An appropriate discussion given what tomorrow is the anniversary of:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

In the WWII era there was a movement known as the RONA, an anti-Soviet Russian nationalist movement led by an ex-Red Army General named Andrei Vlasov. This movement was the product of Nazi efforts to dismantle the Soviet Union and the stresses of the later Nazi war effort, when the Nazis got so desperate for manpower they were forced to call upon the surviving Soviet POWs that hadn't died in 1941 or been assigned to slave labor in the Reich. The RONA, however, only saw service in Czechoslovakia protecting Czechs from the last Nazi diehards, and the men in it and the man who led it were deemed anathema in Soviet history and were only given some mention again in post-Soviet historiography.

Vlasov was a very patriotic man, in his own fashion, and he was certainly in love with his vision of Russia. Yet he worked together with the Nazis for a war which had as its most basic goal the annihilation of Russian civilization, explaining *why* his movement didn't see action until Berlin fell and only against Nazis, at that. The question that I present to you is this: was Vlasov a traitor, a patriot, or a collaborator with a movement intent on destroying Russia and thus beyond all social pales, or something else again?

Personally I think Vlasov was the last category, as a Russian working with Nazis pretty much forfeits any claim to respect in a very literal sense. Whatever the merits of opposing Soviet-style communism, there were better people to do that in the company of than Adolf Hitler. I also think that the RONA illustrates that there was at least some powerful anti-Stalin sentiment in the USSR and shows a potential that can only be a potential given the nature of Nazi ideology to start with. But what do you think? How would you handle such people after a war is over?

Comments

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

From what I understand, Vlasov's cause was to bring down Stalin's regime and he reluctantly allied himself with the nazi's to try and achieve that. There were many similar military factions in eastern europe, who tried to avoid sovietization and resorted hopelessly to an alliance with the devil, in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Finland, Croatia, Slovakia.

"there was at least some powerful anti-Stalin sentiment in the USSR"

I would think, the 3-9 million russians killed in gulags, camps, jails, famines, have all felt some sort of antagonism against him, yeah.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I realize the point was badly phrased. I meant even after the Purges and the like that had been targeted directly at those things..

At the same time, it's worth noting that Vlasov's idea of "bringing down Stalin" was allying with a guy who repeatedly said "I want a minimum of 30 million Russian-Jews killed to make Russia my Wild West/India.".....

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

He might have been himself anti-semitic. Most conservatives all over Central and Eastern Europe were very anti-semitic at the time.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

There's anti-Semitism, and there's being the lamb next to the wolf that wants to eat you helping said wolf eat other lambs.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

My sediments exactly on the closing point.

One of the things that gets very little play in US versions of Soviet history (except in the work of people like Cleon Skousen) was the way that Stalin cracked down on Communists. He was deathly afraid of a revolution.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

How would you handle such people after a war is over?

I'd go for a truth and reconciliation process if at all possible. One of the horrors of moments when it's unclear who will be steering the boat next year is that people choose which horse to back on the basis of who they think will win, rather than their consciences, out of fear that they will be hanged as collaborators / traitors / counterrevolutionaries ... and that purge scars the nation's sense of a common polity and robs it of the truth of its history. Better to disinfect the wound with sunlight, even if it means Nazis breathing the free air.

Of course, Stalin would more likely give birth to triplets than do that.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

I'd go for a truth and reconciliation process if at all possible.

Absolutely.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

I seriously think that the truth and reconciliation process may be the greatest invention of the 20^th century.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying it's always a successful process, but in any case it's a much more positive effort than holding years long grudges. Hell, the process is far from over even here, more than two decades after the end of apartheid, but still.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

That, and mobile phones.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

That's the logical and reasonable course. Unfortunately the OP concerns Stalinism, the triumph of the paranoid form of politics.....

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but if the question is what would Stalin do? we already have the answer to that one, don't we?

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Stalin supposedly had a bunch of look-alikes for use as security decoys. In a sense, he gave birth to triplets.

Unfortunately, the US was less interested in truth and reconciliation than it was in redeploying Nazis de-Nazified Germans in missions very similar to the one they had under Hitler.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And here's where we have a problem: the Warsaw Pact employed former Gestapo officials in the Stasi. Any critique of the USA for this also rebounds on the Soviet Union for identical reasons.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Factions within the US military tried to incite anti-Soviet resistance in Eastern Europe at a time when there was no official Cold War. The whole endeavor was not seen as wasteful of life until the failure of the '56 revolt in Hungary. The quick roll-up of these resistance fighters sure gave the anti-Communists a great deal of political ammunition.

I have no idea how to answer your closing question. If Vlasov had wound up in the hands of one of the Western military organizations, I am sure he would have been treated as a major asset. Reinhard Gehlen was quickly recruited in the fight against the Soviets, but he was clearly on the side of the Nazis to begin with.

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

anti-Soviet resistance in Eastern Europe

operation Gladio

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

That is not exactly the same as the operations in Eastern Europe, but the idea is similar.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

I find it very hard to fault someone for siding with Hitler against Stalin. "Enemy of my enemy" and all that.

They were both monsters and wether or not Stalin was really the "lesser of two evils" is a matter of opinion.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

During Hitler's rise to power, he enjoyed a significant amount of support in the US. His racism resonated with Americans who had a history of enslaving Africans and exterminating Natives. The level of barbarity under Nazi rule did not really sink in until after the death camps had been liberated. There are Americans today who do not comprehend the level of barbarity of the atrocities committed in the US.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Historical revisionism, Nazi atrocities *were* known during the war. The most controversial decision was to execute Nazi officials for the Katyn Forest Massacre, and it was at one point held to be anti-Soviet viewpoints to put the responsibility for that where it belonged: Lavrenti Beria.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Not from a Slavic POV where Hitler was explicitly about killing them all off. I get it that people want to trivialize what the Nazis were very sincere about doing, but perhaps there really is a difference between the Red Tsar and the Omnicidal Menchildren. It's not a matter of opinion that Hitler was worse, unless we're going into straight out moral equivalency of the most cowardly sort.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

I'm not trivializing anything. Just pointing out that a choice between a ruler who wants to kill you and a ruler who will kill you isn't much of a choice.

At that point backing one against the other in the hopes of them destroying eachother starts to look like a pretty good deal

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

What does this have to do with the creation of the doughnut?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Wrong anniversary. I was thinking of the bicentennial of the War of 1812 where Napoleon marched his army to destruction.

[brockulfsen.livejournal.com]

They would have made excellent UN troops for peacekeeping in Southeast Asia or in Africa, or to oppose US adventuring in Central America.

Add them to the French Foreign Legion and demobbed Japanese Italian and German regular Army and you'd have sufficient troops to put out most of the brushfires well away from "home" territories.