From heroism to betrayal. The true story of General Vlasov

Andrei Vlasov is a Soviet general who defected to the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War. He gained fame after he began collaborating with the Third Reich, leading the so-called Russian Liberation Army (unofficial abbreviation ROA).

After the end of the war, General Vlasov was accused of treason and sentenced to death by hanging. His name has become a household name and is used as a symbol of betrayal and cowardice.

Vlasov's army managed to push back the enemy and move forward significantly. But since the advance took place through dense forests surrounded by the Germans, they could be counterattacked by the enemy at any moment.

A month later, the pace of the offensive slowed significantly, and the order to capture Lyuban was not carried out. The general repeatedly said that he was experiencing a shortage of people, and also complained about the poor supply of soldiers.

Soon, as Vlasov predicted, the Nazis began an active offensive. German Messerschmitt planes attacked from the air the 2nd Shock Army, which ultimately found itself encircled.

Exhausted by hunger and continuous bombing by German aircraft, Russian soldiers did everything possible to get out of the cauldron.

However, everything was to no avail. The combat strength became smaller every day, as did the supplies of food and ammunition.

During this period, about 20,000 Soviet soldiers remained surrounded. It should be noted that even German sources said that Russian soldiers did not give up, preferring to die on the battlefield.

As a result, almost the entire 2nd Army of Vlasov died heroically, not yet knowing with what shame its native general would cover it.

Captivity

Those few witnesses who managed to somehow escape from the cauldron claimed that after the failed operation, General Vlasov lost heart.

There were no emotions on his face, and when the shelling began, he did not even try to hide in shelters.

Soon, at a council of officers, in which Colonel Vinogradov and generals Afanasyev and Vlasov participated, it was decided to leave the encirclement in small groups. As time will tell, only Afanasyev will be able to get out of the German ring.

On July 11, General Vlasov, together with three comrades, reached the village of Tukhovezhi. Entering one of the houses, they asked for food, and the general himself called himself a teacher.

After they were fed, the owner suddenly pointed a weapon at them and ordered them to go to the barn, in which he locked them.

He then called the police, all the while carefully guarding the barn with the “teacher” and his associates.

On July 12, a German patrol responded to the call. When the barn doors opened, General Vlasov said in German who he really was. Wehrmacht soldiers successfully identified the famous general from a photo published in a newspaper.

The betrayal of General Vlasov

He was soon taken to headquarters, where they immediately began interrogating him. Andrei Vlasov gave detailed testimony, answering all questions.

Vlasov's meeting with Himmler

A month later, while in the Vinnitsa military camp for captured senior officers, Vlasov himself offered cooperation to the German leadership.

Deciding to go over to the Nazi side, he headed the “Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia” (KONR) and the “Russian Liberation Army” (ROA), which consisted of captured Soviet military personnel.

Vlasov with ROA soldiers

An interesting fact is that some pseudo-historians are trying to compare General Vlasov, who betrayed the Soviet Union during the years, with Admiral Kolchak, who in 1917 fought on the side of the white movement against the reds.

However, for any more or less informed person it is obvious that such a comparison is at least blasphemous.

“Why I took the path of fighting Bolshevism”

After the betrayal, Vlasov wrote an open letter “Why I took the path of fighting Bolshevism,” and also signed leaflets calling for the overthrow of the Stalinist regime.

Subsequently, these leaflets were scattered by the Nazi army from airplanes at the fronts, and were also distributed among prisoners of war.

Below is a photo of Vlasov’s open letter:

What made him take such a step? Many accused him of cowardice, but it is very difficult to find out the true reasons for going over to the enemy’s side. According to the writer Ilya Ehrenburg, who personally knew Andrei Vlasov, the general chose this path not because of cowardice.

He understood that upon returning from encirclement, he would certainly be demoted for failing the operation with colossal losses.

Moreover, he knew perfectly well that in wartime they would not stand on ceremony with a general who had lost his entire army, but for some reason himself survived.

As a result, Vlasov decided to offer cooperation to the Germans, since in this situation he could not only save his life, but also remain the commander of the army, albeit under the banner.

Generals Vlasov and Zhilenkov at a meeting with Goebbels, February 1945.

However, the traitor was deeply mistaken. His shameful betrayal in no way led him to glory. Instead, he went down in history as the main Soviet traitor of the Great Patriotic War.

The surname Vlasov became a household name, and Vlasovites figuratively call those who betray the interests of the Motherland.

Death of Vlasov

In May 1945, during the battles near Czechoslovakia, General Vlasov was captured by Soviet soldiers. At the trial, he pleaded guilty because he committed treason due to cowardice.

Prison photo of A.A. Vlasov from the criminal case materials

By the verdict of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, he was stripped of his military ranks, and on August 1, 1946, he was hanged.

His body was cremated and his ashes were scattered in the “bed of unclaimed ashes” located near the Donskoy Monastery. The remains of destroyed “enemies of the people” have been dumped in this place for decades.

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Place of birth: Lomakino village, Nizhny Novgorod province
Place of death: Moscow
Rank: Lieutenant General of the Red Army
Commanded: 4th Mechanized Corps, 20th Army, 37th Army, 2nd Shock Army (1941-1942),
Russian Liberation Army (1942-1945)
Battles/wars: Russian Civil War, Great Patriotic War, Battle of Dubno - Lutsk - Brody (1941), Kiev operation (1941), Moscow battle (1941-1942), Lyuban operation
Awards: Order of the Golden Dragon, Order of Lenin, Order of the Red Banner, Jubilee Medal "XX Years of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army." Subsequently deprived of all awards and titles.

Vlasov Andrey Andreevich- Soviet lieutenant general (since 1942; deprived of his rank by court verdict). On April 20, 1942, he was appointed commander of the 2nd Shock Army, remaining concurrently deputy commander of the Volkhov Front. During the war, he was captured and collaborated with the Nazis against the USSR, becoming the head of a military organization of collaborators from Soviet prisoners of war - the Russian Liberation Army (ROA).

Andrey Vlasov was born on September 14, 1901 in the village of Lomakino, now Gaginsky district, Nizhny Novgorod region, in the family of a simple Nizhny Novgorod peasant. After graduating from a rural school, he, as a very capable child, was sent to study further, but since the family was quite poor, they chose the cheapest educational institution for him - a religious school. But there were still not enough funds, and the teenager had to tutor.

In 1915, Vlasov graduated from college and enters theological seminary, and after 1917 it transferred to a unified labor school of the second degree. In 1919, he was already a student at the Faculty of Agronomy of Nizhny Novgorod University. But there was a civil war, and A.A. Vlasov went to the Red Army. The first front for him was the Southern Front, where he and other Red Army soldiers fought against Baron Wrangel. Then he took part in the battles of Makhno, Kamenyuk and Popov.

After the end of the civil war, the former student did not return to study at the University of Nizhny Novgorod. He remained to serve in the Red Army. First he commanded a platoon, then a company. Afterwards he taught tactics at a military school in Leningrad. At the end of the 30s, his career advancement went especially quickly. Vlasov is appointed division commander. A few months later, he is sent on a secret government mission: he becomes a military attaché in China under Chiang Kai-Shek. In 1939, Vlasov received the post of division commander in the Kiev Special Military District.

Excerpts from Vlasov’s army profile:

“A very smart growing commander”
“Over the course of a few months, general order has improved in the division”
“The level of tactical training in his division is very high”

Based on the results of military exercises that took place in September 1940, Vlasov’s division was awarded the Red Banner. It is worth noting that the exercises took place in the presence of the People's Commissar of Defense S.K. Timoshenko himself.

The Great Patriotic War

The war for Andrei Vlasov began near Lvov, where he served as commander of the 4th Mechanized Corps. For his skillful actions he received gratitude and, on the recommendation of N. S. Khrushchev, was appointed commander of the 37th Army, which defended Kyiv. After fierce battles, scattered formations of this army managed to break through to the east, and Vlasov himself was wounded and ended up in the hospital.

In November 1941, Stalin summoned Vlasov and ordered him to form the 20th Army, which would be part of the Western Front and defend the capital.

On December 5, in the area of ​​the village of Krasnaya Polyana (located 27 km from the Moscow Kremlin), Soviet The 20th Army under the command of General Vlasov stopped units of the German 4th Tank Army, making a significant contribution to the victory near Moscow. In Soviet times, a version appeared that Vlasov himself was in the hospital at that time, and the fighting was led either by the commander of the operational group A. I. Lizyukov or the chief of staff L. M. Sandalov.

Overcoming stubborn enemy resistance, the 20th Army drove the Germans out of Solnechnogorsk and Volokolamsk. On January 24, 1942, for the battles on the Lama River, he received the rank of lieutenant general and was awarded the second Order of the Red Banner. The armies of Rokossovsky and Govorov operated next to Vlasov. Rokossovsky and Govorov later became Marshals of the Soviet Union.

Zhukov assessed Vlasov’s actions as follows:

“Personally, Lieutenant General Vlasov is well prepared operationally and has organizational skills. He copes well with commanding troops.” After successes near Moscow, Andrei Andreevich Vlasov, along with other generals of the Red Army, is called the “savior of the capital.” On instructions from the Main Political Directorate, a book is being written about Vlasov called “Stalin’s Commander”

On January 7, 1942, troops of the 2nd Shock Army broke through the enemy’s defenses in the area of ​​​​the village of Myasnoy Bor (on the left bank of the Volkhov River) and penetrated deeply into its location (in the direction of Lyuban). But lacking the strength for a further offensive, the army found itself in a difficult situation. The enemy cut her communications several times, creating a threat of encirclement. By March 26, the enemy managed to unite his Chudov and Novgorod groups, create an external front along the Polist River and an internal front along the Glushitsa River. Thus, communications of the 2nd Shock Army and several formations of the 59th Army were interrupted.

March 8, 1942 Lieutenant General A. A. Vlasov was appointed deputy commander of the Volkhov Front troops. On March 20, 1942, the commander of the Volkhov Front K. A. Meretskov sent his deputy A. A. Vlasov at the head of a special commission to the 2nd Shock Army (Lieutenant General N. K. Klykov). “For three days, members of the commission talked with commanders of all ranks, with political workers, with soldiers,” and on April 8, 1942, having drawn up an inspection report, the commission left, but without General A. A. Vlasov. The suspended (“seriously ill”) General Klykov was sent to the rear by plane on April 16.

The question naturally arose: who should be entrusted with leading the troops of the 2nd Shock Army? On the same day, a telephone conversation between A. A. Vlasov and Divisional Commissioner I. V. Zuev took place with Meretskov. Zuev proposed to appoint Vlasov to the post of army commander, and Vlasov - the chief of staff of the army, Colonel P. S. Vinogradov. The Military Council of the Volkhov Front supported Zuev's idea. So... Vlasov became commander of the 2nd Shock Army on April 20, 1942 (Monday), while remaining at the same time deputy commander of the Volkhov Front. He received troops that were practically no longer capable of fighting, he received an army that had to be saved...

During May-June, the 2nd Shock Army under the command of A. A. Vlasov made desperate attempts to break out of the bag.

“We will strike from the Polist line at 20 o’clock on June 4. We don’t hear the actions of the troops of the 59th Army from the east, there is no long-range artillery fire” - Vlasov. June 4, 1942. 00 hours 45 minutes.

The commander of the Volkhov operational group, Lieutenant General M. S. Khozin, did not comply with the directives of Headquarters (dated May 21) on the withdrawal of army troops. As a result, the 2nd Shock Army was surrounded, and Khozin himself was removed from office on June 6. For a short time it was possible to break through the encirclement ring. Then a narrow corridor 300 - 400 meters wide was formed. Under enemy crossfire, it turned into the “Valley of Death”: German machine gunners sitting on both edges shot our soldiers in the thousands. When a “hill” formed from the corpses, the machine gunners simply climbed onto it and fired from there. Our soldiers died so senselessly. Until mid-July, small groups of fighters and commanders of the 2nd Shock still infiltrated across the front line.

MILITARY COUNCIL OF THE VOLKHOV FRONT. Before I put: army troopsand for three weeks they have been conducting intense, fierce battles with the enemy... The personnel of the troops are exhausted to the limit, the number of deaths and morbidity from exhaustion increases every day. Due to the cross-fire of the army area, the troops suffer heavy losses from artillery fire and enemy aircraft... The combat strength of the formations has sharply decreased. It is no longer possible to replenish it from the rear and special units. Everything that was there was taken. On the sixteenth of June, an average of several dozen people remained in battalions, brigades and rifle regiments. All attempts by the eastern group of the army to break through the corridor from the west were unsuccessful” - Vlasov, Zuev, Vinogradov.

JUNE 21, 1942. 8 HOURS 10 MINUTES. TO THE HEAD OF THE GSHK. TO THE MILITARY COUNCIL OF THE FRONT. “Army troops receive fifty grams of crackers for three weeks. The last few days there was absolutely no food. We are finishing off the last horses. People are extremely exhausted. There is group mortality from starvation. There is no ammunition..." - Vlasov, Zuev.

On June 25, the enemy eliminated the corridor. The testimony of various witnesses does not answer the question of where Lieutenant General Andrei Andreevich Vlasov was hiding for the next three weeks - whether he was wandering in the forest or whether there was some kind of reserve command post to which his group made its way. On July 11, 1942, in the Old Believers village of Tukhovezhi, Vlasov was handed over by local residents (according to another version, he surrendered himself) to a patrol of the 28th Infantry Regiment of the 18th Wehrmacht Army.

Versions of the capture of General Vlasov

• A German officer, platoon commander of the 550th penal battalion, captured near Vitebsk in February 1944, testified during interrogation that Vlasov, dressed in civilian clothes, was hiding in a bathhouse near the village of Mostki south of Chudov. The village headman detained Vlasov and handed him over to the head of the intelligence department of the 38th Aviation Corps.
• A Soviet officer, former deputy chief of the political department of the 46th Infantry Division, Major A.I. Zubov named a slightly different place - Sennaya Kerest. On July 3, 1943, he reported that Vlasov entered one of the houses in search of food. While he was eating, the house was surrounded. Seeing the German soldiers entering, he said: “Don't shoot! I am the commander of the second shock army, Andrei Vlasov.” Cook A. Vlasov Voronova M. says: “Being surrounded, Vlasov, among thirty or forty staff workers, tried to connect with units of the Red Army, but nothing worked. Wandering through the forest, we connected with the leadership of one division, and there were about two hundred of us. Around July 1942, near Novgorod, the Germans discovered us in the forest and forced a battle, after which I, Vlasov, soldier Kotov and driver Pogibko went to the villages. Pogiboko and the wounded Kotov went to one village, and Vlasov and I went to another. When we entered a village, I don’t know its name, we went into one house, where we were mistaken for partisans, the local “samookhova” surrounded the house, and we were arrested.”
• According to the latest version: Vlasov, cook Voronova M., adjutant and chief of staff Vinogradov, severely wounded, went to the village where Vlasov’s adjutant remained with the exhausted and sick Vinogradov. Vinogradov was shivering, and Vlasov gave him his overcoat. He himself, along with the cook, went to another village, where they asked the first person they met (as it turned out, the village headman) to feed them. In return, Vlasov gave him his silver watch. The headman told them that Germans were walking everywhere and suggested that while he brought food, they could sit in the bathhouse, and in order not to arouse unnecessary suspicion, he would lock them up. Before Vinogradov and the adjutant had time to eat, the local residents had already called the Germans to hand over the partisans. When the Germans arrived, they saw Vlasov’s overcoat and a man whose description was very similar to Vlasov (they really were very similar), they immediately arrested him. And then they called from the “Vlasov” village. The Germans really didn’t want to go there - what did they care about ordinary partisans when they were taking Vlasov himself. But, in the end, this village was on the way to the headquarters, and they stopped by. They were very surprised when another “Vlasov” came out of the bathhouse and said: “Don’t shoot! I am Army Commander Vlasov!” They didn't believe him, but he showed documents signed by Stalin himself.

Vlasov himself wrote in his appeals and leaflets that he was captured in battle. But both German and Soviet sources claim the opposite. Major Zubov, a participant in the escape from the encirclement of a group of officers of the 2nd Shock Army, recalled that Vlasov, under all pretexts, tried to reduce the size of his group. Maybe because it would be easier to get out, but maybe there was simply no need for extra witnesses.

An alternative version of Vlasov’s transition to the enemy side:

In some memoirs you can find a version that Vlasov was captured even earlier - in the fall of 1941, surrounded near Kiev - where he was recruited and transferred across the front line. He is also credited with the order to destroy all the employees of his headquarters who did not want to surrender with him. So, the writer Ivan Stadnyuk claims that he heard this from General Saburov. This version is not confirmed by published archival documents.

There is also a conspiracy theory and, according to which, in reality, instead of Vlasov, another person was hanged on August 1, 1946, and Vlasov himself subsequently lived for many years under a different name.

According to V.I. Filatov and a number of other authors, General A.A. Vlasov is a Soviet intelligence officer (an employee of the foreign intelligence of the NKVD or military intelligence - the Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Red Army), who since 1938 worked in China under the pseudonym "Volkov", conducting reconnaissance activities against Japan and Germany, and then during the Great Patriotic War it was successfully abandoned to the Germans. The execution of Vlasov in 1946 is associated with the “quarrel” of the special services - the MGB and the NKVD - as a result of which, by the personal decision of Stalin and Abakumov, Vlasov was eliminated as a dangerous and unnecessary witness. Later, a significant part of the investigation materials on the “case” of Vlasov, Bunyachenko and other leaders of the KONR Armed Forces was destroyed.

While in the Vinnitsa military camp for captured senior officers, Vlasov agreed to cooperate with the Nazis and headed the “Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia” (KONR) and the “Russian Liberation Army” (ROA), composed of captured Soviet military personnel.

General Vlasov and other encirclement:

Many of those who remained surrounded held out until the end; mostly the soldiers captured in the corridor and the lightly wounded from large hospitals were captured. Many shot themselves under the threat of capture, such as divisional commissar I.V. Zuev, a member of the Army Military Council. Others were able to reach their own people or get to the partisans, such as the commissar of the 23rd brigade N.D. Allahverdiev, who became the commander of a partisan detachment. Soldiers of the 267th division, 3rd rank military doctor E.K. Gurinovich, nurse Zhuravleva, commissar Vdovenko and others also fought in the partisan detachments.

But there were few of them; most were captured. Basically, completely exhausted, exhausted people, often wounded, shell-shocked, in a semi-conscious state, were captured, such as the poet, senior political instructor M. M. Zalilov (Musa Jalil). Many did not even have time to shoot at the enemy, suddenly encountering the Germans. However, once captured, the Soviet soldiers did not cooperate with the Germans. Several officers who went over to the enemy’s side are an exception to the general rule: in addition to General A. A. Vlasov, the commander of the 25th brigade, Colonel P. G. Sheludko, the officers of the headquarters of the 2nd shock army, Major Verstkin, Colonel Goryunov and the quartermaster 1, changed their oath. rank Zhukovsky.

For example, the commander of the 327th division, General I.M. Antyufeev, was wounded and captured on July 5th. Antyufeyev refused to help the enemy, and the Germans sent him to a camp in Kaunas, then he worked in a mine. After the war, Antyufeyev was restored to the rank of general, continued his service in the Soviet Army and retired as a major general. The head of the medical service of the 2nd shock army, military doctor 1st rank Boborykin, deliberately remained surrounded to save the wounded of the army hospital. On May 28, 1942, the command awarded him the Order of the Red Banner. While in captivity, he wore the uniform of a Red Army commander and continued to provide medical assistance to prisoners of war. After returning from captivity, he worked at the Military Medical Museum in Leningrad.

At the same time, there are numerous cases where prisoners of war continued to fight the enemy even in captivity. The feat of Musa Jalil and his “Moabit Notebooks” are widely known. There are other examples. The head of the sanitary service and brigade doctor of the 23rd Infantry Brigade, Major N.I. Kononenko, was captured on June 26, 1942, along with the staff of the brigade medical company. After eight months of hard work in Amberg, on April 7, 1943, he was transferred as a doctor to the camp infirmary in the city of Ebelsbach (Lower Bavaria). There he became one of the organizers of the "Revolutionary Committee", turning his infirmary in the Mauthausen camp into the center of the patriotic underground. The Gestapo tracked down the “Committee” and on July 13, 1944, he was arrested, and on September 25, 1944, he was shot along with other 125 underground members. The commander of the 844th regiment of the 267th division, V.A. Pospelov, and the chief of staff of the regiment, B.G. Nazirov, were captured wounded, where they continued to fight the enemy and in April 1945 led an uprising in the Buchenwald concentration camp.

An indicative example is the political instructor of the company of the 1004th regiment of the 305th division D. G. Telnykh. Having been wounded (wounded in the leg) and shell-shocked in captivity in June 1942, he was sent to camps, finally ending up in a camp at the Schwarzberg mine. In June 1943, Telnykh escaped from the camp, after which Belgian peasants in the village of Waterloo helped contact partisan detachment No. 4 of Soviet prisoners of war (Lieutenant Colonel Kotovets of the Red Army). The detachment was part of the Russian partisan brigade “For the Motherland” (Lieutenant Colonel K. Shukshin). Telnykh took part in the battles, soon became a platoon commander, and from February 1944 - a company political instructor. In May 1945, the “For the Motherland” brigade captured the town of Mayzak and held it for eight hours until the British troops arrived. After the war, Telnykh, together with other fellow partisans, returned to serve in the Red Army.

Two months earlier, in April 1942, during the withdrawal of the 33rd Army from encirclement, its commander M. G. Efremov and army headquarters officers committed suicide. And if M. G. Efremov with his death “whitened even those cowardly ones who wavered in difficult times and abandoned their commander to save themselves alone,” then the fighters of the 2nd shock were looked at through the prism of A. A. Vlasov’s betrayal.

Vlasov wrote an open letter “Why I took the path of fighting Bolshevism”. In addition, he signed leaflets calling for the overthrow of the Stalinist regime, which were subsequently scattered by the Nazi army from airplanes at the fronts, and were also distributed among prisoners of war.

Why did I take the path of fighting Bolshevism “(A. A. Vlasov)”:

Calling on all Russian people to rise up to fight against Stalin and his clique, to build a New Russia without the Bolsheviks and capitalists, I consider it my duty to explain my actions.

The Soviet government did not offend me in any way.

I am the son of a peasant, born in the Nizhny Novgorod province, studied on pennies, and achieved higher education. I accepted the people's revolution, joined the ranks of the Red Army to fight for land for the peasants, for a better life for the worker, for a bright future for the Russian people. Since then, my life has been inextricably linked with the life of the Red Army. I served in its ranks for 24 years continuously. I went from an ordinary soldier to an army commander and deputy front commander. I commanded a company, battalion, regiment, division, corps. I was awarded the Order of Lenin, the Red Banner and the medal of the XX Years of the Red Army. Since 1930 I have been a member of the CPSU(b).

And now I am coming out to fight against Bolshevism and calling on all the people, whose son I am, to follow me.

Why? This question arises in everyone who reads my appeal, and I must give an honest answer to it. During the Civil War, I fought in the Red Army because I believed that the revolution would give the Russian people land, freedom and happiness.

As a commander of the Red Army, I lived among soldiers and commanders - Russian workers, peasants, intelligentsia, dressed in gray overcoats. I knew their thoughts, their thoughts, their worries and burdens. I did not break ties with my family, with my village, and I knew what and how a peasant lived.

And so I saw that they received nothing of what the Russian people fought for during the Civil War as a result of the Bolshevik victory.

I saw how hard life was for the Russian worker, how the peasant was forced into collective farms, how millions of Russian people disappeared, arrested without trial or investigation. I saw that everything Russian was being trampled underfoot, that sycophants, people who did not care about the interests of the Russian people, were promoted to leadership positions in the country, as well as to command posts in the Red Army.

The commissar system was corrupting the Red Army. Irresponsibility, surveillance, and espionage made the commander a toy in the hands of party officials in civilian clothes or military uniforms.

From 1938 to 1939 I was in China as a military adviser to Chiang Kai-Shek. When I returned to the USSR, it turned out that during this time the senior command staff of the Red Army was destroyed without any reason by order of Stalin. Many, many thousands of the best commanders, including marshals, were arrested and shot, or imprisoned in concentration camps and disappeared forever. Terror spread not only to the army, but to the entire people. There was no family that somehow escaped this fate. The army was weakened, the frightened people looked to the future with horror, awaiting the war being prepared by Stalin.

Anticipating the enormous sacrifices that the Russian people would inevitably have to endure in this war, I tried to do everything in my power to strengthen the Red Army. The 99th Division, which I commanded, was recognized as the best in the Red Army. Through work and constant concern for the military unit entrusted to me, I tried to drown out the feeling of indignation at the actions of Stalin and his clique.

And then war broke out. She found me at the post of commander of the 4th mech. housings.

As a soldier and as a son of my country, I considered myself obligated to fulfill my duty honestly.

My corps in Przemysl and Lviv took the blow, withstood it and was ready to go on the offensive, but my proposals were rejected. Indecisive, corrupted by commissar control and confused management of the front led the Red Army to a series of heavy defeats.

I withdrew my troops to Kyiv. There I took command of the 37th Army and the difficult post of chief of the garrison of the city of Kyiv.

I saw that the war was being lost for two reasons: because of the reluctance of the Russian people to defend Bolshevik power and the created system of violence and because of the irresponsible leadership of the army and the interference in its actions by large and small commissars.

In difficult conditions, my army coped with the defense of Kyiv and successfully defended the capital of Ukraine for two months. However, the incurable diseases of the Red Army took their toll. The front was broken through in the area of ​​neighboring armies. Kyiv was surrounded. By order of the high command, I had to leave the fortified area.

After leaving the encirclement, I was appointed deputy commander of the South-Western direction and then commander of the 20th Army. The 20th Army had to be formed in the most difficult conditions, when the fate of Moscow was being decided. I did everything in my power to defend the nation's capital. The 20th Army stopped the attack on Moscow and then went on the offensive itself. It broke through the front of the German army, took Solnechnogorsk, Volokolamsk, Shakhovskaya, Sereda, etc., ensured the transition to the offensive along the entire Moscow section of the front, and approached Gzhatsk.

During the decisive battles for Moscow, I saw that the rear helped the front, but, like the fighter at the front, every worker, every resident in the rear did this only because he believed that he was defending his homeland. For the sake of his homeland, he endured countless sufferings and sacrificed everything. And more than once I drove away from myself the question that constantly arose:

Yes, that's enough. Am I defending my homeland, am I sending people to die for my homeland? Is it not for Bolshevism, masquerading as the holy name of the Motherland, that the Russian people are shedding their blood?

I was appointed deputy commander of the Volkhov Front and commander of the 2nd Shock Army. Perhaps nowhere was Stalin’s disregard for the lives of the Russian people more evident than in the practice of the 2nd Shock Army. The control of this army was centralized and concentrated in the hands of the General Staff. No one knew about her real situation and was not interested in it. One command order contradicted another. The army was doomed to certain death.

Soldiers and commanders received 100 and even 50 grams of crackers per day for weeks. They were swollen from hunger, and many could no longer move through the swamps where the direct leadership of the High Command had led the army. But everyone continued to fight selflessly.

Russian people died heroes. But for what? Why did they sacrifice their lives? Why did they have to die?

I stayed with the soldiers and commanders of the army until the last minute. There were only a handful of us left and we fulfilled our duty as soldiers to the end. I made my way through the encirclement into the forest and hid in the forest and swamps for about a month. But now the question has arisen in its entirety: should the blood of the Russian people be shed further? Is it in the interests of the Russian people to continue the war? What are the Russian people fighting for? I was clearly aware that the Russian people were being drawn into a war by Bolshevism for the alien interests of the Anglo-American capitalists.

England has always been the enemy of the Russian people. She has always sought to weaken our Motherland and harm it. But Stalin, in serving Anglo-American interests, saw an opportunity to realize his plans for world domination, and for the sake of implementing these plans, he linked the fate of the Russian people with the fate of England, he plunged the Russian people into war, brought upon their head innumerable disasters, and these disasters of war are the crown all the misfortunes that the people of our country suffered under the rule of the Bolsheviks for 25 years.

Isn’t it the first and sacred duty of every honest Russian person to fight against Stalin and his clique?

There, in the swamps, I finally came to the conclusion that my duty was to call on the Russian people to fight to overthrow the power of the Bolsheviks, to fight for peace for the Russian people, to end the bloody war that was unnecessary for the Russian people, for the interests of others, to the struggle for the creation of a new Russia, in which every Russian person could be happy.

I have come to the firm conviction that the tasks facing the Russian people can be resolved in alliance and cooperation with the German people. The interests of the Russian people have always been combined with the interests of the German people, with the interests of all the peoples of Europe.

The highest achievements of the Russian people are inextricably linked with those periods of their history when they linked their fate with the fate of Europe, when they built their culture, their economy, their way of life in close unity with the peoples of Europe. Bolshevism fenced off the Russian people with an impenetrable wall from Europe. He sought to isolate our Motherland from advanced European countries. In the name of utopian ideas alien to the Russian people, he prepared for war, opposing himself to the peoples of Europe.

In alliance with the German people, the Russian people must destroy this wall of hatred and mistrust. In alliance and cooperation with Germany, he must build a new happy Homeland within the framework of a family of equal and free peoples of Europe.

With these thoughts, with this decision, in the last battle, together with a handful of my loyal friends, I was taken prisoner.

I spent over six months in captivity. In the conditions of the prisoner of war camp, behind its bars, I not only did not change my decision, but became stronger in my convictions.

On an honest basis, on the basis of sincere conviction, with full awareness of responsibility to the Motherland, the people and history for the actions taken, I call on the people to fight, setting myself the task of building a New Russia.

How do I imagine New Russia? I will talk about this in due time.

History does not turn back. I am not calling the people to return to the past. No! I call him to a bright future, to the struggle to complete the National Revolution, to the struggle to create a New Russia - the Motherland of our great people. I call him to the path of brotherhood and unity with the peoples of Europe and, first of all, to the path of cooperation and eternal friendship with the Great German people.

My call met with deep sympathy not only among the broadest layers of prisoners of war, but also among the broad masses of the Russian people in areas where Bolshevism still reigns. This sympathetic response of the Russian people, who expressed their readiness to stand up under the banners of the Russian Liberation Army, gives me the right to say that I am on the right path, that the cause for which I am fighting is a just cause, the cause of the Russian people. In this struggle for our future, I openly and honestly take the path of alliance with Germany.

This union, equally beneficial for both great peoples, will lead us to victory over the dark forces of Bolshevism and free us from the bondage of Anglo-American capital.

In recent months, Stalin, seeing that the Russian people did not want to fight for the international tasks of Bolshevism that were alien to them, outwardly changed his policy towards the Russians. He destroyed the institution of commissars, he tried to conclude an alliance with the corrupt leaders of the previously persecuted church, he is trying to restore the traditions of the old army. To force the Russian people to shed blood for other people's interests, Stalin recalls the great names of Alexander Nevsky, Kutuzov, Suvorov, Minin and Pozharsky. He wants to assure that he is fighting for the Motherland, for the fatherland, for Russia.

He needs this pathetic and vile deception only in order to stay in power. Only blind people can believe that Stalin abandoned the principles of Bolshevism.

Pathetic hope! Bolshevism has not forgotten anything, has not retreated one step and will not retreat from its program. Today he talks about Rus' and the Russians only in order to achieve victory with the help of the Russian people, and tomorrow with even greater force to enslave the Russian people and force them to continue to serve interests alien to them.

Neither Stalin nor the Bolsheviks are fighting for Russia.

Only in the ranks of the anti-Bolshevik movement is our Motherland truly created. The cause of the Russians, their duty, is to fight against Stalin, for peace, for New Russia. Russia is ours! The past of the Russian people is ours! The future of the Russian people is ours!

Throughout its history, the multi-million Russian people have always found the strength to fight for their future, for their national independence. So even now the Russian people will not perish, and now they will find the strength in themselves to unite in times of severe disasters and overthrow the hated yoke, unite and build a new state in which they will find their happiness.

At the beginning of May 1945, a conflict arose between Vlasov and Bunyachenko - Bunyachenko intended to support the Prague Uprising, and Vlasov persuaded him not to do this and remain on the side of the Germans. At the negotiations in North Bohemian Kozoedy they did not reach an agreement and their paths diverged.

On May 12, 1945, Vlasov was captured soldiers of the 25th Tank Corps of the 13th Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front near the city of Pilsen in Czechoslovakia while trying to escape to the western zone of occupation. The tank crews of the corps pursued Vlasov’s car at the direction of the Vlasov captain, who informed them that his commander was in this car. Vlasov was taken to the headquarters of Marshal Konev, and from there to Moscow.

At first, the leadership of the USSR planned to hold a public trial of Andrei Vlasov and other leaders of the ROA in the October Hall of the House of Unions, however, due to the fact that some of the accused could express views during the trial that “objectively may coincide with the sentiments of a certain part of the population dissatisfied with Soviet power,” It was decided to make the process closed. The decision to sentence Vlasov and others to death was made by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on July 23, 1946. From July 30 to July 31, 1946, a closed trial took place in the case of Vlasov and a group of his followers. All of them were found guilty of treason. By the verdict of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, they were stripped of their military ranks and hanged on August 1, 1946, and their property was confiscated.

From the criminal case of A. A. Vlasov:

Ulrich: Defendant Vlasov, what exactly do you plead guilty to?
Vlasov: I plead guilty to the fact that, being in difficult conditions, I became cowardly...

• WHO ARE YOU, GENERAL VLASOV? So - autumn 1941. The Germans attack Kyiv. However, they cannot take the city. The defense has been greatly strengthened. And it is headed by a forty-year-old Major General of the Red Army, commander of the 37th Army, Andrei Vlasov. A legendary figure in the army. He has gone all the way - from private to general. He went through the civil war, graduated from the Nizhny Novgorod theological seminary, and studied at the Academy of the General Staff of the Red Army. Friend of Mikhail Blucher. Just before the war, Andrei Vlasov, then still a colonel, was sent to China as a military adviser to Chai-kan-shi. He received the Order of the Golden Dragon and a gold watch as a reward, which aroused the envy of all the generals of the Red Army. However, Vlasov was not happy for long. Upon returning home, at the Alma-Ata customs, the order itself, as well as other generous gifts from Generalissimo Chai-kan-shi, were confiscated by the NKVD... Returning home, Vlasov quickly received general stars and an appointment to the 99th Infantry Division, famous for its backwardness. A year later, in 1940, the division was recognized as the best in the Red Army and was the first among the units to be awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Battle. Immediately after this, Vlasov, by order of the People's Commissar of Defense, took command of one of the four created fur corps. Headed by a general, he was stationed in Lvov, and was practically one of the very first units of the Red Army to enter hostilities. Even Soviet historians were forced to admit that the Germans “got punched in the face for the first time,” precisely from the mechanized corps of General Vlasov. However, the forces were unequal, and the Red Army retreated to Kyiv. It was here that Joseph Stalin, shocked by Vlasov’s courage and ability to fight, ordered the general to gather the retreating units in Kyiv, form the 37th Army and defend Kyiv. So, Kyiv, September-August 1941. Fierce fighting is taking place near Kyiv. German troops are suffering colossal losses. In Kyiv itself... there are trams. However, the well-known Georgy Zhukov insists on the surrender of Kyiv to the attacking Germans. After a small intra-army “showdown,” Joseph Stalin gives the order: “Leave Kyiv.” It is unknown why Vlasov’s headquarters was the last to receive this order. History is silent about this. However, according to some as yet unconfirmed data, this was revenge on the obstinate general. The revenge of none other than Army General Georgy Zhukov. After all, just recently, a few weeks ago, Zhukov, while inspecting the positions of the 37th Army, came to Vlasov and wanted to stay the night. Vlasov, knowing Zhukov’s character, decided to joke and offered Zhukov the best dugout, warning him about night shelling. According to eyewitnesses, the army general, whose face changed after these words, hastened to retreat from his position. It’s clear, said the officers present - who wants to expose their heads... On the night of September 19, Kiev was abandoned practically undestroyed by Soviet troops. Later we all learned that 600,000 military personnel fell into the “Kiev cauldron” through the efforts of Zhukov. The only one who withdrew his army from encirclement with minimal losses was “Andrei Vlasov, who did not receive an order to withdraw.” Having been out of the Kyiv encirclement for almost a month, Vlasov caught a cold and was hospitalized with a diagnosis of “middle ear inflammation.” However, after a telephone conversation with Stalin, the general immediately left for Moscow. The role of General Vlasov in the defense of the capital is discussed in the article “The failure of the German plan to encircle and capture Moscow” in the newspapers “Komsomolskaya Pravda”, “Izvestia” and “Pravda” dated December 13, 1941. Moreover, among the troops the general is called nothing less than “the savior of Moscow.” And in the “Certificate for the Army Commander Comrade. Vlasov A.A.”, dated 24.2.1942 and signed by Deputy. Head Personnel Department of NPOs of the Personnel Directorate of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) Zhukov and Head. The Sector of the Personnel Administration of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (Bolsheviks) reads: “By working as a regiment commander from 1937 to 1938 and by working as a rifle division commander from 1939 to 1941, Vlasov is certified as comprehensively developed, well prepared in operational-tactical attitude by the commander.” (Military Historical Journal, 1993, N. 3, pp. 9-10.). This has never happened in the history of the Red Army, possessing only 15 tanks, General Vlasov stopped Walter Model’s tank army in the Moscow suburb of Solnechegorsk, and pushed back the Germans, who were already preparing for the parade on Moscow’s Red Square, 100 kilometers away, liberating three cities... It was from which he received the nickname “the savior of Moscow.” After the battle of Moscow, the general was appointed deputy commander of the Volkhov Front.
• WHAT IS LEFT BEHIND THE INFORMATION BUREAU OWL REPORTS? And everything would be just great if, after the completely mediocre operational policy of the Headquarters and the General Staff, Leningrad found itself in a ring akin to Stalingrad. And the Second Shock Army, sent to the rescue of Leningrad, was hopelessly blocked in Myasny Bor. This is where the fun begins. Stalin demanded punishment for those responsible for the current situation. And the highest military officials sitting on the General Staff really didn’t want to “give” their friends and drinking buddies, the commanders of the Second Shock, to Stalin. One of them wanted to have absolute command of the front, without having any organizational abilities for this. The second, no less “skillful”, wanted to take this power away from him. The third of these “friends”, who drove the Red Army soldiers of the Second Shock Army with a parade step under German fire, later became the Marshal of the USSR and the Minister of Defense of the USSR. The fourth, who did not give a single clear command to the troops, imitated a nervous attack and left... to serve in the General Staff. Stalin was informed that “the group’s command needs to strengthen its leadership.” It was here that Stalin was reminded of General Vlasov, who was appointed commander of the Second Shock Army. Andrei Vlasov understood that he was flying to his death. As a person who had gone through the crucible of this war near Kiev and Moscow, he knew that the army was doomed, and no miracle would save it. Even if this miracle is himself - General Andrei Vlasov, the savior of Moscow. One can only imagine that the military general in the Douglas, flinching from the explosions of German anti-aircraft guns, changed his mind, and who knows, if the German anti-aircraft gunners were luckier, they would shoot down this Douglas. No matter what grimace history makes. And now we would not have the heroically deceased Hero of the Soviet Union, Lieutenant General Andrei Andreevich Vlasov. According to existing information, I emphasize, which has not yet been confirmed, there was a proposal against Vlasov on Stalin’s table. And the Supreme Commander-in-Chief even signed it...
  Official propaganda presents further events as follows: traitor general A. Vlasov voluntarily surrendered. With all the ensuing consequences... But few people to this day know that when the fate of the Second Shock became obvious, Stalin sent a plane for Vlasov. Of course, the general was his favorite. But Andrei Andreevich has already made his choice. And he refused to evacuate, sending the wounded on the plane. Eyewitnesses of this incident say that the general said through gritted teeth, “What kind of commander abandons his army to destruction.” There are eyewitness accounts that Vlasov refused to abandon the fighters of the 2nd Shock Army who were actually dying of hunger due to the criminal mistakes of the Supreme Command and fly away to save his life. And not Germans, but Russians, who went through the horrors of the German and then Stalinist camps and, despite this, did not accuse Vlasov of treason. General Vlasov with a handful of fighters decided to break through to his own...
• CAPTIVITY On the night of July 12, 1942, Vlasov and a handful of soldiers accompanying him went to the Old Believer village of Tukhovezhi and took refuge in a barn. And at night, the barn where the encirclement found shelter was broken into... no, not the Germans. To this day it is unknown who these people really were. According to one version, these were amateur partisans. According to another, armed local residents, led by a church warden, decided to buy the favor of the Germans at the cost of the general’s stars. That same night, General Andrei Vlasov and the soldiers accompanying him were handed over to regular German troops. They say that before this the general was severely beaten. Note - our own... One of the Red Army soldiers who accompanied Vlasov then testified to SMERSHA investigators: “When we were handed over to the Germans, they wanted to shoot everyone without talking. The general came forward and said, “Don't shoot! I am General Vlasov. My people are unarmed!” That’s the whole story of “voluntary capture.” By the way, between June and December 1941, 3.8 million Soviet troops were captured by Germans, in 1942 even more than a million, for a total of about 5.2 million people during the war. And then there was a concentration camp near Vinnitsa, where senior officers of interest to Germans - prominent commissars and generals. Much was written in the Soviet press about how Vlasov allegedly became cowardly, lost control of himself, and saved his life. The documents state the opposite: Here are excerpts from official German and personal documents that ended up in SMERSH after the war. They characterize Vlasov from the point of view of another side. These are documentary evidence of Nazi leaders, whom you certainly would not suspect of sympathizing with the Soviet general, through whose efforts thousands of German soldiers were destroyed near Kiev and Moscow. Thus, the adviser to the German embassy in Moscow, Hilger, in the interrogation report captured General Vlasov on August 8, 1942 briefly described him: “he gives the impression of a strong and direct personality. His judgments are calm and balanced” (Archive of the Institute of Military History of the Moscow Region, no. 43, l. 57..). And here is Goebbels’ opinion about General. Having met with Vlasov on March 1, 1945, he wrote in his diary: “General Vlasov is a highly intelligent and energetic Russian military leader; he made a very deep impression on me” (Goebbels J. Latest entries. Smolensk, 1993, p. 57). Regarding Vlasov, it seems clear. Maybe the people who surrounded him in the ROA were the last scum and slackers who were just waiting for the start of the war to go over to the side of the Germans. But no, and here the documents give no reason to doubt.
• ….AND THE OFFICERS WHO JOINED WITH HIM General Vlasov's closest associates were highly professional military leaders who at various times received high awards from the Soviet government for their professional activities. So, Major General V.F. Malyshkin was awarded the Order of the Red Banner and the medal “XX Years of the Red Army”; Major General F.I. Trukhin - the Order of the Red Banner and the medal “XX Years of the Red Army”; Zhilenkov G.N., Secretary of the Rostokinsky District Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Moscow. - Order of the Red Banner of Labor (Military Historical Journal, 1993, N. 2, pp. 9, 12.). Colonel Maltsev M.A. (Major General of the ROA) - Commander of the Air Force of the KONR, was at one time a pilot-instructor of the legendary Valery Chkalov (“Voice of Crimea”, 1944, N. 27. Editorial afterword). And the Chief of Staff of the KONR Armed Forces, Colonel Aldan A. G. (Neryanin) received high praise upon graduation from the Academy of the General Staff in 1939. The then Chief of the General Staff, Army General Shaposhnikov called him one of the brilliant officers of the course, the only one who graduated from the Academy with “excellent marks”. It is difficult to imagine that they were all cowards who went into the service of the Germans in order to save their own lives. Generals F.I. Trukhin, G.N. Zhilenkov, A.A. Vlasov, V.F. Malyshkin and D.E. Zakupny during the signing ceremony of the KONR manifesto. Prague, November 14, 1944
• IF VLASOV IS INNOCENT - WHO THEN? By the way, if we are talking about documents, then we can remember one more. When General Vlasov ended up with the Germans, the NKVD and SMERSH, on behalf of Stalin, conducted a thorough investigation of the situation with the Second Shock Army. The results were put on the table to Stalin, who came to the conclusion - to admit the inconsistency of the accusations brought against General Vlasov in the death of the 2nd Shock Army and in his military unpreparedness. And what kind of unpreparedness could there be if the artillery did not have enough ammunition for even one salvo... The investigation from SMERSH was headed by a certain Viktor Abakumov (remember this name). Only in 1993, decades later, Soviet propaganda reported this through clenched teeth. (Military Historical Journal, 1993, N. 5, pp. 31-34.).
• GENERAL VLASOV - HITLER KAPUTT?! Let's return to Andrei Vlasov. So did the military general calm down in German captivity? The facts tell a different story. It was possible, of course, to provoke a guard to fire a machine gun at point-blank range, it was possible to start an uprising in the camp, kill a couple of dozen guards, run to your own people and... end up in other camps - this time Stalin’s. It was possible to show unshakable convictions and... turn into a block of ice. But Vlasov did not feel any particular fear of the Germans. One day, the concentration camp guards who “took to their chests” decided to organize a “parade” of captured Red Army soldiers and decided to put Vlasov at the head of the column. The general refused such an honor, and several “organizers” of the parade were knocked out by the general. Well, then the camp commandant arrived in time to hear the noise. The general, who was always distinguished by his originality and non-standard decisions, decided to act differently. For a whole year(!) he convinced the Germans of his loyalty. And then in March and April 1943, Vlasov makes two trips to the Smolensk and Pskov regions, and criticizes ... German politics in front of large audiences, making sure that the liberation movement finds a response among the people. But for his “shameless” speeches, the frightened Nazis send him to house arrest arrest. The first attempt ended in complete failure. The general was eager to fight, sometimes committing reckless acts.
• THE ALL-SEEING EYE OF THE NKVD? And then something happened. Soviet intelligence contacted the general. In his circle appeared a certain Milenty Zykov, who held the position of divisional commissar in the Red Army. The personality is bright and... mysterious. He edited two newspapers for the general... And to this day it is not known for certain whether this man was who he said he was. Only a year ago, circumstances “surfaced” that could turn all ideas about the “case of General Vlasov” upside down. Zykov was born in Dnepropetrovsk, a journalist, worked in Central Asia, then at Izvestia with Bukharin. He was married to the daughter of Lenin's comrade-in-arms, People's Commissar of Education Andrei Bubnov, and was arrested after him in 1937. Shortly before the war, he was released (!) and drafted into the army as a battalion commissar (!). He was captured near Bataysk in the summer of 1942, while being a commissar in a rifle division, whose numbers he never gave. They met Vlasov in the Vinnitsa camp, where they kept Soviet officers of particular interest to the Wehrmacht. From there, Zykov was brought to Berlin by order of Goebbels himself. On the tunic of Zykov, brought to the military propaganda department, the stars and commissar insignia remained intact. Milenty Zykov became the general's closest adviser, although he received only the rank of captain in the ROA. There is reason to believe that Zykov was a Soviet intelligence officer. And the reasons are very strong. Milenty Zykov was very actively in contact with senior German officers who, as it turned out, were preparing an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler. He paid for this. It remains a mystery what happened on a June day in 1944 when he was called to the telephone in the village of Rasndorf. ROA captain Zykov left the house, got into the car and... disappeared. According to one version, Zykov was kidnapped by the Gestapo, who uncovered the assassination attempt on Hitler, and then shot in Sachsenhausen. A strange circumstance, Vlasov himself was not very concerned about Zykov’s disappearance, which suggests the existence of a plan for Zykov’s transition to an illegal position, that is, to return home. In addition, in 1945-46. - after Vlasov’s arrest, SMERSH was very actively looking for traces of Zykov. Yes, so actively that one got the impression of deliberately covering up traces. When in the mid-nineties they tried to find the criminal case of Milentiy Zykov from 1937 in the FSB archives, the attempt was unsuccessful. Strange, isn't it? After all, at the same time, all of Zykov’s other documents, including the reader’s form in the library, and the registration card in the military archive, were in place.
• THE GENERAL'S FAMILY And one more significant circumstance that indirectly confirms Vlasov’s cooperation with Soviet intelligence. Usually, relatives of “traitors to the Motherland,” especially people occupying a social position at the level of General Vlasov, were subjected to severe repression. As a rule, they were destroyed in the Gulag. In this situation, everything was exactly the opposite. In recent decades, neither Soviet nor Western journalists have been able to obtain information shedding light on the fate of the general’s family. Only recently it became clear that Vlasov’s first wife, Anna Mikhailovna, who was arrested in 1942 after serving 5 years in a Nizhny Novgorod prison, lived and lived in Balakhna a few years ago. The second wife, Agnessa Pavlovna, with whom the general married in 1941, lived and worked as a doctor at the Brest Regional Dermatovenerologic Dispensary. She died two years ago, and her son, who has achieved a lot in this life, lives and works in Samara. The second son is illegitimate, lives and works in St. Petersburg. At the same time, he denies any relationship with the general. He has a son growing up, very similar to his grandfather... His illegitimate daughter, grandchildren and great-grandchildren also live there. One of the grandchildren, a promising officer in the Russian Navy, has no idea who his grandfather was. So decide after this whether General Vlasov was a “traitor to the Motherland.”
• OPEN ACTION AGAINST STALIN Six months after Zykov’s “disappearance,” on November 14, 1944, Vlasov proclaimed the manifesto of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia in Prague. Its main provisions: the overthrow of the Stalinist regime and the return to the people of the rights won by them in the revolution of 1917, the conclusion of an honorable peace with Germany, the creation of a new free statehood in Russia, “the establishment of the national labor system,” “the comprehensive development of international cooperation,” “the elimination of forced labor”, “liquidation of collective farms”, “granting the intelligentsia the right to create freely”. Isn’t it true that the demands proclaimed by the political leaders of the last two decades are very familiar. And what is “betrayal of the Motherland here”? KONR receives hundreds of thousands of applications from Soviet citizens in Germany to join its armed forces.
• STAR…. On January 28, 1945, General Vlasov took command of the Armed Forces of the KONR, which the Germans resolved at the level of three divisions, one reserve brigade, two aviation squadrons and an officer school, a total of about 50 thousand people. At that time, these military formations were not yet sufficiently armed. Lieutenant General A.A. Vlasov and representatives of the German command division inspect one of the Russian battalions as part of Army Group North, May 1943. In the foreground is a Russian non-commissioned officer (deputy platoon commander) with shoulder straps and buttonholes of the Eastern troops, withdrawn in August 1942. The war was ending. The Germans no longer cared about General Vlasov - they were saving their own skins. February 9 and April 14, 1945 were the only occasions when the Vlasovites took part in battles on the Eastern Front, forced by the Germans. In the very first battle, several hundred Red Army soldiers went over to Vlasov’s side. The second one radically changes some ideas about the finale of the war. On May 6, 1945, an anti-Hitler uprising broke out in Prague... At the call of the rebel Czechs, Prague entered... The first division of General Vlasov’s army. She enters into battle with heavily armed SS and Wehrmacht units, captures the airport, where fresh German units arrive, and liberates the city. The Czechs are rejoicing. And very eminent commanders of the Soviet army are beside themselves with rage and anger. Of course, again it was the upstart Vlasov. And then strange and terrible events began. Those who just yesterday begged for help come to Vlasov and ask the general... to leave Prague, since his Russian friends are unhappy. And Vlasov gives the command to withdraw. However, this did not save the walkers; they were shot... by the Czechs themselves. By the way, it was not a group of impostors who asked for help from Vlasov, but people who carried out the decision of the highest body of the Czechoslovak Republic.
• ...AND THE DEATH OF GENERAL VLASOV But this did not save the general, Colonel General. Viktor Abakumov, the head of SMERSH, gave the command to detain Vlasov. The SMERSHists took the show. On May 12, 1945, General Vlasov's troops are caught between American and Soviet forces in southwestern Bohemia. Vlasovites who fell into the hands of the Red Army were shot on the spot... According to the official version, the general himself was captured and arrested by a special reconnaissance group that stopped the convoy of the first division of the ROA and SMERSH. However, there are at least four versions of how Vlasov ended up in the rear of the Soviet troops. We already know about the first one, but here is another one, compiled on the basis of eyewitness accounts. Indeed, General Vlasov was in that same ROA column. Only he was not hiding in the carpet on the floor of the Willis, as Captain Yakushov, who allegedly took part in that operation, claims. The general sat calmly in the car. And the car was not a Willys at all. Moreover, this same car was of such a size that a two-meter-tall general simply wouldn’t fit in it wrapped in a carpet... And there was no lightning-fast attack by scouts on the convoy. They (the scouts), dressed in full dress uniforms with medals, calmly waited on the side of the road for Vlasov’s car to catch up with them. When the car slowed down, the leader of the group saluted the general and invited him to get out of the car. Is this how they greet traitors? And then the fun began. There is evidence from the military prosecutor of the tank division to which Andrei Vlasov was taken. This man was the first to meet the general after his arrival at the location of the Soviet troops. He claims that the general was dressed in ... a general's uniform of the Red Army (old model), with insignia and orders. The stunned lawyer could not find anything better than to ask the general to produce documents. That’s what he did, showing the prosecutor the paybook of the commanding staff of the Red Army, the identity card of the Red Army general No. 431 dated 02.13.41, and the party card of a member of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (Bolsheviks) No. 2123998 - all in the name of Andrei Andreevich Vlasov... Moreover, the prosecutor claims, that the day before Vlasov’s arrival, an unimaginable number of army commanders came to the division, who did not even think of showing any hostility or hostility towards the general. Moreover, a joint lunch was organized. On the same day, the general was transported to Moscow by transport plane. I wonder if this is how traitors are greeted? Further, very little is known. Vlasov is located in Lefortovo. “Prisoner No. 32” was the name of the general in prison. This prison belongs to SMERSH, and no one, not even Beria and Stalin, has the right to enter there. And they didn’t enter - Viktor Abakumov knew his business well. For which he later paid, but more on that later. The investigation lasted more than a year. Stalin, or maybe not Stalin at all, thought about what to do with the disgraced general. Elevate him to the rank of a national hero? It’s impossible - the military general did not sit quietly - he spoke a lot. Retired NKVD officers claim that they bargained with Andrei Vlasov for a long time - repent, they say, before the people and the leader. Admit mistakes. And they will forgive. Maybe... They say that it was then that Vlasov met with Melenty Zykov again...

  But the general was consistent in his actions, as when he did not leave the Second Shock fighters to die, as when he did not abandon his ROA in the Czech Republic. The Lieutenant General of the Red Army, holder of the Order of Lenin and the Red Banner of Battle, made his last choice...

  On August 2, 1946, an official TASS message published in all central newspapers - on August 1, 1946, Lieutenant General of the Red Army A. A. Vlasov and his 11 comrades were hanged. Stalin was cruel to the end. After all, there is no death more shameful for officers than the gallows. Here are their names: Major General of the Red Army Malyshkin V.F., Zhilenkov G.N., Major General of the Red Army Trukhin F.I., Major General of the Red Army Zakutny D.E., Major General of the Red Army Blagoveshchensky I.A, Colonel of the Red Army Meandrov M A, Colonel of the USSR Air Force Maltsev M.A., Colonel of the Red Army Bunyachenko S.K., Colonel of the Red Army Zverev G. A, Major General of the Red Army Korbukov V.D. and Lieutenant Colonel of the Red Army N.S. Shatov. It is unknown where the bodies of the officers were buried. SMERSH knew how to keep its secrets.

• ...AND LIEUTENANT GENERAL VLASOV SOVIET... INTELLIGENT?! Was Andrei Vlasov a Soviet intelligence officer? There is no direct evidence of this. Moreover, there is no document proving this. But there are facts that are very difficult to argue with. The main one among them is this. It is no longer a big secret that in 1942 Joseph Stalin, despite all the successes of the Red Army near Moscow, wanted to conclude a separate peace with Germany and stop the war. Having given up Ukraine, Moldova, Crimea... There is even evidence that Lavrentiy Beria “ventilated the situation” on this issue. And Vlasov was an excellent candidate to conduct these negotiations. Why? To do this, you need to look at the pre-war career of Andrei Vlasov. You can come to stunning conclusions. Back in 1937, Colonel Vlasov was appointed head of the second department of the headquarters of the Leningrad Military District. Translated into civilian language, this means that the brave Colonel Vlasov was responsible for all the KGB work in the district. And then the repressions broke out. And Colonel Vlasov, who received the first pseudonym “Volkov”, was... safely sent as an adviser to the already mentioned Chai-kan-shi... And then, if you read between the lines of the memoirs of the participants in those events, you come to the conclusion that it was no one else who worked in China , like... Soviet Colonel Volkov... intelligence officer. It was he, and no one else, who made friends with German diplomats, took them to restaurants, gave them vodka until they fainted, and talked for a long, long time. About what is unknown, but how can an ordinary Russian colonel behave this way, knowing what is happening in his country, that people were arrested only for explaining to foreigners on the street how to get to the Alexander Garden. Where is Sorge with his attempts at undercover work in Japan? All of Sorge's female agents could not provide information comparable to that of Chai-kan-shi's wife, with whom the Russian colonel had a very close relationship... The seriousness of Colonel Vlasov's work is evidenced by his personal translator in China, who claims that Volkov ordered him, at the slightest danger, shoot him. And another argument. I saw a document marked “Top Secret. Ex..No. 1” dated 1942, in which Vsevolod Merkulov reports to Joseph Stalin about the work to destroy the traitor general A. Vlasov. So, Vlasov was hunted by more than 42 reconnaissance and sabotage groups with a total number of 1,600 people. Do you believe that in 1942 such a powerful organization as SMERSH could not “get” one general, even if he was well guarded. I don't believe. The conclusion is more than simple: Stalin, knowing full well the strength of the German intelligence services, tried his best to convince the Germans of the general’s betrayal. But the Germans turned out to be not so simple. Hitler never accepted Vlasov. But Andrei Vlasov suited the anti-Hitler opposition. It is now unknown what prevented Stalin from completing the job, either the situation at the front, or a too late and, moreover, unsuccessful attempt on the Fuhrer’s life. And Stalin had to choose between destroying Vlasov or kidnapping him. Apparently, they settled on the latter. But... This is the most Russian “but”. The thing is that at the time of the general’s “transition” to the Germans, there were already three intelligence services operating in the USSR: the NKGB, SMERSH and the GRU of the General Staff of the Red Army. And these organizations competed fiercely with each other (remember this). And Vlasov, apparently, worked for the GRU. How else can one explain the fact that the general was brought to the Second Shock by Lavrentiy Beria and Kliment Voroshilov. Interesting, isn't it?

  Further, the trial against Vlasov was carried out by SMERSH and did not allow anyone into this case. Even the trial was held behind closed doors, although, logically, the trial of a traitor should be public and open. And you need to see photographs of Vlasov in court - eyes expecting something, as if asking, “Well, how long will it take, stop the clownery.” But Vlasov did not know about the quarrel between the special services. And he was executed... People present claim that the general behaved with dignity.

  The scandal began the day after the execution, when Joseph Stalin saw the latest newspapers.

  It turns out that SMERSH had to ask for written permission for the execution from the Military Prosecutor's Office and the GRU. He asked, and they answered him: “The execution will be postponed until further notice.” This letter remains in the archives to this day.

  But Abakumov “did not see the answer.” For which he paid. In 1946, on the personal orders of Stalin, Viktor Abakumov was arrested. They say that Stalin visited him in prison and reminded him of General Vlasov. However, these are just rumors...

  By the way, in the indictment against Andrei Vlasov there is no article incriminating “Treason of the Motherland.” Only terrorism and counter-revolutionary activities.

From the editor:

Every year on May 9, our country celebrates Victory Day and pays tribute to the valiant defenders of the Fatherland - living and dead. But it turns out that not everyone who should be remembered with a kind word is remembered and known by us. The lies of totalitarian ideology have given rise to myths for many years. Myths that became truth for several generations of Soviet people. But sooner or later the truth becomes known. People, as a rule, are in no hurry to part with myths. It’s more convenient and familiar this way... Here is one of the stories about how a national hero, a favorite of the authorities, “became a traitor.” This story happened with the combat lieutenant general of the Red Army Andrei Vlasov.

Who are you, General Vlasov?

So, autumn 1941. The Germans attack Kyiv. However, they cannot take the city. The defense has been greatly strengthened. And it is headed by a forty-year-old Major General of the Red Army, commander of the 37th Army, Andrei Vlasov. A legendary figure in the army. Came all the way - from private to general. He went through the civil war, graduated from the Nizhny Novgorod theological seminary, and studied at the Academy of the General Staff of the Red Army. Friend of Mikhail Blucher. Just before the war, Andrei Vlasov, then still a colonel, was sent to China as military advisers to Chiang Kai-shek. He received the Order of the Golden Dragon and a gold watch as a reward, which aroused the envy of the entire Red Army generals. However, Vlasov was not happy for long. Upon returning home, at Almaty customs the order itself, as well as other generous gifts from Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, were confiscated by the NKVD...

Returning home, Vlasov quickly received general's stars and an appointment to the 99th Infantry Division, famous for its backwardness. A year later, in 1941, the division was recognized as the best in the Red Army and was the first among the units to be awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Battle. Immediately after this, Vlasov, by order of the People's Commissar of Defense, took command of one of the four created mechanized corps. Headed by a general, he was stationed in Lvov and was practically one of the very first units of the Red Army to enter hostilities. Even Soviet historians were forced to admit that the Germans “got punched in the face for the first time,” precisely from the mechanized corps of General Vlasov.

However, the forces were unequal, and the Red Army retreated to Kyiv. It was here that Joseph Stalin, shocked by Vlasov’s courage and ability to fight, ordered the general to gather the retreating units in Kyiv, form the 37th Army and defend Kyiv.

So, Kyiv, September-August 1941. Fierce fighting is taking place near Kyiv. German troops are suffering colossal losses. In Kyiv itself... there are trams.

Nevertheless, the well-known Georgy Zhukov insists on the surrender of Kyiv to the attacking Germans. After a small intra-army “showdown,” Joseph Stalin gives the order: “Leave Kyiv.” It is unknown why Vlasov’s headquarters was the last to receive this order. History is silent about this. However, according to some as yet unconfirmed reports, this was revenge on the obstinate general. The revenge of none other than Army General Georgy Zhukov. After all, just recently, a few weeks ago, Zhukov, while inspecting the positions of the 37th Army, came to Vlasov and wanted to stay the night. Vlasov, knowing Zhukov’s character, decided to joke and offered Zhukov the best dugout, warning him about night shelling. According to eyewitnesses, the army general changed his face after these words and hastened to retreat from his position. It’s clear, said the officers present, who wants to expose their heads... On the night of September 19, practically undestroyed Kyiv was abandoned by Soviet troops.

Later, we all learned that 600,000 military personnel ended up in the “Kiev cauldron” through Zhukov’s efforts. The only one who withdrew his army from encirclement with minimal losses was “Andrei Vlasov, who did not receive the order to withdraw.”

Having been out of the Kyiv encirclement for almost a month, Vlasov caught a cold and was admitted to the hospital with a diagnosis of inflammation of the middle ear. However, after a telephone conversation with Stalin, the general immediately left for Moscow. The role of General Vlasov in the defense of the capital is discussed in the article “The failure of the German plan to encircle and capture Moscow” in the newspapers “Komsomolskaya Pravda”, “Izvestia” and “Pravda” dated December 13, 1941. Moreover, among the troops the general is called nothing less than “the savior of Moscow.” And in the “Certificate for Army Commander Comrade. Vlasov A.A.,” dated 24.2.1942 and signed by deputy. head HR Department of the NPO Personnel Directorate of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) Zhukov and head. The Sector of the Personnel Administration of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (Bolsheviks) reads: “By working as a regiment commander from 1937 to 1938 and by working as a rifle division commander from 1939 to 1941, Vlasov is certified as comprehensively developed, well prepared in operational and tactical terms commander."

(Military Historical Journal, 1993, N. 3, pp. 9-10.). This has never happened in the history of the Red Army: possessing only 15 tanks, General Vlasov stopped Walter Model’s tank army in the Moscow suburb of Solnechegorsk and pushed back the Germans, who were already preparing for a parade on Moscow’s Red Square, 100 kilometers away, liberating three cities... It was from which he received the nickname “the savior of Moscow.” After the battle of Moscow, the general was appointed deputy commander of the Volkhov Front.

What remains behind the Sovinformburo reports?

And everything would be just great if, after the completely mediocre operational policy of the Headquarters and the General Staff, Leningrad found itself in a ring akin to Stalingrad. And the Second Shock Army, sent to the rescue of Leningrad, was hopelessly blocked in Myasny Bor. This is where the fun begins. Stalin demanded punishment for those responsible for the current situation. And the highest military officials sitting on the General Staff really did not want to hand over their drinking buddies, the commanders of the Second Shock, to Stalin. One of them wanted to have absolute command of the front, without having any organizational abilities for this. The second, no less “skillful”, wanted to take this power away from him.

The third of these “friends,” who drove the Red Army soldiers of the Second Shock Army in front under German fire, later became the Marshal of the USSR and the Minister of Defense of the USSR. The fourth, who did not give a single clear command to the troops, imitated a nervous attack and left... to serve in the General Staff. Stalin was informed that “the group’s command needs to strengthen its leadership.” Here Stalin was reminded of General Vlasov, who was appointed commander of the Second Shock Army. Andrei Vlasov understood that he was flying to his death. As a person who went through the crucible of this war near Kiev and Moscow, he knew that the army was doomed, and no miracle would save it. Even if he himself is a miracle - General Andrei Vlasov, savior of Moscow.

One can only imagine that the military general changed his mind « Douglas », flinching from the explosions of German anti-aircraft guns, and who knows, if the German anti-aircraft gunners had been luckier, they would have shot down this « Douglas » .

Whatever grimace history would make... And now we would not have the heroically deceased Hero of the Soviet Union, Lieutenant General Andrei Andreevich Vlasov. According to existing, I emphasize, information that has not yet been confirmed, there was a proposal against Vlasov on Stalin’s table. And the Supreme Commander-in-Chief even signed it...

Official propaganda presents further events as follows: traitor general A. Vlasov voluntarily surrendered. With all the ensuing consequences...

But few people to this day know that when the fate of the Second Shock became obvious, Stalin sent a plane for Vlasov. Of course, the general was his favorite! But Andrei Andreevich has already made his choice. And he refused to evacuate, sending the wounded on the plane. Eyewitnesses of this incident say that the general threw through his teeth « What kind of commander abandons his army to destruction? »

There are eyewitness accounts that Vlasov refused to abandon the fighters of the 2nd Shock Army who were actually dying of hunger due to the criminal mistakes of the Supreme Command and fly away to save his life. And not the Germans, but the Russians, who went through the horrors of the German and then Stalinist camps and, despite this, did not accuse Vlasov of treason. General Vlasov with a handful of fighters decided to break through to his...

Captivity

On the night of July 12, 1942, Vlasov and a handful of soldiers accompanying him went to the Old Believer village of Tukhovezhi and took refuge in a barn. And at night, the barn where the encirclement found shelter was broken into... no, not the Germans. To this day it is unknown who these people really were. According to one version, these were amateur partisans. According to another - armed local residents, led by the church warden, decided to buy the favor of the Germans at the price of the general's stars. That same night, General Andrei Vlasov and the soldiers accompanying him were handed over to regular German troops. They say that before this the general was severely beaten. Please note, your...

One of the Red Army soldiers who accompanied Vlasov then testified to SMERSHA investigators: “When we were handed over to the Germans, the technical officers, without talking, shot everyone. The general came forward and said: “Don’t shoot!” I am General Vlasov. My people are unarmed!’” That’s the whole story of the “voluntary departure into captivity.” By the way, between June and December 1941, 3.8 million Soviet troops were captured by the Germans, and in 1942, more than a million, for a total of about 5.2 million people.

Then there was a concentration camp near Vinnitsa, where senior officers of interest to the Germans - prominent commissars and generals - were kept. Much was written in the Soviet press that Vlasov, they say, chickened out, lost control of himself, and saved his life. The documents say otherwise.

Here are excerpts from official German and personal documents that ended up in SMERSH after the war. They characterize Vlasov from the point of view of another side. These are documentary evidence of Nazi leaders, whom you certainly would not suspect of sympathizing with the Soviet general, through whose efforts thousands of German soldiers were destroyed near Kiev and Moscow.

Thus, the adviser to the German embassy in Moscow, Hilger, in the protocol of the interrogation of the captured General Vlasov dated August 8, 1942. briefly described him: “He gives the impression of a strong and straightforward personality. His judgments are calm and balanced” (Archive of the Institute of Military History of the Moscow Region, no. 43, l. 57.).

Here is the opinion of General Goebbels. Having met with Vlasov on March 1, 1945, he wrote in his diary: “General Vlasov is a highly intelligent and energetic Russian military leader; he made a very deep impression on me” (Goebbels J. Latest entries. Smolensk, 1993, p. 57).

Vlasov’s attitude seems clear. Maybe the people who surrounded him in the ROA were the last scum and slackers who were just waiting for the start of the war to go over to the side of the Germans. Annette, here the documents give no reason to doubt.

...and the officers who joined him

General Vlasov's closest associates were highly professional military leaders who at various times received high awards from the Soviet government for their professional activities. Thus, Major General V.F. Malyshkin was awarded the Order of the Red Banner and the medal “XX Years of the Red Army”; Major General F.I. Trukhin - the Order of the Red Banner and the medal “XX Years of the Red Army”; Zhilenkov G.N., Secretary of the Rostokinsky District Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Moscow. - Order of the Red Banner of Labor ( Military-historical magazine, 1993, N. 2, p. 9, 12.). Colonel Maltsev M. A. (ROA Major General) - commander Air Force by KONR forces, was at one time pilot-instructor the legendary Valery Chkalov (“Voice of Crimea”, 1944, N. 27. Editorial afterword).

The Chief of Staff of the VSKONR, Colonel A.G. Aldan (Neryanin), received high praise upon graduation from the General Staff Academy in 1939. The then Chief of the General Staff, Army General Shaposhnikov, called him one of the brilliant officers of the course, the only one who graduated from the Academy with excellent marks. It is difficult to imagine that they were all cowards who went to serve the Germans in order to save their own lives. Generals F. I. Trukhin, G. N. Zhilenkov, A. A. Vlasov, V. F. Malyshkin and D. E. Purchase during the signing ceremony of the KONR manifesto. Prague, November 14, 1944.

If Vlasov is innocent, then who?

By the way, if we are talking about documents, then we can remember one more. When General Vlasov ended up with the Germans, the NKVD and SMERSH, on behalf of Stalin, conducted a thorough investigation of the situation with the Second Shock Army. The results were put on the table to Stalin, who came to the conclusion: to admit the inconsistency of the accusations brought against General Vlasov for the death of the 2nd Shock Army and for his military unpreparedness. And what kind of unpreparedness could there be if the artillery did not have enough ammunition for even one salvo... The investigation from SMERSH was headed by a certain Viktor Abakumov (remember this name). Only in 1993, decades later, Soviet propaganda reported this through clenched teeth. (Military Historical Journal, 1993, N. 5, pp. 31-34.).

General Vlasov - Hitler is kaput?!

Let's return to Andrey Vlasov. So did the military general calm down in German captivity? The facts speak differently. It was possible, of course, to provoke a guard into firing a burst of automatic fire, it was possible to start an uprising in the camp, kill a couple of dozen guards, flee to your own people and... end up in other camps - this time Stalin’s. It was possible to show unshakable convictions and... turn into a block of ice. But Vlasov did not experience any particular fear of the Germans. One day, the concentration camp guards who “took their breasts” decided to organize a “parade” of captured Red Army soldiers and decided to put Vlasov at the head of the column. The general refused this honor, and several “organizers” of the parade were knocked out by the general. Well, then our camp commandant arrived in time.

The general, who has always been distinguished by his originality and unconventional decisions, decided to act differently. For a whole year (!) he convinced the Germans of his loyalty. Then, in March and April 1943, Vlasov made two trips to the Smolensk and Pskov regions, and criticized ... German politics in front of large audiences, making sure that the liberation movement resonated with the people.

Noza's "shameless" speeches frightened the Nazis send him under house arrest. The first attempt ended in complete failure. The general was eager to fight, sometimes committing reckless acts.

All-seeing eye of the NKVD?

Then something happened. Soviet intelligence came out to the general. In his circle appeared a certain Melenty Zykov, who held the position of divisional commissar in the Red Army. The personality is bright and... mysterious. General, he edited two newspapers...

To this day it is not known for certain whether this man was who he said he was. Only a year ago, circumstances “surfaced” that could turn all ideas about the “case of General Vlasov” upside down. Zykov was born in Dnepropetrovsk, a journalist, worked in Central Asia, then at Izvestia with Bukharin. He married the daughter of Lenin's comrade-in-arms, People's Commissar of Education Andrei Bubnov, and was subsequently arrested in 1937. Shortly before the war he was released (!) and the army was called up to serve as a battalion commissar (!).

He was captured near Bataysk in the summer of 1942, being the commissar of an infantry division, whose numbers he never named. They met Svlasov in the Vinnitsa camp, where they kept Soviet officers of particular interest to the Wehrmacht. From there Zykov was brought to Berlin by order of Goebbels himself.

The stars and commissar insignia of Zykov, delivered to the military propaganda department, remained unbroken on his tunic. Melenty Zykov became the general's closest adviser, although he received only the rank of captain in the ROA.

There is reason to believe that Zykov was a Soviet intelligence officer. And the reasons are very compelling. Melenty Zykov was very actively in contact with senior German officers who, as it turned out, were preparing an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler. For this they paid. It remains a mystery what happened on a June day in 1944 when he was called to the telephone in the village of Rasndorf. ROA captain Zykov left home, got into his car and... disappeared.

According to one version, Zykov was kidnapped by the Gestapo, who uncovered the assassination attempt on Hitler, and then shot in Sachsenhausen. A strange circumstance, Vlasov himself was not very concerned about Zykov’s disappearance, which suggests the existence of a plan for Zykov’s transition to an illegal position, that is, to return home. In addition, in 1945-46, after the arrest of Vlasov, SMERSH was very actively looking for traces of Zykov.

Yes, so actively that it seemed like they were deliberately covering their tracks. When in the mid-nineties they tried to find the criminal case of Melenty Zykov from 1937 in the FSB archives, the attempt was unsuccessful. Strange, isn't it? After all, at the same time, all of Zykov’s other documents, including the reader’s form in the library, and the registration card in the military archive, were in place.

General's family

There is one more significant circumstance that indirectly confirms Vlasov’s cooperation with Soviet intelligence. Usually, relatives of “traitors to the Motherland,” especially those occupying a social position at the level of General Vlasov, were subjected to severe repression. As a rule, they were destroyed in the Gulag.

In this situation, everything was exactly the opposite. Over the past decades, neither Soviet nor Western journalists have been able to obtain information that would shed light on the fate of the general’s family. Only recently it became clear that Vlasov’s first wife Anna Mikhailovna, arrested in 1942, after serving 5 years in a Nizhny Novgorod prison, was living and thriving in the city of Balakhna several years ago. The second wife, Agnessa Pavlovna, whom the general married in 1941, lived and worked as a doctor in the Brest regional dermatovenerological dispensary, died two years ago, and her son, who achieved a lot in this life, lives and works in Samara.

The second son, illegitimate, lives and works in St. Petersburg. At the same time, he denies any relationship with the general. He has a son growing up, very similar to his wife... His illegitimate daughter, grandchildren and great-grandchildren also live there. One of his grandchildren, a promising officer in the Russian Navy, has no idea who his grandfather was. So decide after this whether General Vlasov was a “traitor to the Motherland.”

Open action against Stalin

Six months after Zykov’s disappearance, on November 14, 1944, Vlasov proclaimed the manifesto of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia in Prague. Its main provisions: the overthrow of the Stalinist regime and the return to the people of the rights they won in the 1917 revolution, the conclusion of an honorable peace with Germany, the creation of a new free statehood in Russia, “approval national labor building”, “full development of international cooperation”, “elimination of forced labor”, “liquidation of collective farms”, “granting the intelligentsia the right to create freely”. The very familiar demands proclaimed by political leaders of the last two decades are not true.

Why is there treason here? KONR receives hundreds of thousands of applications from Soviet citizens in Germany to join its armed forces.

Star...

On January 28, 1945, General Vlasov took command of the Armed Forces of the KONR, which the Germans authorized at the level of three divisions, one reserve brigade, two squadrons of aviation and an officer school, a total of about 50 thousand people. At that time, these military formations were not yet sufficiently armed.

Lieutenant General A. A. Vlasov and representatives of the German command inspect one of the Russian battalions as part of Army Group North, May 1943. In the foreground is a Russian non-commissioned officer (deputy platoon commander) with shoulder straps and buttonholes of the Eastern troops, introduced in August 1942.

The war was ending. The Germans were already under-generalized by Vlasova; they were saving their own skins. February 9 and April 14, 1945 were the only occasions when the Vlasovites took part in battles on the Eastern Front, forced by the Germans. In the first battle, several hundred Red Army soldiers went over to Vlasov’s side. The second one radically changes some ideas about the end of the war.

On May 6, 1945, an anti-Hitler uprising broke out in Prague... Upon the call of the rebel Czechs, Prague entered... The first division of the army of General Vlasov. She enters the battle with units of the SSivermacht armed with teeth, captures the airport, where fresh German units arrive and liberates the city. The Czechs are rejoicing. Very eminent commanders of the Soviet army are beside themselves with fury of wickedness. Of course, again it’s the upstart Vlasov!

Then strange and terrible events began. Those who yesterday begged for help come to KVlasov and ask the general... to leave Prague, since his Russian friends are unhappy. IVlasov gives the command to withdraw. However, this did not save the walkers; they were shot... by the Czechs themselves. By the way, it was not a group of impostors who asked for Vlasov’s help, but people who carried out the decision of the highest body of the Czechoslovak Republic.

...And the death of General Vlasov

But this did not save the general, Colonel General Viktor Abakumov, the head of SMERSH, gave the command to detain Vlasov. The SMERSHists took the show. On May 12, 1945, the troops of General Vlasov were squeezed between the American and Soviet troops of the southwestern Czech Republic. The “Vlasovites,” who fell into the hands of the Red Army, are shot on the spot... According to the official version, the general himself was captured and arrested by a special reconnaissance group that stopped the convoy of the first division of the ROA and SMERSH. However, there are at least four versions of how Vlasov ended up behind the Soviet troops. We already know the first one, but here is another one, compiled on the basis of eyewitness accounts. Indeed, General Vlasov was in that very ROA column.

Only he wasn’t hiding on the carpet on the floor of the Willis, as stated by Captain Yakushov, who allegedly took part in that operation. The general sat calmly in the car. And the car was not a Willys at all. Moreover, this same car was of such a size that the two-meter tall general simply could not fit inside, wrapped in a carpet... And there was no lightning attack by the scouts on the convoy. They (the scouts), dressed in full uniform, calmly waited on the side of the road for Vlasov’s car to catch up with them. When the car slowed down, the leader of the group saluted the general and invited him to get out of the car. Is this how they greet traitors?

And then the fun began. There is evidence from the military prosecutor of the tank division to which Andrei Vlasov was taken. This man was the first to meet the general after his arrival at the location of the Soviet troops. He claims that the general was dressed in... a general's uniform of the Red Army (old style), with insignia and orders. The stunned lawyer could not find anything better than to ask the general to produce documents. This is what he did, showing the prosecutor the pay book of the commanding staff of the Red Army, the identity card of the Red Army general No. 431 dated 02.13.41. and party card of a member of the CPSU (b) No. 2123998 - everything is in the name of Andrey Andreevich Vlasov...

Moreover, the prosecutor claims that the day before Vlasov’s arrival, an unimaginable number of army commanders came to the division, who did not even think of showing any hostility or hostility towards the general. Moreover, a joint lunch was organized.

On the same day, the general was transported to Moscow by transport plane. I wonder if this is how traitors are greeted?

Very little is known further. Vlasov is located in Lefortovo. “Prisoner No. 32” was the name of the general in prison. This prison belongs to SMERSH, and no one, not even Beria and Stalin, has the right to enter there. They didn’t come in - Viktor Abakumov knew his business well. Why then I paid, but that was later. The investigation lasted more than a year. Stalin, or maybe not Stalin at all, thought about what to do as a sleepy general. Elevate the rank of a national hero? It’s impossible: the military general did not sit quietly, he spoke a lot. Retired NKVD officers claim that they bargained with Andrei Vlasov for a long time: repent, they say, before the people and the leader. Admit mistakes. And they will forgive. May be…

They say that it was then that Vlasov met with Melenty Zykov again...

But the general was consistent in his actions, as when he did not leave the soldiers of the Second Shock to die, as when he did not abandon his ROA in the Czech Republic. Lieutenant General The Red Army, holder of the Order of Lenin and the Red Banner of Battle, made his last choice...

August 2, 1946 official TASS message published in all central newspapers: August 1, 1946 lieutenant general The Red Army A. A. Vlasov and his 11 comrades were hanged. Stalin was cruel to the end. After all, there is no death more shameful for officers than the gallows. Here are their names: Major General of the Red Army Malyshkin V. F., Zhilenkov G. N., Major General of the Red Army Trukhin F. I, Major General of the Red Army Zakutny D. E, Major General of the Red Army Blagoveshchensky I. A, Colonel of the Red Army Meandrov M. A, Colonel of the USSR Air Force Maltsev M. A, Colonel of the Red Army Bunyachenko S. K, Colonel of the Red Army Zverev G. A, Major General of the Red Army Korbukov V. D. and Lieutenant Colonel of the Red Army Shatov N. S. It is unknown where the bodies of the officers were buried. SMERSH knew how to keep its secrets.

Forgive us, Andrey Andreevich!

Was Andrei Vlasov a Soviet intelligence officer? There is no direct evidence of this. Moreover, there are no documents indicating this. But there are facts that are very difficult to argue with.

The main one among them is this. It is no longer a big secret that in 1942 Joseph Stalin, despite all the successes of the Red Army near Moscow, wanted to conclude a separate peace with Germany and stop the war. Having given up Ukraine, Moldova, Crimea...

There is even evidence that Lavrenty Beria “ventilated the situation” on this issue.

IVlasov was an excellent candidate to conduct these negotiations. Why? To do this, you need to look at the pre-war career of Andrei Vlasov. You can come to some startling conclusions. Back in 1937, Colonel Vlasov was appointed head of the Second Department of the Leningrad Military District headquarters. Translated into civilian language, this means that the brave Colonel Vlasov was responsible for all the security work of the district. And then repressions broke out. Colonel Vlasov, who received the first pseudonym “Volkov”, was... safely sent as an adviser to the already mentioned Chiang Kai-shek... Further, if you read between the lines of the memoirs of the participants in those events, you come to the conclusion that someone else worked in China as... Colonel Volkov, a Soviet intelligence officer.

It was he, and someone else, who made friends with German diplomats, took them to restaurants, gave them vodka until they fainted, and talked for a long, long time. It is unknown, but how can an ordinary Russian colonel behave this way, knowing what is happening in his country, that people were arrested only because they were explaining to foreigners on the street how to get to the Alexander Garden. Where does Sorge go with his efforts at undercover work in Japan? All of Sorge’s female agents could not supply information comparable to that of Chiang Kai-shek’s wife, with whom the Russian colonel had a very close relationship... The seriousness of Colonel Vlasov’s work is evidenced by his personal translator in China, who claims that Volkov ordered him to shoot him at the slightest danger.

Another argument. I saw the document marked “Top Secret.” Ex. No. 1" dated 1942, in which Vsevolod Merkulov reports to Joseph Stalin on the destruction work traitor general A. Vlasova. So, Vlasov was hunted by more than 42 reconnaissance and sabotage groups with a total number of 1,600 people. Believe that in 1942 such a powerful organization as SMERSH could not “get” one general, even if he was well guarded. I don't believe. The conclusion is more than simple: Stalin, knowing full well the strength of the German intelligence services, tried in every possible way to convince the Germans of the general’s betrayal.

But the Germans turned out to be so simple. Hitler did not accept Vlasov that way. Andrei Vlasov fell in line with the anti-Hitler opposition. It is now unknown what prevented Stalin from completing the job - either the situation at the front, or the too late or unsuccessful attempt by the Naführer. IStalin had to choose between destroying Vlasov or kidnapping him. Apparently, we stopped last. But... This is the most Russian “but”. The whole point is that at the time of the general’s “transition” to the Germans in the USSR, there were already three intelligence agencies operating: the NKGB, SMERSH and the GRU of the General Staff of the Red Army. These organizations competed fiercely with each other (remember this). IVlasov, apparently, worked for the GRU. How else can one explain the fact that the general was brought to the Second Shock by Lavrentiy Beria and Kliment Voroshilov. Interesting, isn't it?

Further, the trial against Vlasov was carried out by SMERSH and did not allow anyone to be involved in this case. Even the trial took place behind closed doors, although logically, the trial of a traitor should be public and open. You need to see photographs of Vlasov in court - eyes expecting something, as if asking: “How long will it take, stop the clownery.” But Vlasov did not know about the secret services. He was executed... People present at the scene claim that the general behaved with dignity.

The scandal began the day after the execution, when Joseph Stalin saw the latest newspapers.

It turns out that SMERSH had to ask for written permission to punish from the Military Prosecutor's Office and the GRU. They asked, and they answered: “The execution will be postponed until further notice.” This letter remains in the archives to this day.

But Abakumov did not see the answer. Why did I pay? In 1946: the year Stalin personally ordered Viktor Abakumov to be arrested. They say that Stalin visited him in prison and reminded him of General Vlasov. However, these are just rumors...

By the way, in the indictment against Andrei Vlasov there is no article incriminating treason against the Motherland. Only terrorism and counter-revolutionary activities.

In June, under the auspices of the Federal Archival Agency, a two-volume collection of documents “General Vlasov: a history of betrayal” was published. It presents over 700 documents from 14 Russian and foreign archives. The compiler of the collection, Tatyana Tsarevskaya-Dyakina, told the magazine “Historian” about how Vlasov’s movement appears in the light of new archival publications. The conversation was conducted by Oleg NAZAROV.

What myths are refuted by the documents you published?

- First of all, they refute the myths about the Russian Liberation Army (ROA). In fact, ROA is a kind of generalized name for pointwise scattered Russian collaborationist formations, which was used exclusively for propaganda purposes. It began to take shape as a kind of unified structure, as an army, only at the end of 1944.

- But the battalions of Russian collaborators appeared much earlier?

- Certainly. In the occupied territory of the USSR, until the fall of 1943, they were mainly involved in punitive operations against partisans. After the Battle of Kursk, mass escapes began from them, and the Germans transferred the remnants of the Russian battalions to the Western Front. They fought in Italy against partisans and in Normandy against the allies. And only at the end of 1944 it was decided to form two divisions of the ROA. The order appointing General Vlasov as commander of the Armed Forces of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (KONR) was signed at the end of January 1945.

At the same time, it is important to understand that everything that was called the ROA was a German propaganda campaign. The Germans began playing the ROA card at the end of 1942, from the moment the famous “Smolensk Appeal” of the Russian Committee was published, signed, by the way, by Andrei Vlasov and Vasily Malyshkin not in Smolensk, but in Berlin.

We publish documents that show Vlasov’s trip to the north-west of the country - Pskov, Luga, Vitebsk, Mogilev, etc. It was started to demonstrate Vlasov’s independence to the population of the occupied territories. He called himself the commander of the ROA. But in reality, all the Russian battalions that fought on the side of Germany were commanded not by Vlasov, but by Wehrmacht officers. Vlasov did not command them for a single minute.

- How did Vlasov’s voyage through the cities of the USSR end?

- Vlasov, who dreamed of creating a real ROA, turned out to be not entirely controllable. In his speeches, he said not only what the Germans wanted, and in connection with this, the propaganda campaign was quickly curtailed. The general was sent to live in a dacha on the outskirts of Berlin. Thus, he was transported for a short time around the cities of the USSR, and then assigned to the outskirts as unnecessary. There he spent a year and a half, complaining to the German officer assigned to him that he, the commander of the Russian Liberation Army, had only one pair of underwear and torn underpants.

- But he really wanted to fight with the Red Army?

- That's exactly what he wanted. But let's separate what we want from what we actually do. Russian battalions fought. What did Vlasov personally do? I was sitting out my pants at a dacha in Germany. He had his headquarters there. But he didn’t have any real business until July 1944.

In July 1944, after the second front was opened and the Red Army entered the territory of European states, the situation of Nazi Germany became greatly complicated. Then, surrounded by Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, there were people, such as Günther d'Alken, who decided that all means were good for victory. They began to prepare the ground for the meeting between Himmler and Vlasov. Unfortunately for Vlasov, it was scheduled for July 21, which, as it later turned out, was exactly the day after the assassination attempt on Hitler. Naturally, under the current conditions, the meeting was cancelled.

- Why did Vlasov have no real business for so long?

- Adolf Hitler was skeptical about the idea with Vlasov. In their circle, the Germans spoke quite frankly about who Vlasov really was for them. And Heinrich Himmler in October 1943, speaking at a meeting in Poznan before the Reichsleiters and Gauleiters, named the price for which the general was bought. Vlasov was told approximately the following: “The fact that you cannot go back now is, of course, clear to you. But you are a very prominent person, and we guarantee you that when the war ends, you will receive the pension of a Russian lieutenant general, and from now on and for the near future - schnapps, cigarettes and women.”

I repeat, only at the end of 1944 did Himmler decide to create KONR. The Germans put Vlasov in charge. A new stage has begun in the general’s life. Although Vlasov was and remained until the end a puppet in the hands of the Nazis. The question of Vlasov’s political independence did not arise in November 1944. Even the famous manifesto on the creation of KONR was edited by the Germans.

- An extremely interesting fact. Especially considering that some “friends” of Russia assure us that Vlasov fought for freedom of speech, conscience, religion, for accessibility of education, medicine and social security. And how did they manage to do this under the watchful eye of the Nazis?

- The Vlasovites even began to write the Russian constitution. I saw a draft of it in the Boris Nikolaevsky fund in the archives of the Hoover War Institution. Several hundred points. Some Russian emigrants of the first wave then managed to express their comments and at the same time, by the way, accused the Vlasovites of having taken many provisions from them.

- Was this constitution also ruled and edited by the Germans?

- No. It was already 1945. The Nazis now had no time to edit such texts. Although in one of the German documents I came across a mention of the Vlasov Constitution of Russia.

- What did the Vlasovites actually fight for? Why did they take up arms and point them at their fellow citizens? What were the motives for taking the path of betrayal?

- This can be judged from the interrogation protocols in the investigative file of Vlasov and his supporters. Many of those who went over to the side of the enemy simply chickened out. At the beginning of the war, it seemed to someone that the German colossus would crush any resistance, and there was no point in resisting. Sergei Bunyachenko, who had already been arrested once, was afraid of being arrested again. Fear of arrest pushed Major General Vasily Malyshkin onto the path of betrayal.

Some traitors to the Motherland explained their choice by ideological and political reasons, and rejection of Stalinism. Thus, Fyodor Trukhin, in June 1941, deputy chief of staff of the North-Western Front, after being captured - first in the fall of 1941, and then in the spring of 1942 - wrote several memos with proposals for ideological and subversive (including sabotage) work in Soviet rear. Former Red Army Air Force colonel Viktor Maltsev voluntarily surrendered in occupied Yalta and went to serve in the German commandant's office. Vladimir Boyarsky, Georgy Zhilenkov, Pavel Bogdanov were imbued with the anti-Soviet spirit.

If we talk about the rank and file, we must keep in mind that the Red Army soldiers who were captured in the first year of the war were in German camps in appalling conditions. The death toll from hunger, cold, wounds and bullying ran into the millions! It is not surprising that among the prisoners were those who were ready to save their lives at any cost, just to escape the nightmare that surrounded them. This fact is indicative. At the end of the war, the most difficult conditions of imprisonment were in the camps of Norway. The harsh climate and unbearably difficult working conditions resulted in a high mortality rate. So, it was to Norway in the winter of 1944 - 1945 that Grigory Zverev went to gather those who wanted to join the 2nd Division of the ROA. And he brought people from there - not only privates, but also senior officers.

At the very end of the war, the desire to remain as a combat-ready and armed army was dictated by the hope that this would help to go over to the side of the Americans if they wanted to use the Vlasovites against the Bolsheviks. They hoped that the Americans would give them the opportunity to escape and provide them with work. Hopes were not justified. The Americans behaved very carefully towards the Vlasovites. In principle, they were not averse to using Russian collaborators for their own purposes. But they understood perfectly well that a person who betrayed once is capable of betraying again. In the documents, they openly wrote about their uncertainty that there were no Soviet intelligence agents among the Vlasovites. Therefore, fearing getting into trouble, they chose not to spoil relations with their allies in the Anti-Hitler coalition and handed over the Vlasovites who were captured by them to the Soviet Union.

- How did the Red Army soldiers treat the Vlasovites?

- One of the published documents gives an example of the behavior of the Vlasovites at the front. They shouted in Russian: “Don’t shoot! We are our own." And when the Red Army men approached, the Vlasovites shot them point blank. Our soldiers, who at least once encountered such vile methods, had the same reaction to the Vlasovites until the end of the war: “If you see a Vlasovite, kill him!”

- Do the documents published for the first time allow us to learn something new about the relationship between Vlasov and Stalin?

- Stalin knew Vlasov and valued him as a military leader. For military operations during the Battle of Moscow, Vlasov, then commander of the 20th Army, was awarded the Order of the Red Banner at the beginning of 1942, at the suggestion of Georgy Zhukov. Having learned that Vlasov was surrounded, Stalin ordered to immediately find him and take him to the “mainland”, if necessary, “putting the entire front aviation to carry out this task.” We publish documents that reflect Moscow's efforts aimed at saving the general. Having received unconfirmed information about Vlasov’s presence in one of the partisan detachments, Stalin sent several planes to search for him. Not all of them returned: the pilots who tried to pull Vlasov out of the Volkhov swamps died. Moreover, attempts to find Vlasov were not abandoned even when, as it turned out later, he was already in captivity. Contrary to the claims of Vlasov’s fans and the general’s own statements that he was captured in battle, in fact he surrendered to the Germans without firing a single shot or any resistance.

In 1943, the Germans launched a huge propaganda campaign around Vlasov, in modern terms, a PR campaign, the purpose of which was to lure Red Army soldiers to the enemy’s side and create from them military formations, which received the general name ROA. As a response measure aimed at exposing Vlasov, the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army prepared a leaflet “Who is Vlasov.” Stalin personally made changes to the draft document in red pencil. He replaced the original wording with harsher ones and made the text more rude, harsh and offensive. In this form, the leaflet, with a circulation of several thousand copies, was published and distributed among the Red Army soldiers. It was translated into many languages, making it accessible to Soviet soldiers of different nationalities. This is how Stalin expressed his personal attitude towards the general’s betrayal.

Vlasov's defenders say he had no choice. In the appendix to the first volume we have given protocols of interrogations of other Soviet generals who were captured. They answered questions quite frankly. However, most of them did not cooperate with the Nazis. The example of the former army commander, Lieutenant General Mikhail Lukin is typical. During interrogations, he scolded collectivization, the Bolsheviks and their policies, but categorically refused to cooperate with the Germans. This is about the question of whether Vlasov had a choice. Even after he surrendered, he had a choice - to cooperate with the Germans or not. And Vlasov made his choice.

- How did he behave during the investigation and trial?

- Vlasov was broken. He was aware of what awaited him. He told many things quite openly. The revelation of the truth was facilitated by the testimony of other defendants, confrontations, etc. We also present these materials in the book.

- Some publicists assure us that the defendants were tortured...

- Allegations that they were tortured to extract testimony necessary for the investigation are made without evidence. The records show that those interrogated, especially towards the end of the investigation, were completely frank.

- The preface to the two-volume book notes that “all post-war memoirs and literature created by former collaborators are predominantly exculpatory in nature.” Do you know of any exceptions to this rule?

- Yes. We publish the memoirs of Nikolai von Erzdorf, in which a certain negative attitude towards Vlasov and the ROA can be traced. They had not been published before. The author, a former White Guard officer, accused Vlasov and his entourage of imposing Soviet management principles in the ROA and paying little attention to the needs of the soldiers. And this is quite understandable. When the ROA divisions began to be formed at the end of 1944, former Soviet officers were appointed to command and staff positions. They commanded as they knew how and as they were taught.

- How does modern historiography evaluate the phenomenon of the Vlasovites and attempts to justify them?

- Many Western authors see the Vlasovites, first of all, as fighters against Stalinism. The authors who describe Soviet collaboration in rosy tones are united by a common methodological flaw: they recognize the fight against Bolshevism (USSR, communism) as the most important strategic task, a “liberation mission”, which in itself justifies any methods and means, including an alliance with the Nazis. Their interpretation of collaborationism during the Second World War is a typical example of assessments from the standpoint of a “double standard”: refusing the allegiance to France and serving the Nazis (Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain) is treason, but refusing the allegiance to the Soviet Union and serving the same Nazis (General Vlasov) - this is, if not a feat, then a “liberation movement.”

Post-Vlasov structures began to emerge in the West immediately after the end of World War II. In our country, Vlasov had not yet been hanged, but in the West, the general and his supporters were already being glorified, portrayed as a victim of two regimes. The people who remained in the West after the war needed their own hero...

- The Vlasov story continues today. Last November, a conference was held in the capital of the Czech Republic to mark the 70th anniversary of the creation of KONR and the promulgation of the Prague Manifesto. At it, both Europeans and individual Russian citizens remembered Vlasov sympathetically. According to one of Vlasov’s apologists, the main idea and call of that “manifesto is an irreconcilable and decisive struggle against totalitarianism, against the communist dictatorship.” And what considerations guide Russian historians - such as Kirill Alexandrov - in whitewashing Vlasov?

- Today there is an opportunity to go to work in foreign archives. The field of activity is vast. Aleksandrov collected enormous archival and bibliographic material, evidence of which is his book “The Officer Corps of the Army of Lieutenant General A.A. Vlasova, 1944 - 1945,” published in 2009. It is a detailed directory of the people surrounding the general. However, the collected information can be analyzed in different ways. The researcher can reconstruct the outline of events by strictly following the documents. Or maybe, having your own concept, select documents to confirm it. The latter is exactly what Alexandrov does. His work leaves no doubt on whose side the author's sympathies lie. It is no coincidence that he avoids the term “collaborationism”, knowing that since the time of the international Nuremberg Tribunal this phenomenon has been subject to condemnation.

- Are there still unsolved mysteries surrounding the case and personality of General Vlasov?

- Questions that await their researchers remain. The same Alexandrov periodically mentions documents, without giving a link to where they are located, in which archive and in which fund. While looking for some documents, I had the opportunity to follow Alexandrov’s trail more than once. As a result, I came to a dead end. The question inevitably arose: do these documents actually exist in nature?

I have been working as a publisher for 25 years now. During this time, I have not published a single document that I have not seen. I must definitely get either the original or a copy of the original. Until I see them, I cannot say whether such a document existed in reality. Nowadays, many copies of copies are traveling around the world and on the Internet, which researchers are actively using. Not all of them are reliable.

In addition, there remain unstudied documents. For example, not all materials on Vlasov’s investigative case were provided to us. There is another source that no one has reached yet. In New York, in the Bakhmetyev Archive of Columbia University, all funds are available, except for the Mikhail Shatov fund.

- Who was he?

- Shatov’s real name is Kashtanov. He was an ROA officer, then hid in the French occupation zone under an assumed name. In 1950 he emigrated to the USA, where he had to become a painter, a bricklayer, and a taxi driver. In 1955 - 1971, when Shatov was already working at the library of Columbia University, he collected the ROA archive: memoirs, leaflets, information of any nature. He knew many people and corresponded with many people. Shatov created and published a bibliography of publications about the ROA. They denied access to researchers to use the documents in his collection. His heir (son) has for the time being ordered to keep his father’s fund in closed storage. It cannot be ruled out that when these documents are finally opened, we will find something interesting in them. There are other mysteries. Archivists and historians still have work to do.

But even if some new documents are found or someone’s letters or memoirs are discovered, they will not change the overall picture. The main conclusion will remain unchanged: Vlasov was a traitor and a puppet in the hands of enemies with whom not only the Soviet Union, but also other countries of the Anti-Hitler coalition fought.

Magazine "Historian". 2015. No. 7 - 8. P. 90 - 95.