was a major formation of the Red Army during the first period of the Second World War. It was formed as an expediency of an early attempt to halt the advance of the Wehrmacht Army Group North in its offensive thrust towards L ...
and ordered to lead the attempt to lift the
Siege of Leningrad
The siege of Leningrad was a Siege, military blockade undertaken by the Axis powers against the city of Leningrad (present-day Saint Petersburg) in the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front (World War II), Eastern Front of World War II from 1941 t ...
—the
Lyuban-Chudovo Offensive Operation of January–April 1942.
On January 7, 1942, Vlasov's army had spearheaded the
Lyuban offensive operation
The Battle of Lyuban, Lyuban offensive operation or Battle of the Volkhov (7 January 1942 – 30 April 1942) (Russian: Любанская наступательная операция; German: Schlacht am Wolchow) was a Soviet offensive operatio ...
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
The Leningrad Front () was formed during the 1941 German approach on Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) by dividing the Northern Front into the Leningrad Front and Karelian Front on August 27, 1941.
History
The Leningrad Front was immediately ...
(including the 54th) were supposed to participate at scheduled intervals in this operation. Crossing the
Volkhov River
The Volkhov ( ; ; ) is a river in Novgorodsky District, Novgorodsky and Chudovsky Districts of Novgorod Oblast and Kirishsky District, Kirishsky and Volkhovsky Districts of Leningrad Oblast in northwestern Russia. The Volkhov River, Volkhov, whi ...
, 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
The Leningrad Front () was formed during the 1941 German approach on Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) by dividing the Northern Front into the Leningrad Front and Karelian Front on August 27, 1941.
History
The Leningrad Front was immediately ...
) 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

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
Georg Lindemann (8 March 1884 – 25 September 1963) was a German general during World War II. He commanded a division in Poland and France, a corps in the Balkans and Russia, 18th Army outside Leningrad, and later Army Group North. His cousi ...
, interrogated him about the surrounding of his army and details of battles, then "had Vlasov imprisoned in occupied
Vinnytsia
Vinnytsia ( ; , ) is a city in west-central Ukraine, located on the banks of the Southern Bug. It serves as the administrative centre, administrative center of Vinnytsia Oblast. It is the largest city in the historic region of Podillia. It also s ...
."
While in prison, Vlasov met Captain
Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt, a
Baltic German
Baltic Germans ( or , later ) are Germans, ethnic German inhabitants of the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, in what today are Estonia and Latvia. Since Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950), their resettlement in 1945 after the end ...
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
The White movement,. The old spelling was retained by the Whites to differentiate from the Reds. also known as the Whites, was one of the main factions of the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922. It was led mainly by the Right-wing politics, right- ...
during the
Russian Civil War
The Russian Civil War () was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire sparked by the 1917 overthrowing of the Russian Provisional Government in the October Revolution, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. I ...
, persuaded Vlasov to become involved in aiding the German advance against the rule of Joseph Stalin and
Bolshevism
Bolshevism (derived from Bolshevik) is a revolutionary socialist current of Soviet Leninist and later Marxist–Leninist political thought and political regime associated with the formation of a rigidly centralized, cohesive and disciplined p ...
. 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.
Defection
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". 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
Pskov ( rus, Псков, a=Ru-Псков.oga, p=psˈkof; see also Names of Pskov in different languages, names in other languages) is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, city in northwestern Russia and the administrative center of Pskov O ...
, 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
The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...
. 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
Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov (; 18 June 1907 – 17 January 1982), baptized as Varlaam, was a Russian writer, journalist, poet and Gulag survivor. He spent much of the period from 1937 to 1951 imprisoned in forced-labor camps in the Arctic reg ...
and his tale ''The Last Battle of Major Pugachov'', Vlasov emissaries lectured to the Russian
prisoners of war
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
Belligerents hold prisoners of war for a ...
, 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
Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...
.
Vlasov Movement

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
The (; ), abbreviated GPO, was Nazi Germany's plan for the settlement and "Germanization" of captured territory in Eastern Europe, involving the genocide, extermination and large-scale ethnic cleansing of Slavs, Eastern European Jews, and o ...
'' adhered to the idea of the colonization of the ''
Untermensch
''Untermensch'' (; plural: ''Untermenschen'') is a German language word literally meaning 'underman', 'sub-man', or ' subhuman', which was extensively used by Germany's Nazi Party to refer to their opponents and non- Aryan people they deemed ...
en'' and denied any cooperation with the population of the USSR,
Alfred Rosenberg
Alfred Ernst Rosenberg ( – 16 October 1946) was a Baltic German Nazi theorist and ideologue. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart and he held several important posts in the Nazi government. He was the head o ...
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 emigre
White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wavelen ...
s 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
The Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (, ', abbreviated as , ') was composed of military and civilian Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, collaborators with Nazi Germany from territories of the Soviet Union, mo ...
(KONR) became the political body of this movement, and its ideals were described in the Prague Manifesto of the Committee in November 1944.
Robert Conquest
George Robert Acworth Conquest (15 July 19173 August 2015) was a British and American historian, poet, novelist, and propagandist. He was briefly a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain but later wrote several books condemning commun ...
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
ould Ould is an English surname as well as an element of many Arabic names. In Arabic contexts it is a transliteration of the word wikt:ولد, ولد, meaning "son".
Notable people with this surname include:
English surname
* Edward Ould (1852–190 ...
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
Wilhelm Bodewin Johann Gustav Keitel (; 22 September 188216 October 1946) was a German field marshal who held office as chief of the (OKW), the high command of Nazi Germany's armed forces, during World War II. He signed a number of criminal ...
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
National Alliance of Russian Solidarists
The National Alliance of Russian Solidarists ( NTS; ) is a Russian anticommunist organization founded in 1930 by a group of young Russian anticommunist White émigrés in Belgrade, Serbia (then part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia).
The organizat ...
, an organisation of far-right origins which collaborated with the Nazis but the members of which were repressed by Gestapo in 1943 and 1944 so Vlasov had to ask Himmler to free them, as its ideologues surrounded Vlasov, and social democratic views of the other Russian POWs in Germany.
Some of Vlasov's close associates like , a Soviet journalist of Jewish origins, described themselves as
Marxists
Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflict, and ...
, 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
The Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (, ', abbreviated as , ') was composed of military and civilian Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, collaborators with Nazi Germany from territories of the Soviet Union, mo ...
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
Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...
but as "
state capitalism
State capitalism is an economic system in which the state undertakes business and commercial economic activity and where the means of production are nationalized as state-owned enterprises (including the processes of capital accumulation, ...
", and proclaimed their devotion to "completing the Revolution" of 1917 without distinguishing the
February Revolution
The February Revolution (), known in Soviet historiography as the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution and sometimes as the March Revolution or February Coup was the first of Russian Revolution, two revolutions which took place in Russia ...
and the
October Revolution
The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...
, and to ideals of either a "Russia without Bolsheviks and Capitalists" (Smolensk Declaration and the open letter), or a
welfare state
A welfare state is a form of government in which the State (polity), state (or a well-established network of social institutions) protects and promotes the economic and social well-being of its citizens, based upon the principles of equal oppor ...
(''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 generals 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 in 1943 and in and in
Georgi Zhilenkov's interview to the ''
Völkischer Beobachter
The ''Völkischer Beobachter'' (; "'' Völkisch'' Observer") was the newspaper of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) from 25 December 1920. It first appeared weekly, then daily from 8 February 1923. For twenty-four years it formed part of the official pub ...
''; 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
he ROAhad 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 criticisms 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
Eberhard Taubert (11 May 1907 in Kassel – 2 November 1976 in Cologne) was a lawyer and anti-Semitic Nazi propagandist. He joined the Nazi Party on 1 November 1931 (membership number 712,249). At the same time, he joined the ''Sturmabteilung'' ( ...
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
ngbound to Germany".
Himmler, the head of the SS, had a negative attitude towards Vlasov and the idea of arming Russian formations. For example, in late 1942 he told another SS official who was based in Minsk that Russian collaborators should not be promised a national state and only a liberation from Bolshevism and possibly better living standards. He oversaw the creation of the
SS-Volunteer Division "Galicia" in October 1943 from Ukrainian volunteers, but that same month he said that Vlasov made him "genuinely anxious." Himmler later noted that there were Wehrmacht officers who wanted to give Vlasov a million-man army, and speculated that in the future it could theoritically turn against Germany. Himmler did not want Vlasov to even be used for propaganda and on another occasion said that Vlasov's ideology "must be intellectually totally annihilated among us." Hitler had similar concerns, having said in June 1943 that Vlasov was unneeded, because the Germans "would never build up a Russian army."
It was not until Germany's position was weakened in the spring of 1944 that Himmler began changing his mind, with the encouragement of
Gunter d'Alquen and others, and decided to meet with Vlasov. Their meeting was meant for 21 July 1944, but was postponed by the assassination attempt against Hitler until 16 September 1944. When it happened, Himmler promised Vlasov several Russian divisions. Two began to be formed, the
600th Infantry Division in November 1944 and the
650th Infantry Division in January 1945, respectively.
Earlier, in the summer of 1944 Vlasov, who had been depressed after the first few years of failing to get German support for the Russian Liberation Movement, was sent to an SS recovery center in
Ruhpolding
Ruhpolding is the municipality with the biggest area of the Traunstein (district), Traunstein district in southeastern Bavaria, Germany. It is situated in the south of the Chiemgau region in the Alps and next to the Austrian border.
The economy ...
that was run by Heidi Bielenberg, the widow of an SS officer. Several weeks after meeting they decided to get married, even though neither one spoke each other's language and Vlasov probably knew that his first wife was still alive in the Soviet Union. This may have been done under the pressure of the SS. According to the SS liaison officer to Vlasov, the idea for the marriage came mainly from her, because she liked the idea of becoming the "first lady" of a future Russian state.
Commander of the ROA
The only combat of the ROA against the
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...
took place on February 11, 1945, on the river
Oder
The Oder ( ; Czech and ) is a river in Central Europe. It is Poland's second-longest river and third-longest within its borders after the Vistula and its largest tributary the Warta. The Oder rises in the Czech Republic and flows through wes ...
; it was carried out by the First Division 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
Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...
, in
German-controlled Bohemia. In March 1945, Bunyachenko started disobeying the commands of the Wehrmacht; eventually
Ferdinand Schörner
Ferdinand Schörner (12 June 1892 – 2 July 1973) was a German military commander and convicted war criminal, who held the rank of ''Generalfeldmarschall'' (Field Marshal) in the ''Wehrmacht'' of Nazi Germany during World War II. He was the on ...
(and later
Rudolf Toussaint) threatened to use armed force against 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.
[К. Александров. Мифы о генерале Власове] 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's division, commanded by General
Sergei Bunyachenko, was captured southeast of
Plzeň
Plzeň (), also known in English and German as Pilsen (), is a city in the Czech Republic. It is the Statutory city (Czech Republic), fourth most populous city in the Czech Republic with about 188,000 inhabitants. It is located about west of P ...
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
Ivan Stepanovich Konev ( rus, Ива́н Степа́нович Ко́нев, p=ɪˈvan sʲtʲɪˈpanəvʲɪtɕ ˈkonʲɪf, links=no; 28 December 1897 – 21 May 1973) was a Soviet general and Marshal of the Soviet Union who led Red Army forc ...
's command post in
Dresden
Dresden (; ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; , ) is the capital city of the States of Germany, German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, 12th most p ...
, and from there sent immediately to Moscow.
Vlasov was confined in
Lubyanka prison where he was interrogated. A
secret trial
A secret trial is a trial that is not open to the public or generally reported in the news, especially any in-trial proceedings. Generally, no official record of the case or the judge's verdict is made available. Often there is no indictment.
S ...
was held, beginning on 30 July 1946 and was presided over by
Viktor Abakumov
Viktor Semyonovich Abakumov (; 24 April 1908 – 19 December 1954) was a high-level Soviet security official who from 1943 to 1946 was the head of SMERSH in the USSR People's Commissariat of Defense, and from 1946 to 1951 of the Minister of St ...
who sentenced him and eleven other senior officers from his army to death for high treason. Vlasov was executed by
hanging
Hanging is killing a person by suspending them from the neck with a noose or ligature strangulation, ligature. Hanging has been a standard method of capital punishment since the Middle Ages, and has been the primary execution method in numerou ...
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
Shooting is the act or process of discharging a projectile from a ranged weapon (such as a gun, bow, crossbow, slingshot, or blowpipe). Even the acts of launching flame, artillery, darts, harpoons, grenades, rockets, and guided missile ...
.
Legacy
Historiography and memory politics
20th century
In the USSR, the figure of Vlasov was villainized because of the need to defend the official myth of the Great Patriotic War, which was "created and assiduously supported as a pillar of state legitimacy and national culture in the USSR". However, in the emigration and later in the post-Soviet Russia, he and his movement became objects of various narratives.

The first narrative in the emigration was set up by the former
White Guards who served in the ROA or supported Vlasov, although they were a minority in the ROA and had conflicts with the Vlasovites, since the Whites were suspicious of the former Soviet soldiers and sometimes called them "Reds", while
Vasily Malyshkin, one of Vlasov's closest associates, charged that the White movement, described by him as a movement of conservative gentry, had remained distant from realities of the USSR,
and lacked "any progressive principles", ranging from apoliticism to reaction,
and through seeking a "restoration of the old noble-landowning system" did nothing but legitimizing the Bolsheviks. The Vlasovites and the Whites had very different world views, partially because for the Whites struggle against the USSR and collaboration with the Nazis was not a means of survival, partially because the Vlasovites who were grown on the Soviet culture saw conservatism of the Whites as backward-looking and irrelevant, and Malyshkin suggested that the conflict between the Whites and the Vlasovites was rooted in different social backgrounds and class origins and worldviews. However, after the war, the Whites who participated in the Vlasov Movement sought to connect it with their cause: for example,
Constantine Kromiadi
Constantine Gregorievich Kromiadi (, ; 21 January 1893 – 25 April 1990) was a Russian military officer of Greek origin. A staunch anti-communist, he served in the Imperial Russian Army and the White Army, later heading the collaborationist ...
wrote that the Vlasov Movement was a part of the "Christian war of the 30 years of the liberation movement against communism"; the White rightists sought to "offset the opprobrium of collaboration with Germany by viewing World War Two through the prism of the Russian Civil War and the Tsarist period" and alleged that the Soviets, not the collaborators, were the real national traitors. Such ideas were not popular among the majority of the surviving Vlasovites, but for a few years the Whites became their new leaders and even established Monarchist Vlasovite organizations, since they were naturalized citizens of European states and had more chances of surviving, also because of "aristocratic cohesion" and such benefits as knowledge of foreign languages, while the Vlasovites were in danger of
Operation Keelhaul
Operation Keelhaul was a forced repatriation of Soviet citizens and members of the Soviet Army in the West to the Soviet Union (although it often included former soldiers of the Russian Empire or Russian Republic, who did not have Soviet citizens ...
, forced repatriation to the USSR carried out by the U.S. with the subsequential punishment for treason; the Whites attempted to unite the whole emigration and get funding by the CIA, and the latter could help Vlasovites survive. However, the Whites failed to get the attention of the CIA, and their narrative was soon rejected.
However, it would reemerge in post-Soviet Russia.
To get the interest of the U.S. military intelligence, the post-war Vlasovites stressed the anti-Communist nature of their movement.
[https://journals.flvc.org/UFJUR/article/download/130757/136333/240252] However, the new narrative was left-wing, being constructed by the
Menshevik
The Mensheviks ('the Minority') were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903. Mensheviks held more moderate and reformist ...
intellectual and historian
Boris Nicolaevsky, who after visiting
DP camps came to a belief that the Vlasov Movement was democratic and even anti-Nazi to some extent. His narrative was somewhat closer to the truth, as he, unlike the Whites, could cite Vlasovite documents, like the Prague Manifesto of the KONR.
However, it was incomplete and still had some factual errors.
[''Мартынов А. В.'' По обе стороны правды. Власовское движение и отечественная коллаборация] Nikolaevsky described the Vlasovites with the word ''porazhentsy'', "defeatists", the word used by the Bolsheviks during the World War II towards themselves, as they campaigned against the war efforts of the Russian Empire and for overthrow of the reactionary
Tsarist
Tsarist autocracy (), also called Tsarism, was an autocracy, a form of absolute monarchy in the Grand Duchy of Moscow and its successor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire. In it, the Tsar possessed in principle authority and ...
and later imperialist ''bourgeois'' government with a revolutionary civil war;
Nikolaevsky drew a parallel between Vlasov and Leninists and thought the first to be influenced by the latter, believing that Vlasov's motivation was to begin a similar civil war.
The Vlasovites embraced Nicolaevsky's narrative, and he would help them to operate through the CIA-supported
AMCOMLIB, however,
Roman Gul believed that they were insincere and saw Nicolaevsky only as "a direct and CLEAN entry to Washington" and were interested in the Socialist ''émigrés'', including Nicolaevsky, only as powerful representatives of American power.
However, the Vlasovites did not have a necessity to present themselves as left-wing democrats, since the CIA did not scruple to fund the openly far-right collaborators from the
Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations
Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN) was an international anti-communist organization founded as a coordinating center for anti-communist and nationalist émigré political organizations from Soviet and other socialist countries.
The organizat ...
, like the
Belarusian Central Council.
Nicolaevsky's narrative resulted in a polemics among the ''émigrés'', and opponents of Nicolaevsky among ''oborontsy'', the word from the vocabulary of World War I to indicate the patriotic opposition to the Bolsheviks' defeatism, the supporters of the war effort of the USSR in World War II, attacked the Vlasovites and Nicolaevsky: according to them, the democratic program was just a way to court the West in the face of Nazi defeat, that they were national traitors and mere "powerless pawns" in "organized and merciless destruction" of their own people, a "propaganda trick", and that they were unscrupulous people motivated only by lust for power or physical survival whose movement could not be democratic in any way. B. Dvinov, one of the most harsh Nicolaevsky's opponents, supported his publications with documents.
Alexander Dallin called his publications "a documented but one-sided attempt in Russian émigré politics to reduce the Vlasov movement to a German propaganda trick."
Among the positions of the ''émigrés'' was a compromise one that 'Vlasovism' may be a democratic movement, but Vlasov and the other leaders should be condemned, and that the Vlasovites should admit that collaboration with the Nazis was a mistake, but the Vlasovites from the
SBONR, which joined the AMCOMLIB, refused to admit the latter and continued to idolize their executed leader; they accused their opponents of Communism, while the Socialist ''émigrés'' accused Vlasovites of Nazism, and both claims were dangerous since the FBI had been closely monitoring both of the factions. More to it, the SBONR in their responses made nationalist and allegedly antisemitic
dog whistles, since they never mentioned the Jewish origins of their opponents, but contrasted the "Russian people" with the American exiles who "long ago forgotten how to understand" the first; later they compromised themselves more with "historical apologies for restoration and reaction", therefore making Nicolaevsky's narrative unable to be adopted as universal, since one of their publications called
Kerensky a traitor for preventing the
Kornilov coup in 1917.
However, after the polemic Nicolaevsky continued his publications about the biographies of the Vlasovite leaders and did not change his opinion, and not all the Socialist ''émigrés'' dismissed Nicolaevsky and his narrative.
While Benjamin Tromly and other authors believe the description of the ROA as a somewhat revolutionary movement of ideological protest against Stalinism which conflicted with the Nazis to be largely constructed by the Vlasovites themselves,
this claim is rather inaccurate, since the theme of the ROA was explored in the works of several Western historians: along with the sovietologist
Eugene Lyons, the chairman of the AMCOMLIB whose attitute towards the Vlasovites was ambivalent, who also believed the ROA to be influenced with Lenin's
revolutionary defeatism, the historians
Jurgen Thorwald and
Joachim Hoffmann also contributed to the theme; the historian George Fischer, on the contrary, believed the "inertness" and opportunism caused by Stalinist totalitarianism to be the grounds of the ROA, but he saw Vlasov's political career as an overcoming of opportunism and "inertness", although he failed to "overcome" "Bolshevism"; Catherine Andreev agreed with Fischer's last point, but criticized the other two.
[К. М. Александров. Генералитет и вооружённые формирования Комитета освобождения народов России] More to it, Tromly believes that the works of Catherine Andreev and keep the "essential contours" of Nicolaevsky's narrative, and that Andreev "bypasses controversial questions about the context in which Vlasov troops were recruited, the émigrés employed in Nazi security agencies, and the deep internal hostilities within the KONR's ranks",
as well as the war crimes committed by the soldiers of the ROA.
This theme was also explored by Dallin who wrote that "Vlasov was no puppet: therein lay, from the German point of view, both his potential value and his challenge. A relatively 'autonomous' figure, as yet untarnished by association with German abuses and atrocities, he could appeal to the Soviet population more successfully than could the Germans. But as a leader with a will and a following, he and his movement could also develop a dynamic of their own and — precisely because they might be successful — could become potentially distinct from or even hostile to the interests of the German leadership." Dallin also wrote that the idea of the "third force" promoted by the Vlasovites and the NTS was doomed: "no 'third force' could succeed because there was no viable third choice; neither of the titans would tolerate a power vacuum — nor the arrogation of power by a new, autonomous competitor."
Most of these historians relied mostly on the Nazi documents and not the Soviet archives, partly because the latter were unaccessible.
A new narrative was constructed in the 1970s and emerged in
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Soviet and Russian author and Soviet dissidents, dissident who helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union, especially the Gulag pris ...
's book ''
The GULAG Archipelago
''The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation'' () is a three-volume nonfiction series written between 1958 and 1968 by Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Soviet dissident. It was first published in 1973 by the Parisian ...
'': while not directly advocating collaboration, he and the later authors labelled Vlasov as "the symbol of the suffering Russian people" and its "victimhood" throughout the 20th century. Solzhenitsyn described the Vlasovite prisoners met by him in GULAG camps and wrote that "it's not the Vlasovites who betrayed Russia - it's the Soviet state which betrayed these soldiers", since "Stalin sacrificed armies meaninglessly. He had treated prisoners of war as traitors", and the World War II became "a double sacrifice. This is the idea that the Soviet people, now increasingly perceived as the Russian people, won the war against Nazism despite the brutality and incompetence of the Soviet state. In this context, Vlasov's sacrifice is entirely appropriate."
With all these narratives given, Benjamin Tromly calls Vlasov an "empty signifier".
Julia Shapiro writes that Vlasov during his collaboration with the Nazis managed to secure his image for the further generations, but "his intentionally murky beliefs make him a convenient straw man to suit cultural and political agendas. Based on the documents, he can be framed as an anti-Bolshevist crusader, Russian patriot, misunderstood democrat, martyred hero, and fascist puppet. Eighty years on, he still defies categorization." Shapiro believed that Vlasov's motivations were complex and laid between opportunism and ideological opposition; she believes
moral relativism
Moral relativism or ethical relativism (often reformulated as relativist ethics or relativist morality) is used to describe several Philosophy, philosophical positions concerned with the differences in Morality, moral judgments across different p ...
and "historical consciousness" to be among his most important qualities.
Post-Soviet Russia
After ''
perestroika
''Perestroika'' ( ; rus, перестройка, r=perestrojka, p=pʲɪrʲɪˈstrojkə, a=ru-perestroika.ogg, links=no) was a political reform movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) during the late 1980s, widely associ ...
'' and the fall of the Soviet Union, narratives described above entered Russian historiography and
memory politics. These narratives challenge the myth of the Soviet, increasingly perceived as Russian, Victory in the
Great Patriotic War
The Eastern Front, also known as the Great Patriotic War (term), Great Patriotic War in the Soviet Union and its successor states, and the German–Soviet War in modern Germany and Ukraine, was a Theater (warfare), theatre of World War II ...
, which is significant to Russian national identity. As this myth has been increasingly used by
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has served as President of Russia since 2012, having previously served from 2000 to 2008. Putin also served as Prime Minister of Ru ...
and his
Putinist regime to legitimize its state and its actions, the figure of Vlasov gains a political value in contemporary Russia.
The positive attitude towards Vlasov became visible in the late 1980s, but the majority of Russian society is negative towards collaboration, although there is still no unity on this question. The fall of the Soviet Union did not lead to immediate popularisation of Vlasov among the emerging far-right nationalists, since they preferred the ideals of Pan-Slavism and an Empire to a separatist nation-state. A major liberal politician during the fall of the USSR and the mayor of Moscow
Gavriil Popov wrote a complimentary book about Vlasov, but was not supported. In the 2000s various nationalist organizations which associated themselves with the White movement campaigned for rehabilitation of Vlasov; the support for the White narrative in the Church caused a scandal after the reunification of the Orthodox Church in Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad.
Solzhenitsyn's narrative became more or less convenient, since it did not deny the role of Victory and the Great Patriotic War and united it with criticism of Stalin and the understanding of Vlasov's tragedy which could be reintegrated into national history, making it more inclusive. Yet, it became debated in the 1990s and received a backlash as a "slander of the entire generation" "who had fought in the war". The opponents of such narratives, including the
Communist Party of the Russian Federation
The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF; ) is a communist political party in Russia that officially adheres to Marxist–Leninist philosophy. It is the second-largest political party in Russia after United Russia. The youth o ...
created in 1993, started connecting the apology for Vlasov and the ROA with the chaos of the 1990s: economic collapse, dissolution of the Soviet Union and the
First Chechen War
The First Chechen War, also referred to as the First Russo-Chechen War, was a struggle for independence waged by the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria against the invading Russia, Russian Federation from 1994 to 1996. After a mutually agreed on treaty ...
, the rize of the organized crime, making Vlasov a symbol "past and current betrayal in Russia"; in the second part of the 1990s,
Boris Yeltsin
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin (1 February 1931 – 23 April 2007) was a Soviet and Russian politician and statesman who served as President of Russia from 1991 to 1999. He was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from 1961 to ...
turned back to commemoration of the Great Patriotic War, and after the rise of Putin, "this anti-Vlasov discourse hardens and takes on increasing domestic political uses," connecting Vlasov with the 'collapse of Empire' and influence of the West.
Jade McGlynn and Tromly describe how Vlasov's figure became unsuitable for the Putin regime; however, it was not until 2022 when it received significant attention.
Throughout the 2000s, the state-sponsored narratives of World War II villainized Vlasov again whenever his figure appeared in public discourse, although the latter did not happen often.
In the 2010s, the debates over Vlasov moved to historiography, and Kirill Aleksandrov was stripped of his PhD by the Ministry of Education in 2016 after writing a dissertation about the ROA; the earlier successful defense of this dissertation was followed with a scandal, as pro-Kremlin organizations, including the CPRF, forwarded the dissertation to Russian prosecutors to inspect for violation of Putin's "
memory law", which criminalizes "lies about the activities of the Soviet Union in the Second World War" and held rallies with slogans such as "Bandera in Ukraine - Vlasov in Russia", and Aleksandrov's article about Bandera written back in 2014 was designated as an extremist material; the professional historians who joined the attacks compared the dissertation with "blackening of our history" by foreigners.
After the Annexation of Crimea and the beginning of the War in Donbas in 2014 Putin called the Ukrainian authorities "Banderites", and Kremlin-affiliated media and politicians alike framed the fighting as a rerun of the Second World War; the usage of the word "banderite" became popular in propaganda, and the Russian media and politicians were eager to remind of collaborators of other nationalities, Tatars and Chechens, but avoided Vlasov and the ROA: McGlynn noted that in an analysis of 3,509 comparisons between the 2014 conflict and World War II, Vlasov was mentioned just once, as a reminder of Russian collaboration could "besmirch Russia's moral authority as an heir to the Soviet Union's Great Victory of 1945 and self-appointed defender of the war's memory."
According to Tromly, the Russian state avoids the mentions of ethnic Russian collaboration and views "reviving a positive memory of Vlasov" as an "instrument of information war" against itself.
The attention to Vlasov increased after the Russian invasion of Ukraine: McGlynn notes that "written references to Vlasovites have increased to levels that usually accompany the release of a popular new book on the subject." Some of them are related to the Ukrainian units of Russian citizens, like the
Freedom of Russia Legion, while prominent nationalist figures have branded Russians fleeing mobilization as Vlasovite deserters, and some media reminded of the connection between Vlasovites and Banderites; after criticizing the war, the journalist
Dmitry Kolezev received a flood of messages with the same text: "Only Vlasovites discredit the army." Before the invasion,
Alexei Navalny
Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny (, ; 4 June 197616 February 2024) was a Russian Opposition to Vladimir Putin in Russia, opposition leader, anti-corruption in Russia, corruption activist and political prisoner. He founded the Anti-Corruption Found ...
was labelled a Vlasovite, as the official allegations included "memory crimes";
in 2020, the Russian Foreign Ministry officially protested against a monument to the ROA fighters who participated in the Prague Uprising. Putin personally mentioned Vlasov only in 2024, after the presidential elections, during which the Ukrainian units of Russian citizens
launched an incursion into Russia; he labelled as "Vlasovites" these units, reminded how the Vlasovites were executed, and ordered the FSB to track down every Russian citizen "fighting against Russia". He said: "We will punish them without a statute of limitations, wherever they are."
Attempts of rehabilitation
In 2001, a Russian 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
Anti-Sovietism or anti-Soviet sentiment are activities that were actually or allegedly aimed against the Soviet Union or government power within the Soviet Union.
Three common uses of the term include the following:
* Anti-Sovietism in inter ...
agitation and propaganda was vacated.
Memorial
A memorial dedicated to General Vlasov was erected at the
Novo-Diveevo Russian Orthodox convent and cemetery in
Nanuet,
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
New York may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* ...
. Twice annually, on the anniversary of Vlasov's execution and on the Sunday following Orthodox
Easter
Easter, also called Pascha ( Aramaic: פַּסְחָא , ''paskha''; Greek: πάσχα, ''páskha'') or Resurrection Sunday, is a Christian festival and cultural holiday commemorating the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, described in t ...
, a memorial service is held for Vlasov and the forces of the
Russian Liberation Army
The Russian Liberation Army (; , ), also known as the Vlasov army () was a collaborationist formation, primarily composed of Russians, that fought under German command during World War II. From January 1945, the army was led by Andrey Vlasov, ...
.
See also
*''
Engelen des doods'' (''Angels of death'')
*
Collaboration in the German-occupied Soviet Union
*
Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach
*
National Committee for a Free Germany
The National Committee for a Free Germany (, or NKFD) was an Anti-fascism, anti-fascist political and military organisation formed in the Soviet Union during World War II, composed mostly of German defectors from the ranks of German prisoners of ...
References
Literature and film
Books:
*
*
*
*
Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt: ''Against Stalin and Hitler. Memoir of the Russian Liberation Movement 1941–5''. Macmillan, 1970,
*Russian version of the above: Вильфрид Штрик-Штрикфельдт: ''Против Сталина и Гитлера''. Изд. Посев, 1975, 2003.
*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 .
*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.
eview of Catherine Andrevyev: Vlasov and the Russian liberation movement
Documentaries:
General for Two Devils 1995*Europe Central by William T Vollmann
Angels of Death1998, director: Leo de Boer.
Fiction:
*
Europe Central by William T Vollma
External links
It's Too Early To Forgive Vlasov, ''
The St. Petersburg Times (Russia), The St. Petersburg Times'', November 6, 2001
Władysław Anders and Antonio Muňoz: "Russian Volunteers in the German Wehrmacht in WWII" (describes role of Vlasov)*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vlasov, Andrey
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