Repatriation Of Cossacks After World War II
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The Repatriation of Cossacks or "Betrayal of the Cossacks" occurred when
Cossacks The Cossacks , es, cosaco , et, Kasakad, cazacii , fi, Kasakat, cazacii , french: cosaques , hu, kozákok, cazacii , it, cosacchi , orv, коза́ки, pl, Kozacy , pt, cossacos , ro, cazaci , russian: казаки́ or ...
, ethnic
Russians , native_name_lang = ru , image = , caption = , population = , popplace = 118 million Russians in the Russian Federation (2002 ''Winkler Prins'' estimate) , region1 = , pop1 ...
and
Ukrainians Ukrainians ( uk, Українці, Ukraintsi, ) are an East Slavs, East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine. They are the seventh-largest nation in Europe. The native language of the Ukrainians is Ukrainian language, Ukrainian. The majority ...
who were opposed to the Soviet Union (such as by fighting for Germany) were handed over by British and US forces to the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
after the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. Near the end of the war, many Cossacks fled to western Europe, fearing the Red Army, in hopes of surrendering instead to the military forces of the United States or the UK. Once they were arrested by the Allies, they were packed into small trains and were promised to be sent to the west. Unbeknownst to them, they were instead being sent to the Soviet Union. Many men, women, and children were sent to the
Gulag The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...
camps, and many were worked to death. The
repatriation Repatriation is the process of returning a thing or a person to its country of origin or citizenship. The term may refer to non-human entities, such as converting a foreign currency into the currency of one's own country, as well as to the pro ...
s were agreed to in the
Yalta Conference The Yalta Conference (codenamed Argonaut), also known as the Crimea Conference, held 4–11 February 1945, was the World War II meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union to discuss the post ...
;
Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...
claimed the prisoners were Soviet citizens as of 1939, although many of them had left Russia before or soon after the end of the
Russian Civil War , date = October Revolution, 7 November 1917 – Yakut revolt, 16 June 1923{{Efn, The main phase ended on 25 October 1922. Revolt against the Bolsheviks continued Basmachi movement, in Central Asia and Tungus Republic, the Far East th ...
or had been born abroad. Most of those Cossacks and Russians fought the
Allies An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
, specifically the Soviets, in service to the
Axis powers The Axis powers, ; it, Potenze dell'Asse ; ja, 枢軸国 ''Sūjikukoku'', group=nb originally called the Rome–Berlin Axis, was a military coalition that initiated World War II and fought against the Allies. Its principal members were ...
, specifically
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
, yet the repatriations included non-combatant civilians as well. General Poliakov and Colonel Chereshneff referred to it as the "massacre of Cossacks at Lienz".


Background

During the
Russian Civil War , date = October Revolution, 7 November 1917 – Yakut revolt, 16 June 1923{{Efn, The main phase ended on 25 October 1922. Revolt against the Bolsheviks continued Basmachi movement, in Central Asia and Tungus Republic, the Far East th ...
(1917–1923), Cossack leaders and their governments generally sided with the White movement. As a result, the majority of Cossack soldiers were mobilized against the
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...
. As the Soviets emerged victorious in the civil war, many Cossack veterans, fearing reprisals and the
Bolshevik The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
s’
de-Cossackization De-Cossackization (Russian: Расказачивание, ''Raskazachivaniye'') was the Bolshevik policy of systematic repressions against Cossacks of the Russian Empire, especially of the Don and the Kuban, between 1919 and 1933 aimed at the ...
policies, fled abroad to countries in
Central Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object. Central may also refer to: Directions and generalised locations * Central Africa, a region in the centre of Africa continent, also known as ...
and
Western Europe Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's countries and territories vary depending on context. The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the ancient Mediterranean ...
. In exile, they formed their own anti-communist organisations or joined other
Russian émigré Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
groups such as the
Russian All-Military Union The Russian All-Military Union ( rus, Русский Обще-Воинский Союз, abbreviated РОВС, ROVS) is an organization that was founded by White Army General Pyotr Wrangel in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes on 1 September ...
(ROVS). The Cossacks who remained in Russia endured more than a decade of continual repression, ''e.g.,'' the portioning of the lands of the Terek,
Ural Ural may refer to: *Ural (region), in Russia and Kazakhstan *Ural Mountains, in Russia and Kazakhstan *Ural (river), in Russia and Kazakhstan *Ual (tool), a mortar tool used by the Bodo people of India *Ural Federal District, in Russia *Ural econo ...
and
Semirechye Zhetysu, or Jeti-Suu ( kk, , Жетісу, pronounced ; ky, ''Jeti-Suu'', (), meaning "seven rivers"; also transcribed ''Zhetisu'', ''Jetisuw'', ''Jetysu'', ''Jeti-su'', ''Jity-su'', ''Жетысу'',, United States National Geospatial-I ...
hosts, forced cultural assimilation and repression of the
Russian Orthodox Church , native_name_lang = ru , image = Moscow July 2011-7a.jpg , imagewidth = , alt = , caption = Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, Russia , abbreviation = ROC , type ...
, deportation and, ultimately, the
Soviet famine of 1932–33 The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
. The repressions ceased and some privileges were restored after publication of ''
And Quiet Flows the Don ''And Quiet Flows the Don'' (''Quiet Flows the Don'' or ''The Silent Don'', russian: Тихий Дон, literally ''The Quiet Don'') is a novel in four volumes by Russian writer Mikhail Sholokhov. The first three volumes were written from 192 ...
'' (1934) by
Mikhail Sholokhov Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov ( rus, Михаил Александрович Шолохов, p=ˈʂoləxəf; – 21 February 1984) was a Russian novelist and winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is known for writing about life ...
.


The Second World War

After
Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
launched the
invasion of the Soviet Union Operation Barbarossa (german: link=no, Unternehmen Barbarossa; ) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. The operation, code-named afte ...
on 22 June 1941, several anticommunist Cossack leaders, including Kuban ataman Naumenko, Terek ataman Vdovenko, former Don ataman
Pyotr Krasnov Pyotr Nikolayevich Krasnov ( rus, Пётр Николаевич Краснов; 22 September (old style: 10 September) 1869 – 17 January 1947), sometimes referred to in English as Peter Krasnov, was a Don Cossack historian and officer, promot ...
and the Cossack National Center chairman Vasily Glazkov, all publicly praised the German campaign. Despite this outpouring of support, Hitler and other top officials initially denied Cossack émigrés from having any military or political role in the war against the Soviets. It was not until 1942 when
Ostministerium The Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (german: Reichsministerium für die besetzten Ostgebiete (RMfdbO) or ''Ostministerium'', ) was created by Adolf Hitler on 17 July 1941 and headed by the Nazi theoretical expert, the Baltic ...
openly began employing Cossack émigrés for propaganda and administrative purposes. While top Nazi officials were slow to embrace anticommunist Cossacks, some
Wehrmacht The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the ''Heer'' (army), the ''Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmacht''" replaced the previous ...
field commanders had utilized Cossack defectors from the Red Army since the summer of 1941. In early 1943, most of the Cossack units fighting with the
German Army The German Army (, "army") is the land component of the armed forces of Germany. The present-day German Army was founded in 1955 as part of the newly formed West German ''Bundeswehr'' together with the ''Marine'' (German Navy) and the ''Luftwaf ...
were consolidated into the First Cossack Cavalry Division under the command of General
Helmuth von Pannwitz Helmuth von Pannwitz (14 October 1898 – 16 January 1947) was a German general who was a cavalry officer during the First and the Second World Wars. Later he became a Lieutenant General of the Wehrmacht, a SS-Obergruppenführer of the Waffen-S ...
. Later that year, the Cossack cavalry division was deployed to Axis-occupied Yugoslavia to fight
Tito Tito may refer to: People Mononyms * Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980), commonly known mononymously as Tito, Yugoslav communist revolutionary and statesman * Roberto Arias (1918–1989), aka Tito, Panamanian international lawyer, diplomat, and journ ...
's Partisans. In late 1944, the division was incorporated into the
Waffen-SS The (, "Armed SS") was the combat branch of the Nazi Party's ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts, volunteers and conscripts from both occup ...
and expanded into the
XV SS Cossack Cavalry Corps The XV SS Cossack Cavalry Corps was a cavalry corps in the armed forces of Nazi Germany during World War II. Background During the Russian Civil War (1917–1923), Cossack leaders and their governments generally sided with the White movement. A ...
. Another Cossack group whose fate became tied with the Germans consisted of approximately 25,000 Cossack refugees and irregulars who evacuated the North Caucasus alongside the Wehrmacht in 1943. This group, known as “Cossachi Stan” migrated between
southern Ukraine Southern Ukraine ( uk, південна Україна, translit=pivdenna Ukrayina) or south Ukraine refers, generally, to the oblasts in the south of Ukraine. The territory usually corresponds with the Soviet economical district, the Southern E ...
,
Novogrudek Novogrudok ( be, Навагрудак, Navahrudak; lt, Naugardukas; pl, Nowogródek; russian: Новогрудок, Novogrudok; yi, נאַוואַראַדאָק, Novhardok, Navaradok) is a town in the Grodno Region, Belarus. In the Middle A ...
( Byelorussia),
Tolmezzo Tolmezzo ( fur, Tumieç; sl, Tolmeč; archaic german: Tolmein or ''Schönfeld'') is a town and ''comune'' in the province of Udine, part of the autonomous Friuli Venezia Giulia region of north-eastern Italy. Geography Tolmezzo is located at the ...
(
Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...
) and was forced to withdraw to
Lienz Lienz (; Southern Bavarian: ''Lianz'') is a Town privileges, medieval town in the Austrian state of Tyrol (state), Tyrol. It is the administrative centre of the Lienz (district), Lienz district, which covers all of East Tyrol. The municipality a ...
in
Allied-occupied Austria The Allied occupation of Austria started on 8 May 1945 with the fall of Nazi Germany and ended with the Austrian State Treaty on 27 July 1955. After the in 1938, Austria had generally been recognized as part of Nazi Germany. In 1943, however, ...
, at the close of the war.


Yalta and Tehran Conferences

The agreements of the
Yalta Yalta (: Я́лта) is a resort city on the south coast of the Crimean Peninsula surrounded by the Black Sea. It serves as the administrative center of Yalta Municipality, one of the regions within Crimea. Yalta, along with the rest of Crimea ...
and
Tehran Conference The Tehran Conference (codenamed Eureka) was a strategy meeting of Joseph Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill from 28 November to 1 December 1943, after the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran. It was held in the Soviet Union's embassy i ...
s, signed by US President
Franklin D. Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
, Soviet Premier
Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...
and British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 Winston Churchill in the Second World War, dur ...
, determined the fates of the Cossacks who did not fight for the Soviets, because many were
POW A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold prisoners of war ...
s of the Nazis. Stalin obtained
Allied An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
agreement to the repatriation of every so-called "Soviet" citizen held prisoner because the Allied leaders feared that the Soviets either might delay or refuse repatriation of the Allied POWs whom the
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...
had liberated from Nazi POW camps. It was in the context of the wish to remain on good terms with Stalin that, according to Edward Peterson, the US chose to hand over several hundred thousand German prisoners to the Soviet Union in May 1945 as a "gesture of friendship". Although the agreement for the deportation of all "Soviet" citizens did not include White Russian emigres who had fled during the
Bolshevik Revolution The October Revolution,. officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution. in the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolsheviks, Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was ...
before the establishment of the USSR, all Cossack prisoners of war were later demanded. After Yalta, Churchill questioned Stalin, asking, "Did the Cossacks and other minorities fight against us?" Stalin replied, "They fought with ferocity, not to say savagery, for the Germans". In 1944 Gen. Krasnov and other Cossack leaders had persuaded Hitler to allow Cossack troops, as well as civilians and non-combatant Cossacks, to permanently settle in the sparsely settled
Carnia Carnia ( fur, Cjargne or ''Cjargna''/''Cjargno'' in local variants, vec, Ciargna, german: Karnien, sl, Karnija) is a historical-geographic region in the northeastern Italian area of Friuli. Its 27 municipalities all belong to the Province of Ud ...
, in the
Alps The Alps () ; german: Alpen ; it, Alpi ; rm, Alps ; sl, Alpe . are the highest and most extensive mountain range system that lies entirely in Europe, stretching approximately across seven Alpine countries (from west to east): France, Sw ...
. The Cossacks moved there and established garrisons and settlements, requisitioning houses by evicting the inhabitants, with several
stanitsa A stanitsa ( rus, станица, p=stɐˈnʲitsə; uk, станиця, stanytsya) is a village inside a Cossack host ( uk, військо, viys’ko; russian: казачье войско, kazach’ye voysko, sometimes translated as "Cossack Arm ...
s and posts, their administration, churches, schools and military units. There, they fought the partisans and persecuted the local population, committing numerous atrocities. The measures consisting of clearing the Italian inhabitants of the area from their homes and taking stern measures to not allow partisans from the hills to “pass through alive” in the area led the Italians to use the epithet “Barbarian Cossacks.” When the Allies progressed from
central Italy Central Italy ( it, Italia centrale or just ) is one of the five official statistical regions of Italy used by the National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT), a first-level NUTS region, and a European Parliament constituency. Regions Central It ...
to the
Italian Alps The Alps () ; german: Alpen ; it, Alpi ; rm, Alps ; sl, Alpe . are the highest and most extensive mountain range system that lies entirely in Europe, stretching approximately across seven Alpine countries (from west to east): France, Swi ...
, Italian partisans under
Gen. Contini The Book of Genesis (from Greek language, Greek ; Hebrew language, Hebrew: בְּרֵאשִׁית ''Bəreʾšīt'', "In hebeginning") is the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Its Hebrew name is the same as its i ...
ordered the Cossacks to leave Carnia and go north to Austria. There, near
Lienz Lienz (; Southern Bavarian: ''Lianz'') is a Town privileges, medieval town in the Austrian state of Tyrol (state), Tyrol. It is the administrative centre of the Lienz (district), Lienz district, which covers all of East Tyrol. The municipality a ...
, the
British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...
kept the Cossacks in a hastily established camp. For a few days the British supplied them with food; meanwhile, the
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...
's advance units approached to within a few miles east, rapidly advancing to meet the
Allies An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
. On 28 May 1945 the British transported 2,046 disarmed Cossack officers and generals—including the
cavalry Historically, cavalry (from the French word ''cavalerie'', itself derived from "cheval" meaning "horse") are soldiers or warriors who fight mounted on horseback. Cavalry were the most mobile of the combat arms, operating as light cavalry ...
Generals
Pyotr Krasnov Pyotr Nikolayevich Krasnov ( rus, Пётр Николаевич Краснов; 22 September (old style: 10 September) 1869 – 17 January 1947), sometimes referred to in English as Peter Krasnov, was a Don Cossack historian and officer, promot ...
and
Andrei Shkuro Andrei Grigoriyevich Shkuro (russian: Андре́й Григо́рьевич Шкуро́, Ukrainian: Андрій Григорович Шкуро; 19 January 1887 ( O.S.: 7 January) – 17 January 1947) was a Lieutenant General (1919) of the ...
—to a nearby Red Army-held town and handed them over to the Red Army commanding general, who ordered them tried for treason. Many Cossack leaders had never been citizens of the Soviet Union, having fled revolutionary Russia in 1920; hence they believed they could not be guilty of
treason Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplo ...
. Some were executed immediately. High-ranking officers were tried in
Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
, and then executed. On 17 January 1947 Krasnov and Shkuro were hanged in a public square. Gen.
Helmuth von Pannwitz Helmuth von Pannwitz (14 October 1898 – 16 January 1947) was a German general who was a cavalry officer during the First and the Second World Wars. Later he became a Lieutenant General of the Wehrmacht, a SS-Obergruppenführer of the Waffen-S ...
of the
Wehrmacht The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the ''Heer'' (army), the ''Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmacht''" replaced the previous ...
, who was instrumental in the formation and leadership of the Cossacks taken from German POW camps to fight the Soviets, decided to share the Cossacks' Soviet repatriation and was executed for war crimes, along with five Cossack generals and
ataman Ataman (variants: ''otaman'', ''wataman'', ''vataman''; Russian: атаман, uk, отаман) was a title of Cossack and haidamak leaders of various kinds. In the Russian Empire, the term was the official title of the supreme military comman ...
s in Moscow in 1947. On 1 June 1945 the UK placed 32,000 Cossacks (with their women and children) into trains and trucks and delivered them to the Red Army for repatriation to the Soviets; similar repatriations occurred that year in the US occupation zones in
Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
and
Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
. Most Cossacks were sent to the
gulag The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...
s in far northern Russia and
Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part of ...
, and many died; some, however, escaped, and others lived until
Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev s ...
's amnesty in the course of his
de-Stalinization De-Stalinization (russian: десталинизация, translit=destalinizatsiya) comprised a series of political reforms in the Soviet Union after the death of long-time leader Joseph Stalin in 1953, and the thaw brought about by ascension ...
policies (see below). In total, some two million people were repatriated to the Soviets at the end of the Second World War.


Lienz

On 28 May 1945 the British Army arrived at Camp Peggetz, in
Lienz Lienz (; Southern Bavarian: ''Lianz'') is a Town privileges, medieval town in the Austrian state of Tyrol (state), Tyrol. It is the administrative centre of the Lienz (district), Lienz district, which covers all of East Tyrol. The municipality a ...
, where there were 2,479 Cossacks, including 2,201 officers and soldiers. They went to invite the Cossacks to an important conference with British officials, informing them that they would return to Lienz by 18:00 that evening; some Cossacks were worried, but the British reassured them that everything was in order. One British officer told the Cossacks, "I assure you, on my word of honour as a British officer, that you are just going to a conference". By then British–Cossack relationships were friendly to the extent that many on both sides had developed feelings for one another. The Lienz Cossack repatriation was exceptional, because the Cossacks forcefully resisted their repatriation to the USSR; one Cossack noted, "The
NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. ...
or the
Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...
would have slain us with truncheons, the British did it with their word of honour." Julius Epstein described the scene that occurred: The British transported the Cossacks to a prison where they were handed over to the waiting Soviets. In the town of
Tristach Tristach is a municipality in the district of Lienz in the Austrian state of Tyrol. Geography The municipal area stretches from the Drava valley and the suburbs of Lienz southwards up to the Große Sandspitze mountain and the crest of the Gailtal ...
, Austria, there was a memorial commemorating General von Pannwitz and the soldiers of the
XV SS Cossack Cavalry Corps The XV SS Cossack Cavalry Corps was a cavalry corps in the armed forces of Nazi Germany during World War II. Background During the Russian Civil War (1917–1923), Cossack leaders and their governments generally sided with the White movement. A ...
who were killed in action or died as POWs. This memorial was removed in September 2021 because of the connection between General von Pannwitz and both the SA and the SS, as well as his loyalty to the Nazi regime.


Other repatriations


Judenburg, Austria

On 1–2 June 18,000 Cossacks were handed over to the Soviets near the town of
Judenburg Judenburg ( bar, Judnbuag) is a historic town in Styria, Austria. It is the administrative centre of the Murtal district, which was created on 1 January 2012 from the former Judenburg District and former Knittelfeld District. Until 31 December ...
, Austria; of those in custody, some ten officers and 50–60 Cossacks escaped the guards' cordon with hand grenades, and hid in the nearby woods.


Near Graz, Austria

The Russian Cossacks of XV Cossack Cavalry Corps, stationed in Yugoslavia since 1943, were part of the column headed for Austria that would take part in the
Bleiburg repatriations The Bleiburg repatriations ( see terminology) occurred in May 1945, after the end of World War II in Europe, during which Yugoslavia had been occupied by the Axis powers, when tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians associated with the Axis ...
, and they are estimated to have numbered in the thousands. Dizdar, 2005, p. 134
Nikolai Tolstoy Count Nikolai Dmitrievich Tolstoy-Miloslavsky (russian: Граф Николай Дмитриевич Толстой-Милославский; born 23 June 1935), known as Nikolai Tolstoy, is a British monarchist and historian. He is a former ...
quotes a telegram by General
Harold Alexander Harold Rupert Leofric George Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis, (10 December 1891 – 16 June 1969) was a senior British Army officer who served with distinction in both the First and the Second World War and, afterwards, as Governor Ge ...
, sent to the
Combined Chiefs of Staff The Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) was the supreme military staff for the United States and Britain during World War II. It set all the major policy decisions for the two nations, subject to the approvals of British Prime Minister Winston Churchil ...
, noting "50,000 Cossacks including 11,000 women, children and old men". Tolstoy, 1986, pp. 124-125: "In a second telegram sent to Combined Chiefs of Staff, Alexander asked for guidelines regarding the final disposition of '50,000 Cossacks including 11,000 women, children and old men; present estimate of total 35,000 Chetniks – 11,000 of them already evacuated to Italy – and 25,000 German and Croat units.' In each of above cases 'return them to their country of origin immediately might be fatal to their health'." At a location near
Graz Graz (; sl, Gradec) is the capital city of the Austrian state of Styria and second-largest city in Austria after Vienna. As of 1 January 2021, it had a population of 331,562 (294,236 of whom had principal-residence status). In 2018, the popul ...
, British forces repatriated around 40,000 Cossacks to
SMERSH SMERSH (russian: СМЕРШ) was an umbrella organization for three independent counter-intelligence agencies in the Red Army formed in late 1942 or even earlier, but officially announced only on 14 April 1943. The name SMERSH was coined by Josep ...
. Vuletić, 2007, p. 144


Fort Dix, New Jersey, United States

Although repatriations mainly occurred in Europe, 154 Cossacks were repatriated to the Soviets from
Fort Dix Fort Dix, the common name for the Army Support Activity (ASA) located at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, is a United States Army post. It is located south-southeast of Trenton, New Jersey. Fort Dix is under the jurisdiction of the Air Force A ...
,
New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
, in the United States; three committed suicide in the US and seven were injured. Epstein states that the prisoners put up considerable resistance:


Marseilles, France

Cossacks were included in the hundreds who were repatriated to the Soviet Union from
Marseille Marseille ( , , ; also spelled in English as Marseilles; oc, Marselha ) is the prefecture of the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône and capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Situated in the camargue region of southern Franc ...
s in 1946.


Rimini and Bologna, Italy

Several hundred Cossacks were repatriated to the Soviet Union from camps close to
Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400  ...
in 1947. Some 100 Cossacks perished in resistance to forcible repatriations at
Rimini Rimini ( , ; rgn, Rémin; la, Ariminum) is a city in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy and capital city of the Province of Rimini. It sprawls along the Adriatic Sea, on the coast between the rivers Marecchia (the ancient ''Ariminu ...
and
Bologna Bologna (, , ; egl, label= Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nat ...
.


Liverpool, United Kingdom

Thousands of Russians, many of them Cossacks, were transported at the height of armed hostilities in 1944 to
Murmansk Murmansk (Russian: ''Мурманск'' lit. "Norwegian coast"; Finnish: ''Murmansk'', sometimes ''Muurmanski'', previously ''Muurmanni''; Norwegian: ''Norskekysten;'' Northern Sámi: ''Murmánska;'' Kildin Sámi: ''Мурман ланнҍ'') i ...
in an operation that also led to the sinking of the German battleship ''
Tirpitz Tirpitz may refer to: * Alfred von Tirpitz (1849–1930), German admiral * German battleship ''Tirpitz'', a World War II-era Bismarck-class battleship named after the admiral * Tirpitz (pig), a pig rescued from the sinking of SMS ''Dresden'' and ...
''.


Aftermath

The Cossack officers, more politically aware than the enlisted men, expected that repatriation to the USSR would be their ultimate fate. They believed that the British would have sympathised with their anti-Communism, but were unaware that their fates had been decided at the
Yalta Conference The Yalta Conference (codenamed Argonaut), also known as the Crimea Conference, held 4–11 February 1945, was the World War II meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union to discuss the post ...
. Upon discovering that they would be repatriated, many escaped, some probably aided by their Allied captors; some passively resisted, and others killed themselves. Of those Cossacks who escaped repatriation, many hid in forests and mountainsides, some were hidden by the local German populace, but most hid in different identities as Latvians, Poles, Yugoslavians, Turks, Armenians and even Ethiopians. Eventually they were admitted to
displaced persons camp A refugee camp is a temporary Human settlement, settlement built to receive refugees and people in refugee-like situations. Refugee camps usually accommodate displaced people who have fled their home country, but camps are also made for interna ...
s under assumed names and nationalities; many emigrated to the US per the
Displaced Persons Act The Displaced Persons Act of 1948 authorized for a limited period of time the admission into the United States of 200,000 certain European displaced persons (DPs) for permanent residence. This displaced persons (DP) Immigration program emerged fro ...
. Others went to any country that would admit them (e.g., Germany, Austria, France and Italy). Most Cossacks hid their true national identity until the
dissolution of the USSR The dissolution of the Soviet Union, also negatively connoted as rus, Разва́л Сове́тского Сою́за, r=Razvál Sovétskogo Soyúza, ''Ruining of the Soviet Union''. was the process of internal disintegration within the Sov ...
in late 1991.


Amnesty

After the death of Stalin in 1953, partial
amnesty Amnesty (from the Ancient Greek ἀμνηστία, ''amnestia'', "forgetfulness, passing over") is defined as "A pardon extended by the government to a group or class of people, usually for a political offense; the act of a sovereign power offici ...
was granted for some labor camp inmates on 27 March 1953 with the end of the
Gulag The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...
system. It was then extended on 17 September 1955. Some specific political crimes were omitted from amnesty: people convicted under Section 58.1(c) of the Criminal Code, stipulating that in the event of a military man escaping Russia, every adult member of his family who abetted the escape or who knew of it would be subject to five to ten years'
imprisonment Imprisonment is the restraint of a person's liberty, for any cause whatsoever, whether by authority of the government, or by a person acting without such authority. In the latter case it is "false imprisonment". Imprisonment does not necessari ...
; every dependent who did not know of the escape would be subject to five years'
Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part of ...
n exile.


Legacy


In literature

The event was documented in publications such as
Nicholas Bethell Nicholas William Bethell, 4th Baron Bethell (19 July 1938 – 8 September 2007) was a British politician. He was a historian of Central and Eastern Europe. He was also a translator and human rights activist. He sat in the House of Lords as a C ...
's ''The Last Secret: The Delivery to Stalin of Over Two Million Russians by Britain and the United States'' (1974). The first book written about the subject appears to have been ''Kontra'' by the Polish writer
Józef Mackiewicz Józef Mackiewicz (April 1, 1902 – January 31, 1985) was a Polish writer, novelist and political commentator; best known for his documentary novels ''Nie trzeba głośno mówić'' (One Is Not Supposed to Speak Aloud), and ''Droga donikąd'' (The ...
, which was published in Polish in London in 1957.Burgh, Hugo de ''Investigative Journalism'', Milton Park, Taylor & Francis 2000 p.243 Subsequently, in two volumes entitled ''Velikoe Predatelstvo'' (''The Great Betrayal'') published in 1962 and 1970 by a Russian language publisher in New York,
Vyacheslav Naumenko Vyacheslav Grigorievich Naumenko (25 February 1883 – 30 October 1979) was a Kuban Cossack leader and historian. Cossack Naumenko was born in Petrovskaya, Kuban Oblast near the Black Sea in the territory of the Kuban Host. Pursuing a military ca ...
, the former ''ataman'' of the Kuban Host documented the event. Neither the books of Mackiewicz or Naumenko were translated into English for decades after their publication and hence were almost completely ignored in the English-speaking world. The two volumes of ''Velikoe Predatelstvo'' were first translated into English in 2015 and 2018. ''Kontra'' has been republished several times in Polish, but has apparently never been translated into English. The first book written in English on the subject was ''The East Came West'' (1964) by the British author
Peter Huxley-Blythe Peter Huxley-Blythe (16 November 1925 – 18 August 2013) was a British author and fascist. Early life Huxley-Blythe was born in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, the son of Annie Huxley and Henry Blythe. His father was a self-proclaimed "consulta ...
, but attracted little attention because of Huxley-Blythe's involvement with the
European Liberation Front The European Liberation Front (ELF) was a neo-Nazi, pan-European nationalist group that split from Oswald Mosley's fascist Union Movement in 1948. Its founder was Francis Parker Yockey. It issued a manifesto called ''The Proclamation of London'', ...
. The cover of ''The East Came West'' featured an image taken from a Nazi propaganda poster showing a demonical ape dressed in a Red Army uniform surrounded by fire and brimstone reaching out towards Europe. The first book about the subject published on official documentation was ''Operation Keelhaul'' in 1973 by the Austrian-born American author Julius Epstein, which was based on U.S. sources and primarily dealt with the American role in the repatriation. The subject of the repatriation was largely unknown in the English-speaking world until 1974 when Lord Bethell published his book ''The Last Secret'', which was also turned into a BBC documentary that aired the same year.Thorpe, D.R. ''Supermac The Life of Harold Macmillan'', New York:
Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...
, 2010 page 219
Bethell was critical of the repatriation, accusing the British government of "intentionally over-fulfilling" the Yalta agreement by handing over people who were not Soviet citizens, but was careful in his treatment of the evidence. The year 1974 also saw the publication in English of
Aleksander Solzhenitsyn Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Russian novelist. One of the most famous Soviet dissidents, Solzhenitsyn was an outspoken critic of communism and helped to raise global awareness of political repress ...
's book ''The Gulag Archipelago'', where he mentions that many of the prisoners he met in Gulag in the late 1940s were veterans of the Vlasov Army repatriated by the British and Americans in 1945, a policy which he portrayed as craven and self-defeating.Knight Robert "Transnational memory from Bleiburg to London (via Buenos Aires and Grozny)" pages 39-53 from '' Zeitgeschichte'', Volume 38, 2010 p.46 Though Solzhenitsyn in ''The Gulag Archipelago'' did not deal specifically with the repatriation of the Cossacks, instead dealing with the repatriation of people to the Soviet Union in general, the book increased popular interest in the subject, as did his claim that Anglo-American policy towards the Soviet Union was driven in a fundamentally sinister and conspiratorial way, punishing the alleged friends of the West such as the Vlasov Army and the Cossacks while rewarding its enemies such as the Soviet Union. Solzhenitsyn describes the forced repatriation of the Cossacks by
Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 Winston Churchill in the Second World War, dur ...
as follows: "He turned over to the Soviet command the Cossack corps of 90,000 men. Along with them, he also handed over many wagonloads of old people, women and children who did not want to return to their native Cossack rivers. This great hero, monuments to whom will in time cover all England, ordered that they, too, be surrendered to their deaths." The man who led and supervised the entire operation was Major Davies. Subsequently, Count
Nikolai Tolstoy Count Nikolai Dmitrievich Tolstoy-Miloslavsky (russian: Граф Николай Дмитриевич Толстой-Милославский; born 23 June 1935), known as Nikolai Tolstoy, is a British monarchist and historian. He is a former ...
published ''The Victims of Yalta'' in 1977, which was described by a critical historian, D.R. Thrope, as "a work of considerable scholarship".
Nikolai Tolstoy Count Nikolai Dmitrievich Tolstoy-Miloslavsky (russian: Граф Николай Дмитриевич Толстой-Милославский; born 23 June 1935), known as Nikolai Tolstoy, is a British monarchist and historian. He is a former ...
describes this and other events resulting from the Yalta Conference as the "Secret Betrayal" (cf.
Western betrayal Western betrayal is the view that the United Kingdom, France, and sometimes the United States failed to meet their legal, diplomatic, military, and moral obligations with respect to the Czechoslovak and Polish states during the prelude to and af ...
), for going unpublished in the
West West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sunset, Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic languages, German ...
. The 1970s were a period when détente had become fashionable in some quarters and many on the right believed the West was losing the Cold War. The subject of the repatriations in 1945 were used by a variety of right-wing authors in the 1970s-1980s as a symbol of both of the malevolence of the Soviet Union and of a "craven" policy towards the Soviet Union alleged to have been pursued by the successive American and British governments since the Second World War. Reflecting the increased popular interest in the subject of the repatriations, which had become by the early 1980s to be a symbol of western "pusillanimity" towards the Soviet Union, a monument was unveiled in London on 6 March 1982 to "all the victims of Yalta".Knight Robert "Transnational memory from Bleiburg to London (via Buenos Aires and Grozny)" pages 39-53 from '' Zeitgeschichte'', Volume 38, 2010 p.47 John Joliffe, a conservative Catholic British intellectual whose fund-raising help build the monument accused "the British government and their advisors of merciless inhumanity", and ignoring the fact that Churchill was a Conservative went on to blame the repatriations on "the hypocrisy and feebleness of progressive leftists who turned a blind eye to the communist enslavement of Eastern Europe." In May 1983, Tolstoy published an article "The Klagenfurt Conspiracy" in ''Encounter'' magazine alleging a conspiracy by
Harold Macmillan Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, (10 February 1894 – 29 December 1986) was a British Conservative statesman and politician who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963. Caricatured as "Supermac", he ...
, the British "
resident minister A resident minister, or resident for short, is a government official required to take up permanent residence in another country. A representative of his government, he officially has diplomatic functions which are often seen as a form of indir ...
" for the Mediterranean, Field Marshal
Harold Alexander Harold Rupert Leofric George Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis, (10 December 1891 – 16 June 1969) was a senior British Army officer who served with distinction in both the First and the Second World War and, afterwards, as Governor Ge ...
and other British officials to hand over the Cossacks.Thorpe, D.R. ''Supermac The Life of Harold Macmillan'', New York: Random House, 2010 page 220 In his article, Tolstoy alleged that on 13 May 1945 in a meeting in the Austrian city of
Klagenfurt Klagenfurt am WörtherseeLandesgesetzblatt 2008 vom 16. Jänner 2008, Stück 1, Nr. 1: ''Gesetz vom 25. Oktober 2007, mit dem die Kärntner Landesverfassung und das Klagenfurter Stadtrecht 1998 geändert werden.'/ref> (; ; sl, Celovec), usually ...
that Macmillan gave the orders to repatriate all Cossacks regardless if they were Soviet citizens or not. On 11 December 1984, Macmillan was interviewed on the BBC by
Ludovic Kennedy Sir Ludovic Henry Coverley Kennedy (3 November 191918 October 2009) was a Scottish journalist, broadcaster, humanist and author best known for re-examining cases such as the Lindbergh kidnapping and the murder convictions of Timothy Evans and ...
and during the course of the interview Kennedy asked several questions about the Cossack repatriation in 1945.Thorpe, D.R. ''Supermac The Life of Harold Macmillan'', New York: Random House, 2010 page 223 Macmillan seems to have been taken by surprise by Kennedy's questions, and the defensive tone of his answers certainly gave public the impression that he had something to hide. Several of Macmillan's statements such as he felt no guilt because the Cossacks were "rebels against Russia", "not friends of ours" and most damaging of all "the Cossacks were practically savages" did not help his reputation. In 1986, Tolstoy followed up his 1983 article with the book ''
The Minister and the Massacres ''The Minister and the Massacres'' (1986) is a history written by Nikolai Tolstoy about the 1945 repatriations of Croatian soldiers and civilians and Cossacks, who had crossed into Austria seeking refuge from the Red Army and Partisans who had ...
'' alleging a conspiracy led by Macmillan to deliberately hand over refugees from the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia knowing full well they would be executed. As Macmillan went on to serve as prime minister between 1957 and 1963, Tolstoy's allegations attracted tremendous attention in Britain while also causing immense controversy. The architectural historian and interior designer
James Lees-Milne (George) James Henry Lees-Milne (6 August 1908 – 28 December 1997) was an English writer and expert on country houses, who worked for the National Trust from 1936 to 1973. He was an architectural historian, novelist and biographer. His extensi ...
wrote in his diary: "It was wicked to hang
Ribbentrop Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop (; 30 April 1893 – 16 October 1946) was a German politician and diplomat who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Nazi Germany from 1938 to 1945. Ribbentrop first came to Adolf Hitler's not ...
, who was never a criminal. The man who deserved hanging was Harold Macmillan for sentencing all those Poles and Russians who were sent back after the war".Thorpe, D.R. ''Supermac The Life of Harold Macmillan'', New York: Random House, 2010 pages 221 The novelist
Robert Graves Captain Robert von Ranke Graves (24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985) was a British poet, historical novelist and critic. His father was Alfred Perceval Graves, a celebrated Irish poet and figure in the Gaelic revival; they were both Celtic ...
publicly stated: "Harold Macmillan, he's a murderer you know". There was a political edge to the attacks on Macmillan, who represented the left-wing of the Conservative Party, the so-called " one nation conservatism". The "one nation conservatives" such as Macmillan were often disparaged as the "wets" by the so-called "drys" who represented the right-wing of the Conservative Party. In November 1984, Macmillan gave a much publicised speech in which he called the privatisation plans of the Thatcher government “selling off the family silver”, which made him into a hate figure for the "dry" Conservatives. Additionally, many people on the right-wing of the Conservative Party were passionately opposed to British membership of the
European Economic Community The European Economic Community (EEC) was a regional organization created by the Treaty of Rome of 1957,Today the largely rewritten treaty continues in force as the ''Treaty on the functioning of the European Union'', as renamed by the Lisb ...
(EEC) as the European Union (EU) was then called. Through Britain did not join the EEC until 1973, it was Macmillan who as a prime minister first applied to have Britain join the EEC in July 1961, which was ended in January 1963 when President de Gaulle of France vetoed the British application. For many people on the British right, Macmillan is viewed as something alike to a traitor because of the 1961 application to join the EEC. In 1986, the
Federation of Conservative Students The Federation of Conservative Students (FCS) was the student organisation of the British Conservative Party from the late 1940s to 1986. It was created to act as a bridge between the student movement and the Conservative Party. It produced sever ...
in their magazine published a cover story with a photo of Macmillan from 1945 with the question "Guilty of War Crimes?"Knight Robert "Transnational memory from Bleiburg to London (via Buenos Aires and Grozny)" pages 39-53 from '' Zeitgeschichte'', Volume 38, 2010 p.48 The question was rhetorical as the article accepted Tolstoy's charges against Macmillan and sought to link his "one nation conservatism" with a policy of weakness towards the Soviet Union.” In 1985, a British businessman named Nigel Watts became involved in a lengthy and bitter dispute over an insurance claim for the previous ten years with the Sun Alliance insurance company, whose chairman was
Lord Aldington Baron Aldington, of Bispham in the County Borough of Blackpool, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created on 29 January 1962 for the Conservative politician and businessman, Sir Toby Low. On 16 November 1999 he was made a ...
. In 1945, Lord Aldington had served as chief of staff of
V Corps 5th Corps, Fifth Corps, or V Corps may refer to: France * 5th Army Corps (France) * V Cavalry Corps (Grande Armée), a cavalry unit of the Imperial French Army during the Napoleonic Wars * V Corps (Grande Armée), a unit of the Imperial French Army ...
that carried out the repatriation. In consultation with Tolstoy, Watts wrote and published a pamphlet accusing Aldington of war crimes for his involvement in repatriating the Cossacks. In 1945, Toby Low (as Aldington then was known) was planning after leaving the Army to enter politics by running as a Conservative candidate for the
House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...
; Tolstoy has suggested several times that Aldington wanted the patronage of Macmillan, a rising star in the Conservative Party, and would do anything that might please Macmillan such as repatriating the Cossacks in accordance with his wishes. In response, Aldington sued Watts for libel, and Tolstoy insisted on being included as a defendant, seeing a chance to promote his cause. In response to ''The Minister and the Massacres'', the British historian Robert Knight in his 1986 article "Harold Macmillan and the Cossacks: Was There A Klagenfurt Conspiracy?" accused Tolstoy of scholarly misconduct, writing that in May 1945 British policy in Austria was dictated by Operation Beehive, which entitled preparing for a possible war with Yugoslavia and perhaps the Soviet Union.Thorpe, D.R. ''Supermac The Life of Harold Macmillan'', New York: Random House, 2010 page 222 In May 1945, the Trieste crisis almost caused an Anglo-Yugoslav war as Marshal
Josip Broz Tito Josip Broz ( sh-Cyrl, Јосип Броз, ; 7 May 1892 – 4 May 1980), commonly known as Tito (; sh-Cyrl, Тито, links=no, ), was a Yugoslav communist revolutionary and statesman, serving in various positions from 1943 until his deat ...
of Yugoslavia laid claim to the Italian city of
Trieste Trieste ( , ; sl, Trst ; german: Triest ) is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is the capital city, and largest city, of the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, one of two autonomous regions which are not subdivided into provi ...
while Britain supported retaining Trieste within Italy. As Yugoslavia was a Soviet ally in 1945, there were very real fears at the time that an Anglo-Yugoslav war could easily escalate into an Anglo-Soviet war. Knight argued that the forced repatriations in Austria undertaken in May 1945 were at least in part an effort to calm down a very tense situation. Knight maintained that the British wanted to clear Austria of all the vast number of prisoners they had taken to free up soldiers now struck guarding the prisoners for a possible war with Yugoslavia and to improve relations by returning peoples who were the enemies of the Yugoslav and Soviet governments. Both the Yugoslav and Soviet governments believed the British were intending to use Axis collaborationist forces such as the Cossack corps against them. To help resolve the raging controversy, Brigadier
Anthony Cowgill Anthony Wilson Cowgill (7 November 1915 – 29 October 2009) was a British soldier, engineer and researcher. After a 30-year career in the Army he worked for Rolls-Royce and set up a company offering information and access to government. Past ret ...
formed a committee consisting of himself; a former diplomat and "Russia hand" Lord Brimelow, and
Christopher Booker Christopher John Penrice Booker (7 October 1937 – 3 July 2019) was an English journalist and author. He was a founder and first editor of the satirical magazine '' Private Eye'' in 1961. From 1990 onward he was a columnist for ''The Sunday T ...
, a journalist well known for his conservative views. Cowgill believed that the honour of the British Army had been smeared, but Booker was a supporter of Tolstoy when he joined the committee in 1986.Thorpe, D.R. ''Supermac The Life of Harold Macmillan'', New York: Random House, 2010 pages 221-222 Between 2 October-30 November 1989, the much publicised libel trial of Tolstoy vs. Aldington took place and ended with the jury ruling in the favour of the latter and awarding him £1.5 million. The judgement, which forced Tolstoy into bankruptcy, was widely criticized as excessive and unfair. The way in which the
Ministry of Defence {{unsourced, date=February 2021 A ministry of defence or defense (see spelling differences), also known as a department of defence or defense, is an often-used name for the part of a government responsible for matters of defence, found in states ...
supplied Aldington with certain documents that were denied to Tolstoy has been an especially controversial aspect of the trial, and Tolstoy continues to maintain that he was a victim of "the Establishment". Tolstoy retained a loyal set of defenders consisting of the Conservative MP
Bernard Braine Bernard Richard Braine, Baron Braine of Wheatley, PC (24 June 1914 – 5 January 2000) was a Conservative Party politician in the United Kingdom. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) for 42 years, from 1950 to 1992, representing constituencies i ...
, the philosopher
Roger Scruton Sir Roger Vernon Scruton (; 27 February 194412 January 2020) was an English philosopher and writer who specialised in aesthetics and political philosophy, particularly in the furtherance of traditionalist conservative views. Editor from 1982 t ...
, the journalist
Chapman Pincher Henry Chapman Pincher (29 March 1914 – 5 August 2014) was an English journalist, historian and novelist whose writing mainly focused on espionage and related matters, after some early books on scientific subjects. Early life Pincher was born ...
, the writer
Nigel Nicolson Nigel Nicolson (19 January 1917 – 23 September 2004) was an English writer, publisher and politician. Early life and education Nicolson was the second son of writers Sir Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West; he had an elder brother Ben, ...
, Lord Cranborne and from farther afield Solzhenitsyn, who was living in exile in the United States at the time. The Tolstoy vs. Aldington case attracted much publicity as the British journalist
Hugo de Burgh Professor Hugo de Burgh (born 10 June 1949) is Director of the China Media Centre at the University of Westminster, which he founded in January 2005. Before that, he ran the Centre for Media Research at Goldsmiths College. de Burgh is founder, a ...
wrote: "From 1989 to 1993 a historical investigation became news in
tabloid Tabloid may refer to: * Tabloid journalism, a type of journalism * Tabloid (newspaper format), a newspaper with compact page size ** Chinese tabloid * Tabloid (paper size), a North American paper size * Sopwith Tabloid, a biplane aircraft * ''Ta ...
and
broadsheet A broadsheet is the largest newspaper format and is characterized by long Vertical and horizontal, vertical pages, typically of . Other common newspaper formats include the smaller Berliner (format), Berliner and Tabloid (newspaper format), ta ...
media alike as argument raged over the merits of combatants in a struggle over who might have done what over a few days in 1945. The case of "the Cossacks" has been perhaps the single most prominent example of historical investigation to be turned into journalism, not only in acres of newsprint devoted to the story and based upon several books on the subject, but also in a programme in the BBC historical series, ''
Timewatch ''Timewatch'' is a long-running British television series showing documentaries on historical subjects, spanning all human history. It was first broadcast on 29 September 1982 and is produced by the BBC. The ''Timewatch'' brandname is used as a ...
''". After four years of investigation, in October 1990 the Cowgill committee published its report, ''The Repatriations from Austria in 1945'' whose conclusions largely echoed those reached by Knight in 1986 that British policy in Austria was largely governed by preparations for a possible war with Yugoslavia and perhaps the Soviet Union as well. About Tolstoy's allegations that Macmillan was a major war criminal, the Cowgill committee concluded that Macmillan's role in the repatriations was very small and largely dictated by military considerations. During its investigation, the Cowgill committee found copies of British documents that were not available in the
Public Record Office The Public Record Office (abbreviated as PRO, pronounced as three letters and referred to as ''the'' PRO), Chancery Lane in the City of London, was the guardian of the national archives of the United Kingdom from 1838 until 2003, when it was m ...
among the personal papers of
Alexander Comstock Kirk Alexander Comstock Kirk (November 26, 1888 – March 23, 1979) was an American lawyer and diplomat. Early years Alexander Comstock Kirk was born in Chicago, Illinois, on November 26, 1888, the son of James Alexander Kirk (1840–1907)Chicago His ...
, a gay American diplomat who donated all of his personal papers from his death to the National Archives in Washington.Thorpe, D.R. ''Supermac The Life of Harold Macmillan'', New York: Random House, 2010 pages 226 In a column published in the ''Sunday Times'' on 21 October 1990, Robert Harris accused the Cowgill committee of a "whitewash", and maintained that Tolstoy's claims that Britain had willfully sent thousands of people to their deaths in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia was still correct. Cowgill sued Harris and the ''Times'' for libel and the case was settled out of court with the ''Times'' agreeing to donate to a charity of Cowgill's choice, in this case the
Army Benevolent Fund ABF The Soldiers' Charity, formerly the Army Benevolent Fund,Third Sector Magazine"Charity rebranding: a change of vision and strategy" ''Third Sector Magazine'', 06/04/10 is the national charity of the British Army. Since 1944, it has provided ...
. By contrast, the journalist Daniel Johnson wrote on 19 October 1990: "As Cowgill shows, Macmillan was telling the truth; that he had merely advised officers on the ground that Allied policy under the Yalta agreement was to hand back the Cossacks and he had, like everybody else, had been unaware that a large number of them were Russian emigres."Thorpe, D.R. ''Supermac The Life of Harold Macmillan'', New York: Random House, 2010 pages 227 In 1992, Sir
Carol Mather Sir David Carol MacDonnell Mather (3 January 19193 July 2006) was a British soldier and politician. After serving 22 years in the British Army, he was the Member of Parliament for Esher from 1970 until 1987. During his political career he he ...
, a veteran turned Conservative MP wrote in his memoirs ''Aftermath of War: Everyone Must Go Home'' that the overwhelming feeling shared by himself and other British Army officers in Austria in 1945 was that the Cossacks had willingly fought for Nazi Germany and had committed terrible atrocities against Italian civilians while fighting against
Italian partisans The Italian resistance movement (the ''Resistenza italiana'' and ''la Resistenza'') is an umbrella term for the Italian resistance groups who fought the occupying forces of Nazi Germany and the fascist collaborationists of the Italian Social ...
in 1944–1945, meaning no-one had any sympathy for them. By contrast, Major Harold Lunghi who served as part of the British Military Mission in Moscow during World War Two and was closely involved in the talks to repatriate British POWs taken prisoner by the Germans who had liberated by the Red Army, remained highly critical of the decision to repatriate the Cossacks. Lunghi who worked closely with the "very ruthless" General
Filipp Golikov Filipp Ivanovich Golikov (russian: Фили́пп Ива́нович Го́ликов, links=no; July 30, 1900 – July 29, 1980) was a Soviet military commander. As chief of the GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate), he is best known for failing to ...
recalled in an interview on 19 March 2009:
"In Moscow, as among most people who had knowledge and experience of Russia, we were appalled to learn rather late in the day that we were forcibly returning White Russians and others who did not hold Soviet citizenship to the Soviet Union. It was all the more misguided because the Soviet side at first did not lay any claim to them. As far as I recall, Golikov did not initially refer to them at all. On the contrary, the Soviet side at first said and wrote that their concern was ''Soviet citizens''. We knew very well what his, that is, Stalin's priority and why. The Cossacks and the others were a late icing on the cake for Stalin"."Thorpe, D.R. ''Supermac The Life of Harold Macmillan'', New York: Random House, 2010 pages 228
In 1997, Booker published his book ''A Looking Glass Tragedy'', in which he wrote: "there was almost no part of the story which we found to be free from serious error, even to the point where atrocities and massacres described at length were found not to have taken place at all. Even the general belief that most of the Cossacks had died after their return to the Soviet Union turned out to be a wild exaggeration". In a review of ''A Looking Glass Tragedy'', the British historian
Alistair Horne Sir Alistair Allan Horne (9 November 1925 – 25 May 2017) was a British journalist, biographer and historian of Europe, especially of 19th- and 20th-century France. He wrote more than 20 books on travel, history, and biography. Early life, ...
alleged that four of the six massacres of Cossacks by the
NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. ...
described by Tolstoy never took place and: "Of the Cossacks repatriated to Russia, few were actually killed; horrendous as their privations were, the vast majority survived the Gulag." Horne argued that the "absurd" sum awarded to Aldington had made Tolstoy into a "national martyr", and felt that the case showed a need for reforming English libel law. Booker described the British media as suffering from a "Cleverdick Culture", accusing most journalists of being overtly motivated by the need to increase sales in a very competitive business via sensationalistic stories intended to promote public outrage and of being excessively credulous, especially about topics in which the journalists knew little, thus leading journalists to accept the Tolstoy thesis uncritically. Booker noted that the BBC produced nine television or radio documentaries that largely accepted Tolstoy's allegations at face value, which he saw as an example of the "Cleverdick Culture". By contrast, Ian Mitchell in his 1997 book ''The Cost of a Reputation: Aldington versus Tolstoy : the Causes, Course and Consequences of the Notorious Libel Case'' argued that there had been an "Establishment" conspiracy against Tolstoy, claiming that the
Foreign Office Foreign may refer to: Government * Foreign policy, how a country interacts with other countries * Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in many countries ** Foreign Office, a department of the UK government ** Foreign office and foreign minister * Unit ...
and the Defence ministry had deprived Tolstoy of documents that had been helpful to him at this trial. ''The Cost of a Reputation'' was a book privately printed and paid for by
Lord Portsmouth Earl of Portsmouth is a title in the Peerage of Great Britain. It was created in 1743 for John Wallop, 1st Viscount Lymington, who had previously represented Hampshire in the House of Commons. He had already been created Baron Wallop, of Fa ...
, an admirer of Tolstoy. The British historian Edwyn Morris in his 2008 essay "The Repatriation of the Cossacks from Austria in 1945" argued that for Churchill a major concern in 1945 was securing the return of all the British POWs in German POW camps who had fallen into Soviet hands as the Red Army advanced into Germany in 1944-45 and British policies on repatriation on people to the Soviet Union was dictated by the fear that Stalin might hold the British POWs as hostages. Morris argued that Churchill had a well founded belief that if the British granted asylum to the Cossacks, then the Soviets would not return the British POWs. Under the Yalta agreement, the Soviets were to repatriate American and British POWs that came into Red Army hands in exchange for the American and British governments were to repatriate people from the Soviet Union who fell into their hands. Morris argued that if Britain broke the terms of the Yalta Agreement by granting asylum to the Cossacks, then the Soviet Union might likewise break the terms of the Yalta agreement and refuse to repatriate the hundreds of thousands of British POWs whom the Germans had concentrated in POW camps in eastern Germany (it was German policy to build POW camps in eastern Germany as it made it more difficult for POWs who escaped to reach western Europe). Morris also maintained that since the Cossacks had fought for Germany, it was unreasonable to expect Churchill to sacrifice thousands of British POWs just to save them. As it was, the British POWs in Soviet hands were returned to the United Kingdom "humanely and expeditiously". The British historian D.R. Thorpe in his 2010 biography ''Supermac'' came close to accusing Tolstoy of scholarly misconduct, stating that the "White Russians" that Macmillan mentioned in his diary in 1945 were not the Cossacks as Tolstoy claimed, but rather the
Russian Protective Corps The Russian Protective Corps (german: Russisches Schutzkorps, russian: Русский охранный корпус, sr, Руски заштитни корпус / Ruski zaštitni korpus) was an armed force composed of anti-communist White Russi ...
, a collaborationist unit that fought for Nazi Germany whose men were either Russian emigres living in Yugoslavia or the sons of these emigres. Thorpe wrote that strictly speaking the term "White Russian" described any Russian who fought on the White side in the Russian Civil War or those anti-Communist Russians who went into exile, but in British official circles in World War Two and in the British Army the term "White Russian" was used indiscriminately to describe any anti-Communist person from the territory of the modern Soviet Union, regardless if they were Russian or not.Thorpe, D.R. ''Supermac The Life of Harold Macmillan'', New York: Random House, 2010 pages 220 Thus, the British called the Vlasov Army "White Russians" even through General Andrei Vlasov and his men were all former Red Army POWs who had decided to fight for Germany. Thorpe argued that this blanket use of the term "White Russian" together with a lack of qualified officers who could speak Russian ensured that the British in 1945 did not make much effort to distinguish between those Cossacks living in the Soviet Union who had volunteered to fight for Germany vs. those Cossacks living in exile who had volunteered to fight for Germany. Thorpe further argued that Tolstoy seemed unaware of the way the British used the term "White Russian" in World War Two and as he uses the term "White Russian" in the more limited sense, he assumes that the British were consciously repatriating people whom they knew were not Soviet citizens. William Dritschilo described the events at Lienz in ''Lienz Cossacks'', his novelization of the Cossack experience of the 20th century.


Memorials

In
Lienz Lienz (; Southern Bavarian: ''Lianz'') is a Town privileges, medieval town in the Austrian state of Tyrol (state), Tyrol. It is the administrative centre of the Lienz (district), Lienz district, which covers all of East Tyrol. The municipality a ...
, Austria, there is an 18-gravestone cemetery commemorating the "Tragedy of the ". Many of the gravestones mark mass graves holding unknown numbers.


In popular culture

*The plot of the ''
James Bond The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...
'' film ''
GoldenEye ''GoldenEye'' is a 1995 spy film, the seventeenth in the ''James Bond'' series produced by Eon Productions, and the first to star Pierce Brosnan as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. Directed by Martin Campbell, it was the first in the ser ...
'' (1995) involves the resentment of villain
Alec Trevelyan Alec Trevelyan (006) is a fictional character and the main antagonist in the 1995 James Bond film ''GoldenEye'', the first film to feature actor Pierce Brosnan as Bond. Trevelyan is portrayed by actor Sean Bean. The likeness of Bean as Alec Tre ...
(played by
Sean Bean Sean Bean (born Shaun Mark Bean on 17 April 1959) is an English actor. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Bean made his professional debut in a theatre production of ''Romeo and Juliet'' in 1983. Retaining his Yorkshire ac ...
), known as "Janus", the son of "Lienz Cossacks". Janus plots the destruction of the
British economy The economy of the United Kingdom is a highly developed social market and market-orientated economy. It is the sixth-largest national economy in the world measured by nominal gross domestic product (GDP), ninth-largest by purchasing power pa ...
because of "the British betrayal and Stalin's execution squads", the latter of which he and his family had survived, but, tormented by
survivor's guilt Survivor guilt (or survivor's guilt; also called survivor syndrome or survivor's syndrome and survivor disorder or survivor's disorder) is a mental condition that occurs when a person believes they have done something wrong by surviving a traumati ...
, his father ultimately killed his wife, then himself, leaving Alec orphaned. Bond (played by
Pierce Brosnan Pierce Brendan Brosnan (; born 16 May 1953) is an Irish actor and film producer. He is best known as the fifth actor to play secret agent James Bond in the Bond film series, starring in four films from 1995 to 2002 (''GoldenEye'', ''Tomorrow ...
) says of the repatriation, "Not exactly our finest hour", though the
Russian Mafia Russian organized crime or Russian mafia (, ), otherwise known as Bratva (), is a collective of various organized crime elements originating in the former Soviet Union. The initialism OPG is Organized Criminal (''prestupnaya'' in Russian) Gr ...
boss Valentin Zukovsky (played by
Robbie Coltrane Anthony Robert McMillan (30 March 195014 October 2022), known professionally as Robbie Coltrane, was a Scottish actor and comedian. He gained worldwide recognition in the 2000s for playing Rubeus Hagrid in the ''Harry Potter'' film series. He ...
) replies "Still, ruthless people, Cossacks – they got what they deserved".Archived a
Ghostarchive
and th
Wayback Machine
*These events provide the historical context for the ''
Foyle's War ''Foyle's War'' is a British detective fiction, detective drama television series set during and shortly after the Second World War, created by ''Midsomer Murders'' screenwriter and author Anthony Horowitz and commissioned by ITV (TV network), ...
'' episode "The Russian House".


See also

*
Andrey Vlasov Andrey Andreyevich Vlasov (russian: Андрéй Андрéевич Влáсов, – August 1, 1946) was a Soviet Red Army general and Nazi collaborator. During World War II, he fought in the Battle of Moscow and later was captured att ...
* Collaboration with the Axis Powers during World War II *
Cossackia Cossackia (russian: Казакия) is a term sometimes used to refer to the traditional areas where the Cossack communities live in Russia and Ukraine, and to the lands of the Zaporizhian Host. Depending on its context, "Cossackia" may mean the ...
*
German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union Approximately three million German prisoners of war were captured by the Soviet Union during World War II, most of them during the great advances of the Red Army in the last year of the war. The POWs were employed as forced labor in the Soviet w ...
*
Operation Keelhaul Operation Keelhaul was a forced repatriation of Russian civilians (non-Soviet citizens) and Soviet citizens to the Soviet Union. While forced repatriation focused on Soviet Armed Forces POWs of Germany and Russian Liberation Army members, it inclu ...
*
Russian Liberation Army The Russian Liberation Army; russian: Русская освободительная армия, ', abbreviated as (), also known as the Vlasov army after its commander Andrey Vlasov, was a collaborationist formation, primarily composed of Rus ...
*
Russian Monument (Liechtenstein) The Russian Monument (german: Russen-Denkmal) is a small memorial stone in the hamlet of Hinterschellenberg, Liechtenstein. Overview Translated into English, the inscription on the monument reads as follows: ''Here in Hinterschellenberg, on the ...
* ''
The Red Danube ''The Red Danube'' is a 1949 American drama film directed by George Sidney and starring Walter Pidgeon. The film is set during Operation Keelhaul and was based on the 1947 novel '' Vespers in Vienna'' by Bruce Marshall. Plot In Rome shortly aft ...
'' *
Western betrayal Western betrayal is the view that the United Kingdom, France, and sometimes the United States failed to meet their legal, diplomatic, military, and moral obligations with respect to the Czechoslovak and Polish states during the prelude to and af ...
*
Forest brothers The Guerrilla war in the Baltic states was an armed struggle which was waged by the Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian partisans, called the Forest Brothers (also: the "Brothers of the Wood" and the "Forest Friars"; et, metsavennad, lv, mež ...
*
Aftermath of World War II The aftermath of World War II was the beginning of a new era started in late 1945 (when World War II ended) for all countries involved, defined by the decline of all colonial empires and simultaneous rise of two superpowers; the Soviet Union (US ...
*
Swedish extradition of Baltic soldiers The Swedish extradition of Baltic soldiers, or simply the Extradition of the Balts ( sv, Baltutlämningen), was a controversial political event that took place in January 1946, in the aftermath of World War II when Sweden, a neutral country du ...


References


Sources

* * * * Naumenko, Gen. V. G. (2011). ''Great Betrayal''. (Translation by William Dritschilo of (1962) ''Великое Предательство'', All Slavic Publishing House, New York) . * Naumenko, Gen. V. G. (2018). ''Great Betrayal. Volume 2''. (Translation by William Dritschilo of (1970) ''Великое Предательство, Том ІІ'', All Slavic Publishing House, New York) .


Further reading

* Catherine Andreyev (1987). ''Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement: Soviet Reality and Émigré Theories.'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; . * Brent Mueggenberg (2019). ''The Cossack Struggle Against Communism, 1917 - 1945'' Jefferson: McFarland & Company; *
Nikolai Tolstoy Count Nikolai Dmitrievich Tolstoy-Miloslavsky (russian: Граф Николай Дмитриевич Толстой-Милославский; born 23 June 1935), known as Nikolai Tolstoy, is a British monarchist and historian. He is a former ...
(1978). ''The Secret Betrayal''. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons; . * Nikolai Tolstoy (1981). ''Stalin's Secret War''. London: Jonathan Cape; . * John Ure (2002). ''The Cossacks: An Illustrated History''. London: Gerald Duckworth; . * Samuel J. Newland (1991). ''Cossacks in the German Army 1941–1945'', London: Franc Cass; . * Ian Mitchell (1997). ''The cost of a reputation''. Lagavulin: Topical Books; . *
Józef Mackiewicz Józef Mackiewicz (April 1, 1902 – January 31, 1985) was a Polish writer, novelist and political commentator; best known for his documentary novels ''Nie trzeba głośno mówić'' (One Is Not Supposed to Speak Aloud), and ''Droga donikąd'' (The ...
(1993). ''Kontra''. London: Kontra; . * Harald Stadler/Martin Kofler/Karl C.Berger (2005). ''Flucht in die Hoffnungslosigkeit-Die Kosaken in Osttirol''. Innsbruck; (in German)


External links


Return to the scene of the crime
Gordon Dritschilo, rutlandherald.com, 30 June 2005

Jeremy Murray-Brown, Documentary at Boston University (Describes the extradition event in great detail, focusing on a 7-minute film-clip of the event.) {{Collaboration in Russia Aftermath of World War II in the Soviet Union British collusion with Soviet World War II crimes French war crimes History of the Cossacks in Russia Post–World War II forced migrations Soviet Union–United Kingdom relations People extradited to the Soviet Union American collusion with Soviet World War II crimes