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103-597: After his death, his figure and his movement became objects of various narratives in memory politics and historiography. Born in Lomakino , Nizhny Novgorod Governorate, Russian Empire , Vlasov was originally a student at a Russian Orthodox seminary . He quit the study of divinity after the Russian Revolution , briefly studying agricultural sciences instead, and in 1919 joined the Red Army fighting in

206-654: A Baltic German who was attempting to foster a Russian Liberation Movement . Strik-Strikfeldt had circulated memos to this effect in the Wehrmacht. Strik-Strikfeldt, who had been a participant in the White movement during the Russian Civil War , persuaded Vlasov to become involved in aiding the German advance against the rule of Joseph Stalin and Bolshevism . With Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Boyarsky , Vlasov wrote

309-513: A "propaganda trick", and that they were unscrupulous people motivated only by lust for power or physical survival whose movement could not be democratic in any way. B. Dvinov, one of the most harsh Nicolaevsky's opponents, supported his publications with documents. Alexander Dallin called his publications "a documented but one-sided attempt in Russian émigré politics to reduce the Vlasov movement to

412-681: A German propaganda trick." Among the positions of the émigrés was a compromise one that 'Vlasovism' may be a democratic movement, but Vlasov and the other leaders should be condemned, and that the Vlasovites should admit that collaboration with the Nazis was a mistake, but the Vlasovites from the SBONR , which joined the AMCOMLIB, refused to admit the latter and continued to idolize their executed leader; they accused their opponents of Communism, while

515-488: A claim that is consistently declined by Poland. Similarly there have been debates in Germany whether the legacy of World War II implies that Germany's military should be confined to purely defensive measure like peacekeeping or, contrary to this, this legacy can be a justification of an active enforcement of human rights which also might involve preemptive strikes. In Poland , the issue of history politics have risen to

618-481: A crucial role in inscribing a historical narrative into the landscape, an act described by Herfried Münkler as the monumentalization of the landscape. When successor states inherit the monumental landscape of the ancien régime often heated debates errupt on the fate of such monuments. New regimes of memory may neglect, appropriate or physically remove monuments. However, their removals may be controversial: in Estonia

721-829: A dissertation about the ROA; the earlier successful defense of this dissertation was followed with a scandal, as pro-Kremlin organizations, including the CPRF, forwarded the dissertation to Russian prosecutors to inspect for violation of Putin's " memory law ," which criminalizes "lies about the activities of the Soviet Union in the Second World War" and held rallies with slogans such as "Bandera in Ukraine - Vlasov in Russia", and Aleksandrov's article about Bandera written back in 2014

824-541: A flood of messages with the same text: "Only Vlasovites discredit the army." Before the invasion, Alexei Navalny was labelled a Vlasovite, as the official allegations included "memory crimes"; in 2020, the Russian Foreign Ministry officially protested against a monument to the ROA fighters who participated in Prague Uprising. Vladimir Putin personally mentioned Vlasov only in 2024, after

927-499: A framework similar to Just War theory . Memories are also influenced by cultural forces, e.g. popular culture , as well as social norms . It has also been connected with the construction of identity . Armenia and Turkey maintain strongly divergent official narratives on the events of 1915, known as the Armenian Genocide . While Armenian official historiography sees in it a deliberate attempt to irrevocably cleanse

1030-607: A memo shortly after his capture to the German military leaders suggesting cooperation between anti-Stalinist Russians and the German Army. In 2016, in his habilitation thesis , Russian historian Kirill Alexandrov analyzed the careers of 180 Soviet generals and officers who joined the Vlasov army. He concluded that most of them personally experienced atrocities committed by the NKVD during the Great Purge and previous purges in

1133-595: A new revision of history under the pretext of the defense of the national past against the alleged slanderers. As a first step of this defense was the establishment of the commission to handle "the attempts to falsify history to the detriment of Russia's interests" in May 2009. The central topic of the new "history politics" has become World War II . The 2018 book of Mariëlle Wijermars Memory Politics in Contemporary Russia Television, Cinema and

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1236-702: A number of criticisms of the Western Allies as a compromise with Himmler's insistence to add antisemitic points. The Nazis were suspicious of Vlasov, his organisation and his ideological position, and the Gestapo warned about the possibility of the Vlasovites betraying the Reich. The suspicions and criticism of the Vlasovites from the Reich officials was summarised in a document by the Ministry of Propaganda official Eberhard Taubert who described his concerns about

1339-526: A seemingly coherent narrative), strategic silencing (the masking-out of historical facts that contradict one's own interpretation), performing (ritualized forms of reifying the narrative) or renaming/remapping (inscribing the narrative into the monumental and toponymic landscape). Nevertheless, the term is contested and there is no common agreement on its meaning which is often a matter of contextual use. Some authors have suggested that memory debates can be ordered by an Ethics of Political Commemoration ,

1442-416: A similar effect. Recollections that are shaped out of a phenomenon common to many countries traumatized by war and repression, may be remembered in radically different ways by people who experienced similar events. The selectivity may also serve a political purpose, for example to justify the claims of one group over a competing group. Cyprus is a poignant case for this phenomenon. The longstanding conflict on

1545-544: A symbol "past and current betrayal in Russia"; in the second part of the 1990s, Boris Yeltsin turned back to commemoration of the Great Patriotic War, and after the rise of Putin, "this anti-Vlasov discourse hardens and takes on increasing domestic political uses," connecting Vlasov with the 'collapse of Empire' and influence of the West. Jade McGlynn and Tromly describe how Vlasov's figure became unsuitable for

1648-417: Is about a Slovak official posing with other officials for a photograph in winter. The man gives his fur hat to cover his superior's bald head and the photo is taken. Later, when he falls out of favour and is denounced and removed from official records and documents, he is even air-brushed out of photographs; all that remains of him is his fur hat. Winston Churchill is purported to have said that "history

1751-527: Is adequate or not. The question if and how to memorise Germans expelled from Poland in the aftermath of World War II has been constantly debated in both West Germany and Poland. Such questions are so difficult because it requires a moral judgement of these events. These judgements differ remarkably. For instance, the Federation of German Expellees called on Poland to pay compensation for lost property to Germans from what after 1945 became Polish territory,

1854-399: Is the effects of political influence on the representation or study of historical topics , commonly associated with the totalitarian state which use propaganda and other means to impose a specific version of history with the goal of eliminating competing perspectives about the past. In order to achieve this goal, memory regimes resort to different means such as narrating (the construction of

1957-548: Is written by the victors." The accuracy and significance of this statement is still debated. Raul Hilberg 's autobiography is titled The politics of memory . Georg Lindemann Georg Lindemann (8 March 1884 – 25 September 1963) was a German general during World War II . He commanded the 18th Army during the Soviet Kingisepp–Gdov Offensive . His cousin Ernst Lindemann was the captain of

2060-643: The Völkischer Beobachter ; Vlasov was critical of such remarks and replied to the Nazi concerns that "the Jewish question" "was an internal Russian problem and would be dealt with after they [the ROA] had accomplished the primary aim of overthrowing the existing regime"; however, antisemitism frequently appeared in the pro-Vlasov Nazi and collaborationist newspapers issued before the formation of KONR, including

2163-586: The perestroika and the fall of the Soviet Union, narratives described above entered Russian historiography and memory politics . These narratives challenge the myth of the Soviet, increasingly perceived as Russian, Victory in the Great Patriotic War , which is significant to Russian national identity. As this myth has been increasingly used by the Putin regime to legitimize its state and its actions,

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2266-645: The 162nd Tank Brigade had Vlasov dragged out of his car, put on a tank and driven straight to the Soviet 13th Army HQ. Vlasov was then transported from the 13th Army HQ to Marshal Ivan Konev 's command post in Dresden , and from there sent immediately to Moscow. Vlasov was confined in Lubyanka prison where he was interrogated. A secret trial was held, beginning on 30 July 1946 and was presided over by Viktor Abakumov who sentenced him and eleven other senior officers from his army to death for high treason. Vlasov

2369-605: The 54th Army of the Leningrad Front ) failed to exploit Vlasov's advances and provide the required support, and Vlasov's army became stranded. Permission to retreat was refused. With the counter-offensive in May 1942, the Second Shock Army was finally allowed to retreat, but by now, too weakened, it was surrounded and in June 1942 virtually annihilated during the final breakout at Myasnoi Bor. After Vlasov's army

2472-708: The Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia , proclaimed by the Prague Manifesto on 14 November 1944. Vlasov also hoped to create a Pan-Slavic liberation congress, but Nazi political officials would not permit it. The creation of a political movement behind Vlasov and the Russian collaboration became a result of the conflicts within the Nazi Party and the Nazi bureaucracy. While Hitler and

2575-617: The October Revolution , and to ideals of either a "Russia without Bolsheviks and Capitalists" (Smolensk Declaration and the open letter), or a welfare state ( Bloknot Propagandista ); the influence of the NTS on the Manifesto is seen in the description of the future system of Russia as a "national-labour" system, some of Vlasov's generals joined the NTS. All of these documents granted the basic democratic freedoms and rights, including

2678-740: The Oranienbaum Bridgehead to Narva . He was promoted to command of Army Group North on 31 March 1944. On 4 July 1944, he was relieved and transferred to the Reserve Army. On 1 February 1945, he was appointed to the command of all German troops in Denmark as the "Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces in Denmark". Germany surrendered unconditionally in northwest Germany, the Netherlands, and Denmark on 5 May 1945. Lindemann

2781-566: The White movement , described by him as a movement of conservative gentry, had remained distant from realities of the USSR and lacked "any progressive principles", ranging from apoliticism to reaction, and through seeking a "restoration of the old noble-landowning system" did nothing but legitimizing the Bolsheviks. The Vlasovites and the Whites had very different world views, partially because for

2884-527: The defense of Moscow , as his 20th Army counterattacked and retook Solnechnogorsk . Vlasov's picture was printed (along with those of other Soviet generals) in the newspaper Pravda as that of one of the "defenders of Moscow". Vlasov was decorated on January 24, 1942, with the Order of the Red Banner for his efforts in the defence of Moscow. Vlasov was ordered to relieve the ailing commander Klykov after

2987-593: The émigrés , and opponents of Nicolaevsky among oborontsy , the word from the vocabulary of the WWI to indicate the patriotic opposition to the Bolsheviks' defeatism, the supporters of the war effort of the USSR in the WWII, attacked the Vlasovites and Nicolaevsky: according to them, the democratic program was just a way to court the West in the face of Nazi defeat, that they were national traitors and mere "powerless pawns" in "organized and merciless destruction" of their own people,

3090-465: The "Liberation Movement of the Peoples of Russia", underlying its multinationality. Although at first Vlasov hoped for an open co-operation of his movement and the Nazis, during his tour at the occupied territories, he emphasised that the Russians, and that National Socialism could not be imposed on Russia, and that "a foreign coat [would] not fit a Russian." In his nationalist speeches, Vlasov promoted

3193-621: The 1990s and received a backlash as a "slander of the entire generation" "who had fought in the war". The opponents of such narratives, including the Communist Party of the Russian Federation created in 1993, started connecting the apology for Vlasov and the ROA with the chaos of the 1990s: economic collapse, dissolution of the Soviet Union and the First Chechen War , the rize of the organized crime, making Vlasov

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3296-487: The 99th the best of all". The historian John Erickson says of Vlasov at this point that [he] "was an up-and-coming man". In 1940, Vlasov was promoted to major general, and on June 22, 1941, when the Germans and their allies invaded the Soviet Union, Vlasov was commanding the 4th Mechanized Corps . As a lieutenant general, he commanded the 37th Army near Kiev and escaped encirclement. He then played an important role in

3399-640: The Church caused a scandal after the reunification of the Orthodox Church in Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. Solzhenitsyn's narrative became more or less convenient, since it did not deny the role of Victory and the Great Patriotic War and united it with criticism of Stalin and the understanding of Vlasov's tragedy which could be reintegrated into national history, making it more inclusive. Yet, it became debated in

3502-554: The Eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire of its indigenous Armenian populations that stands in continuity of a longer history of Anti-Armenian pogroms, Turkish official historiography denies the extent of state violence and sees in the events of 1915 merely a resettlement campaign ( tehcir ) provoked by hostilities of Armenian nationalist organizations backed by Tsarist Russia . In contrast to Turkish official historiography,

3605-483: The First Division, Bunyachenko and Vlasov gathered a meeting and discussed whether the First Division should help the insurgents. Vlasov spoke against joining the uprising, but his position was not supported by the others, and the First Division joined the uprising. Two days later, the First Division was forced to leave Prague as Communist Czech partisans began arresting ROA soldiers in order to hand them over to

3708-508: The German Parliament that "Remembrance gives us strength, since it helps to keep us from going astray." In similar, but somewhat opposing measure, Gerhard Schröder sought to move beyond this in saying the generation that committed such deeds has passed, and a new generation does not have the same fault because they simply weren't there to be responsible. Good examples for politics of memory could be seen in national monuments and

3811-652: The Kurdish political movement within Turkey widely recognizes the events as a genocide, though marginalizing the role of Kurdish complicity in the killings. The two sides in the conflict in Cyprus maintain widely divergent and contrasting memories of the events that split the island. The term selective memory is applied by psychologists to people suffering from head injuries who retain some memories, but have amnesia about others. Societal trauma, such as war, seems to have

3914-702: The Liberation of the Peoples of Russia became the political body of this movement, and its ideals were described in the Prague Manifesto of the Committee in November 1944. Robert Conquest wrote that Vlasov's "program shows that he was entirely out of sympathy with Nazism, and only concerned with a democratic Russia." As Vlasov became the undisputed leader of the movement, it became referred to as "the Vlasov Movement", while his Manifesto calls it

4017-591: The NTS was doomed: "no 'third force' could succeed because there was no viable third choice; neither of the titans would tolerate a power vacuum — nor the arrogation of power by a new, autonomous competitor." Most of these historians relied mostly on the Nazi documents and not the Soviet archives, partly because the latter were unaccessible. A new narrative was constructed in the 1970s and emerged in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 's book The GULAG Archipelago : while not directly advocating collaboration, he and

4120-600: The Nazis managed to secure his image for the further generations, but "his intentionally murky beliefs make him a convenient straw man to suit cultural and political agendas. Based on the documents, he can be framed as an anti-Bolshevist crusader, Russian patriot, misunderstood democrat, martyred hero, and fascist puppet. Eighty years on, he still defies categorization." Shapiro believed that Vlasov's motivations were complex and laid between opportunism and ideological opposition; she believes moral relativism and "historical consciousness" to be among his most important qualities. After

4223-564: The Peoples of Russia and the creation of its Manifesto, the political organization of the Vlasovites, Zykov was a major ideologue of the Vlasov army and participated in writing of the other Vlasovite program documents. The Vlasovites opposed their programs, the Smolensk Declaration, Vlasov's open letter "Why I Decided to Fight against Bolshevism", the Prague Manifesto of the KONR and Bloknot Propagandista (an important document which

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4326-485: The Putin regime; however, it was not until 2022 when it received significant attention. Throughout the 2000s, the state-sponsored narratives of the WWII villainized Vlasov again whenever his figure appeared in public discourse, although the latter did not happen often. In the 2010s, the debates over Vlasov moved to historiography, and Kirill Aleksandrov was stripped of his PhD by the Ministry of Education in 2016 after writing

4429-540: The ROA against the Red Army took place on February 11, 1945, on the river Oder ; it was carried by the First Division led by General Sergei Bunyachenko . After three days of battle against overwhelming forces, the First Division of the ROA was forced to retreat and marched southward to Prague , in German-controlled Bohemia . In March 1945, Bunyachenko started disobeying the commands of

4532-660: The Red Army, which made them disillusioned with the leadership of Stalin and motivated them to defect to the Nazis. Alexandrov's work was reported to the FSB by Russian and Soviet nationalists as "inciting hatred" but his university, regardless of the political pressure, voted in favor of its scientific value. Vlasov was taken to Berlin under the control of the Wehrmacht Propaganda Department . While there, he and other Soviet officers began drafting plans for

4635-541: The Russian prisoners of war , explaining to them that their government had declared them all traitors, and that escaping was pointless. As Vlasov proclaimed, even if the Soviets succeeded, Stalin would send them to Siberia . Only in September 1944 did Germany, at the urging of Heinrich Himmler , initially a virulent opponent of Vlasov, finally permit Vlasov to raise his Russian Liberation Army . Vlasov formed and chaired

4738-405: The Russian Federation's military prosecutor for a review of Vlasov's case, saying that "Vlasov was a patriot who spent much time re-evaluating his service in the Red Army and the essence of Stalin's regime before agreeing to collaborate with the Germans". The military prosecutor concluded that the law of rehabilitation of victims of political repressions did not apply to Vlasov and refused to consider

4841-427: The Second Shock Army had been encircled. After this success, Vlasov was put in command of the 2nd Shock Army of the Volkhov Front and ordered to lead the attempt to lift the Siege of Leningrad —the Lyuban-Chudovo Offensive Operation of January–April 1942. On January 7, 1942, Vlasov's army had spearheaded the Lyuban offensive operation to break the Leningrad encirclement . Planned as a combined operation between

4944-418: The Socialist émigrés accused Vlasovites of Nazism, and both claims were dangerous since the FBI had been closely monitoring both of the factions. More to it, the SBONR in their responses made nationalist and allegedly antisemitic dog whistles , since they never mentioned the Jewish origins of their opponents, but contrasted the "Russian people" with the American exiles who "long ago forgotten how to understand"

5047-435: The Socialist émigrés dismissed Nicolaevsky and his narrative. While Benjamin Tromly and other authors believe the description of the ROA as a somewhat revolutionary movement of ideological protest against Stalinism which conflicted with the Nazis to be largely constructed by the Vlasovites themselves, this claim is rather inaccurate, since the theme of the ROA was explored in the works of several Western historians: along with

5150-401: The Socialist émigrés , including Nicolaevsky, only as powerful representatives of American power. However, the Vlasovites did not have a necessity to present themselves left-wing democrats, since the CIA did not scruple to fund the openly far-right collaborators from the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations , like the Belarusian Central Council . Nicolaevsky's narrative resulted in a polemics among

5253-460: The Soviet Union's Great Victory of 1945 and self-appointed defender of the war's memory." According to Tromly, the Russian state avoids the mentions of ethnic Russian collaboration and views "reviving a positive memory of Vlasov" as an "instrument of information war" against itself. The attention to Vlasov increased after the Russian invasion of Ukraine: McGlynn notes that "written references to Vlasovites have increased to levels that usually accompany

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5356-424: The Soviet defectors for propaganda purposes. As the reports of the Osstruppen defecting the Soviet partisans reached Hitler, he demanded that all the units be disbanded, and the men sent to the mines and factories, but this order wasn't executed due to the resistance of the OKW . After the 20 July plot, the Eastern troops were handed to the SS, and as Hitler weakened due to physical conditions, Himmler found possible

5459-404: The Soviet population more successfully than could the Germans. But as a leader with a will and a following, he and his movement could also develop a dynamic of their own and — precisely because they might be successful — could become potentially distinct from or even hostile to the interests of the German leadership." Dallin also wrote that the idea of the "third force" promoted by the Vlasovites and

5562-427: The Soviets for execution. Vlasov and the rest of his forces, trying to evade the Red Army, attempted to head west to surrender to the Allies in the closing days of the war in Europe. Vlasov's division, commanded by General Sergei Bunyachenko , was captured 40 kilometres (25 mi) southeast of Plzeň by the Soviet 25th Tank Corps , after their attempt to surrender to US troops was rejected. Captain M. I. Yakushev of

5665-477: The State analyses the effects of various actors, such as the government, the Russian Orthodox Church , cultural figures, and radical thinkers, such as Aleksandr Dugin , on Russian memory politics, and its usage in legitimizing the government and discrediting the opposition. According to historian Georgiy Kasianov , the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory from 2015 was under control of Ukrainian nationalist forces. Croatian researcher Snježana Koren analyzed

5768-569: The Struggle Against Bolshevism ". Even though no Russian Liberation Army yet existed, the Nazi propaganda department issued Russian Liberation Army patches to Russian volunteers and tried to use Vlasov's name in order to encourage defections. Several hundred thousand former Soviet citizens served in the German army wearing this patch, but never under Vlasov's own command. Vlasov was permitted to make several trips to German-occupied Soviet Union: most notably, to Pskov , Russia, where Russian pro-German volunteers paraded. The populace's reception of Vlasov

5871-484: The Tsarist period" and alleged that the Soviets, not the collaborators, were the real national traitors. Such ideas were not popular among the majority of the surviving Vlasovites, but for a few years the Whites became their new leaders and even established Monarchist Vlasovite organizations, since they were naturalized citizens of European states and had more chances of surviving, also because of "aristocratic cohesion" and such benefits as knowledge of foreign languages, while

5974-507: The USSR". However, in the emigration and later in the Post-Soviet Russia, he and his movement became objects of various narratives. The first narrative in the emigration was set up by the former White Guards who served in the ROA or supported Vlasov, although they were a minority in the ROA and had conflicts with the Vlasovites, since the Whites were suspicious of the former Soviet soldiers and sometimes called them "Reds", while Vasily Malyshkin , one of Vlasov's closest associates, charged that

6077-440: The Vlasovites were in danger of Operation Keelhaul , forced repatriation to the USSR carried out by the U.S. with the subsequential punishment for treason; the Whites attempted to unite the whole emigration and get funding by the CIA, and the latter could help Vlasovites survive. However, the Whites failed to get the attention of the CIA, and their narrative was soon rejected. However, it would reemerge in post-Soviet Russia. To get

6180-511: The Volkhov and Leningrad Fronts on a 30 km frontage, other armies of the Leningrad Front (including the 54th) were supposed to participate at scheduled intervals in this operation. Crossing the Volkhov River , Vlasov's army was successful in breaking through the German 18th Army 's lines and penetrated 70–74 km deep inside the German rear area. However, the other armies (the Volkhov Front's 4th , 52nd , and 59th Armies , 13th Cavalry Corps, and 4th and 6th Guards Rifle Corps , as well as

6283-425: The WWII became "a double sacrifice. This is the idea that the Soviet people, now increasingly perceived as the Russian people, won the war against Nazism despite the brutality and incompetence of the Soviet state. In this context, Vlasov's sacrifice is entirely appropriate." With all these narratives given, Benjamin Tromly calls Vlasov an "empty signifier". Julia Shapiro writes that Vlasov during his collaboration with

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6386-409: The Wehrmacht; eventually Ferdinand Schörner (and later Rudolf Toussaint ) threatened to use armed force against the ROA. Vlasov reprimanded Bunyachenko during their meeting with Schörner in assertion of his loyalty, but privately granted Bunyachenko complete independence in sign of his approval while himself taking care of the rest two incomplete divisions. During the Prague uprising, the officers of

6489-407: The Whites struggle against the USSR and collaboration with the Nazis was not a means of survival, partially because the Vlasovites who were grown on the Soviet culture saw conservatism of the Whites as backward-looking and irrelevant, and Malyshkin suggested that the conflict between the Whites and the Vlasovites was rooted in different social backgrounds and class origins and worldviews. However, after

6592-439: The battleship Bismarck . In 1936, Lindemann was promoted to Generalmajor and given command of the 36th Infantry Division which took part in the Invasion of France . Lindemann was promoted to full General and given command of the L Army Corps . In June 1941, at the launch of Operation Barbarossa , Lindemann's Corps was a part of Army Group North . Lindemann commanded the corps during the advance towards Leningrad . His unit

6695-468: The camp, but was dissuaded by his associates, namely Malyshkin and Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt . Ideologically, the Vlasov movement was between the Russian nationalism of the National Alliance of Russian Solidarists , an organisation of far-right origins which collaborated with the Nazis but the members of which were repressed by Gestapo in 1943-1944 (so Vlasov had to ask Himmler to free them), as its ideologues surrounded Vlasov, and social democratic views of

6798-401: The case again. However, Vlasov's Article 58 conviction for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda was vacated. A memorial dedicated to General Vlasov was erected at the Novo-Diveevo Russian Orthodox convent and cemetery in Nanuet , New York , US. Twice annually, on the anniversary of Vlasov's execution and on the Sunday following Orthodox Easter , a memorial service is held for Vlasov and

6901-509: The context in which Vlasov troops were recruited, the émigrés employed in Nazi security agencies, and the deep internal hostilities within the KONR's ranks", as well as the war crimes committed by the soldiers of the ROA. This theme was also explored by Dallin who wrote that "Vlasov was no puppet: therein lay, from the German point of view, both his potential value and his challenge. A relatively 'autonomous' figure, as yet untarnished by association with German abuses and atrocities, he could appeal to

7004-411: The creation of a Russian provisional government and the recruitment of a Russian army of liberation under Russian command. In the spring of 1943, Vlasov wrote an anti-Bolshevik leaflet known as the "Smolensk Proclamation", which was dropped from aircraft by the millions on Soviet forces and Soviet-controlled soil. In March of the same year, Vlasov also published an open letter titled " Why I Have Taken Up

7107-478: The creation of a collaborationist political organisation with its army. As he defected, Vlasov became the leading figure of the so-called "Russian Liberation Movement", the main goal of which was the overthrow of Stalinism with the aid of the Nazis; the ROA was thought to be the armed force of the movement. Although the White emigres participated in its formation, the Soviet defectors eventually became its leaders and formulated its political ideals. The Committee for

7210-441: The discourses surrounding their construction. The construction of a Holocaust memorial in memory of the murdered Jews of Europe at a central location in Berlin was met with protests but also with strong support. Likewise the National Memorial to the Victims of War and Tyranny was deemed inappropriate by some onlookers and a discussion revolved around the question whether the lack of a differentiation between victims and perpetrators

7313-407: The figure of Vlasov gains a political value in contemporary Russia. The positive attitude towards Vlasov became visible in the late 1980s, but the majority of Russian society is negative towards collaboration, although there is still no unity on this question. The fall of the Soviet Union did not lead to immediate popularisation of Vlasov among the emerging far-right nationalists, since they preferred

7416-556: The first; later they compromised themselves more with "historical apologies for restoration and reaction", therefore making Nicolaevsky's narrative unable to be adopted as universal, since one of their publications called Kerensky a traitor for preventing the Kornilov coup in 1917. However, after the polemic Nicolaevsky continued his publications about the biographies of the Vlasovite leaders and did not change his opinion, and not all

7519-511: The forces of the Russian Liberation Army . Books: Documentaries: Memory politics Politics of memory is the organisation of collective memory by political agents ; the political means by which events are remembered and recorded, or discarded. Eventually, politics of memory may determine the way history is written and passed on, hence the terms history politics or politics of history . The politics of history

7622-464: The grounds of the ROA, but he saw Vlasov's political career as an overcoming of opportunism and "inertness", although he failed to "overcome" "Bolshevism"; Catherine Andreev agreed with Fischer's last point, but criticized the other two. More to it, Tromly believes that the works of Catherine Andreev and Kirill Aleksandrov  [ ru ] keep the "essential contours" of Nicolaevsky's narrative, and that Andreev "bypasses controversial questions about

7725-599: The history politics in Yugoslavia by analyzing teaching of history at school during 1945-1960, an immediate aftermath of World War II . She traced both internal and external influences on the state's politics of history, in particular how it was affected by the affiliation with the Soviet Union and the subsequent Soviet-Yugoslav split . She also analyzed the differences in the narratives in different Yugoslav republics. Spatial markers of memory such as monuments play

7828-573: The idea of equal partnership with Germany and the idea of an independent Russia; his speeches angered Himmler, and in response, Wilhelm Keitel issued an order that Vlasov must be returned to POW camp and that his name henceforth should be used only for propaganda purposes. Rosenberg stopped supporting Vlasov, but he was placed under virtual house arrest in Dahlem instead of being sent to the POW camp. Disappointed, Vlasov said several times that he would return to

7931-459: The ideals of Pan-Slavism and an Empire to a separatist nation-state. A major liberal politician during the fall of the USSR and the mayor of Moscow Gavriil Popov wrote a complimentary book about Vlasov, but was not supported. In the 2000s various nationalist organizations which associated themselves with the White movement campaigned for rehabilitation of Vlasov; the support for the White narrative in

8034-467: The interest of the U.S. military intelligence, the post-war Vlasovites stressed the anti-Communist nature of their movement. However, the new narrative was left-wing, being constructed by the Menshevik intellectual and historian Boris Nicolaevsky , who after visiting DP camps came to a belief that the Vlasov Movement was democratic and even anti-Nazi to some extent. His narrative was somewhat closer to

8137-554: The island reflects deep roots in the " motherlands " of the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot peoples. In Germany, the term "politics of history"/"history politics" ( Geschichtspolitik ) was propounded by German historian Christian Meier in 1986 during the Historikerstreit discussion on how to memorialise Nazi Germany and World War II . Speeches by politicians often deal with issues of how to memorialize

8240-469: The later authors labelled Vlasov as "the symbol of the suffering Russian people" and its "victimhood" throughout the 20th century. Solzhenitsyn described the Vlasovite prisoners met by him in GULAG camps and wrote that "it's not the Vlasovites who betrayed Russia - it's the Soviet state which betrayed these soldiers", since "Stalin sacrificed armies meaninglessly. He had treated prisoners of war as traitors", and

8343-490: The movement being "not National Socialist": "It is significant that it does not fight Jewry, that the Jewish Question is not recognized as such at all"; instead it presented "a watered-down infusion of liberal and Bolshevik ideologies", and Taubert described the concern with "strong Anglophile sympathies" and it "toying with the idea of a possible change of course" while not "feel[ing] bound to Germany". Only combat of

8446-483: The ones edited by Zykov, often in form of articles reprinted from the Völkischer Beobachter with the citation of the source. The program documents were also written as a compromise with Nazism to various extents: the Smolensk Declaration included some pro-Nazi points ("Germany was not fighting the war against the Russian people and their homeland but merely against Bolshevism"), and the Manifesto included

8549-406: The other Russian POWs in Germany; some of Vlasov's close associates like Milety Zykov  [ ru ] , a Soviet journalist of Jewish origins, described themselves as Marxists , Zykov was also described as a Bukharinist . Despite being captured by the Nazi secret police and killed, ostensibly for his Jewish origins and for his views, before the formation of the Committee for the Liberation of

8652-466: The past. Richard von Weizsäcker as Bundespräsident identified two modes of memorializing the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945 in his famous 1985 speech: this date can be seen as defeat or liberation. Weizsäcker backed the latter interpretation . In this regard, such moments as the first official "Day of Commemoration for Victims of National Socialism", on January 20, 1996, led to Bundespräsident Roman Herzog remarking in his address to

8755-539: The presidential elections, during which the Ukrainian units of Russian citizens launched an incursion into Russia : he labelled as "Vlasovites" these units, reminded how the Vlasovites were executed, and ordered the FSB to track down every Russian citizen "fighting against Russia": "We will punish them without a statute of limitations, wherever they are." In 2001, a Russian organization "For Faith and Fatherland" applied to

8858-625: The reactionary Tsarist and later imperialist bourgeois government with a revolutionary civil war; Nikolaevsky drew a parallel between Vlasov and Leninists and thought the first to be influenced by the latter, believing that Vlasov's motivation was to begin a similar civil war. The Vlasovites embraced Nicolaevsky's narrative, and he would help them to operate through the CIA-supported AMCOMLIB , however, Roman Gul believed that they were insincere and saw Nicolaevsky only as "a direct and CLEAN entry to Washington" and were interested in

8961-458: The release of a popular new book on the subject." Some of them are related to the Ukrainian units of Russian citizens, like the Freedom of Russia Legion , while prominent nationalist figures have branded Russians fleeing mobilization as Vlasovite deserters, and some media reminded of the connection between Vlasovites and Banderites; after criticizing the war, the journalist Dmitry Kolezev received

9064-538: The removal of a Soviet era statue from the capital evoked strong reaction from Russia. W. G. Sebald underlines German amnesia surrounding the Allied carpet bombings of 131 German cities and towns which turned many German cities into vast necropolises , and resulted in an estimated 600,000 primarily civilian deaths, with millions of internal refugees. Milan Kundera 's opening story in the Book of Laughter and Forgetting

9167-467: The right of the nations to self-determination and to separate from Russia and did not contain antisemitic remarks and invectives; Bloknot Propagandista also contained an attempt in critique of Marxism and denied both internationalism and national chauvinism. However, antisemitic remarks were made in one of the speeches of Vasily Malyshkin in 1943 and in and in Georgi Zhilenkov 's interview to

9270-590: The southern theatre in Ukraine , the Caucasus , and the Crimea during the Russian Civil War . He distinguished himself as an officer and gradually rose through the ranks of the Red Army. Vlasov joined the Communist Party in 1930. Sent to China, he acted as a military adviser to Chiang Kai-shek from 1938 to November 1939. From February to May 1939 he was the advisor to Yan Xishan , the governor of Shanxi . Vlasov

9373-416: The sovietologist Eugene Lyons , the chairman of the AMCOMLIB whose attitute towards the Vlasovites was ambivalent, who also believed the ROA to be influenced with Lenin's revolutionary defeatism , the historians Jurgen Thorwald and Joachim Hoffmann also contributed to the theme; the historian George Fischer, on the contrary, believed the "inertness" and opportunism caused by Stalinist totalitarianism to be

9476-439: The state level when in 2015 it was announced that the works had started on the "Strategy of Polish Political Policy" ("Strategia Polskiej Polityki Historycznej"). President Andrzej Duda announced that "carrying out the historical policy is one of the most important activities of the president". The history in Russia has been highly politicized since the times of the Soviet Union . in the 2000s Vladimir Putin's regime undertook

9579-618: The supporters of the Generalplan Ost adhered to the idea of the colonization of the Untermenschen and denied any cooperation with the population of the USSR, Alfred Rosenberg proposed the creation of monoethnic nation-states as satellites of the Third Reich ruled by local nationalist collaborators. Hitler rejected this project, but the Soviet defectors were used by Wehrmacht Propaganda . Eventually Hitler agreed to use

9682-536: The truth, as he, unlike the Whites, could cite Vlasovite documents, like the Prague Manifesto of the KONR. However, it was incomplete and still had some factual errors. Nikolaevsky described the Vlasovites with the word porazhentsy , "defeatists", the word used by the Bolsheviks during the World War II towards themselves, as they campaigned against the war efforts of the Russian Empire and for overthrow of

9785-494: The usage of the word "banderite" became popular in propaganda, and the Russian media and politicians were eager to remind of collaborators of other nationalities, Tatars and Chechens, but avoided Vlasov and the ROA: McGlynn noted that in an analysis of 3,509 comparisons between the 2014 conflict and WWII, Vlasov was mentioned just once, as a reminder of Russian collaboration could "besmirch Russia's moral authority as an heir to

9888-484: The war, the Whites who participated in the Vlasov Movement sought to connect it with their cause: for example, Constantine Kromiadi wrote that the Vlasov Movement was a part of the "Christian war of the 30 years of the liberation movement against communism"; the White rightists sought to "offset the opprobrium of collaboration with Germany by viewing World War Two through the prism of the Russian Civil War and

9991-506: Was also the chief of staff to the head of the Soviet military mission, General Aleksandr Cherepanov . Upon his return, Vlasov served in several assignments before being given command of the 99th Rifle Division . After just nine months under Vlasov's leadership, and an inspection by Semyon Timoshenko , the division was recognized as one of the best divisions in the Army in 1940. Timoshenko presented Vlasov with an inscribed gold watch, as he "found

10094-534: Was briefly shifted to the command of Army Group Centre during the Battle of Smolensk . Lindemann's corps was then shifted back to Army Group North. On 16 January 1942, Lindemann took the command of the 18th Army , a part of Army Group North . In the summer of 1942, he was promoted to Generaloberst . Lindemann commanded the 18th Army throughout the campaigns around Leningrad and during the January 1944 retreat from

10197-566: Was designated as an extremist material; the professional historians who joined the attacks compared the dissertation with "blackening of our history" by foreigners. After the Annexation of Crimea and the beginning of the War in Donbas in 2014 Putin called the Ukrainian authorities "Banderites", and Kremlin-affiliated media and politicians alike framed the fighting as a rerun of the Second World War;

10300-422: Was executed by hanging on 1 August 1946. His execution was among the last death sentences in the Soviet Union carried out by hanging, after which executions were conducted only by shooting . In the USSR, the figure of Vlasov was villainized because of the need to defend the official myth of the Great Patriotic War "which was created and assiduously supported as a pillar of state legitimacy and national culture in

10403-626: Was mixed. While in Pskov, Vlasov dealt himself a nearly fatal political blow by referring to the Germans as mere "guests" during a speech, which Hitler found belittling. Vlasov was even put under house arrest and threatened with being handed over to the Gestapo . Despondent about his mission, Vlasov threatened to resign and return to the POW camp, but was dissuaded at the last minute by his confidants. According to Varlam Shalamov and his tale The Last Battle of Major Pugachov , Vlasov emissaries lectured to

10506-593: Was surrounded, he himself was offered an escape by aeroplane. The general refused and hid in German-occupied territory; ten days later, on July 12, 1942, a local farmer exposed him to the Germans. Vlasov's opponent and captor, general Georg Lindemann , interrogated him about the surrounding of his army and details of battles, then "had Vlasov imprisoned in occupied Vinnytsia ." While in prison, Vlasov met Captain Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt ,

10609-592: Was written by rather minor members of the KONR as open for discussion and was not recognized as an official program), both to the Western capitalism and Stalinism, which was called by the word "Bolshevism" and described in the Manifesto not as socialism , but as " state capitalism ", and proclaimed their devotion to "completing the Revolution" of 1917 without distinguishing the February Revolution and

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