Video: How the fascist republic appeared in the USSR during the Great Patriotic War
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
In 1941, the Soviet Union entered a bloody battle with Nazi Germany. The Red Army retreated to Moscow, and the Germans began to rule over the abandoned territory. They established their own order everywhere except the Lokot Republic. This unique formation was founded by two Russian engineers, whose orders even the Germans did not dare to challenge.
Konstantin Voskoboinik was born in tsarist Russia, studied to be a lawyer, and with the outbreak of the First World War he volunteered for the front. After the 1917 revolution, he fought for the Bolsheviks and the so-called Greens. For many years Voskoboynik was hiding from the authorities, but then he legalized himself, received an engineering degree and in the late 1930s settled in the town of Lokot, Bryansk region. Here he met the engineer Bronislav Kaminsky, who managed to serve time for anti-Soviet statements.
In 1941, the Wehrmacht pressed the Red Army and approached Smolensk. It was at this time that Voskoboinik and Kaminsky began their active work. They organized a self-defense squad of 100 people to maintain order in the area. When the Germans came to Lokot in October, Voskoboinik was appointed chief burgomaster, and Kaminsky - his deputy. They were allowed to leave the armed detachment of the people's militia, which was named the "Russian People's Liberation Army" and eventually grew to 20,000 fighters with artillery, tanks and armored personnel carriers.
Unlike many collaborators who simply worked for the Germans, Voskoboinik tried to make a real state out of the Lokot Volost Council. He even organized his own Viking party.
The German plans did not include the emergence of a new country, but the help of the local population was very helpful. Thousands of Russian policemen who knew the area were invaluable help in the fight against the red partisans. That is why Lokot self-government received support. The Germans did not interfere in the affairs of this territory.
Voskoboinik himself established laws, appointed taxes, collected them in the "treasury". The collective farms were disbanded, the land was distributed to the peasants. Churches and schools were opened in Lokte, and its own court operated. On one occasion, two Hungarian soldiers were even tried and executed there, despite the protests of the German military command.
In January 1942, during a partisan operation, Konstantin Voskoboinik was killed, and Kaminsky took over at the helm of the Lokotsky district. Under his direct leadership was the unrecognized republic, which occupied a territory equal in area to Belgium, with a population of 580 thousand people.
Kaminsky also became the commander of a new unit. Fighters of the 29th SS Grenadier Division "RONA" was used to fight the partisans. Russians and Belarusians, now serving in the SS, later suppressed uprisings in Warsaw and Slovakia. In the USSR, they were considered traitors, and the Germans did not respect them for their cruelty and weak discipline.
With the advance of the Red Army in August 1943, the Lokot Republic ceased to exist, and a year later its second and last leader, Kaminsky, was shot by the Germans. The same fate awaited many more traitors.
Period occupation of the territory of the USSR by the troops of the Third Reich became the hardest test for our Motherland.
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