Andrey Vlasov was one of Joseph Stalin’s favorite Red Army generals. He turned on the Soviet dictator during World War II, after he was captured by the Germans. Vlasov turned coat, and fought with the Nazis against the Soviet Union at the head of the Russian Liberation Army, a unit of fellow turncoats. Below are some interesting facts about the Soviet Union’s most infamous traitor.
A Would-be Priest Becomes a Soldier
Andrey Andreyevich Vlasov (1901 – 1946) was born near Nizhny Novgorod, and in his youth, planned to be a priest. He studied divinity at a Russian Orthodox seminary, but changed his mind after the Russian Revolution. Vlasov joined the Red Army in 1919, and fought in its ranks during the Russian Civil War, in which he displayed a talent for soldiering and distinguished himself. He earned a reputation for his ability to whip poor units into shape, and rose steadily through the officer ranks. He gave his career a boost in 1930 by joining the Communist Party.
Vlasov was sent to China in 1938 as a Soviet military advisor to its generalissimo, Chiang Kai-Shek. When the Nazis invaded the USSR in 1941, Vlasov was a mechanized corps commander in the Ukraine. Amidst a series of catastrophic Soviet defeats, Vlasov was one of the few Red Army generals who managed to get his unit to safety, as he successfully fought his corps out of multiple encirclements. His skill and aggressiveness brought him to Stalin’s attention. The Soviet dictator summoned him in November, 1941, and promoted him to command an army in Moscow’s defenses.
Turning Traitor
Vlasov and his army played a key role in keeping the Germans out of Moscow. In January, 1942, he spearheaded the counteroffensive that pushed the Germans 100 miles from the Soviet capital. That earned Vlasov decorations and acclaim, as well as Stalin’s admiration. The Soviet leader promoted him to deputy commander of the Volkhov Front, 300 miles northwest of Moscow. Later, he was put in charge of the 2nd Shock Army after its commander fell ill. Unfortunately for Vlasov, his army got cut off and encircled as it advanced towards Leningrad, and was eventually destroyed in June, 1942.
Vlasov managed to evade capture at first, but the Germans eventually caught him after ten days on the run. In captivity, he agreed to switch sides. Taken to Berlin, he and other traitors drafted plans for a Russian provisional government, and for the recruitment of a Russian turncoat army. In 1943, he wrote an anticommunist leaflet, millions of copies of which were dropped on Soviet positions. Using Vlasov’s name, the Nazis recruited hundreds of thousands of Soviet defectors, and formed them into what they designated the Russian Liberation Army.
The End of Vlasov
Although the Russian Liberation Army was nominally under Vlasov’s command, it was kept strictly under direct German control, and its commander exercised little or no authority. Vlasov’s only combat against the Red Army took place while in charge of a turncoat division near the Oder River in February, 1945, in the war’s closing stages. Afterwards, he was forced to retreat to German-controlled Czechoslovakia. There, in May, 1945, a few days before war’s end, Vlasov and his men turned coat once again, this time against the Germans and in support of a Czech uprising.
At war’s end, Vlasov tried to escape to the Western Allies’ lines, but was captured by Soviet forces, who discovered him hiding under blankets in a car. He was flown to Moscow and held in its dreaded Lubyanka Prison, where he underwent torture for months. He was tried for treason in the summer of 1946 along with eleven of his leading subordinates. All were found guilty and sentenced to death, and on August 1st, 1945, Vlasov and his fellow turncoats were hanged.
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Some Sources & Further Reading
Andreyev, Catherine – Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement (1987)
Thorwald, Jurgen – The Illusion: Soviet Soldiers in Hitler’s Armies (1974)
