From the White Armies to Nazi Collaboration: Alexei von Lampe (1885-1967)

Cover photo: Alexey Alexandrovich von Lampe (1885 – 1967), Major General of the General Staff (1921), photo before 1920, unknown author. Public Domain.
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If the figures of Denikin, Wrangel, and Kolchak are well-known and studied, there are many “secondary characters” who played a crucial role in the events of the Russian Civil War, White emigration, and collaborationism with Nazi Germany. This is the case of Alexei von Lampe (1885–1967). A lieutenant colonel with no significant roles during the First World War, von Lampe was able to become pivotal in the White movement. Starting from 1918, when he successfully organized a secret volunteer army center in Kharkov, von Lampe was able to connect different people inside a very divided White movement, and to represent first Denikin and then Wrangel. During the 1920s–1930s, von Lampe became a leading officer of the Russian All-Military Union (ROVS, Russkii obshchevoinskii soiuz), heading its Berlin section in the 1930s. He acted as one of the links between the old White guard and the Nazi regime, as well as with the collaborationist Russian Liberation Army led by General Vlasov.

From Kharkov to the Exile: Von Lampe’s Civil War

Born in 1885 into a family with German descent (his great-grandfather came from Hamburg during the Napoleonic wars and served in the ranks of the Russian Imperial Army), von Lampe had no ties with German culture, and he had to learn the language of his ancestors during his time in Berlin. Nevertheless, von Lampe was baptized as Lutheran, and his family was always devoted to the memory of this German ancestor who served against Napoleon. Studying at the First Cadet Corps and at the prestigious Nikolaevsk Engineering Institute,^[1] von Lampe took part in the Russian-Japanese War of 1904–1905, fighting in Manchuria at the age of 19.^[2] After various reassignments to the railway and engineering regiments, the young officer was finally enrolled in the prestigious Semyonov Regiment, thanks to his father’s connections, and then at the Nikolaevsk Academy of the General Staff.^[3]

With the beginning of the First World War, von Lampe was assigned to the General Staff, and served in various assignments until his appointment at the 18th Army Corpus, where he became lieutenant colonel. The commander in chief of the 18th Army Corpus General Staff, Major-General Count Sergei Kamenskii,^[4] recommended von Lampe in his report:

Excellent mental abilities. He loves warfare. Easily versed in difficult combat situations. He works not for fear, but for conscience. He has great performance. In battle, he behaves fearlessly. Fully possesses a service tact. The most decent way of thinking. Great worker. He performs all the charges carefully and in good faith. He has initiative and he exhibits it reasonably. Character solid, but sociable and benevolent. I recognize the General Staff officer as outstanding, worthy of being promoted to a more independent post of the chief of staff of the division “out of turn.”^[5]

Von Lampe had no clear position about the Provisional Government and never expressed his opinion on Alexander Kerensky or other leaders of that time: however, being a committed monarchist, he was not enthusiastic about the February Revolution. In October 1917 von Lampe was nominated as acting Quartermaster General of the 8th Army at the South-Western Front, and he escaped to Kharkov, where his wife Natalia had relatives, at the announcement of the October Revolution.

During the Civil War, Kharkov had a strategic role for controlling all the troops’ movements between Central Russia, Donbas, and the Black Sea. The city was chosen as the capital of Soviet Ukraine and then of the Donets-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic: the Soviet power in Ukraine was proclaimed there in December 24–25, 1917, at the First All-Ukrainian Congress of the Soviets, in opposition to the “bourgeois” government of the Ukrainian Rada in Kiev. After the Brest-Litovsk Treaty of March 1918, the city became a refuge for many officers loyal to the old regime.

Bolsheviks tried to recruit some of them, but without success. Von Lampe, who then worked for the monarchist newspaper Vozrozhdenie (Rebirth),^[6] came into contact with White officers. When Kharkov was occupied by the German Army on April 5, 1918, he helped in organizing a clandestine center headed by colonel Boris Shteifon, which started a recruitment campaign for sending personnel to Yekaterinodar, at that time the main center of Denikin’s Volunteer Army.^[7] Germans soon discovered these resistance activities, and von Lampe was forced to run to Yekaterinodar, where he was assigned to the General Staff of Denikin’s Russian Armed Forces in the South.

Mediating Between Denikin and Wrangel

Beginning in April 1918, von Lampe became the head of the Special Department of Vassili Shulgin’s Azbuka network and was then put in charge of redacting the newspaper Rossiia. Shulgin recruited him at that position with the hope that he would influence the White movement: the journal was not the official organ of the White government, but it received funds from the Volunteer Army.^[8] This arrangement was made possible after a meeting between Shulgin, Denikin, and General Mikhail Alekseev, who established the Volunteer Army together with General Lavr Kornilov. Indeed, while supportive of Rossiia, Denikin openly criticized the monarchist stance ardently defended by Shulgin’s newspaper:

Three articles under the title “Monarchists.” The majority of the Volunteer Army officers is monarchist. But besides that, there are republicans. The Kornilovtsy, for example, directly sing in their song: “The Tsar is not an idol to us.” Part of the Cossacks, too, is not particularly monarchical. One should not push out the monarchy as the main goal of the struggle. Moreover, the Bolsheviks, who will repeat that the Whites want to put the tsar, will pick it up.^[9]

After a few months of existence, Rossiia was closed by the Kuban Rada not only for being too monarchist, but also because it called for a united and indivisible Russia—a narrative that was not pleasing the Rada, the organ of local Cossacks, who were calling for a federal construction giving autonomy to the regions in general and to Cossacks in particular. Von Lampe was himself critical of Denikin’s actions and noticed his difficulties in imposing himself on the rest of the White movement. In the autumn of 1922, he wrote: “Although Denikin is a very decent person, at the same time he is really narrow and he has no state calibre … this is not a dictator and not a ruler, he is just a honest executor, at least of his personal decisions, but that’s all.”^[10]

Too moderate, Denikin’s leadership was indeed criticized by all sides. The main political and legislative organ of the Whites in Southern Russia, the Special Council, could not reconcile the different factions: leading figures of the pre-revolutionary political life such as Vasilii Shulgin, the Kadets Nikolai Astrov and Vasilii Stepanov, and prominent figures of the last imperial governments such as the former minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Sazonov, were competing with more liberal figures.^[11] Denikin, who was not involved in prerevolutionary politics, did not had enough prestige to impose his authority on them. Moreover, he was not part of the nobility (his father was a former serf who was enrolled for more than twenty years in the Imperial Army), and for the most hardliner Whites, it was unacceptable to see a nonblue- blood leading the armies.

In his memoirs, Shulgin recalls how Denikin tried to receive support from prince Nikolai Nikolaievich, the former head of the Russian Imperial Army in 1914–1915 and uncle of Nicholas II, but the prince refused, maybe, as Shulgin states, because he was closer to Wrangel than to Denikin.^[12] In his memoirs, Denikin himself acknowledged how his attempts at having a non-political dictatorship largely failed:

That political struggle, which is peculiar to the parliament, and which was conducted among the political organizations of the South, involuntarily burst through the walls of the Special Council, together with debates on legislation, turning it into an internal struggle and settling strife. And this discord in exaggerated and sophisticated form was carried by the hundred rumors, arousing deaf discontent in society and in the Army. Finally, the work of the legislative and administrative—in general and private meetings of the Council, in countless commissions and in departmental departments—was unbearable for the members of the Council. It tired them and tormented nerves, chained to the location of the government and separated from real life in the province, from immediate awareness of the affairs of subordinate bodies.^[13]

The figure that had the most profound influence on von Lampe’s career was Petr Wrangel, the legendary “Black Baron”—called after his preference for wearing a black cherkeska, the typical military woolen coat worn by Cossacks and peoples from the Caucasus. Von Lampe found himself under Wrangel’s leadership in the general staff of the Caucasian Volunteer Army, formed in May 1919, and von Lampe was put in charge of the Operative Department that preserved communications between Wrangel and Denikin. On July 21, 1919, von Lampe described a meeting with Shulgin and Wrangel in Tsaritsyn, in which they discussed how to organize political life in South Russia: Shulgin was committed to giving a more openly monarchist agenda to the Volunteer Army and to influencing the Special Council—he was head of its Committee on National Affairs from January 1919—while Denikin was in favor of a more moderate and consensual policy.^[14]

In October 1918, the Red counteroffensive signaled the defeat of Denikin’s military campaign to capture Moscow. Criticized by Wrangel and other White generals, the defeat made the break unavoidable. In his diary, von Lampe noticed that the Red Army’s strategy was better: “I see how they have a plan— retreat to the center and pushing on the flanks, and we have absolutely nothing—go ahead and convince all that the Red Army, which is giving counter-strokes with bayonets, is collapsing.”^[15] In January 1920, after Denikin’s resignation, Wrangel was sent by Denikin to Constantinople, and von Lampe was appointed as White representative at the Entente General Staff. He would never come back to his homeland.

Von Lampe’s Hopes for Horthy’s Hungary

In March 1921 von Lampe was chosen to be the White Russian representative to Hungary. At that time, Budapest was the European center of the Russian monarchist movement, with scions of noble families such as Golitsyn, Оbolenskii, Volkonskii and many other Russian émigré families, often of Baltic German origins. As stated by Hungarian historians, during the 1920s–1930s, approximately 3,000–5,000 subjects of the former Romanov empire lived in the country.^[16] General Denikin was based there for three years, from 1922 to 1925, and wrote his memoirs in a house near Lake Balaton. He stated:

Admiral Miklos Horthy’s regime was an example for the Whites: the crush of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919 and the victory of the counterrevolutionary forces headed by the Admiral were seen as a model to follow for the Russian monarchists. Horthy, who was an ardent antisemite,^[17] had a big impact in the minds and hearts of all anti-Bolshevik activists across Europe. Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg, leader of the Austrian paramilitary group Heimwehr, described in this way his admiration for Horthy and the European counter-revolution: “We enviously built fantasies about fighting side by side with our German comrades, after the assassination of Eisner, who defeated the Soviet Republic, or to participate in the actions of the Hungarian volunteer army, under the leadership of Horthy, who restored the honor of Hungary.”^[18]

Denikin and Wrangel both shared the same hopes about Hungary as a base and ally against Bolsheviks and were planning to rally it against Romania and Russia.^[19] Talking about von Lampe’s commitment to Horthy, Hungarian historian Attila Kolontari writes:

(…) he [von Lampe] saw in White Hungary, if not the only, then at any rate, one of the main partners of the Russian Army on a strategic scale. The White order in the country, the victorious counter-revolution, dominated his thinking over other considerations. In his eyes, the Hungarian White Movement embodied those ideals for which the Russian Whites fought and were defeated in the Civil War. Liberated from Bolshevism, Hungary seemed to Alexei von Lampe an island of order and tranquility in a spewed European sea. (…) His diary says a lot about the possibility of him serving in the Hungarian Army.^[20]

Admiral Horthy received von Lampe on March 23, 1921. The Russian officer gave him a letter from Wrangel, and in his diaries resumed the essence of Horthy’s words. Horthy believed that

(…) all the evil in the world is from the Jews. I understand that between them there are decent people, like there are rascals between Christians, but still I am convinced that all the evil is from the Jews. I read a Russian book, published in 1905, with minutes about their waiting for world domination (“Nilus,” I inserted), all this is so. I was told that the notorious “League of Nations” is all in the hands of the Jews (freemasons), and the English master Davis, also a Jew, leads it!

Horthy’s thoughts were quite pessimistic for the anti-Communist cause, seeing the blindness of European powers and Bolshevik hegemony advancing across the continent.

Europe will never understand the danger of Bolshevism, they force us to disarm, we are doing it as slowly as possible, because if the Bolsheviks, who cannot be stopped and despite the uprisings in the rear, will attack, Poland and the Galicians in the Carpathians will break through, we cannot survive in the face of such a mass. (…) Your situation is difficult, but let us hope that General Wrangel will become the head of a revived Russia— then everything will end. First you need to establish a dictatorship, and then only to transfer power.^[21]

But this enthusiasm for Budapest anti-Bolshevik commitment was too optimistic. Horthy had no other choice than to play double games with the Whites: he had to follow the Entente obligations present in the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, which limited the Hungarian army (no conscription, prohibition of tanks, heavy artillery, and air force). In June 1921, von Lampe proposed to dislocate the White troops present in Hungary, but the Committee of the High Allied Commissaries refused, afraid that it could give more strength to the Hungarian nationalists to challenge the Treaty. Against von Lampe’s advice, some adventurists, such as the general Petr Glazenap, attempted to launch a White expedition of about 20,000 people from Constantinople to Hungary and then against Soviet Russia.^[22] Von Lampe accused Glazenap of trying to be “a new Wrangel,” i.e., a usurper which would take the place of the Black Baron,^[23] and attempted to relegate him out of politics.

For the White movement, the choice of allies was not an easy one either: the Entente or the revanchist losers of the First World War? The ROVS—the organization of White veterans, soldiers, and officers established by Wrangel in Serbia in 1924—had as its main raison d’être the fight against the Soviet Union. The Union was originally pro-Entente: Paris was one of the most important centers of the White emigration, and the ROVS First Department (covering France, Great Britain, Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands) was located in the French capital. Yet, this pro-Entente orientation created tensions with the Second Department (covering Germany, Austria, and Hungary), under the responsibility of von Lampe, who had moved to Berlin in Spring 1922. On March 31, 1925, the German police searched von Lampe’s apartment, and he was conducted away for further talks. In a letter dated April 22, 1925, he briefly reported to General Evgenii Miller, head of the First Department, how the situation was evolving:

The issue of receiving money for the maintenance of a representative office from Paris has become extremely acute lately, as the German police, undoubtedly under the influence of Bolshevik denunciations and provocations, are beginning to persist in expressing suspicions that this money is not Russian, but French…^[24]

In this climate, a Prussian representative, Eduard Kenkel, launched a media attack on the alleged financial backing of ROVS by French and Polish intelligence services.^[25] The polemics was so vivid that von Lampe, together with Sergei Botkin (president of the Organization for the Defence of the Russian refugees in Germany) and Fedor Shlippe (head of the Red Cross Russian Committee), sent a memorandum addressed to the president of the German Republic and to the government. The memorandum stated that “Russian institutions are working for the benefit of their unfortunate compatriots who are in the plight of refugees, and the people who lead them spend their energy and strength on this work in the confidence that Germany has for a future, non-Bolshevik Russia.”^[26] Von Lampe would have to wait for the arrival of the Nazi party in power to see his call for cooperation with Berlin authorities be heard.

Von Lampe, Ivan Ilyin, and the Admiration for Fascism

In Berlin, von Lampe became the chronicler of the White cause, trying to collect memoirs and texts on the Civil War and emigration. His huge archive lasted till 1944, when it went missing after an Allied bombing. Today we have just some parts of von Lampe’s archival work, preserved at the State Archive of the Russian Federation and at the Hoover Institution. The first evidence of von Lampe’s interest in building a historical legacy for the Whites is the Beloe delo (White Cause) collection, printed from 1926 to 1928. The task was both an ambitious one—collect all the texts of the most important White leaders to give an accurate description of what happened in 1918–1922—and a difficult one, because of the frictions inside the emigration, and its divergent position toward the Soviet regime and Italian fascism.

Beloe delo’s first volume was introduced by a long essay written by a key intellectual of the White movement, the philosopher Ivan Ilyin (1883–1954), under the title “The White Idea.” Ilyin explicitly formulated his vision of the political philosophy of the White movement:

(…) the White cause has never been and will never be a matter of “restoration” and “reaction”. Perhaps there are people who would like to mechanically put everything in the old place, but there are no such people among us. We are not a political party and are not obliged to have a developed political program; among us there is room for people of various inclinations, evaluations and desires. But the harsh struggle has taught us all to look deeper into historical events and soberly take into account the conditions of real life. And therefore we are free from both revolutionary and reactionary prejudices; what we want for Russia is healing and rebirth, health and greatness, and not a return to that unhealthy state from which the revolution grew, with all its shame and humiliation.^[27]

Ilyin’s refusal of the labels of restoration/reaction shares a lot with Italian fascism. Writing about the “apolitical” stance of Mussolini movement, Antonio Gramsci commented that “fascism has presented itself as the anti-party; has opened its gates to all applicants; has with its promise of impunity enabled a formless multitude to cover over the savage outpouring of passions, hatreds and desires with a varnish of vague and nebulous political ideals.”^[28] Emilio Gentile, too, underlined the refusal of Italian fascism of the restoration/reaction labels, preferring to work around the idea of a spiritual revolution (rivoluzione dello spirito), aimed to promote the building of the new man, and the rebirth of the nation as an antimaterialistic, vitalistic, and totalitarian community.^[29]

There is other evidence of how the debate around fascism influenced the views of the Russian émigrés in the 1920s and how Ilyin tried to find a synthesis between fascist motives and Russian nationalism. Echoes of the topic of nation elevated as religious dogma are well present in Ilyin’s text, astonishingly, as a mythopoetic element:

And that is why the “motherland” is for us not an object of everyday addiction, but a genuine religious shrine. While fighting for the motherland, we are fighting for the perfection, and strength, and freedom of the Russian spirit; and for its flourishing, we need both territory and state power. And therefore—our domestic motto has always been for us not religious, but religious meaning: all for the motherland, all for the motherland.^[30]

Ilyin saw the Russian nation as transcendental. “This is the spirit of Russian national unity,” he states at the end of his essay. “And the cause is a right cause. And this idea is the right idea. And precisely because (of this)—it has the future (…)”.^[31] Some years later, in spring 1933, the philosopher wrote a famous article on the Nazi victory in Germany for the émigré journal Vozrozhdenie. Describing the values of the Hitler movement, Ilyin tracked a parallel with the White movement:

Patriotism, belief in the originality of the German people and the strength of the German genius, sense of honor, readiness for sacrificial service (the Fascist “sacrificio”), discipline, social justice and extra-class, fraternal nation-wide unity (…) In a word, this spirit, akin to German national socialism Italian fascism. However, not only with him, but also with the spirit of the Russian White movement (…) The thing is, first of all, that we ourselves truly understand, think and feel the spirit of the national socialist movement. Unjust denigration and slandering it interferes with correct understanding, sins against the truth and harms all of humanity (…) Did they not slander the white movement? Did they not accuse it of ‘pogroms’? Didn’t they slander Mussolini? And what, did Wrangel and Mussolini become less from this?^[32]

The idea of a Russian Mussolini was quite popular in the ranks of the White emigration, and many émigrés viewed Petr Stolypin, the former Russian Prime Minister, killed in 1911—as a kind of protofascist Russian Duce.

Will there be a Russian Lord? Will we live to see this happiness, so that his good and strong will reconcile and unite all, give justice, legality and prosperity to everyone, give it to everyone and accept love and trust from everyone? (…) will it be? (…) will, but not earlier than the Russian people to revive in themselves their ancient ability to have a Tsar (…) And since then we will accept the will and the law from that Russian patriot who will lead Russia to salvation, whoever he is and wherever he comes from: our strength, our loyalty to him, our free obedience to his conscience. For it will be a living organ of Russia, an instrument of its national self-rescue.^[33]

Von Lampe as Wrangel’s Hagiograph

This Russian Duce was also, in some ways, embodied by Wrangel. The Beloe delo project, behind von Lampe’s (and Ilyin’s) claims to be open to all the political tendencies present in the emigration, was in fact as though it was a history of the “Wrangel party.” The project opposed all other competing memory projects: for instance, The Archives of the Russian Revolution, a 22-volume collection edited by the Kadet leader Iosif Gessen from 1921 to 1937, or Denikin’s Ocherki russkoi smuty (translated in English as Russian Turmoil), written from 1921 to 1926.

Beloe delo contains several texts signed by Petr Wrangel, including part of his memoirs which were republished later. Wrangel’s memoirs were an answer to Denikin’s and contain mostly low-quality polemical remarks criticizing Denikin’s decisions during the Civil War. The émigré press was full of articles judging the actions of the Armed forces of Southern Russia: for instance, a letter by Anton Denikin to the review Illiustrirovannaia Rossiia in 1930, two years after the death of Wrangel and the publication in the Beloe delo series of his Notes. Denikin’s remarks on Wrangel were presented as an answer to “untruly reconstructions,” dictated by the “unbalanced character” of the Baron. In the second part of his letter, Denikin accused Wrangel of being responsible for the crushing of the White forces during the retreat to Crimea, but the main focus was about the Moscow offensive, which the Baron criticized. Denikin defended his choices as the most “logical” ones and repeatedly underlined the “nervous character” of Wrangel.^[34]

In 1930, Von Lampe wrote an answer to Denikin under the title “Wrangel – Denikin,” in which, considering himself responsible for the fate of Wrangel’s Notes, he sharply criticized Denikin’s views.^[35] The whole article reads as a defense of Wrangel and of his memoirs:

Despite the fact that the author of the Ocherki, General Denikin, was alive, General Wrangel, considering the controversy on the pages of the foreign press between the former and present leaders of the White movement harmful to the cause of the struggle for the Motherland, did not answer with a single word to all attacks by General Denikin while remaining completely calm.^[36]

This role of chronicler, editor, and guardian of Wrangel’s memoirs shaped von Lampe’s life deeply and for a long time. In 1938, for the tenth anniversary of the Baron’s death, von Lampe published a volume of essays in his honor.^[37] Another author in the volume, Ivan Ilyin, also praised the memory of the Baron, underlining that:

We expected an authoritative indication from him of what to do to save Russia, and direct guidance on the ways of this struggle.

We waited for the fact that he, with his sense of personal and national honor, with his ability to speak on behalf of Russian historical strength and Russian national dignity; with his tremendous political tact and personal fearlessness; with its wonderful combination of the necessary tactical flexibility, breadth and genuine ideological principles, it will be able to find and create the national-power solution that will end our shameful and humiliating hard times and Russia will rise from its failure. We waited for this from him. And he wanted from us one thing: loyalty to our motherland, to our strong-willed idea; and according to that, serving her to the end; the service is not party, but patriotic and national, observing honor, but not pursuing personal ambition…^[38]

According to Ilyin, Wrangel was “a living organ of Russia”^[39] and “the (embodiment of a) Christian idea of sacrificial service, the idea of personal and national honor, the idea of all-life, selfless standing for the sacred origins of the Russian spirit and Russian statehood.”^[40] The death of Wrangel was, in Ilyin’s words, a kind of regeneration ritual:

And so the Lord recalled and we lost him (…) But it was precisely this loss, this sudden and timeless departure, that opened many eyes. Just as the loss of our homeland made us feel with all the depth and sharpness—what we had in Russia and what we lost with it and what is the sacred essence of Russia, so the loss of Wrangel somehow returns our thought and our feeling to the fact that makes up the very essence of White movement and White idea!^[41]

The Nazi Temptation: von Lampe and ROVS in the 1930s

Ilyin and von Lampe were united not just in defending Wrangel’s legacy, but also in their fascination with fascism and Nazism. If this attraction was genuinely ideological for Ilyin, it had a more pragmatic objective for von Lampe—that of an anti-Bolshevik crusade. After the failure of the hopes put on Horthy, the rise of Nazism in Germany and the building of the Third Reich were opening new opportunities for part of the White movement.

Von Lampe was arrested for the first time in Berlin in summer 1933, just a few months after Adolf Hitler rose to power, on the accusation of being a Soviet spy. After 42 days, he was freed and discharged, yet this unfortunate experience did not change his goals of securing the support of the Nazi government to the White cause. In his correspondence with ROVS head Evgenii Miller, von Lampe underlined the Nazis as a strategic ally and proposed the constitution of Russian brigades to support the Nazi fight against communism.^[42] Already at the end of October 1933, von Lampe wrote to Miller about his ties with some Nazi officials. An anonymous man, called supervisor in the letter, contacted von Lampe to develop a plan of action.

At the moment, the referent expressed an urgent desire to get from us, as far as possible, a developed plan of those actions that we would have thought desirable to carry out with the German National Socialists towards the destruction of the Bolshevik power in Russia, as in the direction of strengthening the internal work in Russia with the help of the Germans to all directions, while with the complete secrecy of our relationship with the Germans, and then the possible interventional activity on a large scale, God forbid not in such a secret. I think that the latter will be possible, since the relationship between the German government and the power of the Bolsheviks in the USSR will hardly be able to last as long as they are now. I personally have no doubt that the initiative of the coming break will belong to the Bolsheviks, who simply cannot leave their agitation and intrigues in the thick of the German communists.^[43]

When Wrangel, 12 years before, had assigned von Lampe to Germany, he told von Lampe that the “the Russian knot will be untied in Berlin,”^[44] and the General never abandoned this belief. Von Lampe was not alone in this quest for new allies. With the consolidation of Hitler’s regime, a pro-Nazi orientation emerged inside ROVS, supported by Ivan Ilyin and even by General Pavel Shatilov, the new head of the ROVS First Department. In a letter to von Lampe in January 1934, Shatilov wrote that “before the coming to power of the national socialist government in Germany, we had no chance that the German government circles associated with the Red power in Moscow could help us in our actions against the Bolsheviks.”^[45]

Despite the initial disinterest of the German authorities, the ROVS leadership regularly sought contacts. General Miller, in a conversation with a German journalist, pointed out, for instance, that Germany could deal with Communism with a brief blow to the Bolshevik head. In this case, all emigration would be on its side; moreover, let Germany provide the means, and emigration will provide the necessary human material.^[46] In summer 1936, Miller confessed to one of his associates:

Frankly speaking, as events unfold in Europe, I get more and more imbued with the thought that the Fascist doctrine of the state structure can be the sole anchor of salvation from Communism under a rotten parliamentary regime. Therefore, I am quite sympathetic to the idea of popularizing the Fascist slogans among emigration, and in general among the military, and officials of ROVS, in particular.^[47]

In a circular sent to the ROVS heads of departments and subdivisions and rank officers dated January 2, 1937, Miller stressed:

I have repeatedly pointed out the need for all the ranks of the Russian All-Military Union to be thoroughly informed not only with the theory of Fascism (National Socialism), but also with how these theories are applied in practice by the state, in Italy, Germany, Portugal, etc. I have also pointed out that at the present time, fascism, with all its modifications due to the characteristics of these states, is gaining more and more followers and it will not be an exaggeration to say that the period we are experiencing can be characterized as the era of the struggle against the obsolete form of parliamentary democracy. In view of the above, and also because we, the ranks of the Russian All- Military Union, are, as it were, ideological fascists, we must familiarize ourselves with the theory and practice of Fascism.^[48]

The successful OGPU (Soviet intelligence) operations against ROVS leadership—the assassination of general Alexander Kupetov in 1930 and later the kidnapping of Evgenii Miller in 1937—reinforced the organization’s pro-Nazi turn because it gave the perception of being encircled by the “Red menace.”

The Spanish Civil War as the first anti-Bolshevik War: White volunteers to Francoist Troops

For Nazi Germany, the first international theater of war on Communism was the Spanish Civil War. The ROVS took side with Francisco Franco’s pronunciamiento against the Republic and tried to activate the very small Russian émigré community in Spain to support Franco.^[49] Von Lampe did the same, seeing that as a sign of good will to display to the Germans.^[50] However, not all the White leaders were supporting Franco’s crusade. Denikin, for instance, took a position against the participation of White volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, and in an article in the monarchist journal Tsarskii vestnik, the military historian Anton Kersnovskii stated that no foreign volunteers helped the White Army during the Civil War, and that foreign nationalists are not friends to the Russians.^[51]

But Miller thought, as von Lampe did, that the Spanish Civil War was just the first act of the European anti-Bolshevik movement. On December 25, 1936, he issued the circular No. 845 on the procedure for admission of Russian volunteers in the Franco army. Four groups of volunteers were sent and entered Spain successfully, but the French gendarmes detained the fifth. To facilitate obtaining visas and to reduce the cost of (or allow for free) travel for Russian White volunteers to Spain, ROVS representatives contacted the Italian and German ministries of Foreign Affairs, and a special emissary, General Pavel Shatilov, visited Franco in early 1937 to negotiate the dispatch of Russian volunteers. General Miller wrote in a letter to von Lampe in Berlin on February 5, 1937: “Your masters (the Germans) must be satisfied that our point of view on the struggle taking place in Spain completely coincides with their views and behavior.”^[52] If the number of the White Russians in the Francoist ranks was of only about one hundred, it was still good publicity for ROVS to showcase its support to Berlin and Rome.

ROVS was ready to be part of the Axis forces. In two articles published in 1937 for the journal Chasovoi, the White journalist Sergei Wojciechowski, former aide of the ROVS head in Poland, General Aleksandr Kutepov, pointed out that Adolf Hitler described Communism as a global “disease” and called for all to fight against the “world plague.”^[53] If Mein Kampf was questionable, wrote the author, it was true that Nazis were fighting actively against Bolshevism, and therefore Russian nationalists should be using the Nazis and not fearing the “German danger.”^[54] The entry into war, Wojiciechowski proclaimed, will give Russian nationalists the possibility to more directly cooperate.

Building Cooperation with Nazi Germany

If the ROVS was initially oriented to London and Paris, other White organizations were, from their very beginning, pro-German. General Vladimir Biskupskii—who, in the early 1920s, tried to set up a Russian Monarchical Congress in Hungary to support the ambitions of Grand Prince Kirill Vladimirovich as pretendent to the throne—was one of the main pro-German and pro-Nazi leaders in the White community in the 1920s.

In his Russian Roots of Nazism, Michael Kellogg pointed out the solidarity that emerged between Whites and German Freikorps during the anti-Bolshevik battles in Latvia, Ukraine, and Bavaria. After the defeat of Wrangel in Crimea, the end of the Bavarian Soviet Republic, and the failure of the Kapp putsch, a group of Russian émigrés and German officers established the Aufbau organization, aiming at building a bridge between the ultranationalists in Russia and Germany. Kellogg writes that:

(…) according to Aufbau’s statutes, the organization fostered the “national interests of Germany and the Russian area of reconstruction.” Aufbau sought the “promotion of an energetic national economic policy with regard to the Eastern states, especially those states that have formed on the territory of the former Russian Empire, for the reconstruction of the economic life of these states or the Russian Empire.” The imprecise language of Aufbau’s statutes sidestepped the crucial issue of whether the Russian Empire was to be reconstructed as a unified whole, or whether the Ukraine and the Baltic regions, for instance, were to be granted autonomy. This lack of clarity was most likely intended to render the organization palatable both to Great Russians and to minorities, most notably Ukrainians and Baltic Germans who came from the margins of the former Russian Empire.^[55]

Biskupskii had a leading role in the Aufbau. His entourage came out with plans to kill Alexander Kerensky and Pavel Miliukov but, in the latter’s case, they hit Vladimir Nabokov, another relevant figure of Russian politics in emigration and father of the famous writer. Aufbau was also involved in the assassination of Walther Rathenau, a German Foreign Minister of Jewish origin killed by the far rightist Organization Consul for his political line of collaboration with Soviet Union and his will to respect the Versailles Treaty. The common ground of anti-Semitism helped cement the links between Aufbau and Nazi groups.^[56] Von Lampe and Wrangel both shared a very negative opinion of Biskupskii.

When in 1936 the Nazi government established the Russische Vertrauensstelle (Direction of Russian Emigration affairs in Germany), Biskupskii was put at the head of the new body, and Sergei Taboritskii, Vladimir Nabokov’s killer, was at his right hand.^[57] For von Lampe and ROVS, having Biskupskii as the main Russian émigré affairs curator for Nazis was a blow, and the question of reshaping the activities of the Second Department became tragically important. If, in Weimar Germany, the presence of an ROVS headquarter in Brussels and then in Paris was already seen as hostile, under Hitler’s regime it was impossible to be formally linked to an organization beyond the borders of the Third Reich. Even open Nazi sympathizers, such as the Russian Fascist Party, based in Manchuria and sponsored by Japan, was subject to Berlin’s suspicions. In 1936 its delegation was arrested in Germany, and von Lampe reported this story to Miller:

The so-called Rodzaevskii Fascists, in the amount of four persons (more than them, probably, were not in Berlin), were arrested for some kind of stabbing between themselves. The representatives of Rodzaevskii who came, as they say, quite decent people, were not allowed to open the organization precisely because of the above reason for finding the center [of their party] outside Germany.^[58]

If the ROVS wanted to preserve its legitimacy, the only way was to officially cut ties with Paris, a feeling largely supported by the White émigrés based in Germany. The popularity of the Nazi regime between the White Russians seems to have grown in 1936–1939, during the Spanish Civil War. In 1938, after almost two years of discussion between the ROVS headquarters, von Lampe, and Nazi officials, it was finally decided to disband the Second Department^[59] and to replace it with the new Association of the Russian Military Unions (ORVS, Ob’’edinenie russkikh voin soiuzov), covering all the White Russian military organizations in the Third Reich, under von Lampe’s leadership. The ORVS charter stated that the “association is not a political organization and does not pursue political goals. The objectives of the association are: (a) maintaining military discipline and partnership among the Russian military; (b) strengthening scientific knowledge among its members; (c) organizing lectures and reports; and (d) arranging concerts, performances, balls, etc.”^[60]

The Anti-Bolshevik Crusade of the Vlasov Army

In spring 1939, ORVS opened special courses in war theory training for its members, foreseeing an escalation in the European theater after the Munich Agreement. Immediately after Germany attacked Poland, von Lampe wrote in an order for all the ORVS ranks, dated September 2, 1939, that

the main principles of our military organizations formed in a foreign land have always been loyalty to the traditions of our White Leaders, intransigence towards Communism in Russia and non-interference in the internal and political life of the countries that sheltered us. (…) Nowadays, Great-Germany is experiencing a decisive historical moment of its existence (…) on these days, we must be exceptionally loyal to the country that gave us shelter (…) The duty of gratitude for the many years of hospitality obliges us to respond with all our might to the appeals of its representatives to us in one way or another, trying how and how we can help her in her experiences, of course, remaining true to our basic principles.^[61]

The territorial gains of Berlin in Central and Eastern Europe gave more power to von Lampe: ROVS departments in Poland and Czechoslovakia passed under his leadership. But there were no concrete appeals to help by the Nazi officials, and so von Lampe’s circular had no real effects. On the eve of Operation Barbarossa, von Lampe became more offensive and offered support to the German war plans. Captain Boris Holmston-Smyslovskii, together with General Valerian Trusov, both members of OVRS with links to the Wehrmacht (Holmston-Smyslovskii attended intelligence courses in the German Army in the 1930s), visited von Lampe in Berlin, trying to find a way to be accepted into Operation Barbarossa.^[62]

On May 21, 1941, the ORVS head prepared an appeal addressed to the Field Marshal-General Walther von Brauchitsch, commander in chief of the German Army. There was no answer to von Lampe’s proposal before the beginning of war operations against the Soviet Union, but Brauchitsch replied after the outbreak of hostilities that the White veterans, officers, and soldiers were not permitted to take part in them. Nevertheless, on August 17, 1941, von Lampe issued an order for the Association allowing its members to act independently.^[63] This order represents a turning point in White collaboration with Nazis. Holmston-Smyslovskii, who established one of the first battalions, wrote that

The Russian people cannot throw off the communist yoke without external assistance. Every Russian military emigrant must take part in the armed conflict between Germany and the USSR, despite the goals pursued by German policy. The German army on its bayonets does not carry the Russian national government, but it does destroy the Soviet government, which has been killing the body and spirit of the Russian people for 24 years. The biological strength of the Russian people, compared with the same strength of the German people, is so great that we, Russians, do not have to fear that the Germans will swallow us and digest us.^[64]

The leading motive was the hope of a Soviet defeat, no matter the price. In a letter sent in the autumn of 1941 to general Alexei Arkhangelskii, head of ROVS and at that time resident of Brussels, von Lampe wrote that

I really want, dear Alexey Petrovich, so that you understand me (…) I will not change my hatred of the Bolsheviks and I will seek the right to fight them again to the last possible opportunity. (…) But I will fulfill the duty at any cost—in this is the covenant of the late Commander in Chief (Wrangel – GS), and I repeat, he foresaw that the Germans would help our liberation from the Bolsheviks.^[65]

Nazi plans for propaganda directed to civilians and soldiers in Soviet territories were ready long before the beginning of Operation Barbarossa. The main theme was that the war was a liberation fight started by Germany against Bolshevism and Stalin’s crimes. The Wehrmacht was described as invincible because the Red Army soldiers did not want to fight on the orders of Stalin and Anglo-American capitalists. As the Russian historian Boris Kovaliov writes, a few days before the attack on the USSR, in a directive addressed to the Wehrmacht, Alfred Rosenberg stated, “the use of all means of active propaganda in the fight against the Red Army promises greater success than in the fight against all former opponents of Germany.”^[66] However, apart from some local exceptions, there were no Russian military forces engaged with Nazi troops to fight against the Soviet Union during the first years of the war.

Yet the idea of forming a Russian anti-Bolshevik army in support of the Nazi war effort was shared by several White organizations, such as the National Alliance of Solidarists (NTS, Natsional’no trudovoi soiuz), which established its own network of activists in German-occupied Soviet territories. The creation of a somewhat massive Russian collaborationist force, strictly under Nazi control, was not the result of an independent White initiative. Rather, it was a plan elaborated around the personality of Lieutenant General Andrei Vlasov, a high-ranking Soviet officer captured in summer 1942 on the Volkhov Front near Leningrad. He was at the head of the Second Shock Army during the Lyuban Offensive Operation, which aimed to break the Leningrad siege, and was taken prisoner by the Germans and sent to a prisoner of war (POW) camp in Vinnytsia, Ukraine. During his detention Vlasov was contacted by Colonel Reinhard Gehlen’s men, including Captain Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt, who tried to persuade him to take part in the establishment of a Russian Committee on anti-Soviet, pro-Nazi positions.^[67] On December 27, 1942, Vlasov signed the Smolensk Declaration, in which the pro-Hitler agenda of the former Soviet officer is clearly stated:

Germany, meanwhile, is not waging war against the Russian people and their Motherland, but only against Bolshevism. Germany does not wish to encroach on the living space of the Russian people or on their national and political liberties. Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Germany aims to organise a “New Europe” without Bolsheviks and Capitalists, in which every nation is guaranteed an honourable place.

The place of the Russian nation lies in the family of European nations; its place within the “New Europe” will depend on the degree of its participation in the struggle against Bolshevism, since the destruction of Stalin’s blood-stained power and that of his criminal clique is first and foremost the task of the Russian people.

In order to unite the Russian people and to lead them in their struggle against this hated regime, in order to co-operate with Germany in its struggle against Bolshevism and in its creation of a “New Europe,” we, the sons of our people and the patriots of our Motherland, have formed the Russian Committee.^[68]

But it was the open letter signed by Vlasov in March 1943 that aroused more enthusiasm among White emigration. Vlasov’s open letter, titled “Why I decided to fight Bolshevism,” repeated all the refrains of the Nazi propaganda and reproduced some themes dear to the pro-German White Russians, with not just anti-Bolshevik but also anti-British and anti-American rhetoric:

It was clear to me that Bolshevism had involved the Russian people in a war being fought in the interests of the Anglo-American capitalists. England had always been the enemy of the Russian people. England had always attempted to weaken and harm our Motherland. But Stalin, by acting in the interests of the Anglo-American capitalists, had seen an opportunity to realise his plans for worldwide hegemony, and, in order to carry out these plans, he had linked the fate of the Russian people with that of England, had involved the Russian nation in a war and had brought countless sufferings upon it. These wartime sufferings are the result of all the disasters, which the nations of our country have had to bear under 25 years of Bolshevik power.^[69]

After reading Vlasov’s open letter, von Lampe decided to meet with him, even if von Lampe remained cautious about the newborn Russian Liberation Army (ROA, Russkaia osvoboditel’naia armiia). Von Lampe wrote, for instance, that “the whole scheme with Vlasov is based solely on Reds, with the undoubted prohibition to communicate with Whites. Not only they don’t want us but for some reasons, far exceeding our value, they fear us (more than Red ones).”^[70] But Vlasov was able to dismiss von Lampe’s doubts, and on May 22, 1943, the latter wrote a letter to General Alexei Arkhangelskii, head of ROVS: “my impression? Much better than I expected! If I throw away all doubts and believe him completely, then the impression is simply good (…) His words are our words and thoughts for many years. His plans are good, if they are practicable for those who accept them, they are acceptable.”^[71]

Von Lampe met Vlasov on several occasions, from 1943–1944, with the hope of influencing the ideology of the Vlasovite movement and imbuing it with White movement values. But this aim was difficult to attain; the mindset of many Vlasovites was vividly anti-Soviet but not nostalgic of Tsarist Russia, and more oriented toward a national socialist ideology. In a speech delivered to the first conference to recruit Red Army prisoners of war in the ranks of the Russian Liberation Army, Vasilii Malyshkin, ex-Soviet General-major and one of the closest officers in Vlasov entourage, cleared up his stance about the White cause.

We are often asked questions about our feeling to the emigration. Here we must directly answer these questions: the White movement arose as a movement against Soviet power. That is absolutely correct. But this movement did not carry progressive beginnings for the Russian people, this movement was at best an ideological movement, and more often, it was a movement aimed at the restoration of the old nobility-landlord Russia. And therefore, from the very beginning of its emergence, the White movement was doomed to failure; therefore, the Russian people did not stand on its side and understood perfectly well that there could be no return to tsarism. On the contrary, the slogans advanced by Bolshevism, against the background of the White Movement, won greatly, and this helped Bolshevism to carry the Russian people along with it, behind its slogans. We can definitely say to the former participants of the White movement: those who think about the restoration of the nobility-landowner Russia, those who think about the restoration of obsolete state forms, are not along the way, we cannot accept those into our ranks. Our movement is a progressive movement; our movement—this is already completely clear— meets the aspirations of the Russian people, it is close to it.^[72]

Despite these ideological divergences, von Lampe’s fascination for Vlasov did not stop and he continued to hope to win the General to the White cause. Father Aleksandr Kiseliov, who served in the Russian Liberation Army and was the spiritual father of Vlasov during his German years, recalled a meeting with von Lampe and the Cossack general, Piotr Krasnov, at Fiodor Schlippe’s home, one of the main figures in Stolypin administration. The main topic was the White Russian relationship with Vlasov’s movement, and then “turning to (von) Lampe, Vlasov asks about his attitude to the ROA, to which Lampe replies: ‘We, with General Krasnov, are monarchists, Andrei Andreevich.’ ‘Go to our village,’ Vlasov’s voice booms, ‘there you will find a third one, my father. He is a cuirassier and his ideal is Emperor Alexander III.’”^[73]

In a July 26, 1943 letter addressed to Biskupskii, with a copy delivered to all the ORVS heads, von Lampe announced that a group of the Association joined the Russian Liberation Army on the Eastern front.^[74] But Vlasov never agreed to give a public address in which he acknowledged the White cause as the main ideological force in the anticommunist fight. Frictions between the Whites and the Vlasovites were accentuated by some declarations from the ROA leaders; General Vasilii Malyshkin, head of ROA propaganda, affirmed for instance in an anticommunist meeting in Paris with the local Russian community that the aim of the Russian Liberation Army was not the restoration of the tsarist regime.^[75]

While the Whites failed at advancing their monarchist agenda among the Vlasovites, the NTS contributed to the forging of the ideological apparatus of the movement from the very beginning by appealing to the proclaimed solidarism, inspired by the fascist corporative doctrine.^[76] The personnel of the ROA Dabendorf school, which formed the cadres of Vlasov movement from the spring of 1943 until February of 1945, was in the majority composed of NTS members. Von Lampe was not able to understand the NTS influence on Vlasov’s views. In a memo dated September 1944, von Lampe analyzed at length the pros and cons of Russian émigrés’ actions in favor of Vlasov, doubting the sincerity of the latter. He wrote:

From all these questions one can see what significance the personality of Vlasov himself has for one or another answer to them. What kind of man is he? (His first anti-Bolshevik confession was, perhaps, sincere, but objectively completely unconvincing. For it was not clear from her how and why he had such a radical ideological and political upheaval). Is he a man with sufficiently broad, if not political, then at least purely military horizons? Are all the problems that were set out in previous questions clear to him, or is he acting simply by inertia, like a person who has long achieved something and is satisfied with a positive response at a time when the objective state of affairs has changed radically and nothing can be done? (Suspicious people may have many more incomparably less beneficial questions for him, but they are not put here, since there seems to be no direct data for them).^[77]

These severe remarks demonstrate how the Russian monarchists did not really capture the deep changes of post-1917 Russia. The NTS ideological materials were nearer to the fascist spirit of the time than the nostalgia for the tsarist ancien régime. In a letter addressed to Solomon Gegelashvili, head of the South-Eastern department of ORVS, von Lampe wrote that he sent a protest to Vlasov for the absence of appraisal for the White armies in 1917–1920^[78]—a sign of his naivety regarding the ROA ideology.

On October 21, 1944, von Lampe received the proposal to join the Vlasovite Committee for the Freedom of Russia’s Peoples (Komitet osvobozhdeniia narodov Rossii, KONR), established on the basis of Heinrich Himmler’s plans. Von Lampe refused the invitation and was called to a meeting with Vlasov, in which he reaffirmed his loyalty to the ROA activities but declared that his presence in KONR would be subject to Vlasov’s recognition of the righteousness of the White cause.^[79] This topic was again a matter of discussion in a letter to Gegelashvili, dated December 24, 1944.^[80] According to Kirill Aleksandrov,—a Russian scholar known for supporting the NTS agenda and trying to legitimize the Vlasov movement— Georgii Zhilenkov, head of the KONR propaganda department, was responsible for not finding an ideological agreement between von Lampe and Vlasov, “not allowing the signing by Vlasov and the publication in Volia naroda^[81] of the corresponding appeal to the officers and soldiers of the former White armies.”^[82]

Von Lampe finally entered the ranks of KONR in March of 1945, just before the collapse of the Third Reich and of the Vlasov Army.^[83] The anti-Bolshevik revanche under the flags of Hitler’s Germany was crushed by the joint effort of the Soviet and Anglo-American Allied forces.

Conclusion

Von Lampe fled Berlin in the last days of March 1945, seeking to save himself and the ROVS and ORVS cadres. According to Boris Holmston-Smyslovskii, von Lampe, then acting as head of the Russian Red Cross committee in Lindau under French occupation, was able to organize the escape of 2,500 ROVS members from repatriation to the Soviet Union (the Yalta agreements planned to send back to the Soviet Union all those citizens or former citizens in Allied-occupied territories).^[84] Ivan Ilyin also helped von Lampe and his family, and, thanks to his efforts, the former head of ORVS had the chance to reach Paris in 1946.^[85] In 1949, von Lampe became the main deputy to the new head of ROVS, General Arkhangelskii, and succeeded the latter at the top of the organization from 1957, serving until near his death in 1967.

A prolific chronicler, an astute spy, a loyal soldier, an able diplomat, and a committed anticommunist ready to join the Nazis against the Bolsheviks—von Lampe’s biography is more than a sketch into the White Russian emigration life. His trajectory is emblematic of how anticommunist forces were ready to ally with fascist regimes in order to continue and possibly win the Civil War initiated at the end of 1917. There are few tracks of von Lampe’s activities during the Cold War, and it would be of interest to analyze whether his experience was used in shaping the anti-Soviet agenda of that time or not.

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^[1] Posluzhnoi spisok A.A. fon Lampe, l. 1 ob. RGVIA, f. 409, op. 1, d. 26142, p/s 2482/1909.

^[2] Posluzhnoi spisok A.A. fon Lampe, l. 2, 3 ob.

^[3] A. V. Ganin, Korpus ofitserov general’nogo shtaba v gody grazhdanskoi voiny 1917–1922 gg.: Spravochnye materialy (Moscow: Russkii put, 2009), 262.

^[4] During the Civil War, Kamenskii sided with the Red Army, and he was the head of the War Historical Department of the Red Army’s All-Russian General Staff. See Ganin, Korpus ofitserov general’nogo shtaba, 545.

^[5] Attestatsiia na gen. St. p/polk. A.A. fon Lampe (na 1 sent.1917), RGVIA, f. 400, op. 3, d. 4887, l. 1.

^[6] There are no traces of this newspaper at the National Library of Russia in Saint Petersburg, at the State Library in Moscow, or at the Slavonic Library in Helsinki.

^[7] The Volunteer Center had notable successes in infiltration operations inside the Red Army. Alexei Dvigubskii, officer and head of the Volunteer Center, was able to infiltrate the General Staff of the Second Soviet Ukrainian Army, influencing strategy and tactics in that Civil War scenario. This story, including Dvigubskii meetings with Trotsky and Antonov-Ovseenko, was written by Dvigubskii in his report to the High Command of the Russian Armed Forces in the South and republished in Kharkov in 2007. See A. M. Dvigubskii, Otchet o deiatel’nosti Kharkovskogo razvedyvatel’nogo tsentra. Sostavlen polkovnikom Dvigubskim, nachal’nikom Kharkovskogo tsentra razvedyvatel’nogo otdeleniia shtaba Glavnokomanduiushchego Vooruzhennymi silami Iuga Rossii v iiune 1919 goda (Kharkov: Kharkovskii chastnyi muzei gorodskoi usad’by, 2007). See also O. I. Pavlova, Rytsar beloi idei. General A.A. fon Lampe (Оrel 2013), 17.

^[8] Protokol doprosa V.V. Shulgina. 28 oktiabria 1946 g. Moskva. TsA FSB Rossii d. Р-48956 l.179–218, republished in in V. G. Makarov, A. V. Repnikov, V. V. Kristoforov, eds., Tiuremnaia odisseia Vasiliia Shul’gina. Materialy sledstvennogo dela i dela zakliuchennogo (Moscow: Russkii put, 2010), 265. See also TsA FSB Rossii d. Р-48956 l.219–242, republished in Tiuremnaia odisseia Vasiliia Shul’gina, 283.

^[9] V.V. Shul’gin, Teni, kotorye prokhodiat (Saint Petersburg: Nestor-istoriia, 2012), 206.

^[10] GARF F. R-5853 Оp.1 d. 9 l.130.

^[11] J. Smele, The “Russian” Civil Wars, 1916–1926: Ten Years That Shook the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 105.

^[12] Shul’gin, Teni, kotorye prokhodiat, 122–123.

^[13] A. I. Denikin, Ocherki russkoi smuty. Vooruzhennye sily iuga Rossii. Raspad Rossiiskoi imperii. Oktiabr’ 1918-ianvar’ 1919 (Minsk: Kharvest, 2002), 372.

^[14] E. Kroner, Belaia armiia, Chernyi baron: zhizn’ generala Petra Vrangelia (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2011), 165.

^[15] GARF f. Р-5853 op. 1 d. 1 l. 61.

^[16] A. S., Stykalin, “Rossiiskaia belaia emigratsiia v mezhvoennoi Vengrii. Problemy izucheniia,” in A. S. Stykalin, E. M. Varga, eds., Rossiiskaia belaia emigratsiia v Vengrii (1920–1940 gody) (Moscow: Institut slavianovedeniia Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk, 2012), 15.

^[17] During the White Terror in Hungary, in the aftermaths of the failed Bela Kun’s Revolution, a wave of anti- Semitism devastated the local Jewish community, blaming Jews for “supporting Bolshevism.” Károlyi Huszár, for a brief time head of the Hungarian government, called Jews a “degenerate world race”; T. Lorman, Counter- Revolutionary Hungary, 1920–1925: István Bethlen and the Politics of Consolidation (Boulder: East European Monographs, 2006), 5.

^[18] R. Gervart, “Bor’ba s krasnoi bestiei: kontrrevoliutsionnoe nasilie v pobezhdennykh stranakh Tsentral’noi Evropy,” in R. Gervart, D. Khori, eds, Voina vo vremia mira: Voenizirovannye konflikty posle Pervoi mirovoi voiny 1917–1923 (Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe obozrenie, 2014), 95.

^[19] Stykalin, “Rossiiskaia belaia emigratsiia v mezhvoennoi Vengrii. Problemy izucheniia,” 8.

^[20] A. Kolontari, Aleksei fon Lampe – voennyi agent barona Vrangelia v Vengrii (Moscow: AIRO XXI, 2012), 7.

^[21] GARF f. 5853. op. 1. d. 5. l. 114–119.

^[22] Kroner, Belaia armiia, 388.

^[23] GARF f. 5853. op. 1. d. 5. l. 147–149.

^[24] GARF f. Р5853, op. 1, d. 20, l. 558.

^[25] GARF f. Р5853, оp. 1, d. 20, l. 561.

^[26] GARF f. 5826, op. 1, d. 21, l. 64–72.

^[27] I. A. Il’in, “Belaia ideia,” in A.A. von Lampe, ed., Beloe delo, vol. 1 (Berlin: Mednyi vsadnik, 1926), 9.

^[28] A. Gramsci, “Forze elementari,” L’Ordine Nuovo, April 26, 1921, now in A. Gramsci, Gramsci: Socialismo e fascismo. L’ordine nuovo 1921–1922 (Turin: Einaudi, 1966), 99.

^[29] E. Gentile, Le origini dell’ideologia fascista (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999), 96–97.

^[30] Il’in, “Belaia ideia,” 12.

^[31] Il’in, “Belaia ideia,” 15.

^[32] I. A. Il’in, “Natsional-sotsializm. Novyi dukh,” Vozrozhdenie, n.2906, May 17, 1933.

^[33] Il’in, “Belaia ideia,” 14.

^[34] A. I. Denikin, “Moi otvet,” Illiustrirovannaia Rossiia, n.22/23/24, May 24–31 and June 7, 1930.

^[35] A. A. von Lampe, “Wrangel-Denikin,” Novoe vremia, n.2797, 2798, 2799, August 16–17 and 19, 1930.

^[36] Ibid.

^[37] Glavnokomanduiushchii Russkoi armiei general Baron P.N. Vrangel k desiatiletiiu ego konchiny 12/25 aprelia 1938 g. Sbornik statei pod redaktsii A. A. fon Lampe (Berlin, Mednyi vsadnik, 1938).

^[38] I.A. Il’in, “Nad mogiloiu Vozhdia,” in Glavnokomanduiushchii Russkoi armiei, 189.

^[39] Il’in, “Nad mogiloiu Vozhdia,” 186.

^[40] Il’in, “Nad mogiloiu Vozhdia,” 188.

^[41] Il’in, “Nad mogiloiu Vozhdia,” 189.

^[42] V. I. Goldin, Rokovoi vybor. Russkoe voennoe Zarubezh’e v gody Vtoroi mirovoi voiny (Arkhangel’sk — Murmansk: SOLTI, 2005), 68; and GARF. f.5853. op.1. d. 51 а l.83.

^[43] GARF, f. 5853, op. 1, d. 54, l. 16–19. The letter is dated October 26, 1933.

^[44] GARF. f. 5853. op. 1. d. 50. l. 33.

^[45] GARF f. 5853, op. 1, d. 54, l. 68–69.

^[46] Goldin, Rokovoi vybor, 70.

^[47] GARF. f. 9116. op. 1. d. 20. l. 89.

^[48] GARF. f. 5826. op. 1. d. 196. l. 45 and d. 200. l.1.

^[49] S. S. Balmasov, Russkii shtyk na chuzhoi voine (Moscow: Piatyi Rim, 2017), 432.

^[50] GARF. f. 5853. op. 1. d. 59. l.ЗЗ–34.

^[51] Balmasov, Russkii shtyk, 442–444.

^[52] GARF. f. 5853. op. 1. d. 61. l. 76–78, 86–90.

^[53] S. Wojciechowski, “Novaia Germaniia i ‘Russkii vopros’,” Chasovoi no. 194, 1937.

^[54] S. Wojciechowski, “Edinstvennoe reshenie,” Chasovoi no. 198, 1937.

^[55] M. Kellogg, The Russian roots of Nazism. White émigrés and the making of National Socialism, 1917–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 123.

^[56] Kellogg, The Russian roots of Nazism, 176–177.

^[57] Goldin, Rokovoi vybor, 69–70.

^[58] I did not find this letter in von Lampe diaries; it is reported by D. A. Zhukov, I.I. Kovtun, eds. Vrag v sovetskoi forme (Moscow: Veche, 2012), 40. Konstantin Rodzaevskii (1907–1946) was the leader of the Manchurian-based Russian Fascist Party from 1931–1945. He actively collaborated with the Japanese forces of occupation in China, and was executed after the war in the Soviet Union. See John J. Stephan, The Russian Fascists. Tragedy and Farce in Exile, 1925–1945 (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1978). For Rodzaevskii’s background, see 48–59.

^[59] K. K. Semenov, “Berlinskii uzel ROVSa (1920–1945),” in N. F. Gritsenko, ed., Ezhegodnik Doma russkogo zarubezh’ia imeni Aleksandra Solzhenitsyna – 2012 (Moscow: Dom russkogo zarubezh’ia imeni Aleksandra Solzhenitsyna, 2012), 32. See also GARF. f. 5853. op. 1. d. 65 l. 96.

^[60] The text of the charter is reported in von Lampe’s diaries, in GARF. f. 5853. op. 1. d. 68 l. 19.

^[61] GARF. f. 5853. op. 1. d. 68. l. 66.

^[62] S. K. Kashirin, “Rossiiskoe voenno-natsional’noe osvoboditel’noe dvizhenie imeni generalissimusa A. V. Suvorova,” in B. Holmston-Smyslovskii, Pervaia Russkaia natsional’naia armiia protiv SSSR. Voina i politika (Moscow: Veche, 2011), 36. Sergei Kashirin was at the right hand of Holmston-Smyslovskii after the Second World War, leading Russian monarchists and Nazi collaborationists in Argentina.

^[63] Well before the Order no. 46 some Whites were working as translators and experts for the Wehrmacht. In his memories, quite apologetic of Vlasov’s movement, Baltic German veteran of the Russian Civil War Wilfried Strik- Strikfeldt recalls how he was enlisted with correcting propaganda materials addressed to Soviet soldiers a few days before the beginning of Operation Barbarossa. V. Shtrik-Shtrikfeldt, Protiv Stalina i Gitlera. General Vlasov i Russkoe osvoboditel’noe dvizhenie (Frankfurt am Main: Posev, 1993), 10.

^[64] Kashirin, Rossiiskoe voenno-natsional’noe osvoboditel’noe dvizhenie imeni generalissimusa A. V. Suvorova, 36.

^[65] GARF f. Р5853. op. 1. d. 69, l. 137 об.

^[66] B. N. Kovaliov, Kollaboratsionizm v Rossii v 1941–1945 gg.: tipy i formy (Novgorod: NovGU imeni Yaroslava Mudrogo, 2009), 165.

^[67] C. Andreyev, Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement: Soviet Reality and Emigré Theories (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 42–43; and V. Shtrik-Shtrikfeldt, Protiv Stalina i Gitlera, 107–110.

^[68] RGASPI. f. 17. op. 125. d. 165. l. 46–46 ob. The English translation of the Smolensk Declaration can be found in Andreyev, Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement, 206–207.

^[69] A. N. Artizov, ed, General Vlasov: istoriia predatel’stva (Moscow: Politicheskaia entsiklopediia, 2015, vol. 1), 179–183. English translation in Andreyev, Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement, 210–215.

^[70] Quoted in Goldin, Rokovoi vybor, 281. 22

^[71] Quoted in K. M. Aleksandrov, Ofitserskii korpus armii general-leitenanta A.A. Vlasova 1944–1945 (Moscow: Posev, 2009), 554.

^[72] RGASPI. f. 69 op. 1 d. 1151 l. 1–8.

^[73] A. Kiseliov, Oblik generala A.A. Vlasova (zapiski voennogo sviashchennika) (New York: Put zhizni, 1978), 74.

^[74] GARF. f. 5796. op. 1. d. 21. l. 130.

^[75] Goldin, Rokovoi vybor, 289–290.

^[76] For a brief discussion about how NTS influenced the Russian Liberation Army, see Andreyev, Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement, 190–193.

^[77] GARF. f. 5796. op. 1. d. 21. l. 267, 267 ob., 268.

^[78] GARF. f. 5796. op. 1. d. 21. l. 264.

^[79] K. K. Semenov, “Moei nenavisti k bolshevikam ia ne izmeniu: Aleksei fon Lampe kak zerkalo voennoi emigratsii,” Vestnik SPbGU. Seriia 2. Istoriia no. 1 (2016): 76–91.

^[80] GARF. f. 5796. op. 1. f. 21. l. 290–291.

^[81] Volia naroda was the KONR official newspaper, published from autumn of 1944 to March of 1945.

^[82] Aleksandrov, Ofitserskii korpus armii general-leitenanta A.A. Vlasova, 548.

^[83] Aleksandrov, Ofitserskii korpus armii general-leitenanta A. A. Vlasova, 548.

^[84] B. Holmston-Smyslovskii, “Lichnie vospominaniia o generale Vlasove,” in Holmston-Smyslovskii, Pervaia Russkaia natsional’naia armiia protiv SSSR, 61.

^[85] Holmston-Smyslovskii, “Lichnie vospominaniia o generale Vlasove,” 193–195.