Repatriations of Cossacks etc : "The East Came West"

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Barbara
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Repatriations of Cossacks etc : "The East Came West"

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I just finished a tremendous book, "The East Came West" by Peter Huxley-Blythe. This author investigated various topics related to the absolutely tragic repatriations of the Cossacks and others also, at the close of World War II. This book was a preliminary account, where Count Nikolai Tolstoy launched a full-scale investigation and came up so many shocking findings that it's impossible to even conceive of many of them.
I had read that tome in 2022 but this site was closed at that time, so i could not review it. I will probably re-check it out and write a review of that marvelous expose.
This shorter book covers other areas, so the two are complementary. For example this book discusses what happened to General Vlasov in much more detail, and ties it in with the main story.
I recommend reading the 2 books if anyone can find the time. If not, this is a good introduction.
I am posting a review from Amazon, as it summarizes the book fairly well :

"THIS IS A VERY INTERESTING BOOK THAT NARRATES THE STORY AND THE SAGA OF
THE COSSACKS AND THE RUSSIAN LIBERATION ARMY IN THEIR FIGHT AGAINST THE
CRIMINAL COMMUNIST TYRANNY THAT SINCE 1917 HAD OPPRESED THEIR MOTHERLAND.
THE COSSACKS ARE A PROUD AND VALIANT WARRIORS OF THE STEPPES FROM SOUTHERN
RUSSIA, THEIR FREE AND INDEPENDENT SPIRIT WERE ANATHEMA TO THE REDS, AS A RESULT
THEY INCURRED ALL THE WRATH OF THE BOLSHEVIKS WHO WAGED A WAR OF EXTERMINATION
ON THEM, BESIDE THE COSSACKS WERE A THE FOREFRONT OF THE WHITE ARMY.
IN 1941 WHEN THE GERMANS INVADED THE SOVIET UNION THE COSSACKS DECIDED TO
FIGHT ALONGSIDE THEM NOT OF ANY PRO-NAZI SYMPATHY BUT TO LIBERATE THEIR HOMELAND
FROM THE REDS , OF COURSE THEIR HOPES WERE DASHED WHEN THEY REALIZED THAT THEIR
NEW MASTERS WERE AS CRIMINAL AND RUTHLESS AS THE FORMER ONES, IN FACT THE NAZIS
CONSIDERED THE SLAVS AS SUBHUMANS AND THEY DID NOT HAVE ANY INTEREST IN A NATIONALIST
AND INDEPENDENT RUSSIA, OF COURSE THERE WERE ISOLATED CASES OF GOOD GERMANS LIKE COLONEL
HELMUT VON PANNWITZ , WHO WERE RAISED AMONG THE SLAVS AND WAS NOT A NAZI, WHO AT THE END
OF THE WAR WAS ELECTED ATAMAN (CHIEF) OF THE COSSACKS.
WHEN THE GERMANS MOVED TO THE WEST BECAUSE OF THE ONSLAUGHT OF THE RED ARMY THE
COSSACKS WENT WITH THEM , THEY SETTLED IN TOLMEZZO IN NORTHERN ITALY WITH THE HOPE
OF ESTABLISH CONTACT WITH THE WESTERN ALLIES ESPECIALLY THE BRITISH WHO FOUGHT WITH
THEM DURING THE CIVIL WAR, IN FACT WINSTON CHURCHILL CHAMPIONED THE WHITE CAUSE, BUT
THE COSSACKS LEARNED IN THE HARD WAY THAT 1945 WAS NOT 1919, THEY WERE MOVED
TO AUSTRIA AND THERE THE BRITISH BY MEANS OF DECEPTION, LIES AND THE USE OF BRUTE FORCE
SENT THEM BACK TO THE USSR TO THE CRIMINAL HANDS OF JOSEF STALIN; ALONGSIDE WITH THE OFFICERS
AND SOLDIERS, WOMEN, CHILDREN, OLD PEOPLE AND EVEN EMIGRES WHO LEFT RUSSIA IN THE TWENTIES
WERE SENT BACK TO THE USSR WITHOUT ANY REGARD FOR HUMANITY AND IN VIOLATION OF THE GENEVA CONVENTION.
BUT IT WAS NOT ONLY THE BRITISH, THE AMERICANS TOO DID THE SAME THING WITH THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS
OF THE ROA (RUSSIAN LIBERATION ARMY) OF GENERAL ANDREI VLASOV , A FORMER RED ARMY WHO DESERTED
TO THE GERMANS IN ORDER TO FIGHT TO LIBERATE RUSSIA FROM THE BOLSHEVIKS AND ESTABLISH A DEMOCRATIC
AND NATIONALIST STATE; FOLLOWING ORDERS FROM DWIGHT EISENHOWER THE AMERICANS USING
DECEPTIVE METHODS AND EMPLOYING BRUTE FORCE HANDED OVER THE ANTI COMMUNIST RUSSIANS TO THE REDS.
BETWEEN 1944 AND 1947 MORE THAN FIVE MILLIONS RUSSIANS AND NON-RUSSIANS WERE SENT BACK TO
THE USSR, APPROXIMATELY THREE MILLIONS WERE EITHER SHOT OR SENT TO THE SIBERIAN GULAG OF THE FROZEN
NORTH IN WHICH THEY WERE WORKED TO DEATH, THE SURVIVORS WHO WERE RELEASED AND CAME TO THE WEST
WERE IN A VERY BAD CONDITION; THIS TRANSFERENCE FROM THE WESTERN ALLIES(USA, BRITAIN AND FRANCE)
TO THE USSR WAS KNOWN AS OPERATION KEELHAUL AND IS ONE OF THE MOST INFAMOUS AND HEINOUS
CRIMES OF WORLD WAR TWO AND A RUPTURE OF THE PRINCIPLES OF THE ATLANTIC CHARTER CONCEIVED
BY ROOSEVELT AND CHURCHILL ALSO IT TARNISHED THE REPUTATION OF THE THREE MAIN DEMOCRACIES OF
THE WORLD, AS A RESULT THE ANTI COMMUNIST RUSSIANS BECAME ALSO ANTI WESTERN.
WITH THE ONSET OF THE COLD WAR THE POLICY OF APPEASEMENT WITH THE COMMUNISTS CONTINUED,
OF COURSE THERE WERE EXCEPTIONS LIKE MALAYA, GREECE, GUATEMALA AND CHILE IN WHICH THE UNITED
STATES AND BRITAIN SUPPORTED THE ANTI COMMUNIST CAUSE.
AS OF THIS REVIEW SEVEN DECADES HAVE PASSED AND THE SOVIET UNION IS NOW ORTHODOX RUSSIA, HOWEVER
THE INFAMOUUS OPERATION KEELHAUL REMAINS CLASSIFIED AND UNKNOWN, NOT EVEN AN APOLOGY HAS BEEN
MADE BY THE WEST FOR THIS HEINOUS CRIME.
FOR MORE OF OPERATION KEELHAUL I STRONGLY RECOMMEND VICTIMS OF YALTA 1944-1947 BY
NIKOLAI TOLSTOY (I WAS VERY MOVED BY THE CHAPTER FROM LIENZ TO THE LUBIANKA)."

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Barbara
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Re: Repatriations of Cossacks etc : "The East Came West"

Post by Barbara »

Since that review above was written, Count Tolstoy published his magnum opus, which is described and reviewed by a knowledgeable person below. There is much more to say about this tremendous book, but one can learn the general outline from these summaries:

"Stalin’s Vengeance: The Final Truth About the Forced Return of Cossacks After World War


In May 1945, as World War II drew to a close in Europe, some 30,000 Russian Cossacks surrendered to British forces in Austria, believing they would be spared repatriation to the Soviet Union. The fate of those among them who were Soviet citizens had been sealed by the Yalta Agreement, signed by the Allied leaders a few months earlier. Ever since, mystery has surrounded Britain’s decision to include among those returned to Stalin a substantial number of White Russians, who had fled their country after the Russian Revolution of 1917 and found refuge in various European countries. They had never been Soviet citizens, and should not have been handed over. Some were prominent tsarist generals, on whose handover the Soviets were particularly insistent. General Charles Keightley, the responsible British officer, concealed the presence of White Russians from his superiors, who had issued repeated orders stipulating that only Soviet nationals should be handed over, and even then only if they did not resist. Through a succession underhanded moves, Keightley secretly delivered up the leading Cossack commanders to the Soviets, while force of unparalleled brutality was employed to hand over thousands of Cossack men, women, and children to a ghastly fate. Particularly sinister was the role of the future British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, whose own machinations are scrutinized here. Following the publication of Count Nikolai Tolstoy’s last book on the subject in 1986, the British government closed ranks, and three years later an English court issued a £1,500,000 judgment against him for allegedly libeling the British chief of staff who issued the fatal orders. Since then, however, Count Tolstoy has gradually acquired a devastating body of heretofore unrevealed evidence filling the remaining gaps in this tragic history. Much of this material derives from long-sealed Soviet archives, to which Tolstoy received access by a special decree from the late Russian President Boris Yeltsin. What really happened during these murky events is now revealed for the first time.

Brien Purcell Horan
5.0 out of 5 stars A review of STALIN'S VENGEANCE by a retired U.S. Army JAGC colonel

In my opinion, Nikolai Tolstoy’s STALIN’S VENGEANCE, published in autumn 2021, will be viewed in the fullness of time as his most important contribution to history. VICTIMS OF YALTA was Tolstoy’s first book on the forced repatriations to the Soviet Union of some two million people at the end of World War II, many to face either death by machine gun (or the hangman’s noose) or slave labor in the Gulag Archipelago. The focus of STALIN’S VENGEANCE is more narrow: the forced repatriation in Austria of some 30,000 to 50,000 Cossacks. The British Army’s Fifth Corps, under the command of Lieutenant General Charles Keightley, turned over the Cossacks to the Soviet authorities, beginning in late May 1945.

I read VICTIMS OF YALTA in my twenties, when it was published in the late 1970s. At that time, I was a committed student of the Cold War, and this volume described a very disturbing episode which had till then remained largely unknown to the general public. Forty years on, having served as a judge and, before that, as a colonel in the U.S. Army’s legal division, the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, which is responsible for instructing soldiers in the law of war and reviewing operations plans for compliance with the law of war, I read STALIN’S VENGEANCE with a particular eye to the key question of war crimes.

Under the Yalta Agreement concluded by Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin in early 1945, Britain agreed to turn over to the Soviet authorities all Soviet citizens liberated by British forces, and the Soviet Union agreed to return to the British authorities all British subjects liberated by the Red Army. So far, so good. Prisoners of war typically wish to return home. And any international agreement like this must be interpreted and implemented so as to accord with international law. The term “Soviet citizen” would come to be deemed generally applicable to those who were Soviet citizens in 1938, right before the war. The term thus necessarily excluded those who had left the Soviet Union before 1938, as well as those subjects of the former Russian Empire who had fled Russia after the White defeat in the Civil War and never were Soviet citizens. It also obviously excluded children born in the West to émigré parents.

The United Kingdom was a signatory of the 1929 Geneva Convention on prisoners of war. The Soviet Union did not sign it, but the provisions requiring humane treatment of prisoners of war, codified in the Convention, had achieved such widespread acceptance as to have become customary international law binding on all nations.

Both the 1929 Geneva Convention on prisoners of war (Article 2) and the 1907 Hague Convention on land warfare (Annex, Article 4), which by the way was ratified by the USSR’s predecessor state, the Russian Empire, required that prisoners of war be treated humanely at all times. Under the Geneva Convention, they had further to be protected against acts of violence and reprisals. These protections also covered captured civilian non-combatants who accompanied an armed force without belonging to it. Appearing as an expert witness at the famous defamation trial of Aldington v. Tolstoy in 1989, Sir Christopher Greenwood, later a Judge of the International Court of Justice, testified that the “duty of humane treatment includes a duty to protect captives from inhumane treatment by anybody else, and that a duty to protect from inhumane treatment would be violated if members of the enemy armed forces were handed over to another state in circumstances where it was known or suspected that they would be massacred or in any other way ill-treated.” (Tolstoy, p. 451). In other words, a country does not avoid the rule against inhumane treatment by turning a prisoner over to another country it knows or suspects will mistreat him, a principle relevant to the “extraordinary renditions” by the United States to third countries of prisoners captured in combat or abducted by the CIA during the War on Terror.

1945 was more than a decade before Khrushchev’s 1956 speech to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the USSR, in which he detailed the atrocities of Stalinism. Did the British authorities in 1945 know or suspect the fate awaiting the repatriated Cossacks? They clearly did. A week before the Cossack repatriations commenced, a cable from Field Marshal Alexander’s headquarters stated that the immediate repatriation of “approximately 50,000 Cossacks including 11,000 women, children and old men…might be fatal to their health.” (Tolstoy, p. 204). Nor had senior politicians in Britain been blind to Stalin’s constant purges or the more than three million Ukrainians who perished in the terror-famine of 1931-32. The two most senior British officials on the continent in May 1945 were Field Marshal Alexander, as Supreme Commander Allied Forces Headquarters, and Harold Macmillan, future prime minister but then a member of the Cabinet, who was resident minister (based in southern Italy) and political advisor. Macmillan wrote the following entry in his private diary some ten days or so before the Cossack repatriations began: “…among the surrendered Germans are about 40,000 Cossacks and ‘White’ Russians, with their wives and children. To hand them over to the Russians is condemning them to slavery, torture and probably death. To refuse, is deeply to offend the Russians, and incidentally break the Yalta agreement. We have decided to hand them over.” (Tolstoy, p. 256).

Nikolai Tolstoy has proved beyond any reasonable doubt that the involuntary repatriation of the Cossacks to the Soviet authorities in 1945, effected by the use of force, constituted a war crime.

Macmillan mentioned Cossacks and White Russians in his diary. There was a very pronounced anti-Bolshevism among the Cossack population, many of whom had fought in the counter-revolutionary White Army against the Reds during the Russian Civil War. Among the Cossacks who had held senior positions in the White Army were Lieutenant General Pyotr Krasnov, Ataman of the Cossacks of the Don, a general under Nicholas II and then in the White Army, who in exile became a famous novelist, and Andrei Shkuro, a colonel under Nicholas II who became a lieutenant general of the White Army and was awarded the Order of the Bath by King George V.
More on them later.

Who were these Cossacks under British control in Austria, whose estimated numbers ranged between 30,000 and 50,000? It seems that most of them were men who were serving in the German Army and at the end of hostilities had become prisoners of war of the British. During its occupation of parts of the USSR in World War II, Germany had set up Cossack brigades, later divisions, within the Wehrmacht. Many of the soldiers in these Cossack units met the definition of Soviet citizen, having joined the Wehrmacht during the German occupation or having enlisted while they were Red Army prisoners of war of the Germans. Others were émigré Cossacks from countries like France, Germany and Yugoslavia who had never been Soviet citizens but chose to enlist to fight for the overthrow of the Communist régime. Still others were the children of émigrés who had never set foot on Russian soil. Their decision to align themselves with Germany in order to continue the fight against Bolshevism was a dreadful one, but it is irrelevant to the question of whether they were victims of a war crime. Indeed, the fact that these men were under German military command, wore Wehrmacht uniforms and carried their arms openly only underlines their status as soldiers fully entitled to all the protections owed to prisoners of war. (In the event, it appears that they never had much of an opportunity to engage in combat against the Red Army but did fight against Communist partisans in Yugoslavia.) In addition to these soldiers, there were many thousands of Cossack civilians, including children, women and elderly men, who had fled the Soviet Union by accompanying the Cossack units during their withdrawal to the West.

In a fascinating portion of the book, Count Tolstoy clearly establishes that at the very highest level, that is, at the level of Field Marshal Alexander, the Royal Army never had the slightest intention of implementing the repatriation provisions of the Yalta agreement in a manner that would constitute war crimes. Orders issued by Alexander made clear that only Soviet citizens should be repatriated; that screening procedures should be employed to separate Soviet citizens from those who were not; that in the event of doubt as to someone’s citizenship, that person should not be repatriated; and that, in any event, force must not be used to effect repatriations. These orders were fully consistent with international law. If these clear orders had been obeyed, the tragedy of the Cossacks would never have occurred. What happened? Count Tolstoy proves that Fifth Corps received these straightforward orders from on high, but that its commanding officer, Lieutenant General Charles Keightley, and his chief of staff, Brigadier Toby Low (later elevated to the peerage as the 1st Lord Aldington during Macmillan’s premiership), deliberately disobeyed them in every respect, most probably at the behest of Macmillan, based on the latter’s verbal directive. (Tolstoy argues that Macmillan was acting on his own here, without the knowledge or approval of Churchill, who had a nostalgic affection for the White Army of the Russian Civil War.
Churchill, Alexander and Eisenhower in fact were all in agreement that the Cossacks should be transferred from Fifth Corps control to American custody.) The hyper ambitious Low, a barrister by profession, was the youngest brigadier in the Royal Army and had his eye on a political career and a seat in the Commons. Indeed he was elected to Parliament as a Tory two months after the repatriations commenced. Did Low, a protégé of Eden, wish to establish himself as a confidant of Macmillan? Did Keightley wish to benefit from the favor of Macmillan? What was Macmillan’s motive in sabotaging the policy of Field Marshal Alexander?

STALIN’S VENGEANCE also benefits from Tolstoy’s access to the Soviet archives, which Yeltsin opened to him in the 1990s. In his report to Beria, the head of SMERSH, the counter-intelligence agency of the Red Army, showed himself particularly interested in obtaining custody of the Cossack generals, including the elderly Krasnov and Shkuro, who had fought in the Civil War and who in 1945 found themselves among the Cossack soldiers held by the British. The old Cheka were patient and had long tentacles. One must assume, if Beria and the head of SMERSH were so keen on getting their hands on Krasnov and Shkuro, that Stalin was too. As a legal matter, whatever their collaboration may have been with the Wehrmacht, there was no basis to turn these White generals over to SMERSH. They had never been Soviet citizens. And their handover to the Soviets was effected at gunpoint.

The Soviet archives reveal that SMERSH and other Soviet officials were actually very surprised that the British would agree to give them the White generals. In addition, as an intriguing footnote, the USSR prior to 1945 had signed a number of treaties with individual countries acknowledging the principle that repatriations must be voluntary.

Krasnov and Shkuro were transferred to Moscow, where long interrogations ensued at the Lubyanka, headquarters of the NKVD. After a secret trial, they were both hanged in 1947.

The forced repatriations of the mass of the Cossacks were violent and messy. Some died by suicide rather than fall into the hands of Stalin. Some were machine-gunned almost immediately upon entering into Soviet custody. Most disappeared into the gulags. It has been stated that some of the Cossack soldiers committed war crimes in Yugoslavia and northern Italy. Tolstoy explores whether some of these accusations, when run to ground, turn out to be unsubstantiated and may have been propaganda aimed at distracting attention from the illegal repatriations. Whatever the truth, the 1929 Geneva Convention (Articles 60-67) sets forth the procedure for the British military authorities to follow in cases when a prisoner of war is accused of war crimes: a judicial proceeding before a duly constituted tribunal, with representation by a qualified advocate, a right against self-incrimination, and a right to appeal. Those Cossack soldiers and civilians sent to the gulags without such judicial niceties became slave laborers (Article 32 of the Geneva Convention prohibited forcing prisoners of war to perform unhealthy or dangerous work)...

Several other members of the Krasnov family were repatriated at the same time as the old general: his nephews General Semeon Krasnov and Colonel Nikolai Krasnov and the latter’s young son Nikolai. The younger Nikolai, in his twenties when repatriated, was the only member of the family to survive. After ten years of incarceration, he was released under Khrushchev’s partial amnesty in 1955 and was able to make his way to the West. Debilitated by his years of slave labor, however, Nikolai Krasnov died four years later. He recorded what his great-uncle, the old Ataman of the Don Cossacks, had told him during their final brief meeting at the Lubyanka:

"If you do survive, fulfill this testament of mine. Describe everything you experience, what you see and hear, whom you meet. Describe it as it was. Don’t exaggerate the bad. Don’t paint in false colors. Do not depreciate what is good. Do not lie. Write only the truth. Keep your eyes wide open. Here, under these circumstances, you will have no chance to write, not even brief notes, so use your mind as a notebook, as a camera. This is important, gravely important. From Lienz to the end of your journey of sufferings, remember it all. The world must learn the truth about what has happened and what is happening, from the betrayal and treachery to - the end." (Tolstoy, pp. 423-424).

Nikolai Tolstoy’s great merit is that, despite decades of resistance, stonewalling, and setbacks, he has tenaciously pursued his researches to the end, determined that this hidden story be brought to light. In this effort, he was urged on by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

The book is gripping."

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