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Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement: Soviet Reality and Emigré Theories (Cambridge Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies)

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Every so often a text appears which dispells the conventional wisdom of what we come to accept as history. Catherine Andreyev's "Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement" is such a work. This narrative tells the story of one of the strangest, yet most compelling episolds in the history of the second world war. In July of 1942, a Soviet Army general, Andrei Vlasov was captured by the invading German Army. He later came to lead a non-existant force known as the ROA, or Russian Liberation Army. Although this force had never exsted, he was in fact the ideological leader of an estimated 800 million Russians who were opposed to Stalin and served in various capacities during the war. Throughout the war it was clear that the movement was not, as their opponents had charged, blind collaboration with the Nazi forces but a political movement in its own right. The goal of Vlasov and his group was none other than a free and democratic Russian state. In the course of the movement, it was in fact the Nazis themselves that provided the strongest opposition to the goals of the ROA. They, in fact had desired to use Vlasov only for the purpose of propaganda against the Soviets. Andreyev's story tells the story of the various individuals in the movement and the tragic outcome of this movement. Particular emphisis is placed on different factions involved. In this story we learn about the soldiers themselves who were mostly russian prisoners of war, as well as the civilian emigre groups who supported the ROA. We also see the internal struggle between the Vlasov's group who sincerely wanted to liberate their homeland and the Nazi hierarchy who concidered the russians as being racially inferior and wanted to use them as puppets. In short this is an excellent story of an idealistic, but doomed group of people and their struggle.

Tom Pierce

This work is primarily on the ideology of the wartime German sponsored Russian Liberation Movement. Its leadership, who had advanced under Stalin and had been captured by the Germans, attempted to combine Communist, Russian nationalist, and Western democratic beliefs, in a platform that would appeal to the majority of Russians, as well as to the United States. The main statements of the Movement, which the author examines, were devoid of Nazi ideology, and the Movement itself never received the full approval of Hitler and his highest subordinates. Because the leaders of the Russian Liberation Movement were able to express their views on the Stalinist system, without the constraints of the system, this analysis of their ideology, would be of great interest to students of Soviet internal politics before and during the Second World War.