No. 25 Opening speech by General A. A. Vlasov at the founding congress of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia in Prague, November 14, 1944 For more than a quarter of a century, the peoples of Russia have been fighting against the hated dictatorship of Bolshevism. This struggle did not bring success only because the forces

The capture of General Vlasov
or the detective who wasn't there...

Much has been written about General Vlasov. A great many authors, trying to understand the motives that prompted yesterday a very successful Soviet general to go to the service of the Germans, one way or another, relate to the circumstances of the capture of the commander of the 2nd Shock Army of the Volkhov Front. What versions have I not read over the long years of studying the tragic and heroic history of the army, which almost completely died in the swamps between Volkhov and Kerest. The latest and most fantastic is the version heard recently: Lieutenant General Vlasov was captured by the Germans near Vinnitsa. Andrey Andreevich really was near Vinnitsa, but after he was taken prisoner in a completely different place. The Germans in this city had one of the prison camps for Soviet officers.

One of the most closely investigating the path of Vlasov is the historian, researcher at the memorial complex "Brest Fortress" Leonid Reshin. He wrote a lot about the general, and it is with him that you can find the largest number of versions of Vlasov's capture. The village of Mostki, where Vlasov allegedly hid in a bathhouse, and the village of Sennaya Kerest, where the general was taken prisoner in a house where he went to look for food, are called. You can find other names of settlements where, according to various sources, Andrei Andreevich Vlasov was captured by the Germans. The dates of captivity will also be different for different authors: from the third to the twelfth of July. In short, a solid detective!

In fact, there is no detective, and never was. The area of ​​captivity and the circumstances preceding this event, which dramatically changed the fate of the commander of the 2nd Shock Army, could have been established long ago. For this, it was only necessary to carefully study the memorandum of the former chief of communications of the army, Major General A.V. Afanasiev, who left the encirclement with Vlasov, and broke up with him just a day before his capture. Unlike his commander, Afanasyev managed to go out to his own, and he told in detail about the many days of wanderings of a large group of encircled, which included Lieutenant General Vlasov. This note was compiled on July 26, 1942, and for a long time has been gathering dust in the funds of the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense in the city of Podolsk. It was quite often quoted by various researchers, touching on certain aspects of the history of the 2nd Shock Army. This document fell into my hands about fifteen years ago, but I had to find the last link that would help unwind the entire chain. This link was the book of the Czech author Karel Richter "The Case of General Vlasov", which was presented to me in 1995 by my Czech journalist friend Zdenek Shamal. He, like me, was interested in the whole story. When I read this very interesting book, Major General Afanasiev's memorandum spoke in a completely different way. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The laws of the genre call us to gradualness and consistency...

So, the early morning of June 25, 1942. The boundary of the river Polist - the northern road is a narrow-gauge railway of the 2nd Shock Army. The strongest artillery shelling from all sides. At 4 am, with the first rays of the sun, German aircraft appeared, bombing and machine-gunning everything that was still moving towards Myasny Bor. “The Military Council of the Army at dawn on 25.6. was located 500 meters west of the Polist River, near the narrow gauge railway. The further fate of the Armed Forces is not known, ”says Colonel V.S. Rogov, head of the army intelligence department, in his report to the command of the Volkhov Front on the operation to withdraw the 2nd Shock Army from encirclement. Colonel Rogov was also lucky, and he survived. The report was written by him after going to his own.

Major General Afanasiev describes the same thing in somewhat more detail: “Everyone left at night from June 24 to June 25 at KP 46 sd, and at the moment of transition at 2 a.m. the whole group falls under artillery-mortar barrage fire. Groups in the smoke are lost. One group led by Zuev and the head of a special department with a detachment of machine gunners of 70 people from a special department somehow hid from us near the Polist River in the direction of a height of 40.5 (according to Comrade Vinogradov), that is, they left us to the right, and Together with a group of Vlasov Vinogradov, Belishev, Afanasiev and others, we went through the smoke of artillery-mortar explosions to the left, organized a search for Zuev and Shashkov, but had no success. Couldn't get ahead."

Lost in the smoke of explosions, Commissar Zuev and the head of the special department, Shashkov, could not go to their own either then or later. A.G. Shashkov was seriously wounded and shot himself, not wanting to burden his comrades with himself in a practically hopeless situation, and Zuev, having traveled many kilometers through forests and swamps, died in a shootout with the Germans on the railway between the settlements of Torfyanoe and Babino. It was handed over to the Nazis by two traitors Seits and Kovrigin, but that's another story...

The group, which by chance included Afanasiev, who had left the encirclement and Vlasov who never left, rolls back towards the command post of the 46th rifle division of Colonel Cherny. The headquarters of the 46th Rifle Division also returned there. This area was located in the middle of the way between two small swampy rivers - Polista and Glushitsa. These rivers were destined to become bloody frontiers in the history of the 2nd Shock Army. Here is what General Afanasyev writes further in his note: “We were waiting for a moment of calm, but, alas, at that time the enemy broke through the front from the west and moved towards us along the clearing in platoon columns and shouted: “Rus, surrender!”

Afanasiev was instructed to organize the defense, but it was not successful, the Germans pressed the defenders. “It should be noted that Com. Vlasov, despite the shelling, continued to stand still without being applied to the terrain. There was some confusion or forgetfulness. When I began to warn: it is necessary to take cover, he continued to remain in place. The shock of feelings was noticeable.

In my opinion, there was something to be in a shock of feelings. Vlasov, assuming the post of army commander in April 1942, was well aware of the situation in the army, as yesterday's deputy commander of the Volkhov Front. He repeatedly tried to draw the attention of the high command to her plight. The same was done in April 1942 by the front commander, Kirill Afanasyevich Meretskov, telling Stalin that in such a position, the 2nd Shock would not only be unable to attack, but also unable to defend. These words were not heard...

We read Afanasiev further: “Vinogradov (chief of staff of the 2nd Shock Army - A.O.) set about organizing a withdrawal to the rear of the enemy with access through the front to his own. It must be frankly admitted that the special invitations of Comrade. The vineyard officers did not have a headquarters. Everything was done constructively. But, despite these conditions, voluntarily or unwittingly, the group itself voluntarily joined a single group of up to 45 people. It was clear that this did not suit him. But it was too late to stop this flow. Plus, a group of Colonel Chernoy in the amount of 40 people was added to this. It turned out to be quite a large group. Comrade Vlasov was indifferent.

At this point, I want to particularly focus on, since the historian Leonid Reshin writes literally the following: “Major Zubov, a participant in the exit from the encirclement of a group of officers of the 2nd Shock Army, recalled that Vlasov, under all sorts of pretexts, tried to reduce the size of the group. Extra witnesses were not needed ... "Who's lying? Historian Reshin or Major Zubov in hindsight? As can be seen from what General Afanasyev wrote, Vlasov did not show any initiative at all from the moment he left the border of the Polist River. I had to meet even cooler pearls. Reading in the archives of the USSR Ministry of Defense the history of the 59th Army of the Volkhov Front, which fought side by side with the 2nd Shock, I was surprised to read in this scripture that it turns out that all the failures of this army are to blame ... General Vlasov, who had sold out to the Germans in advance and reported them in advance all the strategic plans of the Soviet command. With full responsibility, I want to say that this is complete nonsense. Until July 12, 1942, Lieutenant General Andrei Andreyevich Vlasov was a completely trustworthy Soviet general, nothing more ...

Along the way, with a large group, which included Lieutenant General Vlasov, there were all sorts of collisions. The Germans were all around. Couldn't get through. They ran into mines. Ghibli. Sent forward reconnaissance groups. They didn't return. Some of the people scattered, went their own way. The Germans blocked all directions reliably. The wanderings continued for more than one day. Finally, at the Olkhovsky farms on the Kerest River (now a non-existent settlement - A.O.) they managed to cross to the western bank.

“By this time, we were all already tired, exhausted, ate only grass, cooked mushroom soups that were fresh without salt. A decision was made: on the road to Vditsko, from the south and north, the fighter squad should raid a car with food, pick up the food and deliver it to us in the forest. 15 people performed." The speech ended in failure. Headquarters commissar Sviridov was wounded in the chest by a bullet through and through, and one person was killed. Food was not obtained. It was decided to go to the site of the former command post in the Shchelkovka tract. There again failure. Another person died.

A decision is made to move west in the direction of the village of Podberezye (I did not find this village on the map in the area in question - A.O.)

“It was July 10-11, 1942. The railway has already been changed to the German gauge, guards have been found, but we passed it unnoticed. We went out on a narrow-gauge wooden road, which is 2 kilometers east of Podberezye. Here we made a long stop.

Vinogradov agreed with Vlasov to split the group into small groups, which had to choose their own route of movement and plan of their actions (this moment is also interesting, since many historians attribute such a decision to Vlasov, and not to Vinogradov - A.O.)

I personally objected to this event, proposed my plan - to move everyone to the Oredezh River, to fish on the spot on Lake Chernoye and, if possible, on the river, and the rest of the group, which I agreed to lead, would go to look for partisans, from whom we would find radio station, we will contact our units in the east, and we will be assisted.

My offer was not accepted. I then invited those who wished to come with me. One political instructor wanted to go with me, who, according to the lists, was part of Vlasov's group. Then Vinogradov accused me of allegedly luring me over... Before leaving, I asked where the other groups were going to go, but no one had yet made a decision. I asked Vlasov and Vinogradov about this, they said that they had not made a decision either, and that they would go after everyone else.

General Afanasiev and three other people left along their route. They were lucky, very soon they came across Luga partisans from the Sazonov detachment. Vlasov, Vinogradov, his orderly and the cook Vlasova Maria Voronova went their own way. From the place where they parted with the group of General Afanasiev, this path ran south towards the villages of Tukhovezhi - Yam-Tesovo. The distance between these villages is 6-8 kilometers. Judging by the direction of movement, Colonel Vinogradov wanted to reach the positions of the Soviet troops in the Luga area. This wasn't meant to happen...

We read Karel Richter: “On July 12, at dawn, the officer of the intelligence department of the XXXVIII Army Corps, Captain Schwerdtner, came to wake up Sonderführer Karl Poelhan’s interpreter:
-Get up, we're going to Yam-Tesovo.
-What happened?
- Last night, the patrol shot a certain man there. It looks like General Vlasov. Need to be identified.

The headquarters of the 38th German army corps was at that time in the village of Raglitsy. Many spearfishers are now well aware of the clean quarries available there. It was from here that Captain Schwerdtner and his translator left to identify allegedly General Vlasov. On the way, they stopped at the village of Tukhovezhi, where they were supposed to take escort submachine gunners. In the village, they were approached by a headman who stated that he had detained two suspicious persons: a man and a woman, who asked him for food and lodging for the night, offering a silver watch in exchange. The headman showed the Germans the watch. Captain Schwerdtner did not understand a word of Russian, and besides, he was in a hurry to identify the corpse of General Vlasov. He simply waved away the importunate headman. True, Poelkhan ordered that the detainees be guarded by the headman so that they would not run away while the Germans were driving to Yam-Tesovo.

In the village of Yam-Tesovo, the Germans were shown a wounded Russian soldier with his arm in a sling, who was shot while trying to escape, when the patrol shouted to two people in military uniform: “Stop!” The second of those who escaped was shot dead. The body was placed in a shed. Captain Schwerdtner was taken there.

“The dead man was lying on the straw, tall, stooped, dressed in a cloak. The waxy pallor of her cheeks was covered with thick black stubble.
-Is this your commander? Poelhan translated Captain Schwerdtner's question.
- Yes - led the soldiers downcast shoulders.
- General Vlasov?
-Yes

Schwerdtner waved his hand.
- You can take the prisoner away.

He bent over the dead man, looked at him for a minute. Everything corresponded to Vlasov's description: tall, stately, dark hair, high forehead, wide nose, protruding cheekbones. There were no points, but they can be lost. Without a doubt, this is Vlasov. His orderly confirmed this. Yes, and a cloak. It had three stars, which corresponded to the rank of lieutenant general of the Red Army.

Absolutely certain that it was Vlasov who had been shot by the patrol in the village of Yam-Tesovo, Schwerdtner ordered the dead man to be buried, drawing up an identification protocol. By radio, he informed the corps command that the body of General Vlasov had been successfully identified. The way back again lay through Tukhovezhi. And again the annoying Russian approached them. He led the Germans to the door of the fire shed, which was padlocked. Schwerdtner took two submachine gunners and placed them at the door. The village headman removed the lock. The translator shouted:
-Get out! You are surrounded!

It was quiet for a couple of minutes. Then a deep voice called out:
-Nicht schiessen, general Vlasov!

This is how Karel Richter describes the details of the capture of General Vlasov. I have no reason not to believe him. The path of the group, in which the commander of the 2nd Shock Army, Lieutenant General Vlasov, walked, I traced on the map. The group passed from the border of the Polist River until the moment of parting with General Afanasyev almost 70 kilometers. The place where they said goodbye forever (“it was July 10-11” - Gen. Afanasiev) is ten kilometers away from the villages of Tukhovezhi and Yam-Tesovo. Exactly so much that exhausted and hungry people could walk in a day, no more. Everything came together. There is no doubt. Vlasov was captured in the village of Tukhovezhi, Leningrad Region, not far from the border of the current Novgorod Region. To the west of Myasny Bor, where he was not destined to go along with the remnants of his exhausted army. The headman of the village of Tukhovezhi locked him and Maria Voronova in a barn on July 11, and handed them over to the Germans on July 12. From the village of Tukhovezhi, Vlasov's path turned in a different direction, but this is the topic of another detective story, and this can be put an end to.

It remains only to explain to the reader, who was shot by the Germans in the village of Yam-Tesovo, and why was the cloak with the general's stars on the dead man? The German patrol shot Colonel Vinogradov, chief of staff of the 2nd Shock Army, and wounded his orderly. The cloak on Vinogradov was a general's because, shortly before parting, Vlasov gave it to the colonel, who was very shivering. So they went to the villages to look for food: the general - in a tunic without insignia, the colonel - in a general's raincoat. Outwardly, Vinogradov was slightly similar to his commander, and half a month of hunger strike and forest wanderings further strengthened this resemblance. By the way, the relatives of Colonel Vinogradov still do not know where he is buried.

Alexander ORLOV

Later, when it became known that Vlasov had gone over to the side of the Germans, the amazed and dejected Stalin threw the following reproach to N. S. Khrushchev: “And you praised him, put him forward!” Most likely, it was about the nomination of Vlasov to the Volkhov front. Khrushchev's name in connection with Vlasov appears not for the first time. It was Khrushchev who recommended to Stalin that Vlasov be appointed commander of the 37th Army near Kiev. It was Khrushchev who first met Vlasov after the general left the encirclement near Kiev. It was Khrushchev who left us memories of Vlasov who came out "in peasant clothes and with a goat tied to a rope."

So, on March 8, 1942, Stalin summoned Vlasov from the Svatovo station in the Voroshilovgrad region, where the headquarters of the Southwestern Front was located, and appointed him deputy commander of the Volkhov Front. Soon, the front commander, General K. A. Meretskov, sent Vlasov as his representative to the 2nd shock army, which was supposed to improve the situation of besieged Leningrad. Meanwhile, the 2nd shock army was in a critical situation, and the main responsibility for this lay with Meretskov. As Meretskov himself wrote, "I and the front headquarters overestimated the capabilities of our own troops." It was Meretskov who drove the 2nd shock army into the German "bag". Having failed to arrange its supply, Meretskov misinformed the Headquarters that "army communications have been restored."

It was Meretskov who advised Stalin to send Vlasov to save the 2nd Shock Army instead of the wounded commander N. K. Klykov. After all, Vlasov has experience in withdrawing troops from encirclement, Meretskov explained, and none other than Vlasov will be able to cope with this difficult task. On March 20, Vlasov arrived at the 2nd Shock Army to organize a new offensive. On April 3, near Lyuban, this offensive began and ended in complete failure. This failure led to the encirclement of the 2nd Shock Army and the surrender, under very dark circumstances, of General Vlasov.

What motives guided Vlasov, surrendering to the Germans? Vlasov's apologists are trying to assure us that, wandering through the Volkhov forests, seeing all the horror and all the futility of the death of the 2nd Shock Army, Vlasov understood the criminal essence of the Stalinist regime and decided to surrender. Actually, these motives for surrender were brought in 1943 by Vlasov himself.

Of course, you can’t fit into a person’s head and you won’t recognize his thoughts. But it seems that, having written these words in the spring of 1943, already in the service of the Germans, Vlasov, as usual, lied. In any case, there is no reason to trust these words of the former commander of the 2nd Army, since two months before his capture, before being assigned to the Volkhov Front, he described his second meeting with Stalin in a letter to his wife: “Dear and dear Alik! You won't believe how happy I am. Once again I was hosted by the biggest man in the world. The conversation was conducted in the presence of his closest students. Believe that the big man praised me in front of everyone. And now I don’t know how to justify the trust that HE has in me…”.

We, of course, will again be told that Vlasov was “forced to write like that,” that it was a trick against Soviet censorship, and so on. But even if this is so, then who gave guarantees that in 1943 Vlasov once again did not "disguise himself", now from German "censorship"? The arguments of a person who constantly prevaricates his soul cannot inspire any confidence.

The second explanation for the surrender of Vlasov, which his apologists offer us, is the assertion that the commander was afraid to go out to his own, because he understood that Stalin would immediately shoot him for the ruined army. Proving this, Vlasov's apologists do not stop at the most incredible conjectures. “His military career,” writes E. Andreeva, “no doubt came to an end, he was the commander of the 2nd Shock Army, which was defeated, and regardless of who was responsible, he would have to pay. Other commanders in similar situations were shot.”

By “other commanders”, E. Andreeva means the executed generals in the case of the “Conspiracy of Heroes”, as well as in the case of General D. G. Pavlov. At the same time, E. Andreeva does not say a word that the real reason for the execution of these people was not their military failures (many of them did not even have time to take part in hostilities), but the treason imputed to them in the form of organizing a conspiracy and deliberate sabotage in the troops of the Western front.

As for Vlasov, he was not guilty of the death of the 2nd Army, the main blame for this fell on Meretskov, in extreme cases, on the leadership of the Headquarters. Vlasov could not help but know that Stalin was not at all inclined to reprisals against innocent subordinates. The best example of this is Vlasov himself, when he left the encirclement near Kiev in civilian clothes, having lost most of the army entrusted to him. As we remember, not only was he not shot or tried for this, but on the contrary, he was sent to command the 20th Army. What was the fundamental difference between the Kiev environment of Vlasov and his environment in the forests of Myasny Bor? Moreover, from the documents we see that Stalin was very worried about the fate of the Soviet generals of the 2nd Shock Army, who were surrounded. The leader ordered to do everything to save the Soviet generals. Characteristically, in captivity, Vlasov boastfully declared that Stalin had sent a plane to save him.

Precisely to save, because no repressions were applied to the survivors. For example, the evacuated chief of communications of the 2nd Shock Army, Major General A.V. Afanasyev, not only was not subjected to any repressions, but was awarded and continued his service. In addition, Stalin was skeptical for a very long time about the very fact of Vlasov's betrayal. The check on this fact went on for a whole year. By order of the USSR People's Commissariat of Defense of October 5, 1942, Vlasov was listed as missing, and was listed as such until April 13, 1943, when the circumstances of his betrayal were clarified, and this order was canceled.

The third reason why Vlasov surrendered could be his cowardice and fear of death. It was this reason that the Soviet authorities propagandized in every possible way, it was it that was a red line in the materials of the investigation, and it was the cowardice that the defendant Vlasov explained his behavior at the trial. However, it should be recognized that there are no good reasons to consider Vlasov a coward. On the contrary, at the front, he repeatedly demonstrated contempt for death, calmly being in the zone of artillery fire.

There is, however, another version of V. I. Filatov, that Vlasov was a secret employee of the GRU and was abandoned by our military intelligence to the Germans in order to prevent the emergence of a possible anti-Soviet movement. For all the visual appeal of this version, it has several major flaws that make it impossible. The main reason why this version is untenable is that, if Vlasov was sent to the Germans to create a controlled anti-Soviet army, Stalin would lay a time bomb under his authority. The situation with Vlasov's army, even if he were a Soviet agent, would initially be uncontrollable. Who would give guarantees that Vlasov would not play according to German rules from a hopeless situation? If an anti-Soviet army was created, Stalin would have created a force with his own hands that threatened to add to the external war - the Civil War. Then Stalin would have initiated the most dangerous adventure. Stalin was never an adventurer and would never have gone on an adventure.

Thus, Filatov's version seems to us completely untenable. We believe that it is very likely that Vlasov was sent to the Germans by the enemies of Stalin from among the Soviet Trotskyist party and military leadership, to collude with the German generals to overthrow the Stalinist regime.

Close ties between the generals of the Reichswehr and the Red Army took place even before Hitler came to power. The German Field Marshal General, and then the Reich President P. von Hindenburg, openly favored the commanders I. E. Yakir and I. P. Uborevich. Marshal M. N. Tukhachevsky also had the closest ties with German military circles. “Always think about this,” Tukhachevsky told the German military attaché to General Köstring in 1933, “you and we, Germany and the USSR, can dictate our terms to the whole world if we are together.”

Moreover, most of the commanders of the Red Army, who were in a trusting relationship with the German generals, were accused of conspiracy in 1937. Tukhachevsky, in his suicide letter to Stalin, known as the "Plan for Defeat in the War", acknowledged the existence of collusion between the Soviet and German military.

The German generals, colluding with the Soviet military in 1935-37, pursued the same goal as they: Tukhachevsky and company wanted to overthrow Stalin, and the German generals wanted to overthrow Hitler and the Nazis. In 1941, the internal contradictions between Hitler and the German generals did not disappear anywhere. Among a large number of German generals, including Chief of the General Staff F. Halder, there were people who believed that a further war with the USSR would be disastrous for Germany. At the same time, they believed that Hitler and the Nazis were leading the Reich to disaster. To end the war with Russia according to one's own scenario, and not according to Hitler's scenario - these were the plans of part of the German generals. Under these conditions, it was extremely necessary for the generals of the Wehrmacht to come to an agreement with a part of the Soviet generals, striving for their political goals and for the overthrow of Stalin.

For their part, the conspirators from among the generals of the Red Army, making contact with the Germans, could pursue their far-reaching goals. The conspirators could hope that the anti-Soviet army of prisoners of war created by the German generals, led by their accomplice Vlasov, would be able to radically change the course of the war. Vlasov from the German side, and the conspirators from the Soviet side would do one thing - open the front and overthrow the Stalinist government. At the same time, both German and Soviet conspirator generals believed that Hitler would have no reason to wage war with the new outwardly anti-Soviet regime, and he would be forced to make peace with him. This peace, on the one hand, would be honorable and victorious for Germany, on the other hand, it would be concluded according to the scenario of the German generals and keep Russia as a German-controlled, but still “sovereign” state. Such a state, believed in the German General Staff, could become an ally of the German military in opposition to Hitler.

On the other hand, the Soviet conspirators might have believed that by making peace with Germany, they would be able, by establishing a so-called "democratic" government, which would be recognized by the United States and Britain, to secure full power in the country. Thus, the fifth anti-Stalinist column in the USSR, oriented towards the Trotskyist circles of the West, at the cost of dismembering the territory of the USSR and making peace with its worst enemies, cleared its way to power. What did not work out in the summer of 1937 should have worked out in 1942 or 1943. In 1937, Tukhachevsky was a candidate for "dictators", in 1942 - Vlasov was to become them. Vlasov had to establish contacts not only with the Germans, but also with the Western allies.

Of course, there is no direct documentary evidence of this version today. It must be remembered that all archives relating to the processes of the 30-40s are still classified and become known only in fragments. But even from these passages one can judge the scale of conspiratorial activity in the ranks of the Red Army. In favor of the version of Vlasov the conspirator is also evidenced by the fact that Vlasov's main proteges from among the German military later found themselves in the camp of the anti-Hitler opposition.

So, captured under very strange and obscure circumstances, the commander of the 2nd Shock Army, Lieutenant General A. A. Vlasov, was taken under heavy guard to Siverskaya, to the headquarters of the 18th German Army. He was immediately received by the army commander, Colonel-General Georg von Lindemann. Lindeman Vlasov gave out a number of the most important information constituting the state secret of the USSR.

From Lindemann, Vlasov was sent to the POW camp in Vinnitsa "Promenent". At the word Nazi “prisoner of war camp”, we rightly paint a picture of a death camp. But the camp in Vinnitsa was not like that at all. It was a special camp, subordinated directly to the High Command of the Wehrmacht Ground Forces (OKH), in which high-ranking Soviet prisoners of war were kept. By the time Vlasov arrived at the Vinnitsa camp, captured Soviet generals Ponedelin, Potapov, Karbyshev, Kirillov, as well as Stalin's son Ya. I. Dzhugashvili, were already being held there. And this camp was led by... Peterson, an American of German origin. Here's a strange thing! The Germans, well, did not have enough normal Germans that they began to invite American fellow tribesmen to serve? Stunning information about the camp is given to us by Vlasov's apologist K. Alexandrov. He writes that the camp in Vinnitsa "was under the actual control of representatives of the anti-Hitler opposition."

In August, Vlasov had a meeting with the leadership of the camp, a representative of the German Foreign Ministry and representatives of intelligence. What is noteworthy: Gustav Hilder, adviser to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at a meeting with Vlasov, discussed the possibility of his participation in the puppet government of Russia, which was supposed to officially transfer the territories of Ukraine and the Baltic states to Germany. Note that a high-ranking official of the German Foreign Ministry arrives at a meeting with Vlasov, who is talking in the presence of a person from the United States! They had very curious conversations with Vlasov about including him in the Russian government! Why's that? Who is Vlasov to negotiate with him on this topic?

But the most interesting thing is that Hilder arrived not only to see Vlasov. At the same time, a regimental commissar, a certain I. Ya. Kernes, was in the Vinnitsa camp. Kernes voluntarily went over to the side of the Germans in June 1942 in the Kharkov region. Once captured, Kernes turned to the German authorities with a message that he had extremely important information.

Kernes reported that after the defeat of the Trotskyist-Bukharin bloc and the groups of Tukhachevsky, Yegorov and Gamarnik in the USSR, their remnants united into a widely branched organization with branches both in the army and in state institutions. He, Kernes, is a member and envoy of this organization.

The information that Kernes gave the Germans about the conspiratorial organization indicated that there was an anti-Stalinist secret organization in the USSR, standing on the platform of "continuing the true teachings of Lenin, distorted by Stalin." The organization pursues as its goal the overthrow of Stalin and his government, the restoration of the NEP policy, the destruction of collective farms and the orientation in foreign policy towards Nazi Germany.

When asked whether there were representatives of the “organization” in the NKVD bodies, Kernes replied that there were even those in the central office, but did not name anyone.

It is curious that these provisions, which Kernes spoke about, almost one to one coincide with the “Manifesto of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia”, signed by Vlasov in November 1944.

With Kernes, the conditions for establishing contact between the German side and the conspirators were agreed, and it was also guaranteed that the answer of the German side would be transmitted through the same Kernes. Even before the Vinnitsa camp, Field Marshal von Bock personally met with Kernes.

And although the representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hilder, in his official report, doubted the seriousness of Kernes' powers, it is not difficult to guess that this was done with a desire to divert the tenacious eye of the Nazi leadership from the commissar. As we understand it, the plans of the German generals did not include Hitler knowing about the negotiations with the Red conspirators.

As you can easily see, the same people met with Vlasov as with Kernes. It is possible that both of them were present at the meeting. It is also possible that they knew each other: both fought in Ukraine in 1941. After a meeting with representatives of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Intelligence, Vlasov writes the following note: “The officer corps of the Soviet Army, especially captured officers who can freely exchange thoughts, are faced with the question: how can the Stalin government be overthrown and a new Russia created? All are united by the desire to overthrow Stalin's government and change the state form. There is a question: to whom exactly to join - to Germany, England or the United States? The main task - the overthrow of the government - speaks for the fact that we should join Germany, which declared the struggle against the existing government and regime the aim of the war. However, the future of Russia is unclear. This may lead to an alliance with the United States and England, if Germany does not clarify this issue.

Amazing document! The Soviet general sits in German captivity, which, as you know, was not a resort, and freely talks about who post-Stalinist Russia should join: the USA, England or Germany! In the end, Vlasov graciously agrees to join Germany, but warns that if the latter behaves badly, Russia may join the Western allies as well! It is simply impossible to imagine that the Nazis endured such tricks from some kind of "untermensch", a captured communist. And this is possible only in one case, if Vlasov wrote his note not for the Nazis, but for the generals opposed to the Nazi regime. Vlasov's note is an appeal, no, not to him personally, but to the leaders of the anti-Stalinist conspiracy, to the entire West hostile to the USSR. This is a call for the beginning of immediate cooperation, this is evidence of a readiness to oppose Stalin.

A note from Vinnitsa is the most important and most interesting document that came out from the pen of Vlasov. This is not an agitation or a demagogic appeal, which he will write later. This is an offer of cooperation with the West, an offer coming from a person who feels strong behind him. Noteworthy are the words of Vlasov, spoken by him to a German officer of Russian origin and career intelligence officer Captain V. Shtrik-Shtrikfeldt: "We decided on a big game."

The same Shtrik-Shtrikfeldt, who oversaw Vlasov, gives us an idea of ​​the essence of this "big game". The curator Vlasov recalled that the captured general urged to go "on the Leninist path", that is, to take advantage of the war in order to "liberate the people and the country from the Bolshevik regime." Indeed, during the First World War, Lenin and Trotsky helped the Germans defeat Russia and for this they received power in the country. Why not even now, in the name of overthrowing Stalin, enter into an agreement with Hitler and buy peace from Germany, giving her the Baltic States, Belarus and Ukraine?

“Will they give us,” Vlasov asked Shtrik-Shtrikfeld, “the opportunity to put the Russian army against Stalin? Not an army of mercenaries. She must receive her assignment from the national Russian government. Only a higher idea can justify taking up arms against the government of one's own country. This idea is political freedom and human rights. Think of the great freedom fighters in the United States - George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. In our case, only if we put universal human values ​​above nationalist values, is it justified to agree to your help in the fight against the Bolshevik dictatorship.”

Isn’t it true, dear reader, that we have already heard in our recent history these calls for the priority of “universal values” over “nationalist ones”, we have already been told somewhere about “human rights” and “freedom fighters” in the USA? If you do not know that the above words belong to the traitor to the Motherland Vlasov in 1942, then you might think that this is a speech by a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU A. N. Yakovlev in 1990. Apparently, in 1942, the German General Staff launched a big game to actually overthrow Stalin and replace him with a Trotskyist-liberal regime. But this game was broken by Adolf Hitler.

Hitler was absolutely not to his taste all this fuss with the "Russian liberation movement." And the point here is not only in the zoological Russophobia of Hitler. Hitler could not but see that the manipulations with the "new Russian government" were started by his old enemies from the general corps. This alone could not arouse any enthusiasm in the Fuhrer. In addition, the formation of an independent Russian army threatened Nazi Germany with unpredictable consequences. Arm several hundred thousand Soviet prisoners of war with German weapons, so that they later go over to Stalin and turn the issued weapons against Hitler?! No, by whom, by whom, but Hitler was not a fool. But even in the event of the victory of the anti-Stalinist conspiracy, Hitler won absolutely nothing. On the contrary, his power was again threatened. After all, then the main pretext for war disappeared - the Bolshevik threat to Europe. Willy-nilly, peace would have to be made with the new "Russian" government. And this would mean the end of all the predatory and savage plans of Hitler in relation to Russian territory and the Russian people. At the same time, the new "Russian" government could easily conclude a peace treaty with the West. And then in the name of what did Hitler begin such a difficult campaign in June 1941? Not to mention the fact that such an outcome made the opposition generals a real force capable of carrying out a coup d'état in the Reich, relying on the help of their "Russian allies." No, such a development of events did not smile at Hitler at all. And so he categorically refuses to not only see, but even hear about Vlasov. And the Reichsfuehrer SS G. Himmler, without hiding, calls him a "Slavic pig." Vlasov is sent under house arrest, then released, he lives in Berlin, in good conditions, but still he remains in the position of a half-prisoner. Vlasov was expelled from the big game and did not return to it until the end of 1944.

The plan of the Soviet and German conspirators collapsed before it began to be implemented. This was facilitated first by the successes of the German troops near Stalingrad, when it seemed that the Soviet Union was about to fall, and starting from 1943, by the successes of the Soviet troops, when the power and authority of I.V. Stalin in the country and in the world, as the main leader of the anti-Hitler coalition , become indisputable.

Abandoned by both his fellow conspirators and the German generals, Vlasov found himself in a terrible position. In his ambitious plans, he was supposed to become the commander-in-chief of the "new Russian army", and perhaps the "dictator" of Russia, but he became a German puppet, dressed in either Russian or German uniforms. In vain, Vlasov continued to rush about with the ideas of the ROA, an independent Russian government - all this, in essence, was no longer needed by anyone. Hitler did not allow the formation of independent Russian military units, allowing the formation of only SS national units with Russian symbols. Like a dummy, Vlasov raised his hand at parades in a semi-Nazi salute addressed to “Russian” soldiers dressed in Wehrmacht uniforms, like a parrot repeated demagogic slogans about “free Russia without Bolsheviks.”

Meanwhile, these units were becoming more and more disillusioned with the Nazis. On August 16, 1943, soldiers and officers of the 1st Russian National SS Brigade ("Squads"), led by the former Lieutenant Colonel of the Red Army V.V. Gil-Rodionov, went over to the side of the Soviet partisans. During this transition, during which the newly-minted partisans killed many Germans, Gil-Rodionov was reinstated in the army with the assignment of the next military rank and, moreover, was awarded the Order of the Red Star, and his unit was renamed the 1st anti-fascist partisan brigade.

But it cannot be said that Vlasov did not play any role at all in the III Reich. According to the memoirs of one of the leaders of the Abwehr, V. Schellenberg, “we entered into special agreements with General Vlasov and his staff, even giving him the right to create his own intelligence service in Russia.” What was this service? What sources did she use? This question is still waiting for its researcher.

In the second half of 1944, the Germans again needed Vlasov in a big game. Now, however, this game was intra-German. In July 1944, almost all of Vlasov's German patrons (Field Marshal von Bock, Colonel General Lindemann, Colonel Stauffenberg and others) turned out to be indirect or direct participants in the conspiracy against Hitler. As it turns out, Vlasov with his non-existent "army" played an important role in the plans of the conspirators. Here is what Shtrik-Shtrikfeldt writes about this: “Vlasov knew quite well about the independent and active role that was intended by the conspirators of the ROA. According to their plan, immediate peace was envisaged in the west, and in the east, the continuation of the war with its transformation into a civil one. For this, a well-trained and powerful Vlasov army was needed.

That is, the German generals were preparing for Vlasov the same role: the role of the leader of a fratricidal war. And Vlasov happily agrees to this plan.

“I know,” he assures the German generals, “that even today I can win the war against Stalin. If I had an army consisting of citizens of my fatherland, I would have reached Moscow and ended the war by telephone, simply by talking to my comrades.

Vlasov speaks to his accomplices in the ROA about the need to support the German conspirators.

However, in the case of the anti-Hitler conspiracy with Vlasov, everything is not easy. On July 20, 1944, Vlasov persistently seeks a meeting with Reichsführer Himmler. The meeting then did not take place due to the assassination attempt on Hitler and the coup d'état that had begun, which was suppressed by J. Goebbels and the SS apparatus. What did Vlasov want to tell Himmler? Now it is difficult to say this, but it is known that after the failure of the July 20 conspiracy, Vlasov demonstratively turns away from his yesterday's allies - the generals, who turned out to be conspirators. This unscrupulousness of Vlasov struck even Strik-Strikfeld. When the latter, in a conversation with Vlasov, called Staufenberg and other rebels “our friends,” Vlasov abruptly interrupted him: “They don’t talk about such dead people as friends. They are not known."

After the failure of the conspiracy, Vlasov realized that the cause of the generals was over and the only real force in Germany was the NSDAP, and more specifically, the Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler, whose power and capabilities had increased enormously after the failure of the putsch. Vlasov again hurries to an appointment with "Black Heinrich", asks for a meeting. Such a meeting took place on September 16, 1944. It is curious that the meeting between Vlasov and Himmler took place behind closed doors, one on one. The result of this meeting with Himmler was the recognition of Vlasov as an "ally" of the Reich and commander-in-chief of the ROA. On November 14, 1944, the founding meeting of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (KONR) was solemnly held in Prague, which addressed the peoples of Russia with a "manifesto". Vlasov was elected Chairman of the Committee.

Meanwhile, the agony of Nazi Germany began. Under the blows of the Red Army, the "Thousand-Year Reich" collapsed.

Once again, Vlasov is trying to change the owners. He betrays the Germans and stabs them in the back in Prague in May 1945. However, he cannot stay there for a long time - the Red Army is approaching Prague.

Vlasov runs to the Americans, who seem to agree to accept his services. But the Americans do not tell Vlasov that they already had an agreement with the USSR on the extradition of Vlasov and his associates. Having deceived the commander of the ROA to follow allegedly to the American headquarters as part of a tank column, the Americans drove Vlasov exactly the opposite - to the SMERSH capture group.

On this, in fact, Vlasov's life ended. This life was terrible and black. Vlasov betrayed everyone and everything all his life. The church to which he wanted to devote his life, Stalin, to whom he swore allegiance and whom he "admired", the Motherland, to which he owed everything, soldiers and commanders of the 2nd Shock Army, from whom he fled, his patrons, German generals, new patrons - Himmler and the SS . Vlasov betrayed his wives, betrayed his mistresses, betrayed leaders, generals and soldiers. Betrayal has become for him the norm of life, a certain inner content. The result of such a life could be one - a rope around the neck in the inner prison of Lefortovo.

But the investigation and trial of the traitors to the Motherland Vlasov and his accomplices were closed. The protocols of these interrogations have not been fully declassified so far. Therefore, it remains a mystery who stood behind Vlasov in the tragic days of 1942?

Finishing our article on Vlasov, let's say the following. It focuses more on the present and the future than on the past. There, in the past, everything has long been put in its place. Fidelity was called Fidelity, Valor - Valor, cowardice - cowardice, treason - treason. But today there are extremely dangerous tendencies to call treason - Valor, and cowardice - Heroism. The Vlasovs had hundreds of admirers, apologists, mourning their "martyr's death." Such people do a criminal deed, they offend the Holy Memory of our soldiers, true martyrs who fell during the Great Patriotic War for Faith and Fatherland.

Once back in 1942, Vlasov enthusiastically read the book "Terrible and Kurbsky", more than once admiring the words and deeds of Andrei Kurbsky. He managed to continue the work of his idol. Well, Vlasov and his ilk will find a "worthy" place in the shameful row of traitors and traitors to Russia.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Vlasov Andrey Andreevich

Lieutenant General of the Red Army.

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics 4th Mechanized Corps, 20th Army, 37th Army, 2nd Shock Army (1941-1942) St. Andrew's Flag Russian Liberation Army (1942-1945)
Battles/wars

1 Biography
1.1 In the ranks of the Red Army (before the start of World War II)
1.2 In the initial period of the Great Patriotic War
1.3 In the 2nd shock army
1.4 German captivity
1.5 German captivity and collaboration with the Germans
1.6 Captivity by the Red Army, trial and execution

1.6.1 Rumors of an execution
2 The image of Vlasov in the memoirs of the commanders of the Red Army
3 Vlasov and other encircled
4 Review of the case
5 Arguments from Vlasov's supporters
6 Arguments of opponents of Vlasov and his rehabilitation
7 Alternative versions of the transition to the side of the Germans

Biography

Almost everything that is known about Vlasov's life before captivity became known from his own stories to friends and like-minded people who met him either after the start of World War II, or during his time in captivity, when he nominally became the ideological leader of the Russian Liberation movement, and who made up their memories of him.

Born on September 14, 1901 in the village of Lomakino, now the Gaginsky district of the Nizhny Novgorod region. Russian. He was the thirteenth child, the youngest son. The family lived in poverty, which prevented the father from fulfilling his desire to give all his children an education. Andrey had to pay for Andrei's education to his older brother, Ivan, who sent his brother to receive a spiritual education at a seminary in Nizhny Novgorod. Education in the seminary was interrupted by the revolution of 1917. In 1918, Andrei went to study as an agronomist, but in 1919 he was drafted into the Red Army.

In the Red Army since 1919. After completing a 4-month command course, he became a platoon commander and participated in battles with the Armed Forces in the South of Russia on the Southern Front. Served in the 2nd Don Division. After the liquidation of the White troops in the North Caucasus, the division in which Vlasov served was transferred to Northern Tavria against the troops of P. N. Wrangel. Vlasov was appointed company commander, then transferred to headquarters. At the end of 1920, the detachment in which Vlasov commanded cavalry and foot reconnaissance was transferred to liquidate the insurgent movement of N.I. Makhno.

Since 1922, Vlasov held command and staff positions, and also taught. In 1929 he graduated from the Higher Army Command Courses "Shot". In 1930 he joined the CPSU(b). In 1935 he became a student of the MV Frunze Military Academy. Historian A.N. Kolesnik argued that in 1937-1938. Vlasov was a member of the tribunal of the Leningrad and Kiev military districts. During this time, the tribunal did not issue a single acquittal.

From August 1937, he was commander of the 133rd Infantry Regiment of the 72nd Infantry Division, and from April 1938, assistant commander of this division. In the fall of 1938, he was sent to China to work as part of a group of military advisers, which indicates the full confidence in Vlasov on the part of the political leadership. From May to November 1939, he served as chief military adviser. In parting, before leaving China, Chiang Kai-shek was awarded the Order of the Golden Dragon, Chiang Kai-shek's wife gave Vlasov a watch. Both the order and the watch were taken away by the authorities from Vlasov upon his return to the USSR.

In January 1940, Major General Vlasov was appointed commander of the 99th Rifle Division, which in October of the same year was awarded the challenge Red Banner and recognized as the best division in the Kiev military district. Marshal Timoshenko called the division the best in the entire Red Army. For this, A. Vlasov was awarded a gold watch and the Order of the Red Banner. The Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper published an article about Vlasov, praising his military abilities, his attention and concern for his subordinates, and the precise and thorough performance of his duties.

In his autobiography, written in April 1940, he noted: “I had no hesitation. I always stood firmly on the general line of the party and always fought for it.

In January 1941, Vlasov was appointed commander of the 4th Mechanized Corps of the Kiev Special Military District, and a month later he was awarded the Order of Lenin.

At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War

The war for Vlasov began near Lvov, where he served as commander of the 4th mechanized corps. He received gratitude for his skillful actions, and on the recommendation of N. S. Khrushchev, he 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, near the village of Krasnaya Polyana (located 32 km from the Moscow Kremlin), the Soviet 20th Army under the command of General Vlasov stopped parts of the German 4th Panzer Army, making a significant contribution to the victory near Moscow. In Soviet times, a documented unsubstantiated and unreliable version appeared that Vlasov himself was in the hospital at that time, and either the commander of the operational group A. I. Lizyukov or the chief of staff L. M. Sandalov led the fighting.

Overcoming the stubborn resistance of the enemy, the 20th Army drove the Germans out of Solnechnogorsk and Volokolamsk. On December 13, 1941, the Soviet Information Bureau published an official report on the repulsion of the Germans from Moscow and printed in it photographs of those commanders who distinguished themselves in the defense of the capital. Among them was Vlasov. On January 24, 1942, for these battles, Vlasov was awarded the Order of the Red Banner and promoted to lieutenant general.

Zhukov assessed Vlasov’s actions as follows: “Personally, Lieutenant General Vlasov is well prepared operationally, he has organizational skills. He copes with the management of the troops quite well.

After the successes near Moscow, A. A. Vlasov in the troops, following Stalin, is called nothing more than "the savior of Moscow." On the instructions of the Main Political Directorate, a book is being written about Vlasov called "Stalin's commander." A specialist in the history of the Second World War in the USSR, John Erickson, called Vlasov "one of Stalin's favorite commanders."
Vlasov was trusted to give interviews to foreign correspondents, which indicates the trust in Vlasov on the part of the country's top political leadership.

In the 2nd shock army

On January 7, 1942, the Luban operation began. The troops of the 2nd Shock Army of the Volkhov Front, created to disrupt the German offensive on Leningrad and the subsequent counterattack, successfully broke through the enemy defenses in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe settlement of Myasnoy Bor (on the left bank of the Volkhov River) and deeply wedged into its location (in the direction of Lyuban). But not having the strength to continue the offensive, the army was in a difficult position. The enemy cut her communications several times, creating a threat of encirclement.

On March 8, 1942, Lieutenant General A. A. Vlasov was appointed deputy commander of the Volkhov Front. 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 departed, but without General A. A. Vlasov. On April 16, the seriously ill General Klykov was removed from the army commander and sent by plane to the rear.

On April 20, 1942, A. A. Vlasov was appointed commander of the 2nd shock army, while remaining part-time deputy commander of the Volkhov Front.

The question naturally arose, to whom to entrust the leadership of the troops of the 2nd shock army? On the same day, a telephone conversation took place between A. A. Vlasov and the divisional commissar I. V. Zuev with Meretskov. Zuev proposed to appoint Vlasov to the post of 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 from April 20, 1942 (Monday) became the commander of the 2nd shock army, while remaining deputy commander of the [Volkhov] front. He received troops that were practically no longer able to fight, he received an army that had to be saved ...

V. Beshanov. Leningrad defense.

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 20:00 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.

German captivity

The commander of the Volkhov operational group, Lieutenant General M. S. Khozin, did not comply with the directive of the 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 his post on June 6. The measures taken by the command of the Volkhov Front managed to create a small corridor through which disparate groups of exhausted and demoralized soldiers and commanders came out.

MILITARY COUNCIL OF THE VOLKHOV FRONT. I report: the troops of the army have been conducting tense fierce battles with the enemy for three weeks ... The personnel of the troops are exhausted to the limit, the number of deaths is increasing and the incidence of exhaustion is increasing every day. As a result of the cross-fire of the army area, the troops suffer heavy losses from artillery mortar fire and enemy aircraft ... The combat strength of the formations has sharply decreased. It is no longer possible to replenish it at the expense of rears and special units. Everything that was taken. On June 16, battalions, brigades, and rifle regiments had, on average, only a few dozen men left. All attempts by the eastern group of the army to break through the passage in the corridor from the west were unsuccessful.

Vlasov. Zuev. Vinogradov.

JUNE 21, 1942. 8 HOURS 10 MINUTES. HEAD OF GSHKA. MILITARY COUNCIL OF THE FRONT. Army troops receive fifty grams of crackers for three weeks. The last days there was absolutely no food. We eat the last horses. People are extremely exhausted. Group mortality from starvation is observed. No ammo...

Vlasov. Zuev.

On June 25, the enemy liquidated the corridor. The testimonies of various witnesses do not answer the question of where Lieutenant General A. A. Vlasov was hiding for the next three weeks - whether he wandered in the forest or whether there was some kind of reserve command post to which his group made its way. Thinking about his fate, Vlasov compared himself with General A.V. Samsonov, who also commanded the 2nd Army and also fell into the German encirclement. Samsonov shot himself. According to Vlasov, he was distinguished from Samsonov by the fact that the latter had something for which he considered worthy to give his life. Vlasov considered that he would not commit suicide in the name of Stalin.

German captivity and cooperation with the Germans

General Vlasov's order to stop bullying soldiers.
Main article: Vlasov

Wikisource has the full text of the Open Letter "Why I took the path of fighting Bolshevism"

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), made up of captured Soviet soldiers.

Not a single photograph of this period of Vlasov's life has survived, in which he would be dressed in a German military uniform (which distinguished Vlasov from his subordinates). He always wore a simple khaki uniform with wide cuffs and uniform trousers with general stripes, specially tailored for him (because of his huge physique), military cut. The buttons on the uniform were without military symbols, on the uniform there were no insignia or awards, including the emblem of the ROA on the sleeve. Only on a general's cap did he wear a white-blue-red ROA cockade.

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 aircraft at the fronts, and also distributed among prisoners of war.

In early 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 stay on the side of the Germans. At the negotiations in the North Bohemian Kozoedy, they did not agree and their paths diverged.

Captivity by the Red Army, trial and execution

On May 12, 1945, Vlasov was captured by servicemen of the 25th Tank Corps of the 13th Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front near the city of Pilsen in Czechoslovakia while trying to move to the western zone of occupation. The tankers of the corps pursued the column in which Vlasov was, at the direction of the Vlasov captain, who informed them that it was his commander who was in it. According to the Soviet version, Vlasov was found on the floor of a jeep wrapped in a carpet. This is
seems unlikely, given the interior space in the jeep and Vlasov's build. After the arrest, he was taken to the headquarters of Marshal I. S. Konev, from there to Moscow. From that moment until August 2, 1946, when the Izvestia newspaper published a message about his trial, nothing was reported about Vlasov.

Wikisource logo
Wikisource has the full text of the Verdict in the case of General A.A. Vlasov and his accomplices.

At first, the leadership of the USSR planned to hold a public trial of Vlasov and other leaders of the ROA in the October Hall of the House of the Unions, but subsequently abandoned this intention. According to the Russian historian K. M. Aleksandrov, the reason could be that some of the accused could express views during the trial that “objectively could coincide with the moods of a certain part of the population dissatisfied with the Soviet regime.”

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 was cowardly ...

It seems that at the trial, Vlasov tried to take full responsibility for himself, apparently believing that in this way he would be able to commute the sentences for his subordinates.

The decision on the death sentence against Vlasov and others was taken 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 high 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.

Rumors of an execution

According to rumors, the execution was organized with terrifying cruelty - all the executed were hung on a piano string wire, on a hook, hooked under the base of the skull.

The image of Vlasov in the memoirs of the commanders of the Red Army

The transition of the commander of the 2nd shock army, A. A. Vlasov, to the service of the Germans was one of the most unpleasant episodes of the war for Soviet historiography. There were other officers of the Red Army who took the path of fighting the Soviet regime, but Vlasov was the highest-ranking and most famous of all. In Soviet historiography, no attempts were made to analyze the motives for his act - his name was either automatically denigrated or, at best, simply hushed up.

A. V. Isaev noted that many of Vlasov's colleagues, who wrote memoirs after the war, were put in an awkward position:

If you write well about the former commander, they will say: “How did you not see such a bastard?” If you write badly, they will say: “Why didn’t you ring the bells? Why didn’t you report and tell where to go? ”

For example, one of the officers of the 32nd Panzer Division of the 4th Mechanized Corps describes his meeting with Vlasov as follows: “Leaning out of the cockpit, I noticed that the regiment commander was talking to a tall general with glasses. Recognized him immediately.
This is the commander of our 4th mechanized corps. He approached them, introduced himself to the commander. The surname "Vlasov" is not mentioned at all throughout the entire narrative of the battles in Ukraine in June 1941.

Also, M. E. Katukov simply preferred not to mention that his brigade was subordinate to the army commanded by A. A. Vlasov. And the former chief of staff of the 20th Army of the Western Front, L. M. Sandalov, in his memoirs bypassed the unpleasant question of meeting his army commander with the help of the version of the illness of A. A. Vlasov. Later, this version was supported and developed by other researchers, who claimed that from November 29 to December 21, 1941, Colonel Sandalov served as commander of the 20th Army of the Western Front, and it was under his actual leadership that the 20th Army liberated Krasnaya Polyana, Solnechnogorsk and Volokolamsk.

If Vlasov was mentioned in his memoirs, then, rather, in a negative way. For example, cavalryman Stuchenko writes:

Suddenly, three hundred to four hundred meters from the front line, from behind a bush, the figure of Vlasov, the commander of the army, in an astrakhan gray cap with earflaps and the same pince-nez, grows; behind the adjutant with a machine gun. My annoyance spilled over the edge:

What are you doing here? There is nothing to see here. People are dying for nothing here. Is that how they organize a fight? Is that how they use cavalry?

Thought: now dismissed from office. But Vlasov, feeling unwell under fire, asked in a not entirely confident voice:

So, how do you think it should be done?

K. A. Meretskov spoke in approximately the same spirit, retelling the words of the head of communications of the 2nd shock army, General Afanasyev: “It is characteristic that Vlasov did not take any part in the discussion of the planned actions of the commander-2 group. He was completely indifferent to all changes in the movement of the group. A. V. Isaev suggested that this description could be “relatively accurate and objective”, since Afanasyev witnessed the breakdown of Vlasov’s personality, which led to betrayal: the commander of the 2nd shock was captured just a few days after “discussing the planned actions” .

Marshal Vasilevsky, who became the chief of the General Staff of the Red Army in the spring of 1942, also wrote in his memoirs about Vlasov in a negative way:

“The commander of the 2nd shock army, Vlasov, not distinguished by great commanding abilities, moreover, extremely unstable and cowardly by nature, was completely inactive. The difficult situation created for the army demoralized him even more, he did not make any attempts to quickly and secretly withdraw troops. As a result, the entire troops of the 2nd shock army were surrounded.

According to the director of the Institute for Strategic Studies L. Reshetnikov:

For the Soviet people, "Vlasovism" became a symbol of betrayal, and he himself became a Judas of that time. It came to the point that the namesakes wrote in the questionnaires: "I am not a relative of the traitor general."

In this regard, search activities in the Myasnoy Bor area were also hampered. Local authorities adhered to the version that "Vlasov traitors lie in Myasny Bor." This saved them from the extra hassle of organizing a funeral, and the state from the cost of helping the families of the victims. Only in the 1970s, thanks to the initiative of the search engine N. I. Orlov, the first three military cemeteries appeared near Myasny Bor.

Vlasov and other encircled

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

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

For example, the commander of the 327th Rifle Division, Major General I. M. Antyufeev, being wounded, was captured on July 5. Antyufeev refused to help the enemy, and the Germans sent him to a camp in Kaunas, then he worked in a mine. After the war, Antyufeev was reinstated in the rank of general, continued to serve in the Soviet Army and retired as a major general. The head of the medical and sanitary service of the 2nd shock army, military doctor of the 1st rank Boborykin, specially remained surrounded in order 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 the commander of the Red Army 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, numerous cases are known when prisoners of war and in captivity continued to fight the enemy.
The feat of Musa Jalil and his "Moabit Notebooks" are widely known. There are other examples as well. The head of the sanitary service and brigade doctor of the 23rd rifle brigade, Major N. I. Kononenko, was captured on June 26, 1942, along with the staff of the brigade medical unit. 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 workers. 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 wounded, where they continued to fight the enemy and in April 1945 led an uprising in the Buchenwald concentration camp.

An illustrative 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 June 1942, he was sent to camps, finally ending up in a camp at the Schwarzberg mine. In June 1943, Telnykh fled the camp, after which the Belgian peasants in the village of Waterloo helped to contact partisan detachment No. 4 of Soviet prisoners of war (Red Army Lieutenant Colonel Kotovets). The detachment was part of the Russian partisan brigade "For the Motherland" (lieutenant colonel K. Shukshin). Telnykh participated 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 city of Mayzak and held it for eight hours until the British troops approached. After the war, Telnykh, along with other fellow partisans, returned to serve in the Red Army.

Two months earlier, in April 1942, during the withdrawal from the encirclement of the 33rd Army, its commander M. G. Efremov and officers of the army headquarters committed suicide. And if M. G. Efremov, with his death, “whitewashed even those faint-hearted ones who trembled in difficult times and left their commander to escape alone,” then they looked at the fighters of the 2nd shock through the prism of A. A. Vlasov’s betrayal.

Case review

In 2001, Hieromonk Nikon (Belavenets), the head of the movement "For Faith and Fatherland", applied to the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office to review the sentence of Vlasov and his associates. However, the military prosecutor's office came to the conclusion that there were no grounds for applying the law on the rehabilitation of victims of political repression.

On November 1, 2001, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation refused to rehabilitate Vlasov A.A. and others, overturning the verdict in terms of conviction under Part 2 of Art. 5810 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda) and dismissing the case in this part due to the absence of corpus delicti. The rest of the sentence was left unchanged.

Arguments from Vlasov's supporters

The version of patriotism of A. A. Vlasov and his movement has its supporters and is the subject of discussion to this day.

Vlasov's supporters argue that Vlasov and those who joined the Russian Liberation Movement were driven by patriotic feelings and remained loyal to their homeland, but not to their government. One of the arguments given in favor of this point of view was that “if the state provides protection to a citizen, it has the right to demand loyalty from him”, but if the Soviet state refused to sign the Geneva Agreement and thereby deprived its captive citizens of protection, then the citizens were no longer obliged to remain loyal to the state and, therefore, were not traitors.

At the beginning of September 2009, the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad at its meetings touched upon the disputes regarding the published book of the church historian, Archpriest Georgy Mitrofanov “The Tragedy of Russia.
"Forbidden" themes of the history of the XX century in church preaching and journalism. In particular, it was noted that:

The tragedy of those who are commonly called "Vlasovites" ... is truly great. In any case, it should be comprehended with all possible impartiality and objectivity. Outside of such an understanding, historical science turns into political journalism. We ... should avoid "black and white" interpretation of historical events. In particular, calling the acts of General A. A. Vlasov a betrayal is, in our opinion, a frivolous simplification of the events of that time. In this sense, we fully support Father Georgy Mitrofanov's attempt to approach this issue (or rather, a whole series of issues) with a measure adequate to the complexity of the problem. In the Russian Diaspora, of which the surviving members of the ROA became part, General A. A. Vlasov was and remains a kind of symbol of resistance to godless Bolshevism in the name of the revival of Historical Russia. ... Everything that was undertaken by them was done precisely for the Fatherland, in the hope that the defeat of Bolshevism would lead to the restoration of a powerful national Russia. Germany was considered by the “Vlasovites” exclusively as an ally in the fight against Bolshevism, but they, the “Vlasovites”, were ready, if necessary, to resist by armed force any kind of colonization or dismemberment of our Motherland. We hope that in the future Russian historians will treat the events of that time with greater fairness and impartiality than is the case today.

Arguments of opponents of Vlasov and his rehabilitation

Vlasov's opponents believe that since Vlasov and those who joined him fought against the Soviet Union on the side of his enemy, they were traitors and collaborators. According to these researchers, Vlasov and the fighters of the Russian liberation movement went over to the side of the Wehrmacht not for political reasons, but to save their own lives, they were skillfully used by the Nazis for propaganda purposes, and Vlasov was nothing more than a tool in the hands of the Nazis.

The Russian historian M. I. Frolov notes the great danger of attempts to glorify A. A. Vlasov, naming as their main consequences:

The desire to revise the results of the Second World War, in particular, to devalue the agreements reached by the victorious countries at the Yalta and Postdam conferences, at the Nuremberg trials of the main Nazi war criminals, to revise the principles of international law confirmed by the UN General Assembly (12/11/1946), recognized The charter of the tribunal and found expression in its verdict. Thus, various negative geopolitical, ideological and financial consequences for Russia can be achieved.
justification of collaborationism in other countries (in particular, in the Baltic States and Ukraine), the desire to find a moral and psychological justification for the actions of anti-Russian politicians and forces, as well as the formation of a public consciousness that recognizes the correct separatism.
change in value orientations in society, the desire to remove the sources of positive self-perception of the people, devaluing the victory in the Great Patriotic War by substituting the concepts of "treason - valor", and "cowardice - heroism".

According to the historian, “representing the traitor Vlasov, collaborators“ in the role ”of fighters for Russia, for the Russian people is nothing more than an unworthy attempt from a moral point of view, a conscious, deliberate perversion of the fundamental values ​​of Russian society - patriotism, love for the Motherland, selfless service the interests of its people."

In 2009, with the support of the Russian Orthodox Church, the book “The Truth about General Vlasov: a collection of articles” was published, the main purpose of which, according to its authors, was “to show that the point of view of the professor of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, Archpriest Georgy Mitrofanov, on traitor general A A. Vlasov, the Great Patriotic War is marginal for the Russian Orthodox Church.” The authors emphasize that the betrayal of Vlasov and the Vlasovites is "this is our pain and our shame, this is a shameful page in the history of the Russian people."

Alternative versions of the transition to the side of the Germans.

In separate 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 the published archival documents.

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 intelligence activity against Japan and Germany, and then during the Great Patriotic War was successfully abandoned to the Germans. The execution of Vlasov in 1946 is associated with a "welter" 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 materials of the investigation on the “case” of Vlasov, Bunyachenko and other leaders of the Armed Forces of the KONR was destroyed.

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

Grigorenko Petr Grigorievich:

“In 1959, I met an officer I knew, whom I had seen before the war. We started talking. The conversation touched the Vlasovites. I said: - I had quite close people there.
- Who? he asked.
- Trukhin Fedor Ivanovich - my team leader at the Academy of the General Staff.
- Trukhin?! - even my interlocutor jumped up from his seat. - Well, so I saw off your teacher on the last journey.
- Like this?
- But like this. You remember, obviously, that when Vlasov was captured, there was a message in the press about this, and it was indicated that the leaders of the ROA would appear before an open trial. They were preparing for an open trial, but the behavior of the Vlasovites ruined everything. They refused to plead guilty to treason. All of them - the main leaders of the movement - declared that they fought against the Stalinist terrorist regime. They wanted to free their people from this regime. And therefore they are not traitors, but Russian patriots. They were tortured, but nothing was achieved. Then they came up with the idea of ​​“hooking up” to each of their friends from their former lives. Each of us, who were imprisoned, did not hide why he was imprisoned. I was planted not with Trukhin. He had another, in the past, a very close friend of his. I "worked" with my former buddy.
All of us, “planted”, were given relative freedom. Trukhin's cell was not far from the one where I "worked", so I often went there and talked quite a lot with Fyodor Ivanovich. We were given only one task - to persuade Vlasov and his associates to admit their guilt in treason and not to say anything against Stalin. For such behavior, it was promised to save their lives.

Some hesitated, but the majority, including Vlasov and Trukhin, firmly stood on the same position: “I have not been a traitor and will not admit to treason. I hate Stalin. I consider him a tyrant and I will say so in court.” Our promises of life's blessings did not help. Our frightening stories did not help either. We said that if they did not agree, they would not be judged, but tortured to death. Vlasov said to these threats: “I know. And I'm scared. But it's even worse to slander yourself. And our suffering will not be in vain. The time will come when the people will remember us with a kind word.” Trukhin repeated the same.

And there was no open court, - my interlocutor completed his story. - I heard that they were tortured for a long time and half-dead were hanged. When they hanged me, I won’t even tell you about it…”

Gene. P. Grigorenko “Only rats can be found underground”

USSR awards

Order of Lenin (1941)
2 orders of the Red Banner (1940, 1941)
medal "XX years of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army"

Subsequently, by the verdict of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, he was deprived of all awards and titles.

Foreign awards

Order of the Golden Dragon (China, 1939).

Watch in advance "Logicology - about the fate of man".

Consider the FULL NAME code tables. \If there is a shift in numbers and letters on your screen, adjust the image scale\.

3 15 16 34 49 52 53 67 72 89 95 105 106 120 125 142 148 154 157 167 191
V L A S O V A N D R E Y A AND D R E E V I C
191 188 176 175 157 142 139 138 124 119 102 96 86 85 71 66 49 43 37 34 24

1 15 20 37 43 53 54 68 73 90 96 102 105 115 139 142 154 155 173 188 191
A AND R E I A N D R E E V I C V L A S O V
191 190 176 171 154 148 138 137 123 118 101 95 89 86 76 52 49 37 36 18 3

Consider reading individual words and sentences:

VLASOV \u003d 52 \u003d KILLED, STROKED \u003d 15-ON + 37-NECK.

ANDREY ANDREEVICH \u003d 139 \u003d 63-THROAT + 76-SURGERY \u003d 73-TOOL + 66-REVENGE.

139 - 52 \u003d 87 \u003d CONDEMNED, THROAT \u003d 3-B + 84-LOOP.

VLASOV ANDREY = 105 = DESTROY\LIFE\, NECK, CHOKING, ASPHYXIA.

ANDREEVICH \u003d 86 \u003d BREATH, EXECUTE, DIE.

105 - 86 \u003d 19th \rlo \.

ANDREYEVICH VLASOV = 138 = OXYGEN, GANGBORN, DYING = 75-SQUEEZE, SQUEEZES + 63-THROAT.

ANDREY = 53 = CRUSHED, CLAMPED, TREASON, LOOP \I\.

138 - 53 = 85-LOOP, REVENGE, HANGED.

Let's insert the found numbers into the code of ANDREY VLASOV'S FULL NAME:

191 \u003d 106 \ 87 + 19 \ + 85 \u003d 106-CHOKEN + 85-HANGED, REVENGE, LOOP.

DATE OF BIRTH: 09/14/1901. This is \u003d 14 + 09 + 19 + 01 \u003d 43 \u003d JUDGMENT, SWORD.

191 \u003d 43 + 148 - PUNITIVE, SENTENCED.

DATE OF EXECUTION: 1.08.1946. This is = 1 + 08 + 19 + 46 = 74 = MURDER, DURING, EXTINGUISHING = 19-FROM + 10-FOR + 45-PENALTY = 30-CARA + 44-DAMAGE = 17-AMBA + 57-HANGED. Where the code of the YEAR of execution = 19 + 46 = 65 = HANGING.

191=74+117

COMPLETE DATE OF EXECUTION = 129 + 65-code of the YEAR, HANGING = 194 = 2 X 97-MURDER = 108-INTERRUPT + 86-BREATH.

The number of full years of life \u003d 76-FORTY + 100-FOUR \u003d 176 \u003d RESPIRATORY \u003d 10-FOR + 166-BETHERING \u003d 76-Retribution, Survivor, Ruined, Ruining + 100-HYPOXIA \u003d 106-Suffocation + 70-LIFE, EXODUS \u003d 111 -JUSTICE + 65-HANGING = 51-PUNISHED, KILLED + 76-SURVEY + 49-THROATS.

Addition:

191 \u003d 109-REVENGE, JUDGED, HANGED, SHUT UP + 10-FOR + 72-TREASONING \u003d VIOLENT \u003d 121-ASPHIXIA + 70-LIFE, EXODUS \u003d 146-MECHANICAL + 45-PUBLICATIONS \u003d 75-Vengeance + 116-HANG, HYPOXIA \u003d 54-KAROY, KAJUK, SIGH, CLAMP + 137-HANGED = 83-GANGBOARD + 108-EXECUTED = 97-SENTENCE + 94-UPDOWN = 61-RESTRAIN + 67-CLAMPED + 63-THROAT = 46-STIGHT + 104-VESSELS + 41-NECK.

On September 14, 1901, Andrei Vlasov was born in one of the villages of the Nizhny Novgorod province. He was destined to become the most scandalous military leader in Soviet history. The very name of the general became a household name, and every Soviet citizen who served with the Germans was called a Vlasov.

Little is known about the early life of the future general. Andrei Vlasov was born in a village in Nizhny Novgorod in 1901. His father, according to some reports, was a non-commissioned officer of extra-long service. According to others - an ordinary peasant. There were 13 children in the family, Andrei was the youngest of them. Nevertheless, with the help of his older brothers, he managed to study at the Nizhny Novgorod Seminary. Then Vlasov studied at a local university as an agronomist, but he completed only one course. The Civil War flared up, and his education was interrupted by mobilization in the Red Army. And so began his army career.

In the Red Army, which lacked literate and educated people, Vlasov quickly made his way to the company commander, and then was transferred to staff work. He headed the headquarters of the regiment, then led the regimental school. He joined the party relatively late, only in 1930.

Vlasov was in good standing and was considered a competent commander. It is no coincidence that in the late 30s he was sent to China as part of a group of military advisers to Chiang Kai-shek. Moreover, for several months, Vlasov was considered the main military adviser to the Chinese leader. At the end of 1939, he was recalled to the USSR and appointed commander of the 99th division.

There Vlasov again proved himself from the best side. In just a few months, he managed to restore such order that, according to the results of the exercises, she was recognized as the best in the Kiev military district and was especially noted by the highest authorities.

Vlasov also did not go unnoticed and was promoted to commander of a mechanized corps, and also received the Order of Lenin. The corps was stationed in the Lvov region and was one of the first Soviet units to engage in hostilities with the Germans.

He proved himself well in the first battles, and a month later Vlasov again went on promotion. He was urgently transferred to Kyiv to command the 37th Army. It was formed from the remnants of the units retreating from the west of the Ukrainian SSR, and the main task was not to allow the Germans to take Kyiv.

The defense of Kyiv ended in disaster. There were several armies in the cauldron. However, Vlasov managed to prove himself here too, units of the 37th Army were able to break through the encirclement and reach the Soviet troops.

The general is recalled to Moscow, where he is entrusted with the command of the 20th Army in the most important direction of the German strike - Moscow. Vlasov did not fail again, during the German offensive, the army managed to stop the 4th Göpner Panzer Group near Krasnaya Polyana. And then go on the offensive, liberate Volokolamsk and go to Gzhatsk.

Lieutenant General Vlasov became a celebrity. His portrait, along with several other military leaders, was printed on the front pages of the largest Soviet newspapers as the most distinguished in the defense of Moscow.

Doomed to captivity

However, this popularity had a downside. Vlasov began to be perceived as a lifesaver, which in the end led to an inglorious end. In the spring of 1942, the 2nd shock army penetrated the German defenses, occupying the Luban salient. It was planned to use it as a springboard for a further offensive on Leningrad. However, the Germans took advantage of the favorable conditions and closed the encirclement in the Myasnoy Bor area. The supply of the army became impossible. The headquarters ordered the army to withdraw. In the area of ​​​​Myasny Bor, they managed to break through the corridor for a short time, along which several units came out, but then the Germans closed it again.

Vlasov at that time served as deputy commander of the Volkhov Front Meretskov and, as part of a military commission, was sent to the location of the army in order to assess the situation on the spot. The situation in the army was very difficult, there was no food, no ammunition, it was also impossible to organize its supply. In addition, the army suffered very heavy losses in the battles. In fact, the 2nd shock was doomed.

By this time, the commander of the Klykov army was seriously ill, and he had to be evacuated by plane to the rear. There was a question about the new commander. Vlasov proposed to Meretskov the candidacy of Vinogradov, chief of staff of the army. He himself did not want to take responsibility for the perishing army. However, Meretskov appointed him. In this case, his track record played against Vlasov. He already had a successful experience of breaking through the encirclement, and also showed himself well near Moscow. If someone could save the perishing army, then only a person with such experience.

However, the miracle did not happen. Until the end of June, with the support of the 59th Army, desperate attempts were made to break out of the encirclement. On June 22, for several hours, they managed to break through a 400-meter corridor, along which some of the wounded were carried out, but soon the Germans closed it.

On June 24, the last, desperate attempt to break through was made. The situation was very difficult, the army had been starving for a long time, the soldiers ate all the horses and their own belts and still died of exhaustion, there were no more artillery shells, there was almost no equipment. The Germans, in turn, carried out a hurricane of shelling. After a failed attempt to break through, Vlasov gave the order to escape, as best he could. Break into small groups of 3-5 people and try to covertly get out of the environment.

What happened to Vlasov in the following weeks has not yet been established and is unlikely to ever become known. Most likely, he was trying to get to the reserve command post, where food was stored. Along the way, he entered the villages, introducing himself as a village teacher and asking for food. On July 11, in the village of Tukhovezhi, he entered the house, which turned out to be the house of the headman of the village, who immediately handed over the uninvited guests to the Germans. Having set the table for them in the bathhouse, he locked them up and informed the Germans about it. Soon their patrol detained the general. In some sources there are allegations that Vlasov deliberately intended to surrender to the Germans, but this is somewhat doubtful. For this, it was not necessary to wander for two and a half weeks through the forests, hiding from patrols.

In captivity

Smolensk Appeal"

Smolensk Appeal", in which Vlasov called to go over to his side in order to build a new Russia. It even contained some political points such as the abolition of collective farms. The German leadership approved the appeal, but considered it as a purely propaganda action. They wrote about it in newspapers, there were also leaflets were printed in Russian to be thrown into Soviet territories.

The party leadership was completely indifferent to Vlasov. Hitler and Himmler did not care about the captured general, he did not interest them. The main lobbyists of Vlasov were the military, who may have seen in Vlasov a potential leader of the future puppet government, if there is such a thing. On the initiative of Field Marshals von Kluge and von Küchler, Vlasov made several trips to the location of Army Group North and Center in the winter and spring of 1943. He not only met with prominent German military leaders, but also spoke to local residents in the occupied territories and gave several interviews to collaborationist newspapers.

However, the party did not like that the military was playing their game and trying to enter their territory. The Russian committee was disbanded, Vlasov was temporarily banned from speaking publicly, and the military was reprimanded. The Nazi Party had no desire to turn Vlasov into anything more than a propaganda phantom.

Meanwhile, the activities of Vlasov became known in the USSR. Stalin was so indignant that he personally corrected the newspaper article "Who is Vlasov?". This article reported that Vlasov was an active Trotskyist who planned to sell Siberia to the Japanese, but was exposed in time. Unfortunately, the party took pity on Vlasov and forgave him, allowing him to lead the army. But as it turned out, even in the first days of the war, he was recruited by the Germans, and then returned to Moscow, showed himself well for some time in order to avoid suspicion, and then specially led the army into an environment and finally defected to the Germans.

Vlasov found himself in a difficult position. In Moscow, they already learned about his activities, but in Germany he was in limbo. The party leadership, including Hitler, did not want to hear about the creation of a separate army, which was what the military wanted. When Field Marshal Keitel tried to test the waters, Hitler made it clear that he would not allow it to go beyond the usual propaganda actions.

For the next year and a half, Vlasov became a party-goer. His patrons organized meetings for him with prominent figures who looked at the "Russian question" not as radically as the leaders. In the hope that, having enlisted their support, it would be possible to influence Hitler and Himmler at least indirectly, Vlasov was even arranged for a marriage with the widow of an SS man.

But all that his patrons managed to achieve was the creation of a "school of propagandists" in Dabendorf. For more, the party did not give permission.

Russian Liberation Army

Heavi" down to the village police, who had nothing to do with the ROA.

However, at the beginning and middle of the war, the Germans created small detachments (usually the size of a company / battalion and very rarely a regiment), the so-called. eastern battalions / companies, which were often involved in anti-partisan operations. A significant part of their personnel was later transferred to the ROA. For example, the former Soviet commissar Zhilenkov, before getting to Vlasov, held a prominent post in the RNNA - the Russian National People's Army, numbering several thousand people. Which just acted against partisans in the occupied territories.

For some time, the RNNA was commanded by the former Soviet colonel Boyarsky, who later also became a person close to Vlasov. Most often, the eastern battalions and companies were part of the German divisions, under which German officers were created and controlled. The personnel of these units sometimes wore cockades and stripes used later by the ROA, which creates additional confusion. However, these units, which appeared even when Vlasov was a Soviet general, were subordinate to the Germans and Vlasov had no influence on them.

the same Bolsheviks, only against the collective farms. "Thus, we can sum up this confusing issue. The ROA did not operate in the occupied Soviet territories, but part of the personnel of this army had previously served in the German eastern battalions in Soviet territories.

The combat path of the newly minted army turned out to be very short in general. During the five months of its existence, units of the ROA only twice took part in battles with Soviet troops. Moreover, in the first case, this participation was extremely limited. In February 1945, three platoons of volunteers from the Dabendorf school took part in the battle on the side of the Germans with the 230th division of the Red Army.

And in early April, the 1st division of the ROA fought along with the Germans in the Furstenberg area. After that, all parts of the ROA were withdrawn to the rear. Even with the imminent end, the Nazi leadership did not have much confidence in the newly minted allies.

By and large, the ROA has remained a propaganda, and not a real fighting force. One combat-ready division, which only once took part in hostilities, could hardly have had any influence on the course of the war, except for propaganda.

Arrest and execution

Vlasov hoped to get to the location of the Americans, as he expected a new world war between the USSR and the USA. But he never managed to get to them. On May 12, 1945, he was arrested by a Soviet patrol on a tip. However, the Americans would have given him to the USSR anyway. First, he was a symbolic and familiar figure. Secondly, militarily, the ROA was not any significant force, so even as a potential ally by the Americans in the event of a new war, it would not be considered. Thirdly, an agreement on the extradition of Soviet citizens was reached at the conference of allies, only a few managed to avoid this extradition.

Vlasov and all his associates from among the Soviet citizens were taken to Moscow. Initially, it was supposed to hold an open trial, but Abakumov, who supervised it, was afraid that the leakage of the views of the defendants would cause some undesirable consequences in society, and suggested that they sort it out quietly. In the end, it was decided to hold a closed trial without any publications in the press. The final decision was made by the Politburo. Instead of an open trial of traitors on August 2, 1946, a stingy note was given in Soviet newspapers that Vlasov and his closest associates were found guilty of treason and executed the day before by the verdict of a Soviet court.