Betrayal of the Cossacks
Encyclopedia : B : BE : BET : Betrayal of the Cossacks
The Betrayal of Cossacks is an event that remains in the minds of many Cossacks. It reminds the Cossacks of the paradoxical choices they were forced to make in times of war and of the wrongs that they have endured. This relatively little known event, as well as other events that are results of Yalta, is referred to by Nikolai Tolstoy as "The Secret Betrayal" because of its lack of exposure in the Western hemisphere. The most remembered of these events was the event that took place in Lienz. It is most likely the most remembered because it is considered to be the bloodiest.
Background
During the Russian Revolution of 1917, thousands of Russians who had fought for the White Army and the Tsar against the Bolsheviks fled to western European countries and gained citizenship in their respective countries. Since they had fled Russia before it became the U.S.S.R they never claimed citizenship in Soviet Russia.In June of 1941, the Soviet Union was attacked by Germany, prompting the Soviet Union's entrance into World War II. This created a great conflict of interest among Cossacks in the Soviet Union. They could either fight with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany or they could fight with Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union, which had liquidated the Cossack Republics and taken away many of their former freedoms.
The struggle of some Cossacks to liberate their homelands from the Bolsheviks brought them into the ranks of the German Army, with whose aid they hoped to regain their lost freedom. The Cossacks were first recruited by German commanders in the field. In 1942 their units received recognition and wore their own insignia. By early 1943 authorization was given to create the 1st Cossack Division which trained throughout the summer of 1943 to be sent to Yugoslavia to fight the Tito partisans. Eventually, by 1945, the Cossack Division had expanded into the XVth Cossack Cavalry Corps, commanded by the German General Helmuth von Pannwitz. Von Pannwitz chose to accompany the Cossacks when they were repatriated by the British to the Soviet Union, and was executed with five other Cossack Generals and Atamans in Moscow in 1947. The Cossacks who wore German uniforms saw their service not as treason to the motherland, but as an episode in the Revolution of 1917, part of the ongoing struggle against Moscow and against Communism.
Effect of Yalta and Tehran Conferences
The agreements of the Yalta and Tehran Conferences signed by President Roosevelt, Josef Stalin and Prime Minister Churchill had an enormous impact on the Cossacks who chose not to fight for the Soviet Union because many of them were P.O.W.'s in German camps. Stalin demanded that all Russian or Soviet citizens held in prisons be handed over to the Soviet Union. This was not contested by the British or American governments because they felt that many of their citizens would be freed by the Soviet Union and they believed that nothing should delay their freedom. After Yalta, Churchill did question Stalin asking "Did they (cossacks and other minorities) fight against us?". Stalin replied "they fought with ferocity, not to say savagery, for the Germans'" This was true to many Cossacks who had fought against the Soviet Union and other Allies during the war, most notably a Tatar Caucasian Division who boasted of the description, than to the purely Cossack units, but few fought against the non-Soviet Allies. None the less, they were understood to be Nazi collaborators and treated accordingly.In accordance with the agreements the Cossacks were forcibly surrendered by the Allies to the Red Army and repatriated to the Soviet Union. Toward the end of the war General Krasnov and some other Cossack leaders persuaded Hitler and his authorities to allow all civilians and non-fighting Cossacks to settle on a permanent basis in the sparsely settled foothills of the Italian Alps. The Cossacks moved there in numbers and established a refugee settlement, with several stanitzas and posts, with their administration, churches, schools and defense units. When the victorious Allies moved from central Italy into the Italian Alps, Italian partisans under General Contini ordered the Cossacks to leave their new homes and to retreat northward, into Austria. There, on the banks of the River Drave, near Lienz, the British army units caught up with the Cossacks and interned them in a hastily arranged camp. For a few days the British fed these refugees and created the impression that they understood the unique problem of this group, and could see the reason for their fear and uneasiness. The advance units of the Red Army were only a few miles to the east, rapidly surging to establish contact with the Allies. Many of the Cossacks began to believe that, under the protection of the British, they were safe from being handed over to the Soviet Union.
On May 28, 1945, two thousand and forty six Cossack officers and generals, including the world famous cavalry leaders, Generals Pyotr Krasnov, Andrei Shkuro and Kiletch-Girey, were disarmed and carried in British cars and trucks to a neighboring town held by the Red Army. There they were surrendered to the Red Army general, who ordered that they stand trial for treason. Many of these Cossack leaders had never been nominally citizens and subjects of the Soviet Union, being the men who had left Russia in 1920, at the end of the civil war, and therefore not guilty of any treason. Some of these men were executed on the spot; the higher officers were subjected to trials at Moscow and were also executed. Most notably, General Krasnov was hanged on a public square. The bulk of this group was sent to labor camps in the Far North and Siberia, mostly to succumb to death. However, some escaped or lived until they were given freedom from Moscow who, no longer under Stalin, declared a partial amnesty for inmates of slave camps on March 27, 1953, and again on September 17, 1955, some political crimes were specifically omitted. Section 58.1(c) of the Criminal Code, for example, was excluded. This is the section which stipulates that in the event of flight abroad by a person in military service, all adult members of his family who abetted him or even knew about the contemplated flight are subject to imprisonment of 5 to 10 years; all dependents who did not know of the planned flight are subject to exile in Siberia for 5 years. On June 1, 1945, the rank and file of this group of Cossacks, 32,000 men, women and children were similarly bayoneted by the British into cattle cars and camions, and delivered to the Bolsheviks to be taken back to the Soviet Union. There they were to work, and in many cases die, as prisoners convicted of treason.
Similar scenes were enacted in the same year, 1945, in the American Zone of Occupation, in Austria and Germany. While the exact number of Cossacks who were repatriated is not known, most modern historians estimate it to be 45,000-50,000. Some other estimates, although usually not as widely accepted, have ranged from 15,000 up to 150,000.
Aftermath
The Cossacks, and particularly their officers who were more politically aware, had never doubted that this would be the fate of those who were handed back to those they fought against. They believed that the British would have related to their fight against communism, not knowing that their fates had already been decided by the Yalta Conference. When they discovered the fate many escaped (some probably with the aid of their Allied captors), some passively resisted, and hundreds of others committed suicide. Of the great many of Cossacks that succeeded in fleeing these extraditions, most hid themselves in the forests and mountains; many were saved by the local German population; but the greatest number of the escapees found safety and salvation in changing their identity, disguising themselves as Ukrainians, Latvians, Poles, Yugoslavians, Turks, Armenians and Ethiopians. Eventually they were admitted into the camps for Displaced Persons. Under such assumed nationalities and names, a considerable number of them came to the United States under the Displaced Persons Act. Many others left the Displaced Person camps for any land which would open its doors to them. A great number of these people remained in Germany, Austria, France, and Italy under assumed identities. Many of these people chose to conceal their identity until the fall of Communism in the Soviet Union in 1991.Further reading
- Catherine Andreyev (1987). Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement: Soviet Reality and Emigré Theories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521305454.
- Nikolai Tolstoy (1978). The Secret Betrayal. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. ISBN 0684156350.
- Nikolai Tolstoy (1981). Stalin's Secret War. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN 0224016652.
- John Ure (2002). The Cossacks: An Illustrated History. London: Gerald Duckworth. ISBN 0715632531.
- Samuel J. Newland (1991). Cossacks in the German Army 1941 - 1945, London: Franc Cass. ISBN 07146 33518.
- Nikolai Tolstoy (1986). The Minister and the massacres. London: Century Hutchinson Ltd. ISBN 0-09-164010-5
- Ian Mitchell (1997). The cost of a reputation. Lagavulin: Topical Books. ISBN 09531581 01.
See also
- Russian Liberation Army
- Andrey Vlasov
- Operation Keelhaul
- GoldenEye, a James Bond film in which the villain is a descendant of Lienz Cossacks who bears a grudge against the United Kingdom
References
- Haines, Don Web Page from Combat Magazine
- "Motherland" (Rodina) Society Archives
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.