White emigrants in the fight against the Motherland: Which countries did Russian officers serve and why did they hate the USSR

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

At the end of the Civil War, a massive exodus of the Russian population abroad took place. The emigrants from Russia, who were comprehensively trained in the military sense, were in demand by the foreign leadership for personal purposes. The combat-ready white army was noted in various parts of the world. Hundreds of thousands of White Army men emigrated to China. White emigres were massively used in the military and intelligence purposes by Japan. In Europe, anti-Sovietists were noted in 1923 in the suppression of the Bulgarian communist uprising. In Spain, during the civil war, fugitive Russians fought as part of Franco's army, and then in the Spanish "Blue Division". But most of all, White émigrés were used by the leadership of Hitlerite Germany, where the Vlasov liberation army, the Cossack corps, the special SS Varyag regiment and others were formed from them.

General Fock and resistance to the Bolsheviks to the last breath

A career Russian officer of the imperial army, General Anatoly Vladimirovich Fock, was a prominent hero of his time. A promising participant in the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm fully revealed himself only in the war. On the fronts of the First World War, he established himself as a brave warrior and effective leader. However, Fock did not accept the establishment of Bolshevik power in Russia, considering the withdrawal of the Russians from the First World War as a shame organized by the new rulers in order to preserve their own power.

With firm intentions to fight Bolshevism, Fock enters the Volunteer Army. Here he commands artillery units, and also holds high positions in various headquarters of the armed forces of southern Russia. Fock did not break with the army even in exile after the fall of the White movement. Remaining an enemy of the Bolsheviks, he participated in various associations of the military emigration. Hatred of Bolshevism and awareness of the threat of the Comintern (Communist International) led him in 1937 to Spain, split by civil strife, where he joined the army of General Franco. Fock was worried about the liberation of Russia from the new regime until his last breath. Death found him on Spanish soil.

Alexey von Lampe and hatred of the Soviet regime in cooperation with the Nazis

The name of Major General Alexei Alexandrovich von Lampe is widely known to military historians far beyond the borders of Russia. After taking part in the Russo-Japanese War, the First World War and the Civil War, he found himself in exile. A. A. von Lampe went a glorious way from a military agent of the White General Wrangel to the chairman of the Russian All-Military Union, remaining an implacable enemy of the Communists all his life. During the Second World War, the white émigré fully welcomed the attack of Nazi Germany on the USSR, later joining the Vlasov movement. A. von Lampe sincerely hoped that in the future, the emigration who collaborated with the Germans would be attracted to the complete defeat of communism.

However, von Lampe's plans did not come true, and his ideological initiatives were rejected not only by the Germans, but also by Vlasov himself. In 1945, fearing to fall into the ranks of the old men mobilized by Germany, von Lampe and his family left Berlin, organizing the office of the Red Cross in Lindau. Here he helped Russian emigrants to hide from forced repatriation. Soon he was arrested for espionage, but a month later he was released at the request of the French authorities. From 1946 he lived in Munich, in 1950 he left for Paris, where he was buried.

General Baksheev in the service of the Japanese and plans to seize the Russian capital

The hero of the First World War, Alexei Baksheev, came from a family of Trans-Baikal Cossacks. For special services in the First World War, he was awarded the St. George weapon and the Order of St. George, 4th degree. In the hardest battle in July 1915, he was seriously wounded and taken prisoner in an unconscious state. He returned to service after the exchange of prisoners already in 1917 as a regiment commander and a member of the Cossack military government. During the Civil War, he took the side of the forces of a special Manchurian detachment under the command of the White Guard G. M. Semyonov. In 1919, he was elected deputy first commander and promoted to major general.

After emigrating to Manchuria, he was appointed military chieftain of the Trans-Baikal Cossack army in Harbin, where, together with like-minded people, he hatched odious plans to seize the Russian capital. Actively cooperating with the Japanese authorities, he headed the Bureau for the Affairs of Russian Emigrants, and two years later he rose to the head of the Far Eastern Union of Cossacks. After the victory of the Red Army, he was captured on the territory of Manchuria by counterintelligence and shot together with Ataman Semyonov.

General Shinkarenko and the White Guard prototype

According to the assumption of the writer B. Sokolov, the hero of the First World War Nikolai Shinkarenko could become the prototype of Colonel Nai-Tours from Bulgakov's "White Guard". In 1916, he commanded a rifle battalion, and at the end of the war he was promoted to lieutenant colonel. He was one of the first to join the anti-Bolshevik volunteer army in 1917, quickly rising to the rank of colonel at the suggestion of Wrangel. He participated in many serious clashes on the fronts of the Civil War, inflicting serious blows on the Red Army.

Shinkarenko reached the greatest heights in his military career in battles on the territory of the Crimea, where he was promoted to major general. In 1920, after the Crimean evacuation, he lived in Serbia, Germany and France, where he was engaged in literary work. Appearing as a military commander in the Spanish headquarters of General Franco in 1936, Shinkarenko without hesitation enrolls as a private in the Reketa volunteers. After the defeat of the Republicans and Franco's rise to power, Shinkarenco was granted Spanish citizenship and a pension. Former white general, who rose to lieutenant in the Spanish army, died in 1968 under the wheels of a car in the city of San Sebastian.

Cossack commander Fyodor Eliseev in the French Foreign Legion

Colonel Fyodor Ivanovich Eliseev spent a third of his life in France. The famous Kuban Cossack went from a cornet in the First World War to a circus artist in exile. After the First World War, Eliseev went over to the enemy camp for the Red Army, but with the fall of the White Army, a black series of events began in Eliseev's life. First, the Bolsheviks shot his father, then Fyodor Ivanovich himself was taken prisoner. During five years of wandering through the camps, he lost his entire family, after which he made a firm decision to flee. Having crossed the Finnish border, he joined the local Cossacks and was elected ataman in the Finnish-Kuban Cossack village.

After receiving a French visa, he left for Paris, where he accepted an offer to tour the world with a Cossack circus. After a round-the-world tour, he acquired a restaurant of Russian cuisine in France, but could not tie up with military affairs. During World War II, the ex-colonel of the Russian army joined the French Foreign Legion as a lieutenant, which defended the French colonies from Japanese aggression. In 1947, in France, Eliseev was awarded the Croix de Guerre honorary order and was demobilized. The Russian Cossack lived abroad for 92 years and died in New York.

But that same General Vlasov nevertheless, a monument was erected, and not just anywhere, but in Russia.