Russian collaborators. Russian Collaborationism During World War II: Myths and Realities

Today's slaves are tomorrow's traitors.
Napoleon Bonaparte

Not only in Ukraine or the Baltic States, but also in Leningrad,
Pskov, Novgorod regions population
welcomed the invaders.
J. Kaunator

... In the first months of the war, when German troops marched along
recently “liberated” territories, there were episodes
when the population welcomed the invaders.
From Wikipedia

During and after World War II, Stalin initiated the total deportation of ten peoples Soviet Union who were indiscriminately accused of collaborating with Nazi Germany(Germans, Koreans, Finns-Ingrian, Karachais, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks), and in total during the war years peoples and population groups of 61 nationalities were subjected to forced resettlement. At that time, about 3 million people were subjected to Stalin's ethnic "cleansings", or more precisely, ethnic genocide.

Mass deportations were carried out at the cost of inhuman suffering and hundreds of thousands human lives. Stalin's hatred for some peoples of the USSR is saturated with the directive on the demobilization of their representatives and resettlement in the "bear corners" of the country. Among those who were indiscriminately accused without trial or investigation were not only military personnel awarded orders and medals, but even several Heroes of the Soviet Union. At the same time, it was completely silent that the real, and not fictional collaborators, consisted mainly of Russians and that 75% of the foreign Wehrmacht legionnaires recruited from the conquered countries were “Soviet”. Their total number approached one and a half million (!) people who passed through 800 (!) army battalions and other fascist military and civilian structures. Naturally, these were not only Russians: the collaborators reflected the multinational composition of the USSR, but the Russians dominated among the traitors. According to Vadim Petrovich Makhno, captain of the first rank, who served for several decades in the Black Sea Fleet of the USSR, about 10 divisions in the SS alone were staffed by "eastern volunteers", in which up to 150 thousand former Soviet citizens served. In fact, there were even more SS units manned by Russians.

Constantly reproaching their neighbors for fascism and for the formation of SS divisions during the Second World War, the Russians bashfully forget that the lion's share of the SS units in the occupied territories was manned by Russian soldiers. Unlike the Latvians, Estonians and Ukrainians, who were recruited from strength to one division, there were more than a dozen Russian units and formations of the SS:

Volunteer Regiment of the SS "Varyag".
- 1st Russian National SS Brigade "Druzhina".
- 15th Cossack Cavalry Corps of the SS.
- 29th SS Grenadier Division "RONA" (1st Russian).
- 30th SS Grenadier Division (2nd Russian).
- 36th SS Grenadier Division "Dirlewanger".

CORPS OF THE SS TROOPS OF THE MAIN OPERATIONAL DEPARTMENT OF THE SS FHA-SS
- 15th Cossack Russian Corps of the SS FHA-SS - 3 divisions, 16 regiments.
- SS FHA-SS (TROOPS-SS)
- 29th Russian FHA-SS - 6 regiments.
- 30th Russian FHA-SS, 1st formation, 1944, - 5 regiments.

BRIGADS OF THE MAIN DEPARTMENT OF THE IMPERIAL SECURITY OF THE SS RSHA-SS
- 1st Russian National SS Brigade "Druzhina" - 3 regiments, 12 battalions.
- 1st Guards Brigade ROA "Sonderkommando 113" SD - 1 battalion, 2 companies.
- SS brigade "Center for anti-Bolshevik struggle" (CPBB) - 3 battalions.
- Reconnaissance and sabotage unit of the Main Team "Russia - Center" of the Sonderstaff "Zeppelin" of the RSHA-SS - 4 special forces.

The figure of 1.5 million accomplices of fascism is comparable only with the total number of mobilized citizens of Hitler's allies (Italy, Spain, Hungary, Romania, Finland, Croatia, Slovakia) - about 2 million people. For comparison, I will indicate the number of mobilized in other countries conquered by Hitler: Denmark - less than 5 thousand, France - less than 10 thousand, Poland - 20 thousand, Belgium - 38 thousand military personnel ...

In addition to the total (total) number of traitors-accomplices from the USSR, the German archives preserved accurate data on the number of those mobilized by the Germans into the army from the territory of the USSR: the RSFSR - 800 thousand, Ukraine - 250 thousand, Belarus - 47 thousand, Latvia - 88 thousand ., Estonia - 69 thousand, Lithuania - 20 thousand military personnel. Among the collaborators were also Cossacks - 70 thousand, representatives of the peoples of Transcaucasia and Central Asia - 180 thousand, representatives of the peoples of the North Caucasus - 30 thousand, Georgians - 20 thousand, Armenians - 18 thousand, Azerbaijanis - 35 thousand, Volga Tatars - 40 thousand, Crimean Tatars - 17 thousand and Kalmyks - 5 thousand (It is curious that some Russian "truth-seeking analysts" willingly cite these figures, embarrassingly excluding the RSFSR from the list ...)

Of the surviving 2.4 million Soviet prisoners (and the mortality among Soviet prisoners exceeded 60%), approximately 950 thousand entered the service in various anti-Soviet armed formations of the Wehrmacht. The following categories of Russians served in the local auxiliary forces of the German army:

1) voluntary helpers (hiwi);
2) order service (one);
3) front-line auxiliary units (noise);
4) police and defense teams (gema).

At the beginning of 1943, the Wehrmacht numbered: up to 400 thousand Khivs, from 60 to 70 thousand Odies, and 80 thousand in the eastern battalions. About 183 thousand people worked for railway in Kiev and Minsk, ensuring the movement of Nazi units and military cargo. To this should be added from 250 to 500 thousand prisoners of war who avoided repatriation to the USSR after the war (in total, more than 1.7 million people did not return to their homeland), as well as big number traitors who handed over captured commissars and Jews to the Nazi authorities. In June 1944, the total number of Khivs reached 800 thousand people.

This fact is noteworthy: when in 1943 Hitler demanded that Russian units be removed from the Eastern Front and transferred to the Western Front, the generals clutched their heads: it was impossible, because every fifth Eastern Front was then Russian.

The grandiose scale of betrayal during the Second World War (as well as the massive, multimillion-dollar, permanent emigration from Russia) for me are clear evidence of the “bloatness” and “bloatness” of Russian patriotism. In order to hide the grandiose scale of collaborationism, our historians bashfully write that "the maximum number of those who collaborated with the occupation authorities during the Second World War was in countries with the maximum population"...

That's not all: about 400 thousand former "Soviet" served as Nazi policemen and about 10% of the population of the occupied part of the USSR actively collaborated with the occupiers - I mean Wachmans, members of the "Aizatzgruppen", elders, burgomasters, Russian officials of the German administration, scammers, journalists and priests who worked for German propaganda ...

Taking into account the fact that there were 60-70 million people in the occupied territories, that is, about 40% of the population of the Soviet Union, even with 10% actively cooperating again, a multi-million figure is obtained ... I believe that this is a world record of mass betrayal in the history of all wars that mankind has ever waged. For example, about 5,000 Wachmans passed through the guard battalions of German concentration camps, who personally took part in the torture and massacres of concentration camp prisoners, as well as residents of the countries of Europe occupied by the Nazis. The “Eisatzgruppen” created by Heydrich, who hunted Jews and took a direct part in their executions (in fact, firing squads that killed about 2 million people), usually included about 10% of the local residents. In particular, all the inhabitants of the Belarusian Khatyn were shot or burned alive by the Eisatzkommando, which included 20% of the locals ... I can’t name the exact number of Russian prostitutes serving the Wehrmacht soldiers, but the brothel “relied” on the state for each German division.

To this it should be added that only in 1941 the Red Army suffered the following losses:
- 3.8 million people prisoners of war (against 9147 German soldiers and officers, that is, 415 times fewer Soviet prisoners of war!);
- more than 500 thousand killed and died from wounds in hospitals;
- 1.3 million wounded and sick.

In 1942, another 1653 thousand were added, in 1943 - 565 thousand, in 1944 - 147 thousand Soviet prisoners. Even in four months of victorious 1945, 34,000 servicemen managed to get captured. About 4.2 million died in captivity, and many exchanged captivity for service in collaborationist formations. The numbers are terrible.

Abandoned by officers, demoralized Soviet soldiers surrendered to the Nazis or hid from the enemy. In October 1941, the 1st Deputy Head of the Department of Special Departments of the NKVD S. Milshtein reported to the Minister of the NKVD Lavrentiy Beria: “... From the beginning of the war to October 10, 1941, 657.364 servicemen who had fallen behind and fled from the front were detained by special departments of the NKVD and detachments.” By the end of 1941, only 8% of the personnel remained in the army at the beginning of the war (June 22, 1941)

There is another factor carefully concealed by Soviet historians: the standard of living in the occupied territories was higher than in a country not occupied by the enemy... In any case, it did not come to food cards. Even more striking was the difference in allowances for the soldiers and officers of the Red Army and the Wehrmacht, which differed by at least an order of magnitude, and often more (for more details, see below).

In fact, high patriotism is possible when you feel your country, free, prosperous, in the end - just comfortable for life. When all this is not there, patriotism, whether we like it or not, invariably degenerates into "Russian marches", the Nashi "seliger", xenophobia, gloating over other people's failures, pitiful imitations of loyalty, ending in betrayal...

Professor Lev Simkin, Doctor of Law, wrote that many Russians believed that “there is hardly a worse Soviet power in the world - they did not evacuate for ideological reasons. 22 million citizens of the USSR collaborated with the occupiers.” And one more thing: “Nazism lay on prepared soil - the Soviet government managed to instill in people a firm belief in the existence of the enemy. They were not used to living without an enemy, and changing his image was a common thing. Propaganda changed its sign, if the communist stigmatized kulaks and "enemies of the people", then the Nazi propaganda - communists and Jews.

However, there were also deeper historical prerequisites for military collaborationism. Friedrich Engels, characterizing the Russian bureaucracy and officer corps in the serious analytical work "Army of Europe", prophetically wrote: "What is the lower class of officials in the Russian civil service, recruited from the children of the same officials, the same is the officers in the army: cunning, meanness attitudes, narrowly selfish behavior combined with superficial elementary education, making them even more disgusting; vain and greedy for gain, having sold themselves body and soul to the state, at the same time they themselves daily and hourly sell it in small things, if this can be in any way profitable for them ... This category of people, in civilian and military areas, mainly supports the enormous corruption that permeates all branches of the civil service in Russia.

I could reinforce the thought of Napoleon and Engels: it is difficult to demand patriotism from slaves, in whom the authorities of Russia have always tried to convert their own people. Yes, and the fear of the "masters" imposed on the people did little to promote love. L. Puzin is ironic: "The Russians have always fought badly, so they were forced to fight heroically." The reason why the Russians so often lost military campaigns (which Engels also writes about) is that deep down they were more afraid of their own than of enemies. However, they also won "heroically" not to a small extent out of fear of firing squads.

How many people even think about the fact that a flawed government gives rise not only to a flawed life, but also to mass hatred for such a life and for the country, which gives rise to it forever? Quite naturally, this is most evident in difficult periods of history. Although Russia has always boasted of its patriotism, the revolution and wars have shown its price - and not only in the form of grandiose, historically unparalleled collaborationism. Why is that? Because, my friend L. Puzin answers, that patriotic education is understood in Russia as the education of slaves who are ready to defend the interests of their masters without sparing their lives.

K. Bondarenko saw the roots of betrayal in the very depths of Russian history: collaborationism is elevated to the rank of dignity here, he wrote: comrades-in-arms of Batu in the last years of the life of the bloody khan, and, according to a common version, he was poisoned in the Horde, becoming a victim of a power struggle between Batu's heirs. Alexander's grandson, Ivan Daniilovich Kalita, Prince of Moscow, went down in history due to the fact that he himself decided to collect tribute for the Tatars, offering his services instead of the services of the Baskaks. “Thus, part of the tribute remained in Moscow, hiding from the khan, and this factor contributed to the strengthening of the Moscow principality,” historians are touched. At the same time, without pointing out one significant point: Kalita robbed his own people ...

As an example of the insight of the “classic”, it is enough to recall the mass violation of the oath of the Russian officers, who betrayed the tsar and Kerensky in turn. Moreover, it was the tsarist officers that formed the backbone of the leadership of the Red Army (Bonch-Bruevich, Budyonny, Tukhachevsky, Blucher, Krylenko, Dybenko, Antonov-Ovsienko, Muravyov, Govorov, Bagramyan, Kamenev, Shaposhnikov, Egorov, Kork, Karbyshev, Chernavin, Eideman, Uborevich , Altfater, Lebedev, Samoilo, Behrens, von Taube ...) - a total of 48.5 thousand tsarist officers, only 746 former lieutenant colonels, 980 colonels, 775 generals. In the decisive year 1919, they accounted for 53% of the entire command staff of the Red Army.

The Supreme Military Council of the Army, created by the Bolsheviks on March 4, 1918, included 86 tsarist officers in the rank from major and lieutenant colonel to general (10 people). Of the 46 members of the senior command staff of the Red Army as of May 1922, 78.3% were regular officers of the old tsarist army, of which 7 were former generals, 22 lieutenant colonels and colonels, 8.8% came from the Imperial Life Guards. According to A.G. Kavtardze, a total of about 30% of the pre-revolutionary officer corps tsarist Russia betrayed the former authorities and went to serve in the Red Army, which to a large extent contributed to the victory of the "Reds" in the Civil War. 185 generals of the General Staff of the Imperial Army later served in the corps of the General Staff of the Red Army, and this number does not include generals who held other positions in the Red Army. Most of the 185 were in the service of the Red Army voluntarily, and only six were mobilized. It was no coincidence that a saying arose then: the Red Army is like a radish - red on the outside and white on the inside.

(The Bolsheviks “thanked” the creators of the Red Army by the almost complete destruction of the pre-revolutionary officer corps. Of the total number of 276 thousand tsarist officers as of the autumn of 1917 and 48.5 thousand defectors by June 1941, there were hardly more than a few hundred in the army, and then, mainly - commanders from former ensigns and second lieutenants. In Leningrad alone, more than a thousand former military specialists were shot. Among them: divisional commander A. Svechin, P. Sytin - the former commander of the Southern Front, Yu. Gravitsky, A. Verkhovsky, A. Snesarev and others.In 1937, already in the infamous case of the "military", Marshal Tukhachevsky, Uborevich - the commander of the Belarusian Military District, Kork - the commissar of the Military Academy, the commander of the Leningrad Military District Iona Yakir, the chairman of the sovaviahim Eideman and others) were shot. In an interview, the writer Boris Vasiliev said: “On the eve of the war, Stalin shot all talented people to hell. And often captains commanded divisions.

It must be borne in mind that not only many Soviet ideologists of Marxism-Leninism had a criminal past, like Koba or Kamo, but also that the Red Army absorbed not only the white officers or the lower classes of society, but also its criminal dregs. Oleg Panfilov, in an article published in Novoye Vremya on March 17, 2016, vividly illustrates what has been said with numerous examples. Kotovsky, Vinnitsa, Makhno, and many others came to the Red Army from the "high road", so the Red Army robberies of the population, numerous pogroms, wild drunkenness of the soldiers and officers are not surprising. O. Panfilov writes: “Red commanders robbed the population, killed each other. The Soviet government carefully guarded this part of history, issuing propaganda of strange values about "heroes", "defenders of the motherland", "builders of a brighter future." Like O. Panfilov, I read many forbidden documents of the 1920s. It is difficult to convey the state when, with every sheet of documents, you realize the criminality of the Soviet government, the monstrous bloodthirstiness of those who directed them to a “bright future” ... So it is not at all surprising what kind of plant grew by the beginning of the war from the seeds sown by the revolution.

The mass betrayal in the process of creating the Red Army itself is widely known. The researcher of this issue, M. Bernshtam, wrote that “it was a denationalized and declassified human stratum, organized from prisoners of war and from the lumpen proletariat different countries, who was in Russia on earnings. so-called. "internationalists" (Hungarians, Austrians, Poles, Czechs, Finns, Latvians, Chinese, etc.) numbered about 300,000 fighters. As for its Russian part, Trotsky used forced mobilization with demonstrative executions of "deserters" and "hostages" (members of the families of military experts). So, under the threat of execution of relatives, it was possible to “force those who are its opponents to build communism,” Lenin explained Trotsky’s “effective” method (L. Trotsky “Stalin”).

Commander-in-Chief I.I. Vatsetis (who is also the commander of the Latvian division) wrote to Lenin: “Discipline in the Red Army is based on harsh punishments, commissars... The death penalty is practiced at the fronts so often and on all sorts of occasions and occasions that our discipline in the Red Army can be called, in the full sense of the word, bloody discipline" ("Memory", Paris, 1979, no. 2) .

All this together led to an unprecedented desertion of the Red Army: in 1919, 1 million 761 thousand deserters and 917 thousand evaders were detained (S. Olikov, Desertion in the Red Army and the fight against it. M., 1926) - at that time it was was half the strength of the entire Red Army!

By the way, lies and deceit were laid down in the Red Army from the very beginning - on the very day of its creation, on February 23, 1918. According to the official version, on this day the Red Guards won victories near Pskov and Narva over the regular troops of the Kaiser's Germany. In fact, on February 23, 1918, there was no victory over the Germans either. On the contrary, on February 24, the Germans occupied Pskov with the help of a bicycle platoon. The only "victory" of Trotsky's Red Guards was that they stormed a tank of alcohol during their retreat at one of the stations and drank like pigs.

On February 23, Lenin wrote the article “A Difficult But Necessary Lesson” with the following words: “Under Narva, entire regiments and battalions fled, leaving their positions.”

February 23 - a terrible and shameful day in military history Russia, because on that day the Small Council of People's Commissars decided to accept the conditions of the Brest Peace. In fact, this is the day of the capitulation of Russia, because the Germans almost without a fight approached Pskov and could easily move on Petrograd. And it was this defeat that became the last argument in Lenin's acceptance of the conditions of the Brest Peace, that is, the surrender of Russia in the First World War. Justifying the need for a shameful peace, Lenin wrote in Pravda on February 25:

“The week of February 18–24, 1918, the week of the German military offensive, was a bitter, insulting, difficult, but necessary lesson ... Painfully shameful reports about the refusal of the regiments to maintain positions, about the refusal to defend even the Narva line, about the failure to comply with the order to destroy everything and everything when retreating; not to mention flight, chaos, armlessness, helplessness, slovenliness... There is no army in the Soviet Republic.” (Lenin, PSS, T. 35).

Mass betrayal was repeated after 1991, when many officers and generals of state security, called upon to protect the "socialist fatherland" and the "great principles of communism", with extraordinary ease went into the service of the emerging capitalist class or joined the criminals. Is it any wonder after that that Russian officers sold arms to Chechen terrorists en masse? Anna Politkovskaya was dealt with precisely for exposing these betrayals, and in the Putin era, extrajudicial showdowns became a method of state policy.

The former KGB agent has a resourcefulness worthy of Machiavelli, writes Gianni Riotta in the newspaper La Stampa. But, it seems to me, resourcefulness is still inferior to the main driving force- selfishness. In general, communism has developed this quality to the extent of universal genetic hunger: in all post-Soviet godfathers, this quality of national bandocracy dominates over all the others. I would not be surprised by the information that the current leaders were bought up or recruited in the bud in their youth, which A. Illarionov transparently hints at in an article on Ekho Moskvy devoted to the secret springs of pardoning M. Khodorkovsky.

The military writer V. Beshanov, who served as a naval officer, testifies that in 1989, when his warship sailed through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, a vigilance watch consisting of political workers and officers was set up on deck, and the sailors were driven under deck. For what? They were afraid that they would run away to caprai, in other words, they would desert ... Perhaps they were subconsciously afraid, knowing the enormous scale of desertion during the war of 1941-1945.

Engels also has other prophecies on the “Russian” theme: “The Russian revolution is already ripe and will break out soon, but once it starts, it will carry the peasants along with it, and then you will see such scenes before which the scenes of 93 years will pale.” Reading this, I always think that time has always bypassed Russia.

There is a great deal of evidence for this. Here is just one of them. Having visited Russia, the French Marquis Astolfe de Custine wrote a sharply critical book
Nikolaev Russia. 1839". I will not quote it, but I will note that a hundred years later, US Ambassador to the USSR W.B. Smith (March 1946 - December 1948), after returning from the USSR, said about de Custine's book: “... Before us are political observations so insightful, so timeless, that the book can be called the best work ever written about the Soviet Union.

Until Stalin's death, the existence of Russian units of the Wehrmacht was hidden, and for the disclosure of this information, many people ended up in camps. Nowadays, the activities of the Russian Liberation People's Army (ROA) under the command of General Vlasov are relatively fully covered in the literature, but it is very reluctant to say that the ROA was only a small fraction of collaborators who went into the service of the Nazis. The fact that, moving east, the Germans everywhere encountered anti-Soviet partisan detachments operating in the Soviet rear, led by former officers of the Red Army, was also carefully concealed. The armed units of the collaborators partly arose spontaneously, and partly were recruited by the occupiers. By the way, about Vlasov. Molotov, in a fit of frankness, once said: “What Vlasov, Vlasov is nothing compared to what could be ...”

In order not to be unfounded, I will try as completely as possible, but far from exhaustive, to list the main collaborationist formations of Russians and Russian fascist parties:
- The Russian Liberation People's Army of the Wehrmacht (ROA), by the way, performed under the Russian tricolor, which became the banner of modern Russia. The ROA included 12 security corps, 13 divisions, 30 brigades;
- Fighting Union of Russian Nationalists (BSRN);
- RONA (Russian Liberation People's Army) - 5 regiments, 18 battalions;
- 1st Russian National Army (RNNA) - 3 regiments, 12 battalions.
- Russian National Army - 2 regiments, 12 battalions;
- Division "Russland";
- Cossack Stan;
- Congress for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (KONR);
- Armed Forces of the Congress for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (KONR) (1 army, 4 corps, 8 divisions, 8 brigades).
- Air Force KONR (KONR Aviation Corps) - 87 aircraft, 1 air group, 1 regiment;
- Lokot Republic;
- Detachment Zuev;
- Eastern battalions and companies;
- 15th Cossack Russian Corps of SS troops - 3 divisions, 16 regiments;
- 1st Sinegorsk Ataman Cossack Regiment;
- 1st Cossack division (Germany);
- 7th Volunteer Cossack Division;
- Military Cossack unit "Free Kuban";
- 448 Cossack detachment;
- 30th SS Grenadier Division (Second Russian);
- Brigade of General A.V.Turkul;
- Brigade "Graukopf" - "RNNA" General Ivanov - 1 regiment, 5 battalions;
- "Special Division" Russia "" of General Smyslovsky - 1 regiment, 12 battalions;
- 1st Russian National SS Brigade "Druzhina" (1st Russian National SS Detachment);
- Russian legion "White Cross" of the Wehrmacht - 4 battalions.
- Regiment "Varangian" Colonel M.A. Semenov;
- Higher German school for Russian officers;
- Dabendorf school ROA;
- Russian detachment of the 9th army of the Wehrmacht;
- SS Volunteer Regiment "Varyag";
- SS Volunteer Regiment "Desna";
- 1st Eastern Volunteer Regiment, consisting of two battalions - "Berezina" and "Dnepr" (from September -601 and 602nd Eastern battalions);
- Eastern battalion "Pripyat" (604th);
- 645th battalion;
- Separate regiment of Colonel Krzhizhanovsky;
- Volunteer Belgian Walloon Legion of the Wehrmacht;
- 5th assault brigade of the SS troops "Wallonia" with the SS Panzer Division "Viking";
- Brotherhood of "Russian Truth";
- Battalion Muraviev;
- Detachment of Nikolai Kozin;
- Russian volunteers in the Luftwaffe;
- Guards of the Russian fascist party;
- Corps of the Russian monarchist party;
- Russian Fascist Party;
- Russian National Labor Party;
- People's Socialist Party;
- Fighting union of Russian nationalists;
- Russian People's Labor Party;
- The political center of the fight against the Bolsheviks;
- Union of Russian activists;
- Russian People's Party of Realists;
- Organization Zeppelin;
- Hivi ("hilfsvillige" - "voluntary helpers").
- Russian personnel of the SS division "Charlemagne";
- Russian personnel of the SS division "Dirlewanger".

In addition, the 12th Reserve Corps of the Wehrmacht at various times included large formations of the Eastern troops, such as:

Cossack (Russian) security corps of 15 regiments;
- 162nd Ostlegion Training Division of 6 regiments;
- 740th Cossack (Russian) reserve brigade of 6 battalions;
- Cossack (Russian) Group of the Marching Ataman of 4 regiments;
- Cossack group of Colonel von Panwitz from 6 regiments;
- Consolidated Cossack (Russian) field police division "Von Schulenburg".

SECURITY CORPORATIONS OF THE ARMY REAR AREAS OF THE WEhrmacht
- 582nd security (Russian) corps of the Wehrmacht - 11 battalions.
- 583rd security (Estonian-Russian) corps of the Wehrmacht - 10 battalions.
- 584th security (Russian) corps of the Wehrmacht - 6 battalions.
- 590th security Cossack (Russian) corps of the Wehrmacht - 1 regiment, 4 battalions.
- 580th security Cossack (Russian) corps of the Wehrmacht - 1 regiment, 9 battalions.
- 532nd security (Russian) corps of the Wehrmacht - 13 battalions.
- 559th security (Russian) corps of the Wehrmacht - 7 battalions

"NATIVE" SECURITY CORPORATIONS AND SELF-DEFENSE
- Russian security corps of the Wehrmacht in Serbia - 1 brigade, 5 regiments.
- Russian "People's Guard" of the General Commissariat "Moscow" (Rear Area of the Army Group "Center") - 13 battalions, 1 cavalry division.
(RUSSIAN-CROATIAN)
- 15th Special Purpose Mountain Rifle Corps of the 2nd Tank Army: Russians - 1 security corps, 5 regiments, Croatian - 2 divisions, 6 regiments.
- 69th Special Purpose Corps of the 2nd Tank Army: Russian - 1 division, 8 regiments, Croatian - 1 division, 3 regiments.

Mention should also be made of the Asano Brigade - the Russian units of the Kwantung Army, and the Russian units of the Japanese and Manchurian special services of Manchukuo.

By the way, collaborators fought with the Red Army not only under the current flag of Russia, the tricolor, but were awarded St. George's crosses with the St. George ribbon, which became a sign of belonging to collaborationism.

The St. George ribbon itself arose as a symbol of the Cossacks, which in Russian Empire were police, gendarmerie special forces. St. George's crosses and a ribbon during the Second World War became symbols of merit to the Reich and Adolf Hitler.

As the Wehrmacht's casualties grew, and especially after Battle of Stalingrad 1942-1943, the mobilization of the local population has become even more widespread. In the front line, the Germans began to mobilize the entire male population, including adolescents and the elderly, who for one reason or another were not taken to work in Germany.

Here we must also bear in mind that the turning point in the course of the war led to significant changes in Nazi ideology. Hitler's doctrine of the "master race" began to be crowded by the concept of the New European Order, which was maturing in the depths of Nazi ideology. According to this concept, after the victory of Germany, the United European Reich will be formed, and the confederation will become the form of government. European nations with a single currency, administration, police and army, which should include European units, including Russian ones. In this new community there was a place for Russia, but only free from Bolshevism.

The Belgian collaborator, founder of the Rexist Party and commander of the 28th Volunteer SS Walloon Division Leon Degrelle insisted on changing the status of the SS troops and turning them from a purely German organization into a European one. He wrote: “From all parts of Europe, volunteers rushed to the aid of their German brothers. It was then that the third great Waffen SS was born. The first was German, the second - German, and now the European Waffen SS has become.

It is curious that the head of the Rosenberg Operational Headquarters Herbert Utikal adhered to a similar point of view, and one of the Nazis R. Proksch at the end of 1944 at a meeting of this headquarters said: “The hour of Europe has come. Therefore, we must admit that peoples differ from each other spiritually and physically… A mosaic of many possibilities… If the word “Europe” is pronounced, they all mean… The current war for Europe must be accompanied by new idea. In wars fought over ideological issues, the stronger ideas always win. This is the spiritual mission of the Reich. The goal is unity in diversity… the freedom of peoples in the unity of the continent.”

It is not my task to dwell in detail on both the gradual change in Nazi ideology, and on all the listed Russian pro-fascist military structures and Nazi collaborationist parties, so I will limit myself to the most significant of them.

Russian Liberation Army (ROA). The number of the ROA, formed mainly from Soviet prisoners of war, amounted to several hundred thousand people (and not 125 thousand, as follows from Soviet sources). About 800,000 people at various times wore the insignia of the ROA, but only a third of this number was recognized by the Vlasov leadership as belonging to their movement.

The ROA was headed by Lieutenant General Andrey Vlasov. The leadership of the ROA and later KONR (see below) also included former Russian ("red" and "white") generals F.F. Abramov, V.I. Angeleev, A.P. Arkhangelsky, V. Assberg, E.I. Balabin, V.F. Belogortsev, I. Blagoveshchensky, M.V. Bogdanov, S.K. Borodin, V.I. Boyarsky, S.K. Bunyachenko, N.N. Golovin, T.I. .M.Dragomirov, G.N.Zhilenkov, D.E.Zakutny, G.A.Zverev, I.N.Kononov, P.N.Krasnov, V.V.Kreyter, A.A. von Lampe, V.I. Maltsev, V.F. Malyshkin, M.A. Meandrov, V.G. Naumenko, G. von Pannwitz, B.S. G.V. Tatarkin, F.I. Trukhin, A.V. Turkul, M.M. Shapovalov, A.G. Shkuro, B.A. Shteyfon and others.

According to V. Makhno, in total, about 200 red and white Russian generals served the Nazis:
- 20 Soviet citizens became Russian fascist generals;
- 3 Lieutenant General Vlasov A.A., Trukhin F.N., Malyshkin V.F.;
- 1 divisional commissioner Zhilenkov G.N.;
- 6 Major Generals Zakutny D.E., Blagoveshchensky I.A., Bogdanov P.V., Budykhto A.E., Naumov A.Z., Salikhov B.B.;
- 3 brigade commander: Bessonov I.G., Bogdanov M.V.; Sevostyanov A.I;
Major General Bunyachenko - commander of the 600th division of the Wehrmacht (it is also the 1st division of the ROA SV KONR), former colonel, commander of the Red Army division.
Major General Maltsev - commander of the Air Force KONR, former director of the sanatorium "Aviator", formerly commander of the Air Force of the Siberian Military District, colonel in the reserve of the Red Army.
Major General Kononov - commander of the 3rd Consolidated Cossack Plastun Brigade of the 15th Cossack Cavalry Corps of the SS troops of the Main Operational Directorate of the SS (FHA-SS), former major, commander of the Red Army regiment.
Major General Zverev - commander of the 650th division of the Wehrmacht (it is also the 2nd division of the ROA Armed Forces of the KONR), a former colonel, commander of the Red Army division.
Major General Domanov - commander of the Cossack Security Corps of the Cossack Camp of the Main Directorate of the Cossack Troops of the Main Directorate of the SS (FA-SS), a former secret officer of the NKVD.
Major General Pavlov - marching ataman, commander of the Group of the Marching ataman of the GUKV.
Waffenbrigadenführer - Major General of the SS Troops Kaminsky B.S. - Commander of the 29th Grenadier Division of the SS "RONA" of the Main Operational Directorate of the SS, a former engineer.

On December 12, 1941, Lieutenant-General M.F. Lukin, under whose leadership the encircled Soviet troops detained the infantry units of the Center group for almost two weeks and thus, perhaps, saved Moscow, transmitted a proposal on behalf of the group of generals captured with him the German side to create a Russian counter-government, which would prove to the people and the army that it is possible to fight "against the hated Bolshevik system" without opposing the interests of their homeland. At the same time, Lukin told the German officers who interrogated him: “The people will face an unusual situation: the Russians sided with the so-called enemy, which means that going over to them is not treason to the Motherland, but only a departure from the system ... Even prominent Soviet figures will probably think about by this, perhaps even those who can still do something. After all, not all leaders are sworn adherents of communism.

The figure of Vlasov is also far from being as unambiguous as it is presented in post-war sources. During the Civil War, Vlasov, after completing a four-month command course from 1919 in command positions, participated in battles with whites on the Southern Front, then transferred to headquarters. At the end of 1920, the group in which Vlasov commanded cavalry and foot reconnaissance was transferred to eliminate the insurgent movement led by Nestor Makhno.

He graduated from the Frunze Military Academy. Stalin sent him to China on secret missions to Chiang Kai-shek. Only a small part of the senior Soviet officers survived the purges of the Red Army in 1936–38, but Vlasov was among those chosen. In 1941, Stalin appointed him commander of the Second Shock Army. By personal order of Stalin, he was entrusted with the defense of Moscow, and he played a significant role in the operations that stopped the Nazi advance on the capital. Together with six other generals, he was ranked among the "saviors" of the city, and in January 1942 Vlasov was awarded the Order of the Red Banner, but soon after that he was captured, and his army was almost completely destroyed while trying to repel the Nazi offensive in the Leningrad direction.

Vlasov was considered Stalin's favorite, and at the end of June 1942, he was very concerned about the fate of Vlasov and demanded that he be taken out of the encirclement on the Volkhov, rescued at any cost, the corresponding radiograms were preserved.

Having been captured, Vlasov during interrogations (August 1942) stated that Germany would not be able to defeat the Soviet Union - and this was at the moment when the Wehrmacht was approaching the Volga. Vlasov never connected his plans with Hitler's victory in the East. At first, he sincerely hoped that in the rear of the Germans he would be able to create a sufficiently strong and independent Russian army. Then he counted on the activity of the conspirators and hatched plans for a radical change in the occupation policy. Since the summer of 1943, Vlasov had pinned his hopes on the Western allies. With any outcome, as it seemed to Vlasov, options were possible - the main thing was to get their own significant armed force. But, as history has shown, there were no options.

Frankly developing his views in a narrow circle of German listeners, Vlasov emphasized that among Stalin's opponents there are many people "with a strong character, ready to give their lives for the liberation of Russia from Bolshevism, but rejecting German bondage." However, "they are ready to cooperate closely with the German people, without prejudice to their freedom and honor." “The Russian people lived, lives and will live, they will never become a colonial people,” the former captive general firmly stated. Vlasov also expressed the hope "for a healthy renewal of Russia and for an explosion of the national pride of the Russian people."

Both Russian and German sources agree that the ROA could have attracted at least 2,000,000 fighters out of a total of 5.5 million captured Red Army soldiers (!) If the Nazis had not put sticks in the wheels and interfered with the work of their own hands.

At first, the first detachments of the ROA were sent mainly to fight against the special troops of the NKVD operating in the German rear. The idea of uniting disparate Russian formations into an anti-Soviet Russian army took hold in the summer of 1942. Vlasov, who enjoyed such high favor with the Kremlin to such an extent that allied intelligence officials at first refused to believe the information about his cooperation with the enemy and considered it a propaganda trick of the enemy, became her guide and inspirer.

At the end of June 1942, Vlasov addressed an appeal to all "Russian patriots", announcing the beginning of the liberation struggle. At the same time, at first it was silent that this struggle was supposed to go under the auspices of the Nazis. On the outskirts of Berlin, Dabendorf, the General Staff of the ROA was created. In August and September 1942, Vlasov visited the Leningrad, Pskov regions and Belarus. The response to his first appeals was overwhelming. Tens of thousands of letters from civilians and from captured Red Army soldiers poured into the Dabendorf headquarters. The first shock guards brigade of the ROA was formed in May 1943 in the city of Breslau. On November 14, the first and only Vlasov congress took place in Prague, where the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia was created and a stillborn Manifesto was adopted demanding the "destruction of Stalin's tyranny" and the liberation of the Russian people from the Bolshevik dictatorship. Surprisingly, even at the end of the war, facts of a voluntary transition of small units of the Red Army to the side of the ROA were recorded.

I will not dwell on Vlasov's contradictions with the German functionaries and on the transition of parts of the ROA at the end of the war to the side of the Italian and Czech resistance. According to some reports, the First Division of the ROA came to the rescue of the desperate Czech rebels and saved Prague from destruction by the Germans. The saved city was handed over to the Red Army, which immediately arrested and shot all the Vlasovites who did not have time to escape. The remnants of the ROA in Czechoslovakia and Austria surrendered to US troops.

After the war, the fighters and officers of this army hid throughout Western Europe, and the agents of the Soviet counterintelligence were busy hunting these people mercilessly. General Vlasov was taken prisoner for the second time on May 12, 1945. The trial of Vlasov was classified in order, firstly, to hide from the people the extent of Russian collaborationism and, secondly, the fact of the voluntary entry of Soviet officers and generals into his army.

The execution of A. Vlasov only opened a long list of major military leaders shot by Stalin until the murder of the tyrant himself in March 1953. I will give an abbreviated list of the destroyed "traitors to the motherland, spies, subversive saboteurs":
- Air Marshal Sergei Khudyakov (April 18, 1950);
- Major General Pavel Artemenko (June 10, 1950);
- Hero of the Soviet Union Marshal of the Soviet Union Grigory Kulik (August 24, 1950);
- Hero of the Soviet Union, Colonel-General Vasily Gordov (August 24, 1950);
- Major General Philip Rybalchenko (August 25, 1950);
- Major General Nikolai Kirillov (August 25, 1950);
- Major General Pavel Ponedelin (August 25, 1950);
- Major General of Aviation Mikhail Beleshev (August 26, 1950);
- Major General Mikhail Belyanchik (August 26, 1950);
- brigade commander Nikolai Lazutin (August 26, 1950);
- Major General Ivan Krupennikov (August 28, 1950);
- Major General Maxim Sivaev (August 28, 1950);
- Major General Vladimir Kirpichnikov (August 28, 1950);
- another high-ranking military man, brigvrach (corresponding to the rank of "brigade commander") Ivan Naumov, almost fell short of the KGB bullet "put" to him - he died on August 23, 1950 from torture in Butyrka.
- Deputy Commander of the Black Sea Fleet for Political Affairs, Rear Admiral Pyotr Bondarenko (October 28, 1950);
- On the same day, lieutenant-general of the tank troops Vladimir Tamruchi, killed by the Chekists, died.
In total, according to Vyacheslav Zvyagintsev, who worked with the materials of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, only from August 18 to August 30, 1950, 20 generals and one marshal were sentenced to death.
For cooperation with the Germans in captivity, at least six more military leaders went to execution: brigade commanders Ivan Bessonov and Mikhail Bogdanov and four major generals Pavel Artemenko Alexander Budykho, Andrey Naumov, Pavel Bogdanov and Yevgeny Yegorov.
The captured generals who refused to cooperate with the Germans were also shot, namely, Generals Artemenko, Kirillov, Ponedelin, Beleshev, Krupennikov, Sivaev, Kirpichnikov and brigade commander Lazutin. Some of them even successfully passed the post-war KGB special check and were reinstated in the cadres of the USSR Armed Forces (for example, Pavel Artemenko), but they were not spared either. Aviation Major General Mikhail Beleshev was to blame for Stalin, apparently, by the fact that he was the commander of the Air Force of the 2nd shock army - the same one commanded by Vlasov before his capture. All the rest were to blame for the military miscalculations of the "great leader" himself.
By the way, the stigma of Vlasov fell not only on the collaborators of the captured Second Shock Army, but also on the few military men who miraculously managed to get out of the Volkhov cauldron, in which Vlasov himself was captured.
The executions of the generals in 1950 became the final phase of the pogrom of the marshal-general group, begun by Stalin immediately after the Victory, as part of a whole series of cases then deployed. Stalin needed to besiege the military leaders who imagined themselves victorious (and, of course, only Comrade Stalin could be such!) and allowed themselves to talk too much. Stalin was always afraid of the military and beat their corporate cohesion. In 1950, he believed that in the war with the United States, the second edition of Vlasov and Vlasovism could not be mastered.

Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (KONR). On November 14, 1944, the founding congress of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (KONR) was held in Prague, proclaiming the unification of all anti-Soviet forces located in Germany, including emigrant organizations, national committees, the Vlasov army and other eastern formations, to fight "for a new free Russia against the Bolsheviks and exploiters. At the same time, the Armed Forces of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (AF KONR) began to operate, represented mainly by the Vlasov army. They consisted of three Russian divisions, a reserve brigade, an anti-tank brigade, an air force, an officer school, auxiliary units and small formations. By March 1945, the total strength of the KONR Armed Forces exceeded 150 thousand people. The first division was armed with 12 heavy and 42 light field howitzers, 6 heavy and 29 light infantry guns, 536 heavy and light machine guns, 20 flamethrowers, 10 Hetzer self-propelled guns, 9 T-34 tanks.

For the period of registration, the Committee consisted of 50 members and 12 candidates (including representatives of 15 peoples of Russia) and practically performed the functions of a general meeting. The KONR included the Russian National Council (chaired by General V.F. Malyshkin); Ukrainian national council; National Council of the Peoples of the Caucasus; The National Council of the Peoples of Turkestan, the Main Directorate of the Cossack Troops, the Kalmyk National Committee and the Belarusian National Rada.

The Lokot Republic (Lokot self-government, Lokot district) is an administrative-territorial national entity in the workers' settlement of Lokot in Soviet territory occupied by Nazi Germany during the Great Patriotic War. Existed from November 1941 to August 1943. The "republic" included several districts of the pre-war Oryol and Kursk regions. The size of the Lokot Republic exceeded the territory of Belgium, and its population was 581 thousand people. All power here belonged not to the German commandant's offices, but to local governments.

On the territory of the district, an attempt was made to create and legalize the Nazi party and form an independent Russian government. At the end of November 1941, the head of the Lokotka self-government, K.P. Voskoboinik, published the Manifesto of the People's Socialist Party "Viking", which provided for the destruction of the communist and collective farm system, the provision of peasants with arable land and household plots, the development of private initiative and "the merciless extermination of all Jews, former commissioners." The Jewish population of the Lokot "republic" was completely destroyed.

After Konstantin Voskoboinik was killed by partisans in January 1942, Bronislav Kaminsky took his place, who developed the charter, program and structure of the party bodies of the "republic". Since November 1943, after several renamings, the party became known as the National Socialist Labor Party of Russia (NSTPR). The short name of the National Socialist Party is "Viking" (Vityaz). All leading employees of the self-government must join the party.

The head of the "republic" Voskoboinik repeatedly spoke to the German administration with the initiative to extend such self-government to all the occupied territories. The "republic" had the status of a national entity and its own armed forces - the Russian Liberation People's Army (RONA). On its territory, the district had its own Code of Criminal Procedure. Cases of mass desertion of partisans and their transfer to the side of the armed formations of the Lokot self-government are described.

During the existence of the self-government, many industrial enterprises engaged in the processing of agricultural products were restored and put into operation, churches were restored, 9 hospitals and 37 outpatient medical centers operated, 345 secondary schools and 3 orphanages operated, the city art and drama theater named after K. P. Voskoboynik in the city of Lokot. The local newspaper "Voice of the People" was also published here. S. I. Drobyazko, describing local self-government in the occupied territories of the RSFSR, wrote: “With minimal control from the German administration, the Lokot self-government has achieved major successes in the socio-economic life of the district.”

Russian Liberation People's Army (RONA). This was the name of the collaborationist military formations created by B.V. Kaminsky on the territory of the Lokot Republic. The RONA included 5 infantry regiments or 14 battalions with 20 thousand soldiers.

The army was equipped with guns, grenade launchers and machine guns. The creator and leader of the RONA, a former volunteer of the Red Army and a member of the CPSU (b), had the rank of SS Brigadeführer. The RONA formations first acted against the partisans of the Bryansk region, and then took part in Operation Citadel on the Kursk Bulge, after which they were forced to leave the Lokot Republic along with about 50 thousand military and civilians. In 1944, the RONA was renamed the 29th SS Grenadier Division, which, together with the Dirlewanger Brigade, took part in operations to suppress the partisan movement in Belarus, for which Kaminsky was awarded the Iron Cross, and then the first class badge "For the fight against partisans ”, Eastern Medal of the 1st and 2nd classes. In March 1944, the unit was renamed the Kaminsky People's Brigade, and in July it joined the ranks of the SS under the name of the SS-RONA assault brigade. It was then that the brigade commander received the title of brigadeführer.

On August 1, 1944, when the Home Army raised an uprising in Warsaw, the Kaminsky Brigade took an active part in its suppression. The soldiers were drawn into mass robberies and drunkenness, robbed warehouses and shops, raped women, and shot local residents. According to Polish researchers, 235,000 Poles became victims of the Russians, of which 200,000 were civilians. Executions in the courtyards of Warsaw streets continued for several weeks. Members of the RONA brigade also raped two German girls from the KDF organization.

The actions of the Kaminsky Brigade aroused the indignation of the Wehrmacht and veterans of the First World War. In response to the accusations, Kaminsky stated that his subordinates had the right to loot, as they had lost all their property in Russia.

Being a pathological sadist, Bronislav Kaminsky distinguished himself so much in cruelty and looting that the Germans were forced to shoot him themselves, after which the remnants of his brigade joined the ROA and other units of the Wehrmacht.

Cossack Stan. In October 1942, in Novocherkassk, occupied by German troops, a Cossack gathering was held, at which the headquarters of the Don Cossack Army, an organization of Cossack formations within the Wehrmacht, was elected. According to historian Oleg Budnitsky, "in the Cossack regions, the Nazis received very significant support." The researcher of this problem, Professor Viktor Popov, wrote: “Now it is already known for certain that a certain, and rather considerable, part of the population of the Don, the basis of which was the Cossacks, was very sympathetic and even sympathetic to the German troops.” The creation of the Cossack units was headed by the former colonel of the tsarist army S.V. Pavlov, who worked as an engineer at one of the factories in Novocherkassk. Cossack regiments and battalions were also formed in the Crimea, Kherson, Kirovograd and other cities. Pavlov's initiative was supported by the "white" general P.N. Krasnov. Only through the Cossack units on the side of Germany in the period from October 1941 to April 1945. about 80,000 people passed. Already by January 1943, 30 Cossack detachments with a total number of about 20,000 people were formed. During the retreat of the Germans, the Cossacks covered the withdrawal and participated in the destruction of about a thousand villages and settlements. In May 1945, when surrendering to British captivity, the number of Cossack units of the Wehrmacht numbered 24 thousand military and civilians.

The formations of the "Cossack Camp", created in Kirovograd in November 1943 under the leadership of the "marching ataman" S.V. Pavlov, were replenished with Cossacks from almost all of the South of Russia. Among the commanders of the Cossack military units, the most colorful figure was a participant in the Soviet-Finnish war, a major of the Red Army, awarded the Order of the Red Star, he was also a Wehrmacht colonel, awarded with iron crosses I and II class Ivan Kononov. Having gone over to the side of the Wehrmacht in August 1941, Kononov announced his desire to form a volunteer Cossack regiment and take part in the battles with him. The military unit of Kononov was distinguished by high combat capability. At the beginning of 1942, as part of the 88th Infantry Division of the Wehrmacht, she participated in hostilities against partisans and paratroopers of the encircled corps of Major General P.A. Belov near Vyazma, Polotsk, Velikiye Luki, in the Smolensk region. In December 1944, Kononov's regiment distinguished itself in the battle near Pitomach with units of the 57th Army of the 3rd Ukrainian Front, which were severely defeated.

On April 1, 1945, Kononov was promoted to major general of the "Vlasov" Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia and was appointed marching ataman of all Cossack troops and commander of the 15th corps, but he did not manage to take up his duties. After the death of S.V. Pavlov in June 1944, T.N. Domanov was appointed field ataman of the Stan. The Cossacks took an active part in the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944, when the Nazi command awarded many officers with the Order of the Iron Cross for their diligence. In July 1944, the Cossacks were transferred to northern Italy (Karnia) to fight against the Italian anti-fascists. The newspaper "Cossack Land" was published here, many Italian towns were renamed into villages, and local residents were subjected to partial deportation. On May 18, 1945, Stan surrendered to the British troops, and later his commanders and fighters were handed over to the Soviet command.

Eastern battalions and companies. With the growth of the partisan movement in the German rear, the Wehrmacht took steps to increase the number of security units from the local population and prisoners of war. Already in June 1942, anti-partisan companies from among Russian volunteers appeared at the headquarters of divisions. After appropriate military training under the guidance of German officers, Russian units turned into full-fledged combat units capable of performing a wide variety of tasks - from protecting objects to conducting punitive expeditions in partisan areas. Jagdkommandos (fighter or hunting teams) were also created at the headquarters of German units and formations - small, well-equipped groups with automatic weapons, which were used to search for and destroy partisan detachments. The most reliable and well-trained fighters were selected for these joys. By the end of 1942, most of the German divisions operating on the Eastern Front had one, and sometimes two, eastern companies, and the corps had a company or battalion. In addition, the command of the army rear areas had at its disposal several eastern battalions and yagdkommandos, and as part of the security divisions, eastern cavalry battalions and squadrons. According to the German command, by the summer of 1943, 78 eastern battalions, 1 regiment and 122 separate companies (security, fighter, economic, etc.) with a total number of 80 thousand people were created.

Division "Russland" (1st Russian National Army, later - the Green Army of Special Purpose) - a military formation operating as part of the Wehrmacht during the Great Patriotic War under the leadership of General B.A. Smyslovsky (sondeführer of the Abwehr, acting under the pseudonym Arthur Holmston). The division was formed from units and groups of the Sonderstab "R". The number of the division was up to 10 thousand former White Guards. In February 1945, the 1st Russian National Division was renamed the "Special Purpose Green Army". On April 4, 1945, it increased by 6,000 people due to the inclusion in the Russian Corps, in addition, about 2,500 members of the Association of Russian Military Unions were at their disposal. She was also joined by the heir to the Russian throne, Vladimir Kirillovich. At the end of the war, the remnants of the division ended up on the territory of Liechtenstein, from where most of the Russians emigrated to Argentina.

The Russian Corps (Russian Security Corps, Russian Corps in Serbia, staffed mainly by white emigrants) was organized by Major General M.F. Skorodumov in 1941 after the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia. The corps was used to protect Yugoslav territory from Tito's communist partisans. In 1944 the Germans used the corps to cover their withdrawal from Greece. At this time, the corps participated in battles not only with Tito's partisans, but also with regular units of the Red Army. Winter 1944–1945 was included in the ROA.

The Fighting Union of Russian Nationalists (BSRN) was organized on the initiative of the SD in April 1942 in a prisoner of war camp in Suwalki. The BSRN was headed by the former chief of staff of the 229th Infantry Division, Lieutenant Colonel V.V. Gil. From the members of the BSRN, the 1st Russian National SS Detachment, also known as the "Druzhina", was also formed. The tasks of these units included the security service in the occupied territory and the fight against partisans. The composition of the 1st company of the BSRN consisted exclusively of former commanders of the Red Army. She was a reserve and was engaged in training personnel for new units.

Russian volunteers in the Luftwaffe. I want to draw attention to the fact that the betrayal by the military began even before the start of the war, and by the most elite military and KGB agents who had a real opportunity to escape from the USSR. Soviet spies did not return from missions, and military pilots flew abroad on their planes. So, the commander of the 17th air squadron, Klim, and the senior minder, Timashchuk, flew to Poland. The pilot G.N. Kravets flew to the territory of Latvia.

During the war, the flight of military aircraft pilots was facilitated by a powerful propaganda campaign carried out by the Germans. According to Germany's secret military documents, in just 3 months in 1944, 20 crews flew over to the enemy. It was not possible to fight the flights of military pilots, even despite the measures taken against covert desertion - a section of the order of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR No. 229 of 1941. The most surprising thing is that desertion from the Red Army continued until 1945.

Already in 1942, a training air group as part of the RNNA began to operate in the Abwehr, headed by Major Filatov. It consisted of 22 defectors. In 1943, Major General V.I. Maltsev, who previously held a number of command positions in the Red Army, took up the creation of the Russian Eastern Aviation Group. In November 1941, he voluntarily went over to the side of the Germans in order, in his words, "to fight against the Bolsheviks." Selected military aviators were sent to the air base in Suwalki, where they underwent a rigorous professional and medical selection. Recognized as fit, they studied at two-month preparatory courses, after which they received a military rank, took an oath and were transferred to the Holters group stationed in Moritzfeld (East Prussia). At the end of 1943, Russian pilots were sent to the Eastern Front, where they fought against their compatriots. The "Auxiliary night assault group Ostland" was created, which was equipped with U-2, I-15, I-153, and other aircraft. The pilots - "Ostfliegers" included 2 Heroes of the Soviet Union: fighter captain S.T.Bychkov and senior lieutenant B.R.Antilevsky The squadron made 500 sorties and its work was highly appreciated by the German command, some of the flight personnel were awarded crosses."

From March 1944, through the combined efforts of the Hitler Youth, the SS and the Luftwaffe, young people aged 15 to 20 were recruited into the German Air Defense Auxiliary Service in the occupied territories. The number of Russian volunteers, called "Luftwaffe assistants" (Luftwaffenhelfer), and from December 4, 1944 - "SS pupils" (SS-Zögling), was determined at 1383 people. By the end of the war, 22.5 thousand Russian volunteers and 120 thousand prisoners of war served in the Luftwaffe, which made up a significant percentage of the service personnel in anti-aircraft batteries and construction units.

Here it should be emphasized that the personnel of these units was formed not only from prisoners. Talking among themselves, veterans often recall frequent cases of group betrayals, when soldiers, whispering, whole platoons, and even companies, crawled out of the trenches in order to surrender to the enemy in the darkness of the night. God be their judge: what is “command”, than the attitude towards soldiers as “cannon fodder”, is captivity not more saving ... But, having been captured, traitors became the most attractive contingent for the formation of Russian units.

Walter Schellenberg wrote in his memoirs: “Thousands of Russians were selected in the prisoner of war camps, who, after training, were parachuted deep into Russian territory. Their main task, along with the transfer of current information, was the political decomposition of the population and sabotage. Other groups were intended to fight the partisans, for which they were thrown as our agents to the Russian partisans. In order to achieve success as soon as possible, we began to recruit volunteers from among Russian prisoners of war right in the front line.

A little about the "new Russian police" and the institution of secret informers recruited by the Nazis from Soviet collaborators. According to various estimates, the number of these structures amounted to about a third of all traitors, not counting the category of "volunteer assistants" ("Khiwi", abbreviated from German Hilfswillige), that is, auxiliary personnel used on the front line. The Khiva were recruited mainly from prisoners of war who simply wanted to survive, but were partially recruited on a voluntary basis. "Volunteer assistants" were used in the rear services and in combat units (as carriers of cartridges, messengers and sappers). By the end of 1942, the Heavis made up a significant part of the German divisions operating on the Eastern Front. Over time, some "Khivi", originally enrolled in auxiliary work, were transferred to combat units, security teams and anti-partisan detachments. As losses increase during the hostilities, the regular number of "Hiwi" up to 15% of the total number of units. During the war, Russian soldiers dressed in Wehrmacht uniforms appeared in all military theaters - from Norway to North Africa. By February 1945, the number of "Hiwi" was 600 thousand people in the ground forces, 50 thousand in the Luftwaffe and 15 thousand in the Kriegsmarine.

It is generally accepted that the Germans recruited policemen and informers from "ideological" opponents of the Soviet regime, that is, "avengers", but this is a significant simplification of the real picture. Russian anti-Semites, criminals and all sorts of rabble willingly went to the police, that is, lovers of robbery, also former NKVD informers, prisoners of war who wanted to escape from concentration camps and were mobilized into the police by force under fear of falling into a concentration camp or being sent to work in Germany. There was a small stratum of intelligentsia. In other words, it was a very diverse audience. For many "policemen" service in the occupation authorities was a means of survival and personal enrichment. In addition to special rations, policemen were exempt from taxes and received additional rewards for special "merits", such as the identification and execution of Jews, partisans and underground fighters. For this, special awards "for the Eastern peoples" were relied upon. However, the payment to the police for the "service" was very moderate - from 40 to 130 Reichsmarks.

The police, created from collaborators, was divided into civilian and military, respectively, in the area of responsibility of the civil authorities and the military command. The latter had different names - "combat detachments of local residents" (Einwohnerkampfabteilungen, ESA), "order service" (Ordnungsdienst, Odi), "auxiliary security teams" (Hilfswachemannschaften, Hiwa), "Schuma" battalions ("Schutzmannschaft-Bataillone"). Their duties included combing forests in order to search for encircled and partisans, as well as guarding important objects. Numerous security and anti-partisan formations, created by the efforts of the local command authorities of the Wehrmacht, as a rule, had neither a clear organizational structure nor a strict system of subordination and control from the German administration. Their functions were to protect railway stations, bridges, highways, prisoner of war camps and other facilities where they were called upon to replace the German troops needed at the front. As of February 1943, the number of these formations was determined at 60-70 thousand people.

According to eyewitnesses, often the Slavic policemen even surpassed the Germans in cruelty. Lev Simkin testified that the genocide of Jews in the territories occupied by the Nazis was often initiated not by the Germans, but by local collaborators driven by anti-Semitism of the Black Hundreds. After the war, the same anti-Semitism quickly transformed into the state policy of the USSR, which in a milder form inherited Hitler's attitude towards Jews - one of the clearest examples of "Soviet internationalism" and "brotherhood of peoples" ...

The service of the Russians in the “Secret Field Police” (“Geheim Feldpolizei” (GFP) was considered the most odious. These detachments were motorized and had many machine guns for executions. The employees of the GFP service arrested people on counterintelligence lists, caught Red Army soldiers, saboteurs and “saboteurs”. In addition, the "secret police" chased fugitives who did not want to be stolen to work in the Reich. Punishers also burned villages along with residents who helped the partisans. To this we can add that in one of the occupied regions of Russia, out of every 10 burned villages, partisans burned three , and seven - the Germans with the help of local collaborators. The list of victims of this group of domestic executioners is estimated to be at least 7 thousand people.

It is not customary to talk about this, but I argue that in parallel with the Second World War, there was also the Second Civil War, in which Russian fascists fought Russian communists - horseradish is not sweeter ... The number of victims of this terrible war will never be established, but it the consequences are lingering today. What I mean? I mean that the imperial, xenophobic, anti-Semitic sentiments of the Russians, dating back to the era of Ivan the Terrible, gave rise not only to the “big brother” complex, but to the deeply hidden forces of the disintegration of the country, which led during the war to mass betrayal, in 1991 to the collapse of the USSR, in our days - to a war in the Caucasus, in Ukraine and a wave of terrorism sweeping Russia, and in the future - fraught with the danger of the collapse of the country.

I will not give here the entire list of our emigrants who collaborated with the Germans or with the Duce, but alas, this list includes the Grand Duchess Romanova, the writer Shmelev, who came to the prayer service for the liberation of Crimea by the Germans, F. Stepun, S. Diaghilev, P. Struve , B. Savinkov, Prince N. Zhevakhov, General P. Bermond-Avalov, A. Kazem-Bek, A. Amfiteatrov, many other white emigrants ... Dmitry Merezhkovsky, speaking on the radio, compared Mussolini to Dante, and Hitler to Zhanna Dark. And only immigrants? Lydia Osipova, the author of the Diary of a Collaborator, wrote in her diary on June 22: “Thank God, the war has begun, and soon Soviet power will end.” And when the Germans entered the city of Pushkin, she wrote in capital letters: “HAPPENED! GERMANS COME! FREEDOM, NO REDS. And are there rare cases when the invaders were greeted with posters: “NO RED, FREEDOM!”? By the way, even before the start of the war, in the late 30s, in Omsk, for example, among the opponents of the collective farms there was talk about the imminent start of the war, and that the Japanese would come to Siberia. “They were expected as liberators,” the blogger writes.

In the world, everything is connected to everything: Russian collaborationism during the Second World War is driven by the politics of Bolshevism and deeply rooted Russian xenophobia and anti-Semitism. The current dangerous state of Russia - I am deeply convinced of this - is connected with the entire tragic history of the creation of an empire built on seas of human blood and the incalculable suffering of the peoples inhabiting it. The situation is aggravated by other factors - the long-term "unnatural selection", the fact that there are always more descendants of the executioners than the descendants of the victims, and also the eternal ideological zombie and brainwashing of the population.

It must be admitted that Nazism turned out to be more effective than Bolshevism in terms of propaganda: the Wehrmacht soldiers sincerely believed that Hitler's policy was in the interests of the German people and the aspirations of the overwhelming majority of Germans. Therefore, soldiers and officers, at least at the beginning of the war, were ready to fight and die for the Fuhrer and for the Nazi regime. Russian soldiers were also taught to die “for their homeland, for Stalin,” but, judging by the scale of collaborationism and the horrendous losses at the beginning of the war, faith in the homeland and Stalin was not much different from the religious beliefs of the Orthodox, who smashed their own churches after the Bolshevik putsch… Jurgen Holtman testifies:

“For Stalin and the Bolsheviks, the citizens of the USSR were dumb slaves; cattle, whose destiny is slave forced labor for miserable handouts in the name of the hegemonic aspirations of the ruling elite and the most megalomaniac megalomaniac of all times and peoples - the "red emperor" Joseph Stalin. For such a regime and such a leader, there were few who wanted to fight and die. So they surrendered in tens and hundreds of thousands; and fled from the battlefield in divisions, and deserted en masse. And they went over to the side of the Wehrmacht (this is with such and such a racial ideology of the Germans).

B.N. Kovalev in the monograph "Collaborationism in Russia in 1941-1945: types and forms", 2009, along with military collaborationism, studied in detail its other forms: economic, administrative, ideological, intellectual collaborationism, spiritual, national, children's , a gendered variety of collaborationism.

Naturally, all industrial structures (plants, factories, repair shops, railway technical services, machine and tractor stations, research institutes) in the occupied territories passed into the hands of the German authorities. Labor exchanges were created in the cities, the functions of which included the recruitment of labor at the request of the German authorities and private entrepreneurs, as well as the selection of labor to be sent to Germany. The recruitment of Russian girls into German brothels also took place there.

Administrative collaborationism consisted in recruiting citizens loyal to the Nazis for the posts of burgomasters, elders, members of district administrations, city governments, judges, and other representatives of the “new Russian administration”.

The Nazis pinned special hopes on spiritual collaborationism. If the Soviet government considered the Church and the clergy as their enemies, the Nazis considered them as their potential allies. They counted on all-round assistance from the clergy in the implementation of their occupation policy on the territory of the USSR. About the place of religion in his occupation plans, in his open report “On the attitude towards the Russian civilian population” dated November 26, 1941, the commander of the rear army of the northern regions reported: “The Church begins to acquire in folk life growing importance. With success and diligence, the population is working on the restoration of churches. Church utensils, hidden from the GPU, again begin to find their place. The old generation, through church life, enters into contact with old habits and customs, with a reality that, of course, is inherent in Russians in religious things.

The history of "Orthodoxy in the service of Hitler" goes back not even to the beginning of the Patriotic War, but to the dawn of Soviet power, when the Athonite elder, Fr. Aristocles, before his death in Moscow, prophesied: "The salvation of Russia will come when the Germans take up arms." And in June 1938, Metropolitan Anastassy, a representative of the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, wrote Hitler a shameful kneeling letter of gratitude in connection with the opening of the Berlin Cathedral Church, in which there are such lines: “Not only the German people commemorate you with ardent love and devotion before Throne of the Almighty: the best people of all nations, who desire peace and justice, see you as a leader in the global struggle for peace and truth. We know from reliable sources that the believing Russian people, groaning under the yoke of slavery and waiting for their liberator, constantly lift up prayers to God that He save you, guide you and grant you his all-powerful help. Your feat for the German people and the greatness of the German Empire made you an example worthy of imitation, and a model of how to love your people and your homeland, how to stand up for your national treasures and eternal values. For even these latter find their sanctification and perpetuation in our Church. You have erected a house for the Heavenly Sovereign. May He send His blessing to the cause of your state building, to the creation of your people's empire. May God strengthen you and the German people in the fight against hostile forces that want the death of our people as well. May He give you, your country, your Government and army health, prosperity and good haste in everything for many years” (“Church Life”, 1938, No. 5-6).

Everything would be nothing if it all ended with this, but it all just began with this. In June 1941, after the German attack on the USSR, another Orthodox father, Archbishop Seraphim, addressed the flock with an Appeal, part of which I am forced to quote: “Beloved brothers and sisters in Christ! The punishing sword of Divine justice fell upon the Soviet government, its henchmen and like-minded people. The Christ-loving Leader of the German people called on his victorious army to new fight, to the struggle that we have been longing for - to the consecrated struggle against the theomachists, executioners and rapists who have settled in the Moscow Kremlin ... Truly, a new crusade in the name of saving peoples from the power of Antichrist... Finally, our faith is justified!.. Therefore, as the First Hierarch of the Orthodox Church in Germany, I appeal to you. Be participants in the new struggle, for this struggle and your struggle... The “salvation of all,” about which Adolf Hitler spoke in his address to the German people, is also your salvation, the fulfillment of your long-term aspirations and hopes. The last decisive battle has come. May the Lord bless the new feat of arms of all anti-Bolshevik fighters and give them victory and victory over their enemies. Amen!".

I hear our voices that here we are talking about the leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia - once, and about the revenge of the clergy for the Bolshevik defeat of the Russian Orthodox Church - twice. If so! Because all this is nothing more than a prelude to the mass betrayal of the Orthodox clergy! Here you can cite dozens of church documents dated 1941-1943, in which the fathers of Russian Orthodoxy (Archimandrite John (Prince Shakhovskoy - "New Word", No. 27 of 06/29/1941), Metropolitan Seraphim (Lukyanov) ("Church Life" , 1942, No. 1), All-Belarusian Church Cathedral, Archbishop Filofey (Narko), Bishop Athanasius (Martos), Bishop Stefan (Sevbo) ("Science and Religion", 1988, No. 5), Metropolitan of Vilna and Lithuania Sergius (Voskresensky), Metropolitan Seraphim, Protopresbytor Kirill, Priest Apraksin, chaplains The ROA (A. Kiselev, K. Zaits, I. Legky and many, many others) “practiced” in glorifying Hitler for attacking the USSR: “The demonic cries of the International have begun to disappear from the Russian land”, “It will be“ Easter in the middle of summer “May the hour and day be blessed when the great glorious war with the III International began. May the Almighty bless the great Leader”, “The first ever All-Belarusian Orthodox Church Council in Minsk, on behalf of the Orthodox Belarusians, sends you, Mr. Reich Chancellor, heartfelt gratitude for the liberation of Belarus from the Moscow-Bolshevik godless yoke”, “And there are no words, no feelings in which one could pour out well-deserved gratitude to the liberators and their Leader, Adolf Hitler, who restored freedom of religion there, returned to the believers the temples of God taken from them and restored to them the human form, etc., etc., etc.

It would seem that in the last toast to Hitler, the reason for the betrayal of the representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church was revealed - the long-awaited liberation of the church from the Bolshevik yoke. But then what about the homeland, with the Orthodox Russian people being destroyed by the Nazis, with the total genocide of the compatriots of Jesus Christ? .. But - no way!

From the Paschal Message of Metropolitan Anastassy, 1942: “... The day has come, expected by him (the Russian people), and now he truly, as it were, rises from the dead where the courageous German sword managed to cut his shackles ... And ancient Kiev, and long-suffering Smolensk, and Pskov brightly triumph their deliverance, as it were, from the very hell of the underworld. The liberated part of the Russian people has already sung everywhere ... “Christ is Risen” (“Church Life”, 1942, No. 4).

The most important thing here is not even the betrayal of the Orthodox hierarchs, but the mass nature of the transition of the Russian priesthood to the side of the enemy. In thousands restored and opened by the Germans Orthodox churches(according to various sources, the Germans opened from 7,500 to 10,000 churches in the occupied territories, even the report of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate contains the figure of 7547 churches opened by the Germans) Russian priests offered prayers to the victories of the occupiers in overcrowded cathedrals. These are not my ideas - this is how the order of the church circular of June 1942, signed by Protopresbytor Kirill, was carried out - “To perform prayers for the Lord to give strength and strength to the German army and its leader for the final victory ...”

The Germans perfectly understood the role of the clergy, well financed the revived church and clergy, published the newspaper “Orthodox Christian” in 30,000 copies, and quickly converted the ministers of the Orthodox cult “to their faith”.

The German command used Russian priests in the occupied areas to collect intelligence information, as well as information about the mood of the population. In the North-West of Russia, the so-called "Orthodox mission in the liberated regions of Russia" was formed. In her first address to believers, she urged everyone to "rejoice in their liberation." In addition to conducting active propaganda and collecting information about the political and economic state of the regions, the Orthodox Mission, according to preliminary data, betrayed 144 partisans and Soviet patriots who were actively fighting against the Germans into the hands of German counterintelligence agencies.

I am convinced that the drastic change in Stalin's attitude towards the Russian Orthodox Church is largely due not to his "epiphany", but to the blind copying of the carefully thought-out actions of the fascist command to "recruit" Orthodox "spiritual fathers". By the way, the change in Stalin's attitude towards the church was largely facilitated by the allies, and the first churches were allowed to open only almost six months after the election of the new patriarchate - by a decree of the Council of Ministers of February 5, 1944. Until that time, priests were persecuted and destroyed. In 1941 alone, 4,000 priests were arrested and about half of them were shot... Therefore, there were not enough priests for the churches to be opened, not to mention the fact that the Bolsheviks held back this process of church revival by all available means...

By the way, the betrayal of the Russian Orthodox Church during World War II was no exception to the rule. During the period of the Horde (XIV-XV centuries), the church actively cooperated with the enslavers, urging parishioners to come to terms with the Tatar yoke and treat it as a well-deserved punishment from God. Still would! After all, the Horde not only freed the Russian Orthodox Church from any taxes, duties and burdens that were imposed on the rest of the population of the conquered country, but transferred huge land holdings (more than a third of all arable land in the country) to the church. Bishop Tarasy of Rostov brought the hordes of Khan Duden to Russia, who plundered and destroyed Vladimir, Suzdal, Moscow and a number of other Russian cities. The head of the church, Metropolitan Joseph, as well as the bishops of Ryazan and Rostov, Galitsky and Przemysl fled, but most of the priests of the Russian Orthodox Church quickly adapted to the power of the Horde and called on the people to submit. For faithful service to the conquerors, the Orthodox clergy were given special labels (commended letters) from the khans.

The Horde khans generously paid off the Orthodox Church for its treason - for the fact that the church laid the spiritual sword of Orthodoxy at their feet, for the preaching of obedience to the Mongol “king” and his “glorious army” sounded from the ambos, for tearing away from churches, a people revolting from despair, which the ferocious Mongol army drowned in blood. The historian N.M. Karamzin, describing the position of the Russian Orthodox Church under the Horde, wrote that for the sake of bribes, the church was ready not only to faithfully cooperate with the foreign conqueror, but also to inspire the second “Mongol invasion”.

But as soon as the Horde staggered, completely different sermons sounded from the ambos: now the priests cursed the "nasty" who enslaved the country. In other words, without blinking an eye, the Russian Orthodox Church betrayed its yesterday's patroness the Horde, as before - Russia. Both betrayals were dictated solely by bribes - from now on, the priests expected from the victorious Moscow that she would confirm all her Horde "labels" to the "brethren" and would defend the property of the church as zealously as the Horde defended them. And, oddly enough, she succeeded ...

I will not talk here about all other types of collaborationism - work for the occupiers of journalists, teachers, artists, scientists, engineers, workers, peasants, work that can be attributed to a survival strategy. This category also includes many Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian girls cohabiting with the occupiers. It should only be noted here that the energy of such "service" was largely determined by the pre-war reaction of the citizens of the USSR to Stalinism - the well-known phenomena of non-participation and internal emigration as negative reactions to Soviet power. I will only note that the Nazis established several orders and medals to reward particularly zealous traitors, and some “natives” collaborators managed to “deserve” up to a dozen of such “insignia”.

Yuri Krylov in "Hydepark" cites numerous facts of another type of collaborationism - Stalin's. I mean the active cooperation between Stalin and Hitler, which Stalin welcomed shortly after Hitler came to power. Although they say that Stalin owns the phrase “trading in raw materials is trading in the homeland,” the USSR sold raw materials to Nazi Germany in grandiose quantities, and strategic, military raw materials ... It is quite possible to talk about massive support for the Nazis by the Soviet Union in all possible ways - from the deployment of German military factories and schools to the supply of oil, grain and metal. Soviet-German military training and rearmament programs developed. For Germany, devastated by the First World War and the Treaty of Versailles, Soviet assistance was then indispensable. In fact, we are talking about close cooperation between the USSR and Nazi Germany during the Second World War already unleashed by Hitler (1939-1941).

In 1934, having deep contempt for the "weak" democratic governments of Europe, Stalin exclaimed in a fit of sympathy: "This is the leader!" On August 23, 1939, during a meeting with I. Ribbentrop in the Kremlin, Stalin made a toast: “I know how the German people love their Fuhrer. I would therefore like to drink to his health. Stalin made the second toast to Himmler, "the man who ensures the security of the German state." Introducing L. Beria to the guest, Stalin jokingly said: "This is our Himmler." Ribbentrop later shared his "Moscow impressions" with his Italian colleague, Count Ciano: "I felt in the Kremlin, as among old party comrades." And in December 1939, Stalin wrote to German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop: “Thank you, Mr. Minister, for your congratulations. The friendship of the peoples of Germany and the Soviet Union, sealed by blood, has every reason to be long and strong” (Pravda, December 25, 1939). At the same time, Stalin personally congratulated Adolf Hitler on the successful operation to occupy Poland ...

In a special report of the Soviet special services, the words of Troitskaya from Kharkov were recorded: “The fact of concluding an agreement with Germany shows that there is much in common between Stalin and Hitler, now we have no difference in regimes. In Germany it is called fascism, but in our country it is called socialism.”

Here is the text of the secret additional protocol:

“When signing the non-aggression pact between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the undersigned plenipotentiaries of both parties discussed in a strictly confidential manner the question of delimiting the spheres of mutual interests in Eastern Europe. This discussion led to the following result:
1. In the event of a territorial and political reorganization of the regions that are part of the Baltic states (Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), the northern border of Lithuania is simultaneously the border of the spheres of interests of Germany and the USSR. At the same time, the interests of Lithuania in relation to the Vilna region are recognized by both parties.
2. In the event of a territorial and political rearrangement of the regions that are part of the Polish state, the border of the spheres of interests of Germany and the USSR will approximately run along the line of the Nareva, Vistula and Sana rivers.
The question whether the preservation of an independent Polish state is desirable in mutual interests, and what the boundaries of this state will be, can only be definitively clarified in the course of further political development.
In any case, both governments will resolve this issue by way of friendly mutual agreement.
3. Regarding the south-east of Europe, the Soviet side emphasizes the interest of the USSR in Bessarabia. The German side declares its complete political disinterest in these areas.
4. This protocol will be kept strictly secret by both parties.
By authorization
USSR governments
V. Molotov
For the Government
Germany
I. Ribbentrop»

Having visited Moscow, German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop issued a communiqué, which Soviet newspapers published on September 20, 1939. In particular, it said: “Soviet-German friendship is founded forever ... Both countries desire the continuation of peace and an end to the fruitless struggle of England and France with Germany. If, however, instigators of war prevail in these countries, Germany and the USSR know how to react. In Nazi jargon, the "warmongers" were Jews.

It's hard to believe, but after the capture of half of Europe by Hitler, Stalin sent a congratulatory telegram to the Fuhrer, which spoke of the "dizzying victories of the Wehrmacht."

Hitler did not remain in debt: “Mr. Joseph Stalin. Moscow. On your sixtieth birthday, I ask you to accept my most sincere congratulations. With this I associate my best wishes I wish good health to you personally, as well as a happy future for the peoples of the friendly Soviet Union. Adolf Hitler" (True, December 23, 1939). And in another place and at another time, Hitler stated: “Stalin only pretends to be the herald of the Bolshevik revolution. In fact, he identifies himself with Russia and the tsars and simply revived the tradition of pan-Slavism. For him, Bolshevism is only a means, only a disguise, the purpose of which is to deceive the German and Latin peoples.

By the way, the initiator of the shameful collusion was not Hitler, but Stalin. In a speech at the 18th Party Congress in the spring of 1939, he subtly hinted to his “partner” that he was not going to “pull chestnuts out of the fire” for such imperialist predators as England and France. The Germans instantly caught the Stalinist hint. German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop wrote in his memoirs: “Since March 1939, I believed that in Stalin’s speech I heard his desire to improve Soviet-German relations ... I acquainted the Fuhrer with Stalin’s speech and urged him to give me authority for the steps required to establish whether there really is a serious desire hidden behind it. Don't add or subtract...

Stalin not only initiated the shameful act, but even earlier in many ways contributed to the rise of Hitler to power. This is hard to believe today, but let's look at the facts. Hitler's rise to power was largely the result of Stalin's wretched policy, in particular, the forceful Stalinist decision imposed on the Comintern, which forbade Western Communists to bloc with the Social Democrats. Hitler was able to come to power because the German communists split the socialist movement. It was on Stalin's orders that the Comintern, which included the KKE, called on the German Communist Party to "reject any agreement with the Social Democrats against fascism and concentrate fire on the Social Democrats." The German Communist Party complied with the directive.

Obsessed with the paranoid idea of conspiracies, Stalin nevertheless trusted Hitler most of all, fearing the unification of democratic Europe and the United States to fight communism. When Churchill wrote Stalin a letter warning of an impending German attack on Russia, Stalin did not reply, but informed Hitler himself of the letter. By the way, the dream of the latter was to convince Russia to enter into an alliance with Germany for the war with England. He even suggested to Stalin the subsequent division of the British Empire between the victors. What did Stalin say? He asked the German ambassador to convey to Hitler the following: "We will remain friends with Germany, no matter what happens"...

Daniil Granin said on this occasion that pre-war propaganda set up that Germany is closer to us than England and France, and even more so America. “Ribbentrop came to Moscow, hugged, kissed Molotov. The Germans are our friends, allies, and after a while we had to shoot at them. They were morally prepared for war, because they came to wild Russia, where subhumans lived, an inferior race. And we began to say to the first prisoner we took: “After all, we are class brothers. Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Ernst Thalmann! These are the people we passed in school.”

A striking symbol of the Soviet-German "military cooperation" in 1939-1941. became "joint parades" of units of the German armed forces and the Red Army. Ours deny the fact of these parades, but the German military chronicle has preserved direct and convincing evidence of the "brotherhood in arms" of the USSR and Nazi Germany, in particular photographs taken in Brest on September 22, 1939, which depict brigade commander Krivoshey, General Guderian and a group of officers, past which military equipment moves. By the way, this parade is mentioned by Guderian in his memoirs, published in Russian in 1998: “Our stay in Brest ended with a farewell parade and a ceremony with the exchange of flags in the presence of brigade commander Krivoshein.” You can see the joint parade of 22.09.1939 of the 22nd motorized corps of the Wehrmacht and the 29th separate tank brigade of the Red Army on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6gg1z5DovI Similar joint parades were held in Bialystok, Grodno, Lvov and other cities of the "attached territories".
The USSR in many ways contributed to the restoration of the German army: for the training of German military personnel in the USSR, the training and research centers "Lipetsk" (aviators), "Kama" (tankmen), "Tomka" (chemical weapons) were organized. The future military commanders of the Third Reich and the SS troops were trained in the USSR. The NKVD and the Gestapo agreed on repressive actions during the partition of Poland, created a joint Training Center and also held a number of joint conferences in Krakow and Zakopane. Shortly before the attack on the USSR, German communists and anti-fascists who fled to the Soviet Union after Hitler came to power were handed over to the Gestapo. Most of them were killed by the Nazis.
In 1939, Stalin categorically rejected attempts to organize an anti-Hitler coalition with the participation of the USSR, demanding that he be given the opportunity to occupy the eastern regions of Poland in exchange for participating in an alliance with France and Great Britain. Such a condition for these countries was unacceptable.
In his diary, the American ambassador in Berlin, William E. Dodd, writes on the scale with which the Russian embassy received Hitler and his emissaries in Germany, showed them honor and hospitality. While there was a famine in the USSR that killed millions, in the Russian embassy and in the Kremlin the tables were bursting with overseas food, all kinds of food and expensive drinks - in hospitality, far superior to the embassies of other countries.
For a while, the friendship between the two necrophilic tyrants seemed unshakable. September 20, 1939 in the London "Evening Standard" David Lowe published the famous cartoon dedicated to the cooperation of Hitler and Stalin - "Rendezvous". He captured the meeting of two dictators, demonstrating the height of good manners and impeccable knowledge of etiquette against the backdrop of the blazing fire of a world war:
"The scum of humanity, if I'm not mistaken?" Hitler salutes Stalin with a bow.
"A bloody worker killer, I presume?" - Joseph Vissarionovich politely inquires in response.

Concluding a pact with Hitler, Stalin contributed to the rapid defeat of Poland and the mafia division of its territory between the "allies". A little-known fact that I recently learned from the historian and publicist Igor Stadnik. It turns out that during Ribbentrop's second visit to Moscow at the end of September 1939, Molotov, along with material assistance, offered Hitler military assistance in Germany's European campaigns. Even Ribbentrop was shocked, took a time out and eventually refused the presence of the Red Army in the Wehrmacht ... Nevertheless, according to Academician Yuri Pivovarov, Soviet officers nevertheless took part in the naval operations of the German fleet: allies of Germany. I'm not talking about the additional secret protocols rejected by the Germans on the further division of Europe ...

The war unleashed by Hitler in Europe was already in full swing, it was clear to everyone that sooner or later we would have to fight Germany. And it was at this time that echelon after echelon went from Russia to Germany, more and more strengthening the power of a potential enemy. These trains were transporting strategic cargo to Germany and this happened already during the Nazi blitzkrieg against Norway, Holland, Belgium and France. Only at the end of 1940, that is, 6 months before the start of the war, Germany and the USSR agreed to increase the strategic supplies of Russia to Nazi Germany by 10%.

According to the German-Soviet trade agreement, signed on August 19, 1939 as a result of negotiations between Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, the USSR began regular supplies of raw materials and materials necessary for the functioning of German military production. These shipments included, among others: phosphates, platinum, rare earth metals, petroleum products, cotton, feed grains, including:
1,000,000 tons of feed grains and legumes, worth 120 million Reichsmarks;
900,000 tons of oil, worth about 115 million Reichsmarks;
100,000 tons of cotton, worth about 90 million Reichsmarks;
500,000 tons of phosphates;
100,000 tons of chromite ores;
500,000 tons of iron ore;
300,000 tons of iron scrap and pig iron;
2400 kg of platinum.

The Soviet Union also pledged to be an intermediary in securing the purchase of military materials needed by Germany that were not produced directly in the USSR. In accordance with the economic agreement of February 11, 1940, Germany was also granted the right to transit through Soviet territory for trade with Iran, Afghanistan and the countries of the Far East. The transit of goods from eastern markets through the territory of the USSR radically leveled the consequences of the British naval blockade of Germany, which was established after the Wehrmacht's invasion of Poland, while simultaneously contributing to the growth of the economic and military power of the Germans.

Subsequently, additional economic agreements of February 11, 1940 and January 10, 1941 were concluded between the USSR and Germany, as well as a number of agreements that significantly expanded the volume of strategic supplies. To this we can add that the USSR complied with the agreements on these deliveries until June 22, 1941, despite the fact that the Germans, for their part, often retreated from them.

Stalin sent Hitler only oil and products of its processing, about 800 thousand tons. In essence, this meant that the German bombers flew to bomb London, filled with Soviet kerosene. The flywheel of war spun with each turn more and more. The Union of Cannibals was indeed sealed with blood.

Ours are trying to disavow military supplies to the USSR by mutually beneficial trade agreements, and they have agreed to the "German fathers" of the Soviet "Defence". And what was the reality?

A number of historians evaluate these military supplies as a "crime", "conscious support for the Nazi regime" and even as "Stalin's tribute to Hitler." The fact is that after Hitler came to power, Soviet-German trade was significantly reduced, but it expanded to its full extent just before Hitler's attack on the USSR ...

Here is an extract from the Second Memorandum on Real German-Soviet Economic Relations (Berlin, May 15, 1941):
3. The situation with the supply of Soviet raw materials still presents a satisfactory picture. In April, deliveries of the following most important types of raw materials were made:
Grain 208.000 tons;
Oil 90.000 tons;
Cotton 8.300 tons;
Non-ferrous metals 6.340 tons (copper, tin and nickel).
As regards manganese ore and phosphates, their supply has suffered due to lack of tonnage and transport difficulties in the southeastern zone.
The transit road through Siberia is still in operation. Supply of raw materials from East Asia, in particular the rubber transported to Germany along this road, continues to be significant (during April - 2,000 tons of rubber in special trains and 2,000 tons in ordinary Siberian trains).
Total deliveries in the current year are calculated:
Grain 632.000 tons;
Oil 232.000 tons;
Cotton 23.500 tons;
Manganese ore 50.000 tons;
Phosphates 67.000 tons;
Platinum 600 kg.

Until June 22, 1941, 72% of all German imports passed through the territory of the USSR. This means that in the first stage of the war in Europe, the Reich successfully overcame the economic blockade with the help of the Soviet Union, which undoubtedly contributed to the Nazi aggression in Europe. In 1940 alone, Germany accounted for 52% of all Soviet exports, including 50% of exports of phosphates, 77% of asbestos, 62% of chromium, 40% of manganese, 75% of oil, 77% of grains. After the defeat of France, Great Britain, almost single-handedly for a year, courageously resisted the Nazis, supported by the Bolsheviks in every possible way.

All this - on the eve of June 22, 1941 ... All this was transformed into a weapon with which the Nazis would destroy Russians ... A glaring fact: millions of Russians were killed using weapons created thanks to the criminal conspiracy of Stalin and Hitler to supply Germany with strategic materials. I'm not talking about the fact that in fact in 1939-1941. The USSR was a "non-belligerent ally" of militaristic Germany.

And now a typical example of German reciprocal deliveries. The USSR purchased from the Germans the cruiser Lutzow (Petropavlovsk), which cost a lot of money. A German tug delivered the ship's hull to Leningrad without mechanisms and weapons, before the start of the war, its construction at the Baltic Shipyard was hampered by the Germans, so that by the beginning of World War II, the ship's readiness was only 70%. In addition, on September 17, Petropavlovsk was badly damaged by German artillery fire and lay on the ground, plunging into the water to the armored deck. It was possible to raise it and somehow repair it only by 1944 ...

I'm not talking about a conscious marriage: for example, the Germans supplied us with a powerful expensive press, with which it was possible to produce special pipes, the huge cylinder of which, weighing almost 90 tons, burst already in the process of adjustment. We did not make such cylinders at home then, and the newly ordered one was never delivered ... On November 30, 1940, Krupp undertook to supply six ship gun turrets with 380-mm guns to the USSR. Naturally, instead of towers, we managed to get only ... a few folders with documentation.

What else was bought from the Germans? - Equipment for galleys, bakeries, ship laundries, diesel engines, typewriters, in single copies - military equipment ...

Testimony of the People's Commissar of the Aviation Industry of the USSR A.I. Shakhurin: "... Just before the start of the war, supply disruptions began." We are talking, of course, about German deliveries, while the last Soviet trains with cargo regularly passed to Germany on the eve of June 22, 1941 ... However, trade was originally planned so that German deliveries could lag behind Soviet ones by 20%, but in fact the Germans, of course, slowed down their supplies even more, causing constant conflicts of the parties, constantly increasing the trade imbalance in their favor. So Hitler fooled our “wise and brilliant leader of the peoples”, who mediocrely gave away the strategic raw materials that we ourselves needed so much.

By agreement with the Kremlin, German ships could hide from the British fleet in Murmansk, and there in September - October 1940, about 40 German ships gathered, among them - one of the largest and fastest transatlantic liners "Bremen", capable of quickly transferring to long distances entire divisions. In October, the Teriberka naval base (German name "Basis Nord"), provided to the Reich east of Murmansk, was expanded, which until then could only receive submarines attacking ships of the anti-Hitler coalition. Now our people are trying in every possible way to downplay the role of this criminal act of Stalin - the creation of a fascist military base on the territory of the USSR, moreover, in a strategically important area and in wartime: it seems to be not a base at all, but just a raid parking lot, and besides, not warships. And now - the documented truth.

Germany received the Nerpichya Bay, 45 km from Murmansk, in complete and unauthorized disposal. Any Nazi warships were allowed to enter this bay, from submarines and torpedo boats to battleships.

The Nazis, with their usual thoroughness, began to build berths, repair shops, supply depots and aviation fuel storage facilities in Nerpichya Bay, hidden in coastal granite rocks. According to some reports, even before the arrival of the German builders, the preparatory work for the construction of Basis Nord was carried out by the workers of the 95th section of the Murmansk branch of EPRON. It is possible that the hardest work was done by prisoners from the nearest NKVD special camp.

In early October 1939, the base began to be used for its intended purpose. It converged the strategic interests of almost all formations and services of the Kriegsmarine (Kriegsmarine - the official name of the Naval Forces of Nazi Germany). Grand Admiral Raeder ordered that the base be used to supply the German surface fleet during the planned invasion of Norway and as a starting point for escorting ships along the Northern Sea Route. The German industry was in dire need of jute, rubber, molybdenum, tungsten, copper, zinc and mica, which could be obtained from Japan. The Kriegsmarine was ready to send 12 to 26 transports there along the Northern Sea Route.

The headquarters of the commander of the German submarine fleet, Karl Dönitz, believed that the Basis Nord was an extremely important and convenient stronghold for the fight against British shipping in the North. From here it was also possible to carry out important hydrographic and meteorological information for the Nazis and to lay fairways for military ships.

A division of submarines, a huge tanker "Jan Wellem" with a tonnage of 11,776 tons, supply vessels "Fenicia" and "Cordillera", which provided the actions of German raiders in the North Atlantic, dozens of other warships, including the meteorological observation ship WBS6 "Ködingen" were based in the Nerpichya Bay. "and WBS7" Sachsenwald ". So, in fact, the USSR became a strategic ally of Nazi Germany at the beginning of World War II.

What can be added to this? It can be added that until June 1941, the Stalinist regime believed that the destruction of the fascist regime was a crime ... Don't you believe it? Then let's listen to excerpts from the report of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR Molotov after the conclusion of the shameful pact with Nazism:

“Since the conclusion of the Soviet-German non-aggression pact on August 23, an end has been put to the abnormal relations that existed for a number of years between the Soviet Union and Germany,” Molotov declared at the very beginning of the report. - In place of hostility, fueled in every possible way by some European powers, came the rapprochement and establishment of friendly relations between the USSR and Germany. Further improvement of these new, good relations found its expression in the German-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Border between the USSR and Germany, signed on September 28 in Moscow.
..The governments of England and France, however, do not want an end to the war and the restoration of peace, but are looking for a new justification for continuing the war against Germany. V Lately the ruling circles of England and France are trying to portray themselves as fighters for the democratic rights of the peoples against Hitlerism, moreover, the British government has declared that for it the aim of the war against Germany is nothing more and nothing less than "the destruction of Hitlerism." It turns out that the British, and with them the French supporters of the war, declared something like an "ideological war" against Germany, reminiscent of the old religious wars. Indeed, at one time religious wars against heretics and infidels were in vogue. As is well known, they led to the gravest consequences for the masses of the people, to economic ruin and to the cultural savagery of the peoples... But these wars took place during the Middle Ages. Is it not to these times of the Middle Ages, to the times of religious wars, superstitions and cultural savagery, that the ruling classes of England and France are again dragging us? In any case, under the "ideological" flag, a war of an even greater scale and even greater dangers for the peoples of Europe and the whole world is now started. But this kind of war has no justification for itself.
The ideology of Hitlerism, like any other ideological system, can be recognized or denied, this is a matter of political views. But any person will understand that ideology cannot be destroyed by force, it cannot be ended by war. Therefore, it is not only senseless, but also criminal to wage such a war as the war for the "destruction of Hitlerism", covered up with a false flag of struggle for "democracy".

After the signing of the criminal pact on September 7, 1939, some representatives of the European Communist Parties were summoned to the Kremlin, where Stalin bluntly dotted the "i". He said that the situation had changed and that the Western Communist parties, in particular the French, should fight against their own governments. Stalin's plan was this: to support the Germans, thereby adding fuel to the war between France, Great Britain and Germany. And then, when "the imperialists bleed each other", as in 1917-1918, "we will carry the socialist revolution to Paris."

Naturally, the French government banned the PCF. A hundred leading communists who remained in France from October 1939 to May 1940, under the German occupation, clandestinely campaigned against the French government in exile, which was at war with Nazi Germany. This propaganda during the war was nothing but a betrayal of France.

To this must be added the destruction of the "top" of the Red Army commanders before the war, Stalin's pogroms of research organizations in the USSR, the arrests of major physicists, including nuclear scientists, the transfer of German anti-fascists (including scientists) to Germany, close cooperation between the Gestapo and the NKVD . As one of the historians said, "the National Socialist sword was honed together with the NKVD of the USSR." It is curious that during the war the Gestapo often occupied the buildings of the NKVD.

On November 11, 1938, Commissar of State Security 1st rank L. Beria and SS Brigadeführer G. Müller signed the General Agreement “On Cooperation, Mutual Assistance, Joint Activities between the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD of the USSR and the Chief Directorate of Security of the National Socialist Workers Party of Germany (GESTAPO)”. I will quote several sections of this shameful "Pact":

"P. 1. The parties see the need to develop close cooperation between the state security agencies of the USSR and Germany for the sake of the security and prosperity of both countries, to strengthen good neighborly relations, friendship between the Russian and German peoples, joint activities aimed at waging a merciless fight against common enemies, pursuing a systematic policy of inciting wars, international conflicts and the enslavement of humanity.
Clause 2. The parties that signed this agreement see the historical necessity of such a decision and will try to do everything to strengthen the influence and power positions of their countries around the world without causing mutual harm.
p. 3. ... The parties will lead a joint struggle against the common main enemies:
- international Jewry, its international financial system, Judaism and the Jewish worldview;
- the degeneration of mankind, in the name of the improvement of the white race and the creation of eugenic mechanisms of racial hygiene.
The parties will do their best to strengthen the principles of socialism in the USSR, national socialism in Germany, and are convinced that one of the fundamental elements of security is the process of militarization of the economy, the development of the military industry and strengthening the power and efficiency of the armed forces of their states.
The parties will contribute to the development of cooperation in the military field between our countries, and, if necessary, to promote joint intelligence and counterintelligence activities on the territory of enemy states.
In the event that situations arise that, in the opinion of one of the parties, create a threat to our countries, they will inform each other and immediately enter into contact to agree on the necessary initiatives and take active measures to reduce tension and to resolve such situations.
The leaders of the NKVD and the GESTAPO, employees of the services of both departments will have regular meetings to hold consultations, discuss other activities that contribute to the development and deepening of relations between our countries. As they say, do not subtract, do not add ...

Cooperation between Stalin and Hitler on the eve of the war had another unexpected consequence - it facilitated the betrayal of the communists themselves. It is generally accepted that during the war the Germans were especially methodical in destroying communists and commissars. This is true, but not all. Again I give the floor to Professor Lev Simkin: “My ideas about the persecution of communists in the German rear - and those turned out to be somewhat exaggerated. In many cities, party members were only required to register with the commandant's office, and they could well be left alone. According to the historian Boris Kovalev, in each district center of the Kalinin, Kursk, Orel, Smolensk regions, an average of 80 to 150 communists voluntarily came to register with the German commandant's offices. Most of them worked in responsible positions before the war, and continued to work for the Germans during the occupation. True, there were those who acted on the instructions of the underground.

Let's summarize briefly. In August 1939, a criminal pact was concluded in Moscow, according to which Stalin and Hitler became military allies, and the USSR became an accomplice in the crimes of Nazism:

“The Red Army, together with the Wehrmacht, took part in the defeat and division of Poland, in the capture [and executions] of hundreds of thousands of Polish officers and soldiers, in the suppression of the partisan movement in the occupied territories. Red Army troops took part in the joint Soviet-Nazi parade in Brest. On September 28, 1939, another treaty was signed in the Kremlin: "On friendship and the border between the USSR and Germany." The contract does not specify an expiration date. He signed forever, forever.
..If Hitler had not attacked the Soviet Union, then Comrade Stalin would forever have remained a friend of Hitler, and the peoples of the Soviet Union, in accordance with the agreements signed in the Kremlin, would have forever been friends of Nazism. And let the pipes of crematoria smoke peacefully over the concentration camps of Europe, this did not concern us. Our people would never let such a friend down, our leaders would provide Hitler with everything necessary to continue the war, to defeat all the enemies of the Reich, to keep the conquered peoples under the heel of Nazism, to spread the brown plague throughout Europe and the world.
If Hitler had not attacked, then today on Lake Seliger, presumably, our good Nashi-Rashists would coo with the messengers of a nice organization called the Hitler Youth.
The Soviet Union and Germany, having divided their spheres of influence in 1939, began to develop living space, each in his own field. The Soviet Union - in Finland, Germany in Norway and Denmark. The Soviet Union - in Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia. Germany - in Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg. The Soviet Union is in Romania. Germany - in France, Yugoslavia, Greece.
The Soviet Union fought, relying mainly on its own resources. And the victories of Germany became possible only thanks to the supply of strategic raw materials from the Soviet Union, thanks to the fact that Hitler was calm for his rear, thanks to the fact that he was not afraid of the blockade of Germany. On November 13, 1940, the head of the Soviet government and People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Comrade Molotov, did not forget in a personal conversation to remind his comrade-in-arms Hitler that the defeat of France and other European states became possible only thanks to the help and support of the Soviet Union.
Hitler crushed Europe on Soviet oil, he fed his army with our bread and fat. It is impossible to fight without vanadium, tungsten, manganese, copper, tin, chromium. Hitler received all this from the hands of his faithful Soviet comrades. And also - iron ore, cotton, platinum and much more.

According to Yu.Plavsky, “Stalin, to the detriment of his people, supplied food and armed Hitler's army. Stalin staunchly defended his ally from the attacks of the United States and England. The result of the conspiracy of two dictators: ruins from Europe, 50,000,000 dead, of which more than half are Russians.

In today's Russia, Stalin, who made all conceivable and unthinkable failures, is increasingly turning into national hero No. 1. On his conscience, not only tens of millions of destroyed fellow citizens, but also tremendous losses during the Finnish and Second World Wars. But for Stalin's apologists and part-time trade union patriots, I saved an amusing quote from Stalin's book "Questions of Leninism":
“The history of old Russia was that it was constantly beaten. Everyone beat. Mongolian khans. Turkish beks. Polish-Lithuanian pans, Anglo-French capitalists. Beat the Japanese barons. They beat for everything and constantly. Everyone beat them for cultural backwardness, for state backwardness, for industrial backwardness. They beat me - because it was profitable and got away with impunity. (Joseph Stalin, Questions of Leninism, 1934, p. 445). Why am I bringing this up? Solely to illustrate the assessment of "Russian victories", the main necrophile of Russian history ...

To the above, one could add Stalin's collaborationism of another kind - the ruthless attitude of the "great leader" towards the Russian man and the Russian soldier after Hitler's attack on the USSR: the executions of several dozen generals, including Heroes of the Soviet Union, at the beginning of the war, the Asian tactics of scorched land, the ominous order 0428 (“We will not hand over to the enemy a single one of our houses, not a single factory, not a single institution - we will burn everything ourselves”), flooding the enemy with the corpses of our soldiers (grand losses of the army and civilian population), confinement to the GULAG of a mass of soldiers who fell into captivity, wholesale arrests of "suspicious persons", echelons of 1942, taking away "potential traitors" into the unknown, and much, much more. The Soviet and Russian military historian G.F. Krivosheev indicates the following figures, based on the data of the NKVD: out of 1,836,562 soldiers who returned home from captivity, 233,400 people were convicted in connection with the accusation of collaborating with the enemy and served their sentences in the Gulag system. All this is described in detail, in particular, in the memoirs of Lydia Osipova, Larisa Dovga and the works of the historian Sergei Kudryashov, but this is another story that requires separate consideration ...

That's not all: Stalin did not spare the Russian soldier, believing that the war would write everything off. According to Latynina, when Stalin sent hundreds of thousands of soldiers to storm the German fortifications with the words “But the Germans will be to blame for everything,” he followed the “the worse, the better” strategy: “If 20 million people die in Russia during the war, All the same, everyone will be blamed on the Germans. There, the more Russians Zhukov kills, the worse the anger of the Russian soldier will be when he kills everything that moves in East Prussia. The problem of vengeance is a topic for a separate conversation, so terrible that it is better not to touch it on the Russian site ... (see, for example, P. Hedruk "Genocide in East Prussia").

I note that during the First World War, a million Russian soldiers were also captured by the enemy. The tsarist government not only did not abandon the Russian subjects, but provided them with moral and other support. As for the power of the Bolshevik, Stalinist, the prisoners were equated with traitors and after the Nazi camps ended up in the Gulag, from which many never returned ... By the way, the number of Russians who were captured by the Germans during the Second World War was calculated, according to estimates, 5.2-5.7 million people and about 30% of this number agreed to cooperate with the enemy ...

According to the data collected by Fyodor Sverdlov in the book “Soviet generals in captivity”, about 100 Soviet generals, brigade commanders and brigade commissars were captured, of which 12 actively collaborated with the enemy (A.A. Vlasov, F.N. Trukhin, V. F.Malyshkin, D.E.Zakutny, I.A.Blagoveshchensky, G.N.Zhilenkov, P.V.Bogdanov, A.E.Budykho, A.Z.Naumov, I.G.Bessonov, M.V. Bogdanov and A.N. Sevastyanov) and 29 died in captivity. Of the senior officers who returned from captivity, 31 were arrested and repressed.

Secret Decree of the Presidium Supreme Council USSR dated April 19, 1943, military field courts received the right to punish "traitors" in an "expedited manner" with immediate execution of the sentence - up to public hanging. In the winter of 1944, I personally saw 4 shibenitsy on the Blagoveshchensk market in Kharkov with executed policemen. Military field courts and "special meetings", as a rule, were held "in Soviet fashion" - hastily, without a proper evidence base, with an investigation directly during the trial and the immediate execution of the sentence. One can imagine how many innocent people were executed... Recently (June 16, 2012) this was confirmed by Doctor of Law Lev Simkin on the program "The Price of Victory" ("Echo of Moscow"), who studied in detail the work of Soviet justice in the war and post-war years and discovered numerous cases of miscarriage of justice.

Suffice it to say that only in the first six months after the start of the war, that is, until December 31, 1941, the number of criminal cases considered by the Stalinist Military Tribunals exceeded 85 thousand, while 90,322 servicemen were convicted, of which 31,327 people were sentenced to death ... According to according to Yu. Nesterenko, according to the officially registered verdicts of the tribunals during the war, at least 150 thousand soldiers and officers were shot, mostly innocent, and no one considered the victims of the detachments at all ... In the documentary book "The Hidden Truth of the War of 1941" ("Russian kniga", 1992) the total number of people shot by Soviet punitive authorities during the war is estimated at one million people.

During the Battle of Stalingrad alone, 13,500 Soviet servicemen were sentenced to death by a military tribunal. They were shot for desertion, defection to the side of the enemy, “self-shooting” wounds, looting, anti-Soviet agitation, retreat without an order. Soldiers were considered guilty if they did not open fire on a deserter or a fighter intending to surrender. The huge number of defectors in the first phase of the battle inspired unjustified optimism in the Germans.

Even according to official data, military tribunals under article 58 "treason" in 1941-54. 484,000 traitors and deserters were convicted, of which more than 150,000 servicemen were shot (for comparison, the number of such sentences in the Wehrmacht was about 8,000, and in France, the Petenov part of which directly went to the service of Hitler, about 10,000). Statistics of convicted traitors in other European countries: Denmark - 15 thousand, Norway - 18 thousand, Hungary - 18 thousand, Czechoslovakia - 25 thousand, England - 2 traitors ... For voluntary surrender and cooperation with the invaders, 23 former Soviet generals (not counting dozens of generals who received camp terms). After the signing of decrees on the creation of penal units, according to official data, 427,910 servicemen passed through them.

To this we can add that after the end of World War II, out of 2.5 million citizens of the USSR returned from Europe (repatriated, prisoners and defectors), about 7% were repressed and sent to the Gulag, many were forcibly sent to "great construction projects", and most of the remaining until the end of her life she bore the stigma of "traitors" with all the ensuing consequences.

After the war, the population of the Gulag increased by a million people, a significant part of which were traitors and prisoners. It is also interesting that in the countries of Western Europe the number of convicted traitors differed by orders of magnitude from Russian statistics. Moreover, the criminal trials of traitors in the USSR dragged on until the 80s.

All this is being carefully retouched, glossed over, hidden, distorted by the current Russian authorities, who organize "Commissions to counter attempts to falsify history to the detriment of Russia's interests", but in fact shamelessly distort the history of World War II, contribute to the publication of mediocre, worthless and extremely biased "scientific works" such as "65 Years of the Great Victory", which is recognized by domestic hangers-on as "the best publication about the Great Patriotic War" ... By the way, in the early 80s, Viktor Astafyev wrote an angry letter about a similar 12-volume book on the history of the Second World War - that's all lies and lies.

These historians "by order" believe that the "Great Patriotic War" will be taught in their kholuy-servile presentation. But history is not a corrupt girl, but a science that eventually puts everything in its place. And the terrible inhuman truth about the Second World War, about the seas of incompetently spilled blood of the people, the endless oceans of suffering, the grandiose scale of betrayals, the enslavement of countries and peoples, the historical defeat of the "enslavers" - cannot be hidden and the truth cannot be hidden, as Soviet historians distorted and concealed it for fifty years . Every day more and more layers of historical truth will be revealed, and it is hoped that the time is not far off when, through the efforts of new generations of unbiased historians, all the KGB-Bolshevik myths will be finally destroyed and historical truth, as it always happened in the past, will triumph.

Finishing touch: In the First World War, neither the Germans nor the Austrians created a single unit of Russian traitors fighting with their own country! Isn't it the best evidence of the power of the Bolshevik corruption of the population of the country? ..

Until recently, the topic of Russian collaborationism was so taboo that, after reading this article, our professional patriots can fall into a vicious frenzy and, with their inherent correctness, resort to their usual arguments in the form of Russian obscenities. Understanding the futility of the enterprise, I will nevertheless try to cool their “patriotic” ardor with references to the numerous works of professional historians of collaborationism Aleksandrov, Chuev, Drobyazko, Semenov, Romanko, Budnitsky, and many, many others that have appeared recently. Here are just a few of the sources from which I drew information for this work:

K.M. Aleksandrov, Russian soldiers of the Wehrmacht. Heroes or traitors, Moscow: Yauza, Eksmo, 2005, 752 p. - (Dossier III Reich).
KM Aleksandrov, Against Stalin. Vlasovites and Eastern Volunteers in the Second World War. Collection of articles and materials, St. Petersburg: Yuventa, 2003, p. 352.
B.N. Kovalev, Collaborationism in Russia in 1941-1945. Types and Forms, Novgorod: NovGU named after Yaroslav the Wise, 2009, p. 370.
V.A. Perezhogin, War and society, 1941-1945: in 2 books. M., 2004. Book 2. Ch. Issues of collaborationism, p. 293-305.
G. Sapozhnikova. Traitors by choice and without. Interview with a doctor historical sciences B.N. Kovalev. TVNZ, 14.09.2010.
V. Makhno, Directory "A complete list of associations and formations of the 3rd Reich from the citizens of the USSR."
O.V.Romanko, Hitler's Soviet Legion. Citizens of the USSR in the ranks of the Wehrmacht and the SS. M., Eksmo, Yauza, 2006. p. 640.
O.V.Romanko, Legion under the sign of the Chase. Belarusian collaborationist formations in the power structures of Nazi Germany (1941-1945), Simferopol: Antikva, 2008, p. 304.
V. Polyakov, The Terrible Truth About the Great Patriotic War: Partisans Without the “Secret” Heading.
O. Budnitsky, Russian emigration during the war years, Echo of Moscow, The price of victory, 06/23/2012.
O. Budnitsky, Collaborationism: causes and consequences, Echo of Moscow, The price of victory, 03.03.2012, 03.10.2012.
L. Simkin, Hitler's accomplices, Echo of Moscow, The price of victory, 06/09/2012, 06/16/20121.
S.I.Drobyazko, O.V.Romanko, K.K.Semenov, Foreign formations of the Third Reich / Ed. K.K. Semenova, M., AST; Astrel, 2009. p. 848.
S.I.Drobyazko, O.V.Romanko, K.K.Semenov, Foreign formations of the Third Reich. Foreigners in the Service of Nazism: A History of European Collaborationism, M., AST, Astrel, Harvest, 2011, p. 832.
S.I.Drobyazko, A.Karashchuk, Russian Liberation Army, 1999.
S.I. Drobyazko, Eastern legions and Cossack units in the Wehrmacht, AST, 2000
S.I. Drobyazko, Eastern Volunteers in the Wehrmacht, Police and SS, AST, 2000.
S.I. Drobyazko, Soviet citizens in the ranks of the Wehrmacht. On the question of the number // Great Patriotic War in the assessment of the young: Sat. articles of students, graduate students, young scientists, M., 1997, pp. 127-134.
S.I. Drobyazko, Eastern troops in the Wehrmacht, 1941-1945. // Our News, 1994, Nos. 436-437.
S.I. Drobyazko, Politics of collaborationism and the Cossack question during the Second World War. // Our news, 1996, No. 445, pp. 15-18.
S.I. Drobyazko Eastern Troops and the Russian Liberation Army. // Materials on the history of the Russian liberation movement 1941-1945: Collection of articles, documents and memoirs. Issue 1. M.: Archive of the ROA, 1997, pp. 16-106.
S.I. Drobyazko Cossack units in the Wehrmacht. // Materials on the history of the Russian liberation movement 1941-1945: Collection of articles, documents and memoirs. Issue 1. M.: Archive of the ROA, 1997. S.182-232.
S.I. Drobyazko, Lokotsky autonomous region and the Russian Liberation People's Army. // Materials on the history of the Russian liberation movement 1941-1945, Collection of articles, documents and memoirs. Issue 2. M.: Archive of the ROA, 1998, pp. 168-216.
Semiryaga M.I. Collaborationism. Nature, typology and manifestations during the Second World War. Moscow: Russian Political Encyclopedia (ROSSPEN), 2000. 863 p.
A.V. Okorokov, Anti-Soviet military formations during the Second World War. M.: Military University of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, 2000. 184 p.
A.V. Okorokov, Cossacks and Russian freedom movement/ In search of truth. Ways and fates of the second emigration. M., 1997. p. 224-226.
A.V. Okorokov, Fascism and Russian emigration (1920-1945). M.: "RUSAKI", 2001. 594 p.
E. Samoilov, From the White Guard to Fascism / Inevitable Retribution: based on the materials of the trials of traitors to the Motherland, fascist executioners and agents of imperialist intelligence. M .: "Military publishing house", 1984. p. 92-110.
B.V. Sokolov, Occupation. Truth and myths. M.: AST-PRESS KNIGA, 2003. 352 p.
V. Ulyanov, I. Shishkin, Traitors. Appearance. M., 2008. 544 p.
A. Kazantsev, Third Force, Sowing, 1952, 1974 and 1994

The most extensive list of historical literature on Russian collaborationism during World War II is contained in the book by D. Zhukov and I. Kovtun "Russian SS", M., "Veche", 2010, 480 p. Here are just a few extracts from this list:
Kazantsev A.S. "Third force. Russia between Nazism and Communism. M.: "Posev", 1994. 344 p.
Frelikh S. General Vlasov. Russians and Germans between Hitler and Stalin / Foreword by A. Hillgruber. Cologne, 1990. 400 p.
Zhukov D.A., Kovtun I.I. Russian police. M.: "Veche", 2010. 304 p.
Zhukov D.A., Kovtun I.I. Russian SS men in battle. Soldiers or punishers? M.: Yauza-press, 2009. 320 p.
Kovalev B.N. Nazi occupation and collaborationism in Russia, 1941–1944. M.: ACT Publishing House: Transitbook, 2004. 483 p.
Pyatov K. Slavic pupils of the SS / "Echo of War" (Moscow). 2008 No. 2. S. 15.
Semenov K.K. Russian SS Fuhrers / "Echo of War" (Moscow). 2008. No. 2. S. 8-11.
Chuev S.G. Damned soldiers. Traitors on the side of the III Reich. M .: "Eksmo"; Publishing house "Yauza", 2004. 576 p.
Bishop K. Foreign divisions of the III Reich. Foreign Volunteers in the Waffen-SS 1940–1945. M.: "Eksmo", 2006. 192 p.
Comb E. Russian National Idea as an Element of the Terror Regime of Collaborationist Authorities / Nazi War of Extermination in the North-West of the USSR: Regional Aspect. Proceedings of the international scientific conference (Pskov, December 10-11, 2009). M.: Fund " historical memory»; Pskov State Pedagogical University, 2010, pp. 92-100.
Dean M. Collaborators of the Holocaust. Crimes of the local police of Belarus and Ukraine, 1941–1944. SPb.: "Academic project"; Publishing house "DNA", 2008. 268 p.
Shneer A. Plen. Soviet prisoners of war in Germany, 1941-1945. M.: "Bridges of Culture"; Jerusalem: Gesharim, 2005. 624 p.

In addition to this - a small list of really truthful books and works about World War II:
"The Hidden Truth of the War of 1941" ("Russian Book", 1992);
V. Astafiev “Merry Soldier”, “Cursed and Killed” and “There is no answer for me ... Epistolary diary. 1952-2001";
V. Grossman "Life and Fate";
N. Nikulin "Memories of the war";
A. Adamovich, D. Granin "Blockade Book";
S. Aleksievich “The war has no female face”, “Charmed by death”;
D. Granin "My lieutenant";

G.Vladimov "The General and his army";
M. Dudin "Where ours did not disappear";
S.Verevkin "Second World War: torn pages";
V. Nekrasov "In the trenches of Stalingrad";
A. Nekrich "1941, June 22";
A.Nikonov “Be the first! Main riddle World War II";
G. Popov "War and Truth" (1941-1945. Notes on the war);
S. Zakharevich "Big Blood";
A. Smirnov "Falcons washed with blood";
B. Sokolov "The Truth about the Great Patriotic War", "Exterminated Marshals", "Third Reich: Myths and Reality"; On the ratio of losses in people and military equipment on the Soviet-German front during the Great Patriotic War // Questions of History. 1988. No. 9.
V. Beshanov “Fought on coffins”, “Blood-red army. Whose fault is it?”, “They filled up with corpses!”, “Tank pogrom of 1941”; "Ten Stalin's blows", "Leningrad defense";
I. Drogovoz "Large fleet of the country of the Soviets";
M. Solonin “June 22. Anatomy of a catastrophe”, “June 25. Stupidity or aggression?”, “On peacefully sleeping airfields...”, “There is no good in war”, “A new chronology of the catastrophe”, “Another chronology of the catastrophe” and other works;
V. Suvorov "The Last Republic", "Shadow of Victory";
V. Suvorov, A. Burovsky and others. "Union of a Star with a Swastika: Counter Aggression";
I. Hoffmann "Stalin's war of extermination (1941-1945)";
Y. Holtman “Some myths of the Second World War. Part I-VI". Sites Proza.ru, Litsovet;
V.Kondratiev "Wounded leave", "Selizharovsky tract", "Sashka", "In war as in war" and other works;
V. Bogomolov “In August forty-fourth”, “My life, or did you dream about me?”;
G. Baklanov “The dead have no shame”, “Span of the earth”, “July 41 years”;
B.Vasiliev “Not on the lists”, “The dawns here are quiet”;
V. Bykov "Sotnikov", "Survive until dawn", "Go and not return"; "Long way home. Book of memories";
J. Degen "War never ends";
A. Beck "Volokolamsk Highway";
K. Vorobyov "Killed near Moscow", "It's us, Lord!";
M. Hastings "Armageddon: the battle for Germany, 1944-1945" ("Armageddon: The Battle For Germany 1944-1945");
P.Hedruck "Genocide in East Prussia";
P. Polyan “Victims of two dictatorships. Soviet prisoners of war and Ostarbeiters in the Third Reich and their repatriation.
A. Kokoshin "Army and Politics";
"Another war: 1939-1945" edited by Yu. N. Afanasyev;
M. Meltyukhov "Stalin's missed chance";
L. Kopylev "Keep forever";
S. Yarov "Blockade ethics";
"Secrecy removed: Losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in wars, hostilities and military conflicts";
P. Aptekar Are the victims justified? Military history magazine. 1992. No. 3. S. 44-45.
I. Pykhalov "The Great Slandered War";
Yu.Nesterenko. Endless action "anti-victory" (http://yun.complife.info/miscell/antivict.htm).

In concluding this work, I cannot but touch on the personal motive for taking up this difficult and thankless subject. This motive is connected with the understanding that sooner or later Russia will face the need to revise the causes and results of the Second World War, that is, one of the most perverse topics in its history. Although the distortions of history are inherent in all countries and peoples, sooner or later it becomes possible to correct them in order to learn from mistakes and miscalculations. Although the history of Russia is still far from such revisions, they are inevitable, and then there will be a need for other points of view and other truths, to which every people and every country sooner or later grow ...

traitors and patriots

It cannot be said that the phenomenon of Soviet collaborationism was unique in World War II. But if not by the share of the population, then by the absolute number of collaborators who served in the German army. The Soviet Union occupies a sad first place.

Since the beginning of the war, millions of Red Army soldiers were taken prisoner. By December 1, 1941, there were already 3806 thousand of them. In 1942, another 1653 thousand were added, in 1943 - 565 thousand, in 1944 - 147 thousand. Even in four months of victorious 1945, 34 thousand Soviet military personnel managed to get captured . Of the approximately 6.2 million Soviet prisoners, about 100, and maybe 200 thousand, were able to escape, about 4.2 million died in captivity, and about 1.8 million were liberated by Soviet troops (of which only half were at the time of liberation, it retained the status of long-term, while the rest had been liberated by the Germans themselves earlier and served in collaborationist formations). The numbers are terrible.

The reason for the tragedy lies in the misanthropic policy of Hitler, for whom the territories in the East were primarily "living space" for German colonization. The German leadership counted on a blitzkrieg and did not care about the prisoners - more than 2.5 million of them did not survive the winter of 1941/1942. The Soviet government provided unwitting support, although it declared with the outbreak of war that it was ready to comply with the basic conditions of the Geneva Convention on Conversion with prisoners of war, but in fact rejected two of its most important points: on providing the International Red Cross with lists of captured enemy soldiers and on allowing parcels from their homeland for military personnel. As a result, the German command left the prisoners without food and in unequipped camps to their fate.

There were many defectors. For the first year of the war, however, when their number was especially large, there is no data, but it is known that later, in the second half of 1942, 61 thousand Red Army soldiers defected to the side of the Germans. In 1943, the number of defectors decreased to 24 thousand, and in the first three months of 1944 there were only 2.2 thousand of them. In the last year of the war, there were even fewer of them (there are no exact data), but even in March 1945 on the Oder , when no one doubted Hitler's defeat, 18 Soviet soldiers nevertheless ran across the German lines.

Collaboration with Germany was initially not rejected by many captured representatives of the Soviet generals. So, according to German data, in December 1941, such generals as M. I. Potapov and P. G. Ponedelin expressed their readiness, under certain conditions, together with the German army to fight against Stalin and the Bolsheviks ... On December 12, the hero of Vyazma, Lieutenant General M. F. Lukin, under whose leadership the encircled Soviet troops detained the infantry units of the Center group for almost two weeks and thereby, perhaps, saved Moscow, transmitted on behalf of a group of generals imprisoned with him a proposal to the German side to create a Russian counter-government, which proved I wish the people and the army could fight "against the hated Bolshevik system" without opposing the interests of their homeland. At the same time, Lukin told the German officers who interrogated him: “The people will face an unusual situation: the Russians sided with the so-called enemy, which means that going over to them is not treason to the Motherland, but only a departure from the system ... Even prominent Soviet figures will probably think about this, perhaps, even those who can still do something. After all, not all leaders are sworn adherents of communism.

Mikhail Fedorovich Lukin died in 1970 as a recognized war hero. Only 14 years later, in Joachim Hoffman's book "History of the Vlasov Army", excerpts from the protocols of his interrogations were published. If these protocols fell into the hands of Stalin's investigators, the general would not escape execution. After all, General Ponedelin was shot after the war, and only on the basis of very confused denunciations about his alleged readiness to cooperate with the enemy. And even later, during the time of Khrushchev or Brezhnev, the announcement of the protocols would certainly deprive Lukin of the rank of general, and his name would be deleted from the history of the Great Patriotic War ...

The first stage of collaborationism encouraged by the Germans in Russia came from the first weeks of the war. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war, in order to escape from the camp, and civilians, in order not to die of hunger, entered the German army as "Hee-wee" - "voluntary assistants (Hilfswillige). They were used in rear services and formally did not have the right to wear weapons, although they were considered soldiers of the German army. Soon, many "Hee-wee" began to be used for sentry and security functions and armed with light small arms. By the end of 1941, "Hee-wee" was already about 200 thousand people: Russians, Ukrainians , Belarusians, Latvians, Tatars ... It is almost impossible to determine the exact number of "Hee-Vi" in different periods. According to some estimates, in the spring of 1943 there were more than 1 million. According to a number of German generals and officers, without the assistance of "voluntary assistants "It would have been impossible for German troops in Russia to solve the difficult problems of transport and supply.

From the moment the war in the East took on a protracted character, the German command began to seek the possibility of forming combat units from collaborators, initially more for propaganda than for actual military purposes. When forming Russian units important role played by the captured commander of the 2nd shock army and deputy commander of the Volkhov Front, Lieutenant General Andrei Andreevich Vlasov. Born in 1901 into a peasant family, Vlasov made a brilliant career. At the beginning of the war, he commanded the 4th mechanized corps on the Southwestern Front, then - the 37th army in the battle of Kiev. In the Battle of Moscow, Vlasov successfully led the 20th Army. Later, he led the 2nd shock, which was surrounded through no fault of his own. He tried to get to the front line with a group of fighters, but on July 11, 1942 he was captured by a German patrol. In his appeals to the Red Army soldiers later, Vlasov repeatedly claimed that he deliberately took up the fight against the Bolsheviks for the "new Russia". However, by his own admission, he resolved the issue of unacceptability for himself Soviet system, only being surrounded in the Volkhov swamps.

By the autumn of 1942, Vlasov was the largest and most popular Soviet commander in the army, who agreed to cooperate unconditionally with Germany. Lukin, not having obtained the consent of the German leaders to the creation of an independent Russian army and government, and convinced of the death of millions of prisoners in the camps due to the inhumanity of the Germans, lost interest in such cooperation. In addition, he asked the Germans for the time being not to announce his proposals for Russian-German cooperation, because he was afraid for the family that remained in the unoccupied territory. Therefore, the choice fell on Vlasov, whose name promised the greatest propaganda effect.

In Smolensk, on December 27, 1942, the appeal of the Russian Committee to the soldiers and commanders of the Red Army was published, signed by its chairman, Lieutenant General A. A. Vlasov and secretary, Major General V. F. Malyshkin, the former chief of staff of the 19th Army. In this appeal, Bolshevism was declared "the enemy of the Russian people" and the main culprit of the war. It was also stated here: “The history of our country does not know such defeats as were the lot of the Red Army in this war. Despite the selflessness of the fighters and commanders, despite the courage and sacrifice of the Russian people, battle after battle was lost. The reason for this is the rottenness of the entire Bolshevik system, mediocrity of Stalin and his main headquarters. The "allies of Stalin" - the British and American "capitalists" - who allegedly betrayed the Russian people, also got it, "while" Germany is waging war not against the Russian people and their Motherland, but only against Bolshevism. "The Russian Committee called on the Russian people to fight for" new Russia" - "without Bolsheviks and capitalists". In this "new Russia" forced labor was to be abolished and the "real" right to work, as well as real freedoms of conscience, speech, assembly, were to be ensured for the workers ... Vlasov and Malyshkin called for the destruction of the “regime of terror and violence.” A special paragraph of the appeal also provided for ensuring social justice and protecting workers from any kind of exploitation.” The collective farms were supposed to be liquidated and the land transferred to the private ownership of the peasants. In addition, they promised to release all political prisoners. The program is attractive at first sight.

But in the same appeal, the Russian Committee declared enemies of the people not only "Stalin and his clique", but also "everyone who volunteers to serve in the punitive organs of Bolshevism - special departments, the NKVD, detachments", and even "those who destroy values belonging to the Russian people". The enemies of the people had to be mercilessly destroyed. It is easy to see that millions and millions of people are included in this category, including even ordinary Red Army soldiers, who destroyed bridges, roads and buildings when retreating on the orders of the command. Had Vlasov and his supporters come to power as a result of the German victory, they would have staged a terror that could eclipse the Red Terror in Russia in 1917-1920, when, according to some reports, about 2 million people died. And upon closer examination, the program for building a "new Russia" turns out to be copied from the program documents of the German Nazis with their slogans of the struggle against Russian Bolshevism and Western plutocracy. By the way, the Russian Committee spoke very sparingly about the national question, promising only a "guarantee of national freedom" and emphasizing the special role of the Russian people. Well, the members of the Russian Committee, high-ranking Soviet military men in the past, who grew up in a totalitarian system, accepted without much difficulty another totalitarian ideology - the Nazi one, which often coincided almost literally with the Bolshevik one. It is interesting that Major M.F. Zykov worked at Vlasov’s headquarters, who was a supporter of N.I. Bukharin, worked with him in Izvestia, was in a camp, was released before the war, and, having been captured, tried to implement the “Bukharin alternative” within the framework of the Vlasov movement. He disappeared without a trace in the summer of 1944. At Vlasov's headquarters and in the leadership of the Wehrmacht, there was no doubt that he was kidnapped and killed by Gestapo agents who saw in Zuev a "Jew" (perhaps unfounded) and a "communist" (which is undoubtedly). The Gestapo, in turn, claimed that Zuev was killed by Soviet agents.

In 1942-1943. separate security or combat infantry battalions, formed by the Wehrmacht from prisoners of Russian nationality, were formally included in the Russian Liberation Army (ROA) headed by Vlasov. Sometimes during the fighting they were united in regiments. One of these regiments, for example, during the landing of the allies in Normandy, was commanded by the former colonel of the Red Army S.K. Bunyachenko, later - the commander of the 1st division of the ROA (he was awarded by the Germans for the battles in Normandy). At the end of 1942, on the orders of Hitler, many military formations from Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, representatives of Muslim nationalities and other immigrants from the USSR were transferred from East to West, and later to Italy (Russian Hee-Vis were even in Rommel's army in North Africa). This, along with the refusal to form any Russian political bodies and the Russian army, as well as other national bodies, caused a decline in morale and an increase in desertion to the partisans.

Vlasov, in practice, did not control the use of parts of the ROA formally headed by him. In those cases when individual Russian battalions found themselves at the front, they fought stubbornly. Here, however, we encounter the courage of the doomed rather than the heroism of the conscious fighters against Stalin's tyranny. In the event of a retreat, the Vlasovites were threatened with severe German repressions, while Soviet captivity threatened them with a quick and often painful death. I recall the story of my distant Belarusian relative, who in July 1944 liberated Brest as a sergeant. Shortly after the German retreat, the Brest Fortress was visited by two Soviet colonels who were inspecting its fortifications. In the dungeons of the fortress, a Vlasov platoon was hiding, which destroyed both. They began to search for the disappeared colonels, the soldiers discovered the Vlasovites and, with the help of smoke bombs, forced them to surrender. The commander of the unit told the prisoners: "I can transfer your case to the tribunal, and everyone will be shot. But I appeal to my soldiers. As they decide, so it will be with you." And the soldiers immediately raised the Vlasovites on bayonets, not heeding the call of one of them to listen to why they began to serve the Germans.

The highest officers of the German army already from 1942 realized that the creation of the ROA and some kind of Russian government alternative to Stalin, as well as a number of other national armies and governments, could become the only means of achieving victory in the East. However, until the beginning of 1944, their proposals in this regard were rejected by Hitler and Himmler, who considered the "eastern territories" only as German colonies. But with new defeats in the East and West, even the Nazi leaders made concessions here. Back in 1943, the command of the eastern troops was created, uniting all the collaborationist formations. On April 16 of the same year, the chief of staff of Army Group North, General Kinzel, criticizing the charters intended for these formations, wrote to the commander of the Eastern Forces, General Helmikh, that they bypass the main question: "what will happen to them, the fighters of the Eastern troops, homeland after the war "because it is completely wrong to think that they are "fighting on the side of Germany out of gratitude for the liberation from Bolshevism." "For the fighters of the Eastern troops, in fact, the question is this: will we move from Bolshevik slavery to German slavery, or are we fighting for the freedom and independence of our Motherland?" In order for this kind of assumption to receive at least formal approval, it took the defeat of German troops in France and Belarus in the summer of 1944. On September 14, Vlasov was received by Himmler. The commander of the ROA was promised the preservation of Russia within the borders on September 1, 1939, subject to broad autonomy for non-Russian peoples and Cossack regions. Hitler and Himmler agreed to the formation of the 1st division of the ROA (600th Infantry). In January 1945, the 2nd division of the ROA (650th infantry) began to form. Then, in the autumn of 1944, Germany was preparing for a counter-offensive in the Ardennes, hoping to inflict a decisive defeat on the Western allies and force them to a separate peace. After that, they expected to throw all their forces to the East and defeat the Red Army. It was here that the ROA divisions were supposed to play their role.

On November 14, 1944, the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (KONR) was formed in Prague, headed by Vlasov. He united the Russian Committee and other national committees and military formations created under the auspices of Germany (except for the Baltic ones). KONR adopted a manifesto, basically repeating the appeal of the Russian Committee of December 27, 1942. It is significant that the manifesto did not say anything about the struggle against the "British and American capitalists", and Germany's help was already welcomed "on conditions that do not affect the honor and independence of our country." At the same time, it was emphasized that at the moment Germany's assistance is the only opportunity to wage an armed struggle against the "Stalinist clique". The manifesto also indicated the desire of the KONR to maintain friendly relations with all countries after the war. KONR also declared that now, with the Red Army's entry into Eastern and Central Europe and the Balkans, the war had taken on a distinctly predatory character on the part of the USSR. One gets the impression that the KONR manifesto was addressed not so much to the Red Army and the population of the USSR, but to the Western allies, whose protection the committee members were trying to achieve, in view of the near defeat of Germany, which had become undeniable.

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Today's slaves are tomorrow's traitors.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Not only in Ukraine or the Baltic States, but also in Leningrad,

Pskov, Novgorod regions population

welcomed the invaders.

J. Kaunator

... In the first months of the war, when German troops marched along

recently “liberated” territories, there were episodes

when the population welcomed the invaders.

During and after the Second World War, Stalin initiated the total deportation of ten peoples of the Soviet Union who were indiscriminately accused of collaborating with Nazi Germany (Germans, Koreans, Ingrian Finns, Karachais, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks), and in total during the war years peoples and groups of the population of 61 nationalities were forcibly resettled. In total, about 3 million people were subjected to Stalin's ethnic "cleansings".

Mass deportations were carried out at the cost of inhuman suffering and hundreds of thousands of human lives. Stalin's hatred for some peoples of the USSR is saturated with the directive on the demobilization of their representatives and resettlement in the "bear corners" of the country. Among those who were indiscriminately accused without trial or investigation were not only military personnel awarded orders and medals, but even several Heroes of the Soviet Union. At the same time, it was completely silent that the real, and not fictional collaborators, consisted mainly of Russians and that 75% of foreign Wehrmacht legionnaires recruited from the conquered countries were "Soviet". Their total number approached one and a half million (!) people who passed through 800 (!) army battalions and other fascist military and civilian structures. Naturally, these were not only Russians: the collaborators reflected the multinational composition of the USSR, but the Russians dominated among the traitors. According to Vadim Petrovich Makhno, captain of the first rank, who served for several decades in the Black Sea Fleet of the USSR, about 10 divisions in the SS alone were staffed by "eastern volunteers", in which up to 150 thousand former Soviet citizens served.

This figure (1.5 million accomplices) is only comparable with the total number of mobilized citizens of Hitler's allies (Italy, Spain, Hungary, Romania, Finland, Croatia, Slovakia) - about 2 million people. For comparison, I will indicate the number of mobilized in other countries conquered by Hitler: Denmark - less than 5 thousand, France - less than 10 thousand, Poland - 20 thousand, Belgium - 38 thousand military personnel ...

In addition to the total (total) number of traitors-accomplices from the USSR, the German archives preserved accurate data on the number of those mobilized by the Germans into the army from the territory of the USSR: the RSFSR - 800 thousand, Ukraine - 250 thousand, Belarus - 47 thousand, Latvia - 88 thousand ., Estonia - 69 thousand, Lithuania - 20 thousand military personnel. Among the collaborators were also Cossacks - 70 thousand, representatives of the peoples of Transcaucasia and Central Asia - 180 thousand, representatives of the peoples of the North Caucasus - 30 thousand, Georgians - 20 thousand, Armenians - 18 thousand, Azerbaijanis - 35 thousand, Volga Tatars - 40 thousand, Crimean Tatars - 17 thousand and Kalmyks - 5 thousand (It is curious that some Russian "truth-mongering analysts" willingly cite these figures, embarrassingly excluding the RSFSR from the list ...)

1) voluntary helpers (hiwi);

2) order service (one);

3) front-line auxiliary units (noise);

4) police and defense teams (gema).

At the beginning of 1943, the Wehrmacht numbered: up to 400 thousand Khivs, from 60 to 70 thousand Odies, and 80 thousand in the eastern battalions. About 183 thousand people worked on the railway in Kiev and Minsk, providing the movement of Nazi units and military cargo. To this should be added from 250 to 500 thousand prisoners of war who avoided repatriation to the USSR after the war (in total, more than 1.7 million people did not return to their homeland), as well as a large number of traitors who handed over captured commissars and Jews to the Nazi authorities. In June 1944, the total number of Khivs reached 800 thousand people.

That's not all: about 400 thousand former "Soviet" served as Nazi policemen and about 10% of the population of the occupied part of the USSR actively collaborated with the occupiers - I mean Wachmans, members of the "aisatzgruppen", elders, burgomasters, Russian officials of the German administration, scammers, journalists and priests working for German propaganda...

Taking into account the fact that there were more than 60 million people in the occupied territories, that is, about 40% of the population of the Soviet Union, even with 10% actively cooperating again, a multi-million figure is obtained ... I believe that this is a world record for mass betrayal in the history of all wars that ever led mankind. For example, about 5,000 Wachmans passed through the guard battalions of German concentration camps, who personally took part in the torture and massacres of concentration camp prisoners, as well as residents of the countries of Europe occupied by the Nazis. The “Eisatzgruppen” created by Heydrich usually included about 10% of the local residents. In particular, all the inhabitants of the Belarusian Khatyn were shot or burned alive by the Aisatzkommando, which included 20% of the locals ... I can’t name the exact number of Russian prostitutes serving the Wehrmacht soldiers, but the brothel was “relyed” by each German division.

To this it should be added that only in 1941 the Red Army suffered the following losses:

3.8 million people prisoners of war (against 9147 German soldiers and officers, that is, 415 times fewer Soviet prisoners of war!);

More than 500 thousand killed and died of wounds in hospitals;

1.3 million wounded and sick.

Ours also have a routine justification for all these shameful facts: they say that their reason was the dissatisfaction of a part of the population with the Soviet government (including collectivization). This is true, but not all. Many Russians went into the service of the Nazis because they were brought up in the spirit of chauvinistic, nationalist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic ideas and regular Jewish pogroms. In addition, as I found out in the book "Russian Fascism", Russian pogroms preempted the German ones, and Nazi ideas covered wide sections of the "white movement". In fact, high patriotism is possible when you feel your country, free, prosperous, in the end - just comfortable for life. When all this is not there, patriotism, whether we like it or not, invariably degenerates into “Russian marches”, Nashi “Seliger”, xenophobia, gloating over other people’s failures, pitiful imitations of loyalty, ending in betrayal…

However, there were also deeper historical prerequisites for military collaborationism. Friedrich Engels, describing the Russian bureaucracy and officers in a serious analytical work of the "Army of Europe", prophetically wrote:

“What is the lower class of officials in the Russian civil service, recruited from the children of the same officials, the same is the officers in the army: cunning, meanness of views, narrowly selfish behavior are combined with a superficial primary education that makes them even more disgusting; vain and greedy for gain, having sold themselves soul and body to the state, at the same time they themselves daily and hourly sell it in small things, if this can be in any way profitable for them ... This category of people, in the civil and military fields, mainly and supports that enormous corruption that pervades all branches of the civil service in Russia.”

The Russian people greet the German troops with the national white-blue-red flag (tricolor). Russia, 1941

How many people even think about the fact that a flawed government gives rise not only to a flawed life, but also to mass hatred for such a life and for the country, which gives rise to it forever? Quite naturally, this is most evident in difficult periods of history. Although Russia has always boasted of its patriotism, the revolution and wars have shown its price - and not only in the form of grandiose, historically unparalleled collaborationism. Why is that? Because, my friend L. Puzin answers, patriotic education is understood in Russia as the education of slaves who are ready to defend the interests of their masters without sparing their lives.

K. Bondarenko saw the roots of betrayal in the very depths of Russian history: collaborationism is elevated to the rank of dignity here, he wrote: comrades-in-arms of Batu in the last years of the life of the bloody khan, and, according to a common version, he was poisoned in the Horde, becoming a victim of a power struggle between Batu's heirs. Alexander's grandson, Ivan Daniilovich Kalita, Prince of Moscow, went down in history due to the fact that he himself decided to collect tribute for the Tatars, offering his services instead of the services of the Baskaks. "Thus, part of the tribute remained in Moscow, hiding from the khan, and this factor contributed to the strengthening of the Moscow principality," historians are touched. At the same time, without pointing out one significant point: Kalita robbed his own people ... "

The Supreme Military Council of the Army, created by the Bolsheviks on March 4, 1918, included 86 tsarist officers in the rank from major and lieutenant colonel to general (10 people). Of the 46 members of the senior command staff of the Red Army as of May 1922, 78.3% were regular officers of the old tsarist army, of which 7 were former generals, 22 lieutenant colonels and colonels, 8.8% came from the Imperial Life Guards. According to A.G. Kavtardze, a total of about 30% of the pre-revolutionary officer corps of tsarist Russia betrayed the former authorities and went to serve in the Red Army, which to a large extent contributed to the victory of the "Reds" in the Civil War. 185 generals of the General Staff of the Imperial Army later served in the corps of the General Staff of the Red Army, and this number does not include generals who held other positions in the Red Army. Most of the 185 were in the service of the Red Army voluntarily, and only six were mobilized. It was no coincidence that a saying arose then: the Red Army is like a radish - red on the outside and white on the inside.

(The Bolsheviks "thanked" the creators of the Red Army by the almost complete destruction of the pre-revolutionary officer corps. Of the total number of 276 thousand tsarist officers as of the autumn of 1917 and 48.5 thousand defectors by June 1941, there were hardly more than a few hundred in the army, and then, mainly - commanders from former warrant officers and second lieutenants. In Leningrad alone, more than a thousand former military specialists were shot. Among them: divisional commander A. Svechin, P. Sytin - the former commander of the Southern Front, Yu. Gravitsky, A. Verkhovsky, A. Snesarev and others.In 1937, Marshal Tukhachevsky, Uborevich, the commander of the Belarusian Military District, Cork, the commissar of the Military Academy, the commander of the Leningrad Military District, Iona Yakir, the chairman of the Sovaviahim Eideman, and others were shot in the notorious case of the "military". In an interview, the writer Boris Vasiliev said: “On the eve of the war, Stalin shot all talented people to hell. And often captains commanded divisions.

The former KGB agent has a resourcefulness worthy of Machiavelli, writes Gianni Riotta in the newspaper La Stampa. But, it seems to me, resourcefulness is still inferior to the main driving force - self-interest. In general, communism has developed this quality to the extent of universal genetic hunger: in all post-Soviet godfathers, this quality of national bandocracy dominates over all the others. I would not be surprised by the information that the current leaders were bought up or recruited in the bud in their youth, which A. Illarionov transparently hints at in an article on Ekho Moskvy devoted to the secret springs of pardoning M. Khodorkovsky.

There is a great deal of evidence for this. Here is just one of them. Having visited Russia, the French Marquis Astolfe de Custine wrote a highly critical book

Nikolaev Russia. 1839". I will not quote it, but I will note that a hundred years later, US Ambassador to the USSR W.B. Smith (March 1946 - December 1948), after returning from the USSR, said about de Custine's book: “... Before us are political observations so insightful, so timeless, that the book can be called the best work ever written about the Soviet Union.

Until Stalin's death, the existence of Russian units of the Wehrmacht was hidden, and for the disclosure of this information, many people ended up in camps. Nowadays, the activities of the Russian Liberation People's Army (ROA) under the command of General Vlasov are relatively fully covered in the literature, but it is very reluctant to say that the ROA was only a small fraction of collaborators who went into the service of the Nazis. The fact that, moving east, the Germans everywhere encountered anti-Soviet partisan detachments operating in the Soviet rear, led by former officers of the Red Army, was also carefully concealed. The armed units of the collaborators partly arose spontaneously, and partly were recruited by the occupiers. By the way, about Vlasov. Molotov, in a fit of frankness, once said: "What Vlasov, Vlasov is nothing compared to what could be ..."

The Russian Liberation People's Army of the Wehrmacht (ROA), by the way, performed under the Russian tricolor, which became the banner of modern Russia. The ROA included 12 security corps, 13 divisions, 30 brigades;

Fighting Union of Russian Nationalists (BSRN);

RONA (Russian Liberation People's Army) - 5 regiments, 18 battalions;

1st Russian National Army (RNNA) - 3 regiments, 12 battalions.

Russian National Army - 2 regiments, 12 battalions;

Division "Russland";

Cossack Stan;

Congress for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (KONR);

Russian Liberation Army of the Congress for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (3 divisions, 2 brigades).

KONR Air Force (KONR Aviation Corps) - 87 aircraft, 1 air group, 1 regiment;

Lokot Republic;

Zuev detachment;

Eastern battalions and companies;

15th Cossack Russian Corps of the SS troops - 3 divisions, 16 regiments;

1st Sinegorsk Ataman Cossack Regiment;

1st Cossack division (Germany);

7th Volunteer Cossack Division;

Military Cossack unit "Free Kuban";

448 Cossack detachment;

30th SS Grenadier Division (Second Russian);

Brigade of General A.V.Turkul;

1st Russian National SS Brigade "Druzhina" (1st Russian National SS Detachment);

Regiment "Varyag" Colonel M.A. Semenov;

Higher German school for Russian officers;

Dabendorf School of the ROA;

Russian detachment of the 9th army of the Wehrmacht;

Volunteer Regiment of the SS "Varyag";

SS Volunteer Regiment "Desna";

1st Eastern Volunteer Regiment, consisting of two battalions - "Berezina" and "Dnepr" (from September -601 and 602nd Eastern battalions);

Eastern battalion "Pripyat" (604th);

645th battalion;

Separate regiment of Colonel Krzhizhanovsky;

Volunteer Belgian Walloon Legion of the Wehrmacht;

5th SS assault brigade "Wallonia" with the SS Panzer Division "Viking";

Brotherhood of "Russian Truth";

Battalion Muraviev;

Detachment of Nikolai Kozin;

Russian volunteers in the Luftwaffe;

Guards of the Russian Fascist Party;

Corps of the Russian Monarchist Party;

Russian Fascist Party;

Russian National Labor Party;

People's Socialist Party;

Fighting alliance of Russian nationalists;

Russian People's Labor Party;

The political center of the fight against the Bolsheviks;

Union of Russian Activists;

Russian People's Party of Realists;

Zeppelin Organization;

Hivi ("hilfsvillige" - "voluntary helpers").

Russian personnel of the SS division "Charlemagne";

Russian personnel of the SS division "Dirlewanger".

In addition, the 12th Reserve Corps of the Wehrmacht at various times included large formations of the Eastern troops, such as:

Cossack (Russian) security corps of 15 regiments;

162nd Ostlegion Training Division of 6 regiments;

740th Cossack (Russian) reserve brigade of 6 battalions;

Cossack (Russian) Group of the Marching Ataman of 4 regiments;

Cossack group of Colonel von Panwitz from 6 regiments;

Consolidated Cossack (Russian) field police division "Von Schulenburg".

Mention should also be made of the Asano Brigade - the Russian units of the Kwantung Army, and the Russian units of the Japanese and Manchurian special services of Manchukuo.

As the casualties of the Wehrmacht grew, and especially after the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942-1943, the mobilization of the local population became even more widespread. In the front line, the Germans began to mobilize the entire male population, including adolescents and the elderly, who for one reason or another were not taken to work in Germany.

Here we must also bear in mind that the turning point in the course of the war led to significant changes in Nazi ideology. Hitler's doctrine of the "master race" began to be crowded by the concept of the New European Order, which was maturing in the depths of Nazi ideology. According to this concept, after the victory of Germany, the United European Reich will be formed, and the form of government will be a confederation of European peoples with a single currency, administration, police and army, which should include European parts, including Russian ones. In this new community there was a place for Russia, but only free from Bolshevism.

It is curious that the head of the Rosenberg Operational Headquarters, Herbert Utikal, also adhered to a similar point of view, and one of the Nazis R. Proksch at the end of 1944 at a meeting of this headquarters said: “The hour of Europe has come. Therefore, we must admit: the peoples differ from each other spiritually and physically... A mosaic of many possibilities... If the word "Europe" is spoken, they all mean... The current war for Europe must be accompanied by a new idea. In wars fought over ideological issues, the stronger ideas always win. This is the spiritual mission of the Reich. The goal is unity in diversity… the freedom of peoples in the unity of the continent.”

According to V. Makhno, in total, about 200 red and white Russian generals served the Nazis:

20 Soviet citizens became Russian fascist generals;

3 Lieutenant General Vlasov A.A., Trukhin F.N., Malyshkin V.F.;

1 divisional commissioner Zhilenkov G.N.;

6 Major Generals Zakutny D.E., Blagoveshchensky I.A., Bogdanov P.V., Budykhto A.E., Naumov A.Z., Salikhov B.B.;

3rd brigade commander: Bessonov I.G., Bogdanov M.V.; Sevostyanov A.I;

Major General Bunyachenko - commander of the 600th division of the Wehrmacht (it is also the 1st division of the ROA SV KONR), former colonel, commander of the Red Army division.

Major General Maltsev - commander of the Air Force KONR, former director of the sanatorium "Aviator", formerly commander of the Air Force of the Siberian Military District, colonel in the reserve of the Red Army.

Major General Kononov - commander of the 3rd Consolidated Cossack Plastun Brigade of the 15th Cossack Cavalry Corps of the SS troops of the Main Operational Directorate of the SS (FHA-SS), former major, commander of the Red Army regiment.

Major General Zverev - commander of the 650th division of the Wehrmacht (it is also the 2nd division of the ROA Armed Forces of the KONR), a former colonel, commander of the Red Army division.

Major General Domanov - commander of the Cossack Security Corps of the Cossack Camp of the Main Directorate of the Cossack Troops of the Main Directorate of the SS (FA-SS), a former secret officer of the NKVD.

Major General Pavlov - marching ataman, commander of the Group of the Marching ataman of the GUKV.

Waffenbrigadenführer - Major General of the SS Troops Kaminsky B.S. - Commander of the 29th Grenadier Division of the SS "RONA" of the Main Operational Directorate of the SS, a former engineer.

The figure of Vlasov is far from being as unambiguous as it is presented in post-war sources. During the Civil War, Vlasov, after completing a four-month command course from 1919 in command positions, participated in battles with whites on the Southern Front, then transferred to headquarters. At the end of 1920, the group in which Vlasov commanded cavalry and foot reconnaissance was transferred to eliminate the insurgent movement led by Nestor Makhno.

Russian policeman on joint patrol with the Germans

Another high-ranking military man, brigvrach (corresponding to the rank of "brigade commander") Ivan Naumov, almost fell short of the KGB bullet "put" to him - he died on August 23, 1950 from torture in Butyrka.

Rear Admiral Pyotr Bondarenko, Deputy Commander of the Black Sea Floo for Political Affairs (October 28, 1950);

On the same day, lieutenant-general of the tank troops Vladimir Tamruchi, who had been killed by Chekists, died.

In total, according to Vyacheslav Zvyagintsev, who worked with the materials of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR,

Photos from open sources

During the Great Patriotic War, there were Soviet citizens who were on the other German side - in the ranks of the Wehrmacht, the SS, paramilitary and police formations. And today there are admirers of these people who betrayed their country. Many of them like to speculate about the 2 million Russians who fought against the USSR on the side of Germany for ideological reasons: they say, the damned Bolshevik commissars were so hated by them. There is also talk of a "second civil war". In fact, collaborationism was based not at all on the ideological denial of Soviet power. Yes, there were many staunch opponents of the communists, but they did not determine the face of "Russian" collaborationism.

FAILURE FROM THE BEGINNING

Let's start with the fact that 1.2 million people seem to be the most plausible figure. It is called by the historian Sergey Drobyazko, who studied the data in the most detail. Among them there were many immigrants from Central Asia, the Baltic states, the Caucasus and Ukraine. The number of Russians proper is estimated at about 400,000.

Almost immediately, the Russian units showed themselves to be poor helpers. Many very quickly realized their own real situation of the serfs, and the wrongness, the hopelessness of their cause. Moreover, this realization came even before Stalingrad, when the USSR stood on the edge of the abyss. In this regard, the fate of the so-called Russian National People's Army (RNNA) is very indicative. This "army" was formed on the initiative of several white émigrés by Sergei Ivanov, Konstantin Kromiadi and others, who brainwashed Soviet prisoners with stories about the new Russian state that would arise in the course of the struggle against the Bolsheviks and Jews. The number of participants in the formation reached 4 thousand, and the Germans had certain hopes for him. The most important task of the RNNA was entrusted in the spring of 1942: it was used against the Soviet units of the 4th Airborne Corps and the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps, located in the German rear in the Vyazma and Dorogobuzh regions.

It was assumed that collaborators dressed in Soviet uniforms would capture Lieutenant General Pavel Belov and try to persuade the Red Army to surrender. However, the opposite happened: 100 RNNA fighters went over to the Soviet side. After that, the "army" was aimed at fighting the partisans. The struggle was sluggish, and the People's Army en masse went over to the side of those with whom they were supposed to fight. So, only on August 6–15, 1942, 200 officers and soldiers of the RNNA ran across to the partisans (with weapons in their hands). And in October there was a major conflict between the RNNA and the German command, which set out to unambiguously show who is the master and who is the servant. From the very beginning of the existence of the RNNA, they wore Soviet uniforms there, but with shoulder straps and white-blue-red cockades. Now the order was given to change into German uniforms. In addition, the people's army should have been divided into battalions. The personnel were indignant and refused to obey, as a result, the SS troops had to be used to admonish the presumptuous lackeys. The weapons were taken away from the RNNA fighters, then, however, they were returned, after which 300 people immediately went over to the partisans. Further - more: in November, another 600 people joined the ranks of defectors. In the end, the patience of the Germans snapped, the RNNA was disbanded, and its units were transferred to France.

MARCH OF THE DEFLECTORS

In April 1943, the Nazis sought to raise the morale of their assistants and immediately enrolled all Russians in the Vlasov Russian Liberation Army (ROA). Thus, they tried to convince them that they represent something one. The Germans did this not from the breadth of their souls, but because an exodus began: in the same 1943, 14 thousand people fled to the partisans.

It was already a real decomposition, and the Germans decided to remove the "assistants" from the Eastern Front out of harm's way. Relatively reliable units were sent to France, Holland, Belgium and the Balkans, while unreliable ones were simply disbanded. This dealt a rather powerful blow to the psyche of the defectors, who finally realized the insignificance of their real status. Many of them preferred to flee to the partisans than go to the West.

In this regard, the fate of the 1st Russian National SS Brigade "Druzhina" is most indicative. It was created on the basis of the Fighting Union of Russian Nationalists, which was headed by Soviet Colonel Vladimir Gil (who took the pseudonym Rodionov). At first, the 1st Russian National SS Detachment (Druzhina No. 1) arose, after merging with Druzhina No. 2, the formation became known as the 1st Russian National SS Regiment. And after strengthening at the expense of local residents and prisoners in May 1943, the SS brigade itself was formed. At the headquarters of the brigade, the German headquarters functioned, which was headed by SS Hauptsturmführer Rosner. It is clear that there could be no talk of any independence. The number of the brigade was 3 thousand people. Specialized "vigilantes" in the fight against partisans.

So, the brigade took part in anti-partisan operations in the Begoml-Lepel area. There, the "Russian" SS men were taught a hard lesson by the partisans, which had a good educational effect. Many thought about the transition, and the partisans immediately took advantage of these moods. In August 1943, Gil-Rodionov established contact with the command of the Zheleznyak partisan brigade. He and the fighters of the SS brigade were promised an amnesty if the “vigilantes” went over to the side of the partisans. The proposal was readily accepted, parts of the brigade destroyed the German headquarters, and along with those officers who were considered unreliable. Further, the former SS men attacked the nearest German garrisons.

Almost the entire composition of the unit passed to the partisans, which became known as the 1st anti-fascist partisan brigade. Vladimir Gil was awarded the Order of the Red Star and reinstated in his former rank. Freshly baked partisans showed themselves very well in battle. So, they defeated the German garrisons in Ilya, Obodovtsy and Vileyka. In April 1944, the Nazis undertook a serious operation to defeat the partisans of the Polotsk-Lepel zone. The brigade was forced to break through the German blockade. During this breakthrough, Gil was seriously injured, from which he died.

DESERT MOVEMENT

The Vlasov army, however, also did not want to fight. Andrei Vlasov stubbornly tried to convince the German command that he needed more time to prepare. With difficulty, it was possible to force the 1st division of Sergei Bunyachenko to advance to the Oder front. There, on April 13, she took part in the attack of the Soviet troops, and the Vlasovites did not like such a contribution to the fight against Bolshevism. They beat them seriously, for real. Then Bunyachenko, without hesitation, took his formation to the Czech Republic to join with other Vlasov units.

Let's leave aside the ideological anti-communists for the time being and draw the obvious conclusion. For the most part, the so-called Vlasovites were more deserters than anti-communists. They simply did not have the will to somehow resist the huge military-political machine of the Third Reich. In a number of cases, the lack of will was facilitated by resentment against the Soviet government, in which very many people were really offended. However, many offended resisted the fascist invaders to the end, fearing neither deprivation nor death. So the factor of resentment, not to mention the ideology, did not play a decisive role.

It is interesting to compare all this with the First World War. Then those who disagreed with the authorities did not run over to the Germans or Austrians, did not desert. They carried on stubborn (and rather risky) revolutionary work in the tsarist army. The Bolsheviks were famous for their organization and courage, advocated the overthrow of all imperialist governments, but they did not take the side of the Germans. The Bolsheviks have always been in favor of holding the front, and are categorically against desertion. And they never supported the deserter's call "Bayonet to the ground - and let's go squeeze your woman."

The Bolsheviks continued to fight, fraternizing with the Germans, while not surrendering to them, agitating the same Germans and preparing for a decisive revolutionary assault. The steadfastness of the Bolsheviks was recognized by many army commanders, for example, the commander of the Northern Front, General Vladimir Cheremisov. He was so shocked by the fortress of the Bolsheviks that he even financed their newspaper Our Way. And not only he, many other military leaders also financed the Bolshevik press. This, incidentally, to the question of where the Bolsheviks took the money from. And, of course, here one can and should recall the Battle of Moonsund, during which the Bolsheviks concentrated resistance to the Germans in their hands.

It is a completely different matter - the "assistants" of the Germans. They showed themselves very, very poorly. Their irretrievable losses amounted to 8.5 thousand people, of which 8 thousand were missing. In fact, it was about deserters and defectors. As a result, the Germans disbanded many of these units, leaving them for fortification work. When the allies landed on the Atlantic coast, many easterners fled, others surrendered, and others even rebelled, killing their superiors. And right before the curtain, they tried to use the “assistants” to form the Russian Liberation Army.

LOKOTSKY REPUBLIC: A FUTURE PR

The current fans of collaborationism have a special pride - the Lokotsky district, loudly called the republic. During the war, the Germans allowed the creation of an autonomous police formation on the territory of several districts of the Oryol and Kursk regions for reasons that will be discussed below. This formation was headed by Bronislav Kaminsky, the leader of the so-called People's Socialist Party of Russia "Viking" (at first the burgomaster was Konstantin Voskoboinik, who was killed by partisans). Nothing to say, a good name for the Russian nationalist party! In its manifesto we read: “Our party is a national party. She remembers and appreciates the best traditions of the Russian people. She knows that the Viking knights, relying on the Russian people, created the Russian state in hoary antiquity. It is very significant that these collaborators build the Russian state by non-Russian Vikings, who only rely on the Russian people! By the way, the newly-minted "Vikings" - the Nazis at first did not allow the creation of a party, the go-ahead was given only in 1943. Such is the "independence".

Now the Lokot self-government is regularly promoted, trying to present it as an alternative to communism and Stalinism. A lot of molasses is being poured out about what kind of economic prosperity the collaborators managed to achieve there after the abolition of the hated collective farm system. Say, the peasants had plenty of land and livestock with poultry. At the same time, it is completely incomprehensible what kind of prosperity can be discussed in the conditions of the most difficult war, when the vast majority of the adult male population is put under arms. Moreover, powerful requisitions were imposed on the local population: thousands of cattle were stolen for the needs of the German "liberator" army.

Kaminsky created the Russian Liberation People's Army (RONA), whose strength reached 20 thousand. She acted, however, not very effectively, although she was fierce in relation to the captured partisans and those who were suspected of complicity. Here, the administrative and legal talents of the Kaminians also manifested themselves, who compiled a special anti-partisan code of 150 articles, each of which was subject to the death penalty. They served quite productively as scouts, directing German punishers at the partisans. However, there were also enough defectors in the RONA: only in the winter of 1942-1943, thousands of Kaminians, who had previously destroyed German garrisons and warehouses, went over to the side of the partisans.

Kaminsky and his henchmen controlled only part of their autonomy, the population of which was 0.5 million people. “Looking at the map, it is easy to make sure that the territories around the Bryansk-Navlya-Lgov and Bryansk-Navlya-Khutor-Mikhailovsky railway lines were given under the control of Kaminsky,” writes historian Alexander Dyukov. - It was in these areas that the so-called Southern Bryansk partisan region operated ... Thus, the territories de facto controlled by the partisans were transferred to Kaminsky ... In order to save "German blood", the command of the 2nd Panzer Army went to provide “militarize” the area subordinate to him and fight the partisans, naturally, under German control ”(Die Aktion Kaminsky. Trampled Victory. Against Lies and Revisionism).

One of the Kamenites, Mikheev, honestly admitted: "Only 10% of the forest belonged to us." And General Bernhard Ramke stated: "The militants of engineer Kaminsky cannot repel major attacks on themselves." In fact, the Nazis set up some kind of experiment on the “untermensch” subordinate to them, whose main task was to protect the railway lines from the partisans. The experiment failed miserably, which is why, by the way, the Germans did not do this anywhere else.

The end of Kaminsky turned out to be inglorious: the Germans shot him during the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising.

SUICIDE COMPLEX

In general, if the deserters desperately wanted to live, and the erring ones wanted to atone for their guilt, then the ideological anti-communists sought death with the persistence of suicides. And here it is appropriate to recall some more "heroes" of the anti-Bolshevik struggle. “A member, and then the head of the Russian Imperial Union-Order, N. Sakhnovsky fought as part of the Belgian Walloon Legion of SS troops under the command of a deeply religious Catholic Leon Degrel,” writes historian Vladimir Larionov. - Sakhnovsky's battalion received weapons only in Ukraine, and, breaking out of the encirclement, in the Korsun-Shevchenko operation of the Red Army, the battalion almost without exception died in a heroic hand-to-hand fight "(" Knights of Holy Russia ").

This is just some kind of extravaganza - "he died in hand-to-hand combat", but the weapon was not issued! It is clear why the Nazis assigned the role of serfs and cannon fodder to Russian "assistants". But how could the Russian people grab such a deadly bait? It is significant that fans of collaborationism glorify the Cossacks with might and main, who followed Peter Krasnov and were eventually extradited to Joseph Stalin by Western democracies. (For some reason, the act of extradition itself is called betrayal, which is completely ridiculous, because the allies did not betray anyone. They were just fulfilling their allied obligations, extraditing to the USSR those who fought on the side of Germany, including against themselves.) it is known that many of these unfortunates committed suicide, fearing a "terrible reprisal."

These horrors are fairly exaggerated, the attitude towards collaborators was often very liberal. Here is an example: on October 31, 1944, the British authorities handed over to the Soviet allies 10,000 repatriates who served in the Wehrmacht. As soon as they arrived in Murmansk, they were announced forgiveness, as well as release from criminal liability. True, they had to pass the test, and the collaborators spent a year in a filtration camp, which is quite logical. After that, the vast majority were released, moreover, they accrued seniority.

The data of the archives have long been open, which expose the lie that supposedly all or most of the prisoners were imprisoned. Historian Viktor Zemskov worked in the State Archives of the Russian Federation, studied the materials stored there. It turns out that by March 1, 1946, 2,427,906 repatriates were sent to their place of residence, 801,152 - to serve in the Soviet army, 608,095 - were enrolled in the worker battalions of the People's Commissariat of Defense of the USSR. But 272,867 people (6.5%) were transferred to the disposal of the NKVD of the USSR. In fact, they were sitting.

The suicide of the Cossacks is a terrible end, which shows the depth of despair and doom of "Russian" collaborationism.

Thousands of fighters against Bolshevism did not represent any independent force, did not possess any subjectivity. First they went to fight for the Germans, then they rushed to seek the patronage of the Anglo-Americans, hoping for their help and intercession. But among the collaborators who adhere to the extreme right, there were enough people who perfectly understand what Western democracies are. They knew they were plutocracies trying to subdue Russia. The same Krasnov in the novel "From the Double-Headed Eagle to the Red Banner" put into the mouth of his hero Sablin the words that the main enemy is England. And now the people who just yesterday fought for the anti-democrat Adolf Hitler, with some kind of blind hope, rush into the arms of this very main enemy.

It may be objected that Krasnov and the Krasnovites used, albeit illusory, but still a chance for salvation. Yes, this is true, although it is significant that they themselves considered themselves completely dependent on some external, foreign forces. And this shows the inferiority of collaborationism, which was expressed in a terrible illness of the will. If these people were really sure that they were right, they would continue the struggle, for example, entering into an alliance with the Serbian Chetniks of Draža Mihailović.

In any case, you could make an attempt, because anything is better than taking your own life by committing the terrible sin of suicide. However, in reality it turned out that these people did not have any faith in themselves, there was only a blind hatred for Bolshevism, which was combined with a wild fear of it. And this hatred, mixed with fear, blinded and deafened the collaborators. They were not looking for the Truth, but for the Force, seeing it in the deadly Teutonic armadas. They stood under the banner of foreign invaders, which means political suicide. And then many of them - quite naturally - committed literal suicide.

Here are revealing lines from the diary of a certain Lydia Osipova, who passionately hated Bolshevism and wished for the arrival of the German liberators: “They are bombing, but we are not afraid. Bombs are liberation. And that's how everyone thinks and feels. Nobody is afraid of bombs... But when the Bolsheviks came, I decided to poison myself and poison Nikolai [husband. - A.E.] so that he does not know this. Reading all this is wild, here some absolutely terrible, infernal abysses open up. And again, there is suicidality. Lack of own strength, hatred and fear - all this threw ideological collaborators into a spinning funnel of suicide. They so merged with the alien Force that they dissolved in it and died with it together.

ILLNESS OF WILL

Now we need to remember that collaborationism also existed in countries where there were no Bolsheviks in power. Yuri Nersesov wrote very well about this: “The population of the Third French Republic with colonies by the beginning of the war exceeded 110 million people ... At least 200 thousand French citizens got into the ranks of the German army. Another 500,000 served in the military units of the collaborationist government of Marshal Pétain, who independently fought against the allies in Africa and the Middle East, and also joined German formations, making up, in particular, an infantry regiment and an artillery battalion in the famous 90th light motorized division Field Marshal Rommel's African Corps. Taking into account the police, Gestapo and fascist militants diligently catching partisans and underground fighters, it turns out about 1 million with 80 thousand dead.

The same picture will be in any other European country. From Poland, where, with 35 million pre-war population, only from the territories occupied by Germany, 500 thousand people joined the army and police, to Denmark, which, having capitulated to Germany almost without resistance, only in the SS troops on the Eastern Front lost about 2.5 thousand people.

So it turns out that the proportion of collaborators in European countries where there was neither a Gulag nor collective farms is much higher than the Soviet one ”(“ The Myth of the Second Civil War ”).

Of course, there were also ideological people there, like, say, the Belgian SS man Leon Degrel. In the winter of 1945, he led three battalions and three separate companies of Walloon volunteers to help the German cities. After the battles near Stargard, only 625 people survived. Or SS volunteer Eugene Volo, the last of those who received the Iron Cross in the Reich Chancellery. Although these were a minority, and the majority of collaborators simply obeyed the Force, being bewitched by the power and ruthlessness of the German military-political machine. It's the same with the majority of "Russian" collaborators. True, the sickness of the will, forcing one to seek the Force (and not to be it), was also inherent in Hitler's ideological accomplices.

I must say that in our country this disease of the will is fatally superimposed on our long-standing Westernism, inherent in a wide variety of people, even those who are very, very far from collaborationism. In the West they see the Force before which they bow. Not the Truth, but namely the Force, expressed in ruthless, all-destroying expansion and unrestrained accumulation of material resources. This Force kills and enslaves the will, turning a person into an object, a conductor of cosmic power. Ultimately, the subjects of the Force themselves become such objects. Let us remember that a plutocrat is also a slave of his capitals.

In 1941-1945, the majority of Russians fought on the side of Pravda, opposing the armadas of the German Power. And the minority bowed before the Force, which made him weak and doomed to defeat.

Myths about pro-Hitler collaborationism in 1939-1945 have long turned not only into an occasion for speculation, but also into an effective weapon of information and psychological warfare. This is especially true of Russian and Ukrainian collaborationism. How are they used? And where is the truth?

Collaborationism - in international law conscious, voluntary and deliberate cooperation with the enemy in his interests and to the detriment of his state. But due to the fact that collaborationism is most often discussed during the years of the Second World War, in the narrow sense this term is often used in relation to the phenomena of work for the Nazi regime of the population of the countries occupied by it.

Even when applied to World War II alone, the term is very broad. Many millions of people lived in the territories occupied by Hitler, and most of them, except for the obvious underground resistance fighters, can be "convicted" in various forms of cooperation with the occupiers - participation in forced labor, obtaining documents, passing registration ... Therefore, many scientists , speaking of collaborationism during the Second World War, they suggest limiting themselves to the facts of the service of representatives of the peoples against whom Hitler waged war in paramilitary formations (Wehrmacht, SS, etc.), as well as participation in the work of political and administrative structures that supported the Third Reich and Hitlerism. And, perhaps, we can agree with this.

Although even in this context it can be difficult to draw a line between "collaborationism" and "alliance." Some states during the war managed to be both Hitler's allies and his opponents - such as Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Finland. Probably, this does not really detract from the guilt of the people who fought as part of their national units under the Nazi banners, but they still should not be called collaborators. But, say, with the Belgians, Dutch, Danes, Norwegians, or with the peoples who inhabited the Soviet Union, who fought for Hitler, everything is much more clear. Here we can safely talk about collaborationism in any sense.

Hitler himself initially treated the ideas of arming collaborators very coldly.

“It should never be allowed for anyone other than the Germans to carry weapons! This is especially important. one fine day it would certainly and inevitably turn against us. Only a German has the right to bear arms, and not a Slav, not a Czech, not a Cossack, and not a Ukrainian.

Hitler Adolf

However, it was still an "ideal" model for him, since collaborators in the power structures of the Third Reich appeared relatively early - take, for example, the Ukrainian "Roland" and "Nachtigal". And the further course of the war forced the Nazis to rely on collaborators more and more ...

Let's digress a little from the history of the middle of the 20th century and return to times closer to us.

Starting from the 1980s - 1990s, in the wake of denigrating everything "Soviet", Russophobic publicists, and after them the authors of the yellow press, promoted to the masses the trend that there was allegedly no "Great Patriotic War", but there was "civil" - since from a million to two million "Russians" allegedly fought on the side of Hitler. Over time, in the course of restoring historical justice in the 2000s, this trend "fell into the shadows", but in 2014 it was updated already "under a new sauce". The forces of "Maidan" in Ukraine, glorifying Shukhevych, Bandera and other Nazis, had to urgently prove that the main collaborator was "someone else", best of all - "Muscovites" (they say that poor Ukrainians have only one division of the SS "Galicia ", while the Russians - oh-oh-oh). And this issue needs to be dealt with in more detail.

Absolutely accurate data on the number of collaborators representing the peoples of the USSR have not reached us. With statistics, apparently, there was confusion from the beginning. Plus, a lot burned down in 1945. Much on this occasion "left" to the British and Americans, who immediately "rehired" the most accommodating of yesterday's Nazi henchmen to fight the USSR already under their flags ...

The figures given by various historians range from 800,000 to 1.5 million. The most confirmed today is an estimate of 1.2 million people.

Regarding who it really was, there is a wonderful one. Referring, in turn, to the calculations of Sergei Drobyazko, he cites the following number of collaborators representing various peoples of the USSR:

250,000 Ukrainians
70,000 Belarusians
70,000 Cossacks
150,000 Latvians
90,000 Estonians
50,000 Lithuanians
70,000 Central Asians
12,000 Volga Tatars
10,000 Crimean Tatars
7,000 Kalmyks
40,000 Azerbaijanis
25,000 Georgians
20,000 Armenians
30,000 North Caucasian peoples.

In this case, the Russians account for a little more than 300 thousand ...

Here is a list of the main collaborationist formations, which are usually referred to as "Russians":

Russian liberation army;

Russian Liberation People's Army;

Cossack camp (after reorganization - Separate Cossack Corps);

15th Cossack Cavalry Corps of the SS;

29th SS Grenadier Division (Russian number 1);

30th Grenadier Division (Russian number 2);

Division "Russland";

Russian Corps;

The combat union of Russian nationalists (and on its basis - the 1st Russian national SS detachment "Druzhina".

On the forums of Russian and Ukrainian nationalists, sometimes this list looks much more "impressive". The secret of this is very simple. As part of the forces of the Third Reich, various units repeatedly changed their names, served as the basis for the formation of each other.

For example, the division "Russland" managed to visit both the "Green Special Purpose Army" and the "1st Russian National Army". And so - many other collaborationist formations. Even in the list above, we made some dubbing! The 29th SS Grenadier Division "RONA" was created on the basis of the Kaminsky brigade, and that, in turn, on the basis of the Russian Liberation People's Army. So the list isn't really as big as some make it out to be.

another way to manipulate. In the "Russian" divisions, divisions are recorded that, in fact, cannot be called Russian. Let's say the 30th division, "2nd Russian" - only in name. In practice, it was formed from Belarusian and Ukrainian collaborators-policemen! The regiment "Desna", which is often recorded in the "Russian" units, was generally Ukrainian ... Even in the ROA, according to some reports, there were less than half of ethnic Russians! Therefore, with such and such calculations, it is not a fact that there were even 300 thousand Russian collaborators ...

What motivated collaborators in principle?

Contrary to the opinion of information speculators, there were very few pure ideological "fighters against Bolshevism" in their ranks. We will not talk about those who created underground organizations in concentration camps, went to the police or the ROA, and then raised an uprising with weapons or went to the partisans - everything is clear with such people. Heroes. Dot.

The bulk of the collaborators were driven, to a greater or lesser extent, by mercantile considerations. They can be roughly divided into three groups:

National-fascists - separatists who wanted to create their own fascist political projects under Hitler's protectorate;

People who relied on Hitlerism for the purpose of earning money and career growth;

People who simply aspired to survive (these turned out to be mainly in units such as "Khivi" - "voluntary assistants of the Wehrmacht").

It is impossible to whitewash or justify these people in any way. In the article "" we have already talked about the monstrous atrocities of the Nazis, and about their original plans for the Slavic population. Collaborators calmly, without remorse, served those who destroyed their compatriots by the millions, and often personally took part in this destruction.

Speaking about collaborationism in general, I would like to note that for many peoples the main form of collaborationism has become participation in the "national" formations of the SS.

Thirdly, the Wehrmacht included such a curious unit as the "Ukrainian Liberation Army", in which about 80 thousand people served! As well as the "Ukrainian National Army", which included, among other things, the SS division "Galicia".

Fourthly... The most disgusting of all Ukrainian collaborationisms, if I may say so, was the mass service of Ukrainians in the units of the so-called "Ukrainian people's militia", auxiliary security police, Schutzmannschaft battalions, subordinate either to the police or to the SD, and carrying out punitive functions against their compatriots. In 1942, the total number of their personnel in Eastern Europe reached 300 thousand people. A huge percentage of them were Ukrainians.

The very Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which today was glorified by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, was engaged in filling these units.

"Following the instructions of Keitel and Jodl mentioned above, I contacted the Ukrainian nationalists who were in the service of German intelligence and other members of the nationalist fascist groups whom I attracted to carry out the tasks set above. In particular, I personally instructed the leaders of the Ukrainian nationalists, German agents Melnik ( nickname "Consul-1") and Bandera to organize provocative speeches in Ukraine immediately after the German attack on the Soviet Union in order to undermine the nearest rear of the Soviet troops, and also in order to convince international public opinion of the alleged decomposition of the Soviet rear "...

"Canaris received an order from the then head of the OKW, who presented it as a directive that he had obviously received from Ribbentrop, since these directives were read out in close connection with the political intentions of the Imperial Foreign Office. Canaris was instructed to provoke an insurrectionary movement in Galician Ukraine, the purpose of which would be the extermination of Jews and Poles"...

This is how the UPA came about!

The UPA militants "coped" with their tasks. Only during the Volyn massacre they destroyed up to 80 thousand Poles ...

Documents declassified today clearly show that the leadership of the OUN-UPA was carried out by SD bodies. The Germans specially armed the Ukrainian national organizations. The detachments carried out propaganda for the creation of a "Ukrainian state" under the protectorate of Germany. By order of the Nazi curators, the German agents-leaders of the OUN-UPA recruited ordinary fighters, including under the pretext of "self-defense" from the Nazis, and then carried out the necessary indoctrination with them, directing them to the destruction of the peaceful Polish, Jewish, Ukrainian population, fighting with the Soviet partisans, and later - with all the supporters of the Soviet system.

Over time, when the situation changed, the OUN members wrote in their propaganda newspapers about the allegedly large-scale battles with the Nazis. There is no documentary evidence of this in nature. Things did not go further than actions of banal robbery and looting (in the UPA, a significant part of the contingent were criminals) or initiative actions of revenge for the dead relatives of individual fighters. The description of actions of this kind should include Koch's complaints about the destruction by "Ukrainian bandits" of a certain "service point", during which 12 foresters, workers and policemen died. At the same time, it should be noted that, apparently, not even the entire German administration was informed about the nature of cooperation between the German special services and the OUN-UPA. Possibly for privacy reasons.

Field Marshal Erich von Manstein:

"In general, there were three types of partisan detachments: Soviet partisans who fought with us and terrorized the local population; Ukrainian, who fought with Soviet partisans, but, as a rule, released the Germans who fell into their hands, taking away their weapons; finally, Polish partisan gangs who fought the Germans and Ukrainians"...

Twice Hero of the Soviet Union Alexei Fedorov:

"Being for a long time (June 1943 - January 1944) on the territory of the Volyn and Rovno regions, we do not have any facts about where the Ukrainian nationalists, in addition to the widespread empty chatter in their press, fought against the German invaders and enslavers."

In 2007, Crimean veterans' organizations asked Angela Merkel about the damage done to the German army by the UPA. The Chancellor ordered a number of research institutions to prepare a response. The answer was expected. German historians stated that the Ukrainian nationalists did not cause any significant damage to the Nazis. In 1943, the fact of an attack on rear units was noted, as a result of which only a few people died and were taken prisoner (apparently, Koch reported on this case). Nothing else has been recorded...

Therefore, the UPA, which at its peak consisted of several tens of thousands of fighters, can also be safely attributed to collaborationist formations, just with a more complex and secret control system.

Taking this into account, and also the fact that, as we found out, a significant part of the collaborationist units, which are commonly considered "Russian", were in fact fully or partially staffed by ethnic Ukrainians, we can safely conclude that the real number of Ukrainian collaborators in fact, it was either equal to or even exceeded the number of Russian collaborators. And this despite the fact that, in principle, there were about three times more ethnic Russians at that time!

When analyzing Ukrainian collaborationism, two more important facts should be taken into account.

First. It was minimal in the southeastern regions of the Ukrainian SSR and concentrated on the territory of several regions of modern Western Ukraine.

Second. Ukrainians are a nation that suffered some of the worst losses in World War II. From 1941 to 1945, approximately every fifth inhabitant of Ukraine perished...

It turns out that the collaborators, concentrated in Western Ukraine, contributed to mass destruction their own compatriots! However, as well as the fraternal Belarusian people... It turns out that the inhabitants of northwestern Ukraine perceived the inhabitants of southeastern Ukraine as something "foreign", "not their own" even then. This suggests that there was no "Ukrainian unity" then, just as there is none now.

In Soviet times, the topic of collaborationism was not very much liked to be discussed. First, so as not to show the extent of betrayal. Secondly, to try to establish peace among nations. Alas, to a certain extent, this had the opposite effect in the future, making it easier for the heirs of the fascist killers to "rehabilitate" themselves and establish a new near-fascist regime ...