Andrey Vlasov

Andrey Andreyevich Vlasov (Андрей Андреевич Власов, September 14 1901 – August 1, 1946) was a Soviet Red Army general and collaborator with Germany.

He quit the study of divinity after the Russian Revolution, briefly studying agricultural sciences instead, and in 1919 joined the Red Army fighting in the southern theatre in Ukraine, the Caucasus, and the Crimea during the Russian Civil War.

He distinguished himself as an officer and gradually rose through the ranks of the Red Army.

Vlasov joined the Communist Party in 1930.

Planned as a combined operation between the Volkhov and Leningrad Fronts on a 30 km frontage, other armies of the Leningrad Front (including the 54th) were supposed to participate at scheduled intervals in this operation.

As a lieutenant general, he commanded the 37th Army near Kiev and escaped encirclement.

He then played an important role in the defense of Moscow, as his 20th Army counterattacked and retook Solnechnogorsk.

Vlasov's picture was printed (along with those of other Soviet generals) in the newspaper Pravda as that of one of the "defenders of Moscow".

Sent to China, he acted as a military adviser to Chiang Kai-shek from 1938 to November 1939.

From February to May 1939 he was the advisor to Yan Xishan, the governor of Shanxi.

Vlasov was also the chief of staff to the head of the Soviet military mission, General Aleksandr Cherepanov.

After just nine months under Vlasov's leadership, and an inspection by Semyon Timoshenko, the division was recognized as one of the best divisions in the Army in 1940.

During the Axis-Soviet campaigns of World War II he fought (1941–1942) against the Wehrmacht in the Battle of Moscow and later was captured attempting to lift the siege of Leningrad.

After his capture he defected to Germany and headed the Russian Liberation Army (Russkaya osvoboditel'naya armiya, ROA).

In 1940, Vlasov was promoted to major general, and on June 22, 1941, when the Germans and their allies invaded the Soviet Union, Vlasov was commanding the 4th Mechanized Corps.

Vlasov was decorated on January 24, 1942, with the Order of the Red Banner for his efforts in the defence of Moscow.

Vlasov was ordered to relieve the ailing commander Klykov after the Second Shock Army had been encircled.

After this success, Vlasov was put in command of the 2nd Shock Army of the Volkhov Front and ordered to lead the attempt to lift the Siege of Leningrad—the Lyuban-Chudovo Offensive Operation of January–April 1942.

On January 7, 1942, Vlasov's army had spearheaded the Lyuban offensive operation to break the Leningrad encirclement.

With the counter-offensive in May 1942, the Second Shock Army was finally allowed to retreat, but by now, too weakened, it was surrounded and in June 1942 virtually annihilated during the final breakout at Myasnoi Bor.

After Vlasov's army was surrounded, he himself was offered an escape by aeroplane.

The general refused and hid in German-occupied territory; ten days later, on July 12, 1942, a local farmer exposed him to the Germans.

Vlasov's opponent and captor, general Georg Lindemann, interrogated him about the surrounding of his army and details of battles, then "had Vlasov imprisoned in occupied Vinnytsia."

While in prison, Vlasov met Captain Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt, a Baltic German who was attempting to foster a Russian Liberation Movement.

Strik-Strikfeldt had circulated memos to this effect in the Wehrmacht.

Strik-Strikfeldt, who had been a participant in the White movement during the Russian Civil War, persuaded Vlasov to become involved in aiding the German advance against the rule of Joseph Stalin and Bolshevism.

With Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Boyarsky, Vlasov wrote a memo shortly after his capture to the German military leaders suggesting cooperation between anti-Stalinist Russians and the German Army.

Initially this army existed only on paper and was used by Germans to goad Red Army troops to surrender; only in 1944 did Heinrich Himmler, aware of Germany's shortage of manpower, arrange for Vlasov to form a real collaborationist army formed from Soviet prisoners of war.

At the war's end, Vlasov changed sides again and ordered the ROA to aid the May 1945 Prague uprising against the Germans.

He and the ROA then tried to escape to the Western Front, but were captured by Soviet forces with the United States' assistance.

Vlasov was tortured, tried for treason, and hanged.

Born in Lomakino, Nizhny Novgorod Governorate, Russian Empire, Vlasov was originally a student at a Russian Orthodox seminary.

However, the other armies (the Volkhov Front's 4th, 52nd, and 59th Armies, 13th Cavalry Corps, and 4th and 6th Guards Rifle Corps, as well as the 54th Army of the Leningrad Front) failed to exploit Vlasov's advances and provide the required support, and Vlasov's army became stranded.

Permission to retreat was refused.

Upon his return, Vlasov served in several assignments before being given command of the 99th Rifle Division.

Timoshenko presented Vlasov with an inscribed gold watch, as he "found the 99th the best of all".

The historian John Erickson says of Vlasov at this point that [he] "was an up-and-coming man".

In 2016, in his habilitation thesis, Russian historian Kirill Alexandrov analyzed the careers of 180 Soviet generals and officers who joined the Vlasov army.

He concluded that most of them personally experienced atrocities committed by the NKVD during the Great Purge and previous purges in the Red Army, which made them disillusioned with the leadership of Stalin and motivated them to defect to the Nazis.

Crossing the Volkhov River, Vlasov's army was successful in breaking through the German 18th Army's lines and penetrated 70–74 km deep inside the German rear area.