friedrich braun
09-09-2004, 11:39 PM
New Aspects of Andreij Vlassov
The Russian Army of Liberation (ROA) · Corrective Revision by Russian Historians
By Wolfgang Strauss
On a spring day in East Prussia in 1945 an officer of the Red Army observed a mounted sergeant flaying a young Russian captive with a long leather knout. The captive was exhausted, half naked and completely covered in blood. Every time the whip cut into his flesh, the young man raised his bound hands and hoarsely addressed the officer in cultivated Russian: "Captain, Sir." Crack! "Captain, Sir." Crack! Crack! The captain, who was also a cultivated man, appeared impassive. He made no attempt to save the doomed youth, however. He knew that he would be arrested on the spot if he intervened and he knew that his gold epaulettes would not protect him. The flayed youngster was not Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s first encounter with captured Vlassov soldiers, but it seems to have been the most gripping. On another occasion he was watching as three captured Vlassovtsis were being escorted to the rear. When a Soviet tank came thundering past, one of the three suddenly threw himself under its treads.
Title page of "The Russian Army of Liberation," AST Publishing House, Moscow 1998, Text by S. Drobaiasko, Illustrations by A. Karashtshuk.
When the Red Army began its offensive against Königsberg, Stalin’s orders were unmistakably simple yet inconceivably brutal: "Everything is allowed!" The soldiers of the Red Army were officially encouraged to pillage, rape and massacre. Simple soldiers were allowed ten pounds weight of plunder, generals several boxcars full. By terrorizing the civilian population the Russians caused them to panic and clog the roads behind the German lines, further hampering movement of the German army.
Solzhenitsyn instructed his men to maintain discipline, spare civilians and observe the ten pound limit as he read Marshall Rokossowski’s Orders of the Day to his battery of artillery:
"Tomorrow morning at five o’clock begins our final offensive. All Germany lies before us! One final blow and our enemy will collapse. Our army will be crowned with immortal victory!"
He did not repeat Stalin’s order to rape and slaughter, but every member of the Red Army was aware of it. The terrible exhortation "Everything is allowed!" had no need of confirmation by an insignificant officer such as himself.
All East Prussia was soon in flames. In Nights in East Prussia , written in a slave labor camp later in 1945 and published in Germany in 1974, Solzhenitsyn describes the brutality of this volcanic eruption of rape and slaughter. Nights is a depiction of stark terror in verse form, filled with vivid and horrifying images of cows bellowing in their blazing stables while the bodies of their owners char in the flames of their houses. Donald M. Thomas, Solzhenitsyn’s English biographer, has attempted a prose reconstruction which releases the horror from its lyric form. What remains is the protocol of an orgy of blood. Its title is simply Solzhenitsyn.
He describes the fate of an old peasant woman in an isolated farmhouse. A merry group of Red Army soldiers tell her, "Cook us some eggs, Mother!" which she hurriedly does. They thank her, eat the eggs and shoot her down, then murder her bedridden husband. The grandson of the elderly couple is able to escape by jumping out of a window. "Halt! Click your heels together!" they laugh while shooting at the fleeing child.
According to Solzhenitsyn, the women who were shot were fortunate. He recalls one woman lying on a bloodsoaked mattress next to the body of her young daughter. The woman is battered and mutilated but still alive How many soldiers have raped her? A platoon? An entire company? The woman begs the Russians to shoot her. The author does not tell us whether she gets her wish, although he cannot bring himself to release her from her torment. His entire book is filled with such ghastly and haunting depictions. In another passage he describes the Red Army as "human hordes gone berserk." Donald Thomas asks: were they really human? (Solzhenitsyn, page 156.)
Solzhenitsyn recalled that on the 26th of January his unit suddenly found itself isolated and cut off by the enemy. On this occasion, however, they were surrounded by their own countrymen: Vlassov’s soldiers were attacking with desperate bravery. On page 252, Volume 1 of The Gulag Archipelago (Paris edition) Solzhenitsyn writes:
"I was watching when, in the early dawn, they suddenly sprang up from the snow where they had gathered in their camouflage coats. With a great ‘Hurra!’ they suddenly attacked the positions of the 152mm section with hand grenades, putting the heavy guns out of commission before they could fire a shot. Pursued by their flares, our last little group of survivors fled for three kilometers across the snow covered fields, all the way to a footbridge across the narrow river."
Even as early as 1945, Solzhenitsyn felt admiration for his countrymen in Wehrmacht uniform with the St. George cross on their arm, who fought so heroically. He created a human and literary monument to them in his epic story of the Gulag, written twenty years after the War. After another twenty years had passed, he completed the Vlassov epic with a radical revision of the history of the "Great Patriotic War," for which he won the Nobel Prize in literature. He did more than demolish the Stalinist interpretation of World War II as a "Good War," however. He was also the first Soviet combat officer to make the transition from military tribute to political rehabilitation of the Vlassovtsis. In his essay "The Russian Question at the End of the 20th Century," which appeared in the renowned Russian literary magazine Nowij mir In July of 1994, Solzhenitsyn wrote:
"As for the attempt on the German side to form Russian volunteer units, and the belated formation of the Vlassov army, I have already covered that in the Gulag Archipelago.
Uniform insignia of the armed forces of the Committee for the Liberation of the Russian Peoples (KONR).
Underneath: A soldier of the Infantry Regiment of the First ROA Division in 1945.
Next to that: Cavalry of the Intelligence Branch of the 1st ROA Division.
Beneath that: A First Lieutenant on the Staff of the First ROA Division.
[…] It is indicative of their valor and devotion that at the end of the Winter of 1944-45, when it was obvious to everyone that Hitler had lost the war, in those last few months, tens of thousands of Russians volunteered for that Russian army of liberation. This was the real voice of the Russian people. The story of the Russian Liberation Army has been slandered by ideologues as well as the nations of the West, which could not imagine that the Russians desired liberation for themselves. Nevertheless it represents a heroic and manly page in Russian history. We still believe in its continuation and future today." (Page 120 of Piper’s German translation, Munich, 1994.)
Solzhenitsyn defends General Vlassov against accusations of high treason with the historically based argument that in the history of the Russian Empire there have been times when domestic repression was a greater danger than the external usurper. "The enemy within was too dangerous, too deeply rooted" he writes. In order to overthrow the internal enemy, it was necessary to form an alliance with an external force. In order to overthrow Stalin, Vlassov was forced to form an alliance with Germany.
When these revelations appeared in the leading Russian forum of the intelligentsia, in July of 1994, the publisher received sharp criticism as well as enthusiastic agreement. The criticism came primarily from old hardline Stalinist historiography, which dictated that a renaissance of Vlassov style idealism should not and would not be tolerated. Now, five years later, the situation has changed dramatically. The counterrevolutionaries are in retreat and Stalin’s Great Patriotic War is no longer dogma for the young generation of historians. Vlassov and his Liberation Army have become the icons of a nationalistic young intelligentsia which has an anti-Bolshevik as well as anti-liberalist view of the world.
The most recent evidence for this comes from the military historians S. Drobiasko and A. Karashtshuk, the authors of the lavishly illustrated Wtoraja Mirowaja woina 1939 - 1945. Russkaya Osvoboditelnaya Armija (The Russian Liberation Army in World War II,) which was published late in 1998 by the renowned Moscow military publishing house AST.
There are several reasons for the rapid advance of Revisionism in Russia. In the first place, "Stalinist-Antifascist Political Correctness" has been effectively neutralized. In the second place, the formerly secret Soviet archives have been opened to international historians. In the third place, the influence of Revisionist literature from the West has had a profound influence. In the fourth place, the process of de-ideologizing historiography is continuing apace in Russia, as everywhere. In addition, there is no entrenched tradition of anti-nationalism in Russia comparable to that which now wields such powerful influence in Germany. As a result, Russia is relatively free of the historical and political censorship oppressing Germany. And finally, the Russian media provide no forum for Russians infected with the self-incrimination malaise, as do the German media. The printing of the pro-Vlassov book in 1998 is perhaps the most striking symbol of the irreversible advance of historical Revisionism in Russia.
It is obvious that in view of this extensive documentary work on the Russian Liberation Army (ROA), Germany’s wartime Eastern policy must also be considered in a different light. After all, the development and deployment of the ROA were possible only with the support of the Wehrmacht.
...
http://vho.org/tr/2003/1/Strauss63-69.html
The Russian Army of Liberation (ROA) · Corrective Revision by Russian Historians
By Wolfgang Strauss
On a spring day in East Prussia in 1945 an officer of the Red Army observed a mounted sergeant flaying a young Russian captive with a long leather knout. The captive was exhausted, half naked and completely covered in blood. Every time the whip cut into his flesh, the young man raised his bound hands and hoarsely addressed the officer in cultivated Russian: "Captain, Sir." Crack! "Captain, Sir." Crack! Crack! The captain, who was also a cultivated man, appeared impassive. He made no attempt to save the doomed youth, however. He knew that he would be arrested on the spot if he intervened and he knew that his gold epaulettes would not protect him. The flayed youngster was not Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s first encounter with captured Vlassov soldiers, but it seems to have been the most gripping. On another occasion he was watching as three captured Vlassovtsis were being escorted to the rear. When a Soviet tank came thundering past, one of the three suddenly threw himself under its treads.
Title page of "The Russian Army of Liberation," AST Publishing House, Moscow 1998, Text by S. Drobaiasko, Illustrations by A. Karashtshuk.
When the Red Army began its offensive against Königsberg, Stalin’s orders were unmistakably simple yet inconceivably brutal: "Everything is allowed!" The soldiers of the Red Army were officially encouraged to pillage, rape and massacre. Simple soldiers were allowed ten pounds weight of plunder, generals several boxcars full. By terrorizing the civilian population the Russians caused them to panic and clog the roads behind the German lines, further hampering movement of the German army.
Solzhenitsyn instructed his men to maintain discipline, spare civilians and observe the ten pound limit as he read Marshall Rokossowski’s Orders of the Day to his battery of artillery:
"Tomorrow morning at five o’clock begins our final offensive. All Germany lies before us! One final blow and our enemy will collapse. Our army will be crowned with immortal victory!"
He did not repeat Stalin’s order to rape and slaughter, but every member of the Red Army was aware of it. The terrible exhortation "Everything is allowed!" had no need of confirmation by an insignificant officer such as himself.
All East Prussia was soon in flames. In Nights in East Prussia , written in a slave labor camp later in 1945 and published in Germany in 1974, Solzhenitsyn describes the brutality of this volcanic eruption of rape and slaughter. Nights is a depiction of stark terror in verse form, filled with vivid and horrifying images of cows bellowing in their blazing stables while the bodies of their owners char in the flames of their houses. Donald M. Thomas, Solzhenitsyn’s English biographer, has attempted a prose reconstruction which releases the horror from its lyric form. What remains is the protocol of an orgy of blood. Its title is simply Solzhenitsyn.
He describes the fate of an old peasant woman in an isolated farmhouse. A merry group of Red Army soldiers tell her, "Cook us some eggs, Mother!" which she hurriedly does. They thank her, eat the eggs and shoot her down, then murder her bedridden husband. The grandson of the elderly couple is able to escape by jumping out of a window. "Halt! Click your heels together!" they laugh while shooting at the fleeing child.
According to Solzhenitsyn, the women who were shot were fortunate. He recalls one woman lying on a bloodsoaked mattress next to the body of her young daughter. The woman is battered and mutilated but still alive How many soldiers have raped her? A platoon? An entire company? The woman begs the Russians to shoot her. The author does not tell us whether she gets her wish, although he cannot bring himself to release her from her torment. His entire book is filled with such ghastly and haunting depictions. In another passage he describes the Red Army as "human hordes gone berserk." Donald Thomas asks: were they really human? (Solzhenitsyn, page 156.)
Solzhenitsyn recalled that on the 26th of January his unit suddenly found itself isolated and cut off by the enemy. On this occasion, however, they were surrounded by their own countrymen: Vlassov’s soldiers were attacking with desperate bravery. On page 252, Volume 1 of The Gulag Archipelago (Paris edition) Solzhenitsyn writes:
"I was watching when, in the early dawn, they suddenly sprang up from the snow where they had gathered in their camouflage coats. With a great ‘Hurra!’ they suddenly attacked the positions of the 152mm section with hand grenades, putting the heavy guns out of commission before they could fire a shot. Pursued by their flares, our last little group of survivors fled for three kilometers across the snow covered fields, all the way to a footbridge across the narrow river."
Even as early as 1945, Solzhenitsyn felt admiration for his countrymen in Wehrmacht uniform with the St. George cross on their arm, who fought so heroically. He created a human and literary monument to them in his epic story of the Gulag, written twenty years after the War. After another twenty years had passed, he completed the Vlassov epic with a radical revision of the history of the "Great Patriotic War," for which he won the Nobel Prize in literature. He did more than demolish the Stalinist interpretation of World War II as a "Good War," however. He was also the first Soviet combat officer to make the transition from military tribute to political rehabilitation of the Vlassovtsis. In his essay "The Russian Question at the End of the 20th Century," which appeared in the renowned Russian literary magazine Nowij mir In July of 1994, Solzhenitsyn wrote:
"As for the attempt on the German side to form Russian volunteer units, and the belated formation of the Vlassov army, I have already covered that in the Gulag Archipelago.
Uniform insignia of the armed forces of the Committee for the Liberation of the Russian Peoples (KONR).
Underneath: A soldier of the Infantry Regiment of the First ROA Division in 1945.
Next to that: Cavalry of the Intelligence Branch of the 1st ROA Division.
Beneath that: A First Lieutenant on the Staff of the First ROA Division.
[…] It is indicative of their valor and devotion that at the end of the Winter of 1944-45, when it was obvious to everyone that Hitler had lost the war, in those last few months, tens of thousands of Russians volunteered for that Russian army of liberation. This was the real voice of the Russian people. The story of the Russian Liberation Army has been slandered by ideologues as well as the nations of the West, which could not imagine that the Russians desired liberation for themselves. Nevertheless it represents a heroic and manly page in Russian history. We still believe in its continuation and future today." (Page 120 of Piper’s German translation, Munich, 1994.)
Solzhenitsyn defends General Vlassov against accusations of high treason with the historically based argument that in the history of the Russian Empire there have been times when domestic repression was a greater danger than the external usurper. "The enemy within was too dangerous, too deeply rooted" he writes. In order to overthrow the internal enemy, it was necessary to form an alliance with an external force. In order to overthrow Stalin, Vlassov was forced to form an alliance with Germany.
When these revelations appeared in the leading Russian forum of the intelligentsia, in July of 1994, the publisher received sharp criticism as well as enthusiastic agreement. The criticism came primarily from old hardline Stalinist historiography, which dictated that a renaissance of Vlassov style idealism should not and would not be tolerated. Now, five years later, the situation has changed dramatically. The counterrevolutionaries are in retreat and Stalin’s Great Patriotic War is no longer dogma for the young generation of historians. Vlassov and his Liberation Army have become the icons of a nationalistic young intelligentsia which has an anti-Bolshevik as well as anti-liberalist view of the world.
The most recent evidence for this comes from the military historians S. Drobiasko and A. Karashtshuk, the authors of the lavishly illustrated Wtoraja Mirowaja woina 1939 - 1945. Russkaya Osvoboditelnaya Armija (The Russian Liberation Army in World War II,) which was published late in 1998 by the renowned Moscow military publishing house AST.
There are several reasons for the rapid advance of Revisionism in Russia. In the first place, "Stalinist-Antifascist Political Correctness" has been effectively neutralized. In the second place, the formerly secret Soviet archives have been opened to international historians. In the third place, the influence of Revisionist literature from the West has had a profound influence. In the fourth place, the process of de-ideologizing historiography is continuing apace in Russia, as everywhere. In addition, there is no entrenched tradition of anti-nationalism in Russia comparable to that which now wields such powerful influence in Germany. As a result, Russia is relatively free of the historical and political censorship oppressing Germany. And finally, the Russian media provide no forum for Russians infected with the self-incrimination malaise, as do the German media. The printing of the pro-Vlassov book in 1998 is perhaps the most striking symbol of the irreversible advance of historical Revisionism in Russia.
It is obvious that in view of this extensive documentary work on the Russian Liberation Army (ROA), Germany’s wartime Eastern policy must also be considered in a different light. After all, the development and deployment of the ROA were possible only with the support of the Wehrmacht.
...
http://vho.org/tr/2003/1/Strauss63-69.html