Andrey Andreyevich Vlasov (, – August 1, 1946) was a Soviet Russian Red Army general. During the Axis-Soviet campaigns of World War II, he fought against the Wehrmacht in the Battle of Moscow and later was captured attempting to lift the siege of Leningrad in 1942. After his capture, he defected and collaborated with Nazi Germany. He nominally headed the Russian Liberation Army (Russkaya osvoboditel'naya armiya, ROA), also becoming the political leader of the Russian collaborationist anti-Soviet movement.
Initially, this army existed only on paper and was used by Germans to goad Red Army troops to surrender, while any political and military activities were officially forbidden to him by the Nazis after his visits to the occupied territory; only in November 1944 did Heinrich Himmler, aware of Germany's shortage of manpower, arrange for Vlasov's formations, composed of Soviet prisoners of war as armed forces of Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia, a political organisation headed by Vlasov. While for the Nazis the ROA was a mere propaganda weapon, Vlasov and his associates attempted to create an armed political movement independent of the Nazi control that would present an anti-Stalinist program described by Robert Conquest as democratic, while attempting to avoid Nazi antisemitism and chauvinism, with "completing the Revolution" of 1917 being the ultimate goal of the movement.
In January 1945, Vlasov headed the army as it was declared that it would be no longer a part of the Wehrmacht. At the war's end, the 1st division of ROA aided the May 1945 Prague uprising against the Germans. Vlasov and the ROA were captured by Soviet forces. Vlasov was tortured, and hanged for treason after a secret trial. After his death, his figure and his movement became objects of various narratives in memory politics and historiography.
Early career
Born in Lomakino, Nizhny Novgorod Governorate, Russian Empire, Vlasov was originally a student at a Russian Orthodox seminary. He quit the study of divinity after the Russian Revolution, briefly studying agricultural sciences instead, and in 1919 joined the Red Army. He fought in the southern theatre in Ukraine, the Caucasus, and the Crimea during the Russian Civil War, including against the White forces of Anton Denikin and Pyotr Wrangel, and the anarchist army of Nestor Makhno. He distinguished himself as an officer and gradually rose through the ranks of the Red Army. In the 1920s and early 1930s he was a company, battalion, and regimental commander, and graduated from an infantry officer course. He was also an instructor at the Frunze Military Academy.
Vlasov joined the Communist Party in 1930. Sent to China in 1938, he acted as a military adviser to Chiang Kai-shek until November 1939. From February to May 1939 he was the advisor to Yan Xishan, the governor of Shanxi. Vlasov was also the chief of staff to the head of the Soviet military mission, General Aleksandr Cherepanov. He received a military decoration from Chiang and a watch from his wife, Madame Chiang Kai-shek, which were both taken from him after he returned to the USSR. Upon his return, Vlasov served in several assignments before being given command of the 99th Rifle Division. After just nine months under Vlasov's leadership, and an inspection by Semyon Timoshenko, the division was recognized as one of the best divisions in the Army in 1940.Коллектив авторов. «Великая Отечественная. Командармы. Военный биографический словарь» — М.; Жуковский: Кучково поле, 2005. Timoshenko presented Vlasov with an inscribed gold watch, as he "found the 99th the best of all". The historian John Erickson says of Vlasov at this point that [he] "was an up-and-coming man".John Erickson, The Soviet High Command, MacMillan, 1962, p.558 In 1940, Vlasov was promoted to major general, and on June 22, 1941, when the Germans and their allies invaded the Soviet Union, Vlasov was commanding the 4th Mechanized Corps.
As a lieutenant general, he commanded the 37th Army near Kiev and escaped encirclement. He then played an important role in the defense of Moscow, as his 20th Army counterattacked and retook Solnechnogorsk. Vlasov's picture was printed (along with those of other Soviet generals) in the newspaper Pravda as that of one of the "defenders of Moscow". Vlasov was decorated on January 24, 1942, with the Order of the Red Banner for his efforts in the defence of Moscow. Vlasov was ordered to relieve the ailing commander Klykov after the Second Shock Army had been encircled.Bellamy, Absolute War, pg 384 After this success, Vlasov was put in command of the 2nd Shock Army of the Volkhov Front and ordered to lead the attempt to lift the Siege of Leningrad—the Lyuban-Chudovo Offensive Operation of January–April 1942.
On January 7, 1942, Vlasov's army had spearheaded the Lyuban offensive operation to break the Leningrad encirclement. Planned as a combined operation between the Volkhov and Leningrad Fronts on a 30 km frontage, other armies of the Leningrad Front (including the 54th) were supposed to participate at scheduled intervals in this operation. Crossing the Volkhov River, Vlasov's army was successful in breaking through the German 18th Army's lines and penetrated 70–74 km deep inside the German rear area.Meretskov, On the service of the nation, Ch.6 However, the other armies (the Volkhov Front's 4th, 52nd, and 59th Armies, 13th Cavalry Corps, and 4th and 6th Guards Rifle Corps, as well as the 54th Army of the Leningrad Front) failed to exploit Vlasov's advances and provide the required support, and Vlasov's army became stranded. Permission to retreat was refused. With the counter-offensive in May 1942, the Second Shock Army was finally allowed to retreat, but by now, too weakened, it was surrounded and in June 1942 virtually annihilated during the final breakout at Myasnoi Bor.Erickson, Road to Stalingrad, 2003, p.352. See also p.381, where Erickson describes 2 Shock after this operation as 'an army brought back from the dead.'
German prisoner
After Vlasov's army was surrounded, he himself was offered an escape by aeroplane. The general refused and hid in German-occupied territory; ten days later, on July 12, 1942, a local farmer exposed him to the Germans. Vlasov's opponent and captor, general Georg Lindemann, interrogated him about the surrounding of his army and details of battles, then "had Vlasov imprisoned in occupied Vinnytsia."
While in prison, Vlasov met Captain Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt, a Baltic German who was attempting to foster a Russian Liberation Movement. Strik-Strikfeldt had circulated memos to this effect in the Wehrmacht. Strik-Strikfeldt, who had been a participant in the White movement during the Russian Civil War, persuaded Vlasov to become involved in aiding the German advance against the rule of Joseph Stalin and Bolshevism. With Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Boyarsky, Vlasov wrote a memo shortly after his capture to the German military leaders suggesting cooperation between anti-Stalinist Russians and the German Army.
Defection
Vlasov was taken to Berlin under the control of the Wehrmacht Propaganda Department. While there, he and other Soviet officers began drafting plans for the creation of a Russian provisional government and the recruitment of a Russian army of liberation under Russian command. In the spring of 1943, Vlasov wrote an anti-Bolshevik leaflet known as the "Smolensk Proclamation", which was dropped from aircraft by the millions on Soviet forces and Soviet-controlled soil. In March of the same year, Vlasov also published an open letter titled "Why I Have Taken Up the Struggle Against Bolshevism". Even though no Russian Liberation Army yet existed, the Nazi propaganda department issued Russian Liberation Army patches to Russian volunteers and tried to use Vlasov's name in order to encourage defections. Several hundred thousand former Soviet citizens served in the German army wearing this patch, but never under Vlasov's own command.
Vlasov was permitted to make several trips to German-occupied Soviet Union: most notably, to Pskov, Russia, where Russian pro-German volunteers paraded. The populace's reception of Vlasov was mixed. While in Pskov, Vlasov dealt himself a nearly fatal political blow by referring to the Germans as mere "guests" during a speech, which Hitler found belittling. Vlasov was even put under house arrest and threatened with being handed over to the Gestapo. Despondent about his mission, Vlasov threatened to resign and return to the POW camp, but was dissuaded at the last minute by his confidants. According to Varlam Shalamov and his tale The Last Battle of Major Pugachov, Vlasov emissaries lectured to the Russian prisoners of war, explaining to them that their government had declared them all traitors, and that escaping was pointless. As Vlasov proclaimed, even if the Soviets succeeded, Stalin would send them to Siberia.
Vlasov Movement
The creation of a political movement behind Vlasov and the Russian collaboration became a result of the conflicts within the Nazi Party and the Nazi bureaucracy. While Hitler and the supporters of the Generalplan Ost adhered to the idea of the colonization of the Untermenschen and denied any cooperation with the population of the USSR, Alfred Rosenberg proposed the creation of monoethnic nation-states as satellites of the Third Reich ruled by local nationalist collaborators. Hitler rejected this project, but the Soviet defectors were used by the Wehrmacht Propaganda Department. Eventually Hitler agreed to use the Soviet defectors for propaganda purposes. As the reports of the Osttruppen defecting to the Soviet partisans reached Hitler, he demanded that all the units be disbanded, and the men sent to the mines and factories, but this order wasn't executed due to the resistance of the OKW. After the 20 July plot, the Eastern troops were handed to the SS, and as Hitler weakened due to physical conditions, Himmler found possible the creation of a collaborationist political organisation with its army.
After defection, Vlasov became the leading collaborator with Nazi Germany and the figurehead of the so-called "Russian Liberation Movement". Its stated goal was the overthrow of Stalinism with the aid of the Nazis; the ROA was thought to be the armed force of the movement. Although the White emigres participated in its formation, the Soviet defectors eventually became its leaders and formulated its political positions. The Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (KONR) became the political body of this movement, and its positions were described in the Prague Manifesto of the Committee in November 1944.
As Vlasov became the undisputed leader of the movement, it became referred to as "the Vlasov Movement", while his Manifesto calls it the "Liberation Movement of the Peoples of Russia", underlying its multinationality. Although at first Vlasov hoped for an open co-operation of his movement and the Nazis, during his tour at the occupied territories, he emphasised that National Socialism could not be imposed on Russia, and that "a foreign coat [would] not fit a Russian." In his nationalist speeches, Vlasov promoted the idea of equal partnership with Germany and the idea of an independent Russia; his speeches angered Himmler, and in response, Wilhelm Keitel issued an order that Vlasov must be returned to POW camp and that his name henceforth should be used only for propaganda purposes. Rosenberg stopped supporting Vlasov, but he was placed under virtual house arrest in Dahlem instead of being sent to the POW camp. Disappointed, Vlasov said several times that he would return to the camp, but was dissuaded by his associates, namely Malyshkin and Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt.