Constantine Gregorievich Kromiadi (russian: link=no, Константин Григориевич Кромиади, el, Κωνσταντίνος Γκριγκόριεβιτς Κρομιάδης; 1893 – 1990) was a Caucasus Greek-born military officer and anti-communist who served in the Imperial Russian Army, the

White Army The White Army (russian: Белая армия, Belaya armiya) or White Guard (russian: Бѣлая гвардія/Белая гвардия, Belaya gvardiya, label=none), also referred to as the Whites or White Guardsmen (russian: Бѣлогв� ...

, later he headed

Russian National People's Army The Russian National People's Army (, ), abbreviated RNNA, was a Nazi German collaborationist military unit during World War II, led primarily by white émigrés with ties to American-based Russian fascist Anastasy Vonsiatsky. Name The Rus ...

and finally commanded the headquarters of the Nazi-collaborating Russian Liberation Army. In his latter years he was employed by

Radio Liberty Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmit ...

where Kromiadi also worked with the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

First years

Born in

Kars Oblast The Kars Oblast was a province (''oblast'') of the Caucasus Viceroyalty of the Russian Empire between 1878 and 1917. Its capital was the city of Kars, presently in Turkey. The ''oblast'' bordered the Ottoman Empire to the west, the Batum Oblast ...

in 1893, Kromiadi entered service in the Imperial Russian Army as a volunteer and fought during

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

in Persia and also on the Caucasus Front, where many

Armenians Armenians ( hy, հայեր, '' hayer'' ) are an ethnic group native to the Armenian highlands of Western Asia. Armenians constitute the main population of Armenia and the ''de facto'' independent Artsakh. There is a wide-ranging diasp ...

Caucasus Greeks The Caucasus Greeks ( el, Έλληνες του Καυκάσου or more commonly , tr, Kafkas Rum), also known as the Greeks of Transcaucasia and Russian Asia Minor, are the ethnic Greeks of the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia in what is no ...

, Georgians, and

Russians , native_name_lang = ru , image = , caption = , population = , popplace = 118 million Russians in the Russian Federation (2002 '' Winkler Prins'' estimate) , region1 = , pop1 ...

fought against the forces of the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...

. During the

Russian Civil War {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Russian Civil War , partof = the Russian Revolution and the aftermath of World War I , image = , caption = Clockwise from top left: {{flatlist, *Soldiers ...

Kromiadi joined the White movement, achieving the rank of

colonel Colonel (abbreviated as Col., Col or COL) is a senior military officer rank used in many countries. It is also used in some police forces and paramilitary organizations. In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, a colonel was typically in charge o ...

. After the war he emigrated to

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...

where he worked as automobilist.

In Axis army

During

World War II 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 opposing ...

, Kromiadi was a Nazi official and a pioneer of the

Russian Liberation Movement The Russian Liberation Movement (russian: Русское Освободительное Движение) was a movement in the Soviet Union that sought to create an anti-communist armed force during the Second World War that would topple Joseph ...

. In 1942, he headed the

, an armed unit of Russians, under the pseudonym of Sanin, together with engineer

Sonderführer ''Sonderführer'' (; "special leader"; in full: , "special leader with military command power"), abbreviated Sdf or Sf, was a specialist role introduced in the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany in 1937 for the mobilization plan of the German armed for ...

Sergei Ivanov of Russian fascist party. He was relieved by the Germans along with other Russian émigrés, at that time he tried unsuccessfully to take command of another Russian unit, the Druzhina Brigade. The dissolution of the group was heavily influenced with the view of the Slavic people as "Untermenschen" (sub-humans) by the Germans. Kromiadi became close with captured Soviet general Andrey Vlasov, thus becoming Vlasov's first

white émigré White Russian émigrés were Russians who emigrated from the territory of the former Russian Empire in the wake of the Russian Revolution (1917) and Russian Civil War (1917–1923), and who were in opposition to the revolutionary Bolshevik commun ...

ally. In 1943, Vlasov gave Kromiadi command of his headquarters. Kromiadi made several attempts to attract white émigrés to General Vlasov, and was finally successful by the time of the

Prague Manifesto The Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (russian: Комитет освобождения народов России, ', abbreviated as russian: КОНР, ') was a committee composed of military and civilian Nazi collaborator ...

, having secured the support of two branches 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 ...

. Kromiadi's point of view was that the Russian Liberation Army was a 30-year Christian liberation war against Communism.2018 Traitors, Collaborators and Deserters in Contemporary European Politics of Memory Forms of Betrayal Editors: Grinchenko, Gelinada, Narvselius, Eleonora (Eds.) P 91 & 94

Radio Free Europe

In 1980, he wrote a book on his experience in the Russian Liberation Movement called ''For Land, for Freedom...'', which was published in San Francisco. He died in 1990 in

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kromiadi, Constantine 1893 births 1990 deaths People from Kars People from Kars Oblast Russian people of Greek descent Russian military personnel of World War I Counter-revolutionaries Russian military leaders Russian collaborators with Nazi Germany Russian Liberation Army personnel Russian anti-communists White Russian emigrants to the United States Emigrants from the Russian Empire to Germany White Russian emigrants to Germany