SOVIET EXILES AND THE U. S.
Fischer, George
Soviet Exiles and the U. S. Democratic 'Non-Returners' Need Our Encouragement By GEORGE FISCHER "IT TAXES A RUSSIAN to beat a Russian." This is the conclusion reached by Wallace Carroll,...
...IF THE U.S...
...authorities in Europe, moreover, liave frequently lent their support to Tsarist emigre politicos—while showing little interest or sympathy for our genuine and important allies, those recent Soviet refugees who eagerly espouse liberty and freedom...
...Nor is it enough to regard the Soviet refugees only as unmatchable sources of information on every aspect of Soviet life...
...But there are indications that a very wide following among the "non-returners" is commanded by the highly active surviving youth of Gen...
...The surprise return to Russia of the Soviet pilot, Anatole Barsov, is probably only an extreme symptom of widespread disappointment...
...We must remember that there are many, many such Russians among the Soviet exiles...
...If "It takes a Russian to beat a Russian," it is not enough merely to incorporate this concept into American military strategy, as Wallace Carroll urges...
...since World War II...
...IN THE TWILIGHT of the haunted, often illegal, existence in postwar Europe of the Soviet exiles, no one can determine with certainty either their total number or their precise coloration...
...Let the United States help them...
...guesstimates" of their total number run from 200,000 to over a million...
...Some Americans thus c o nc e i v e of all "non-returners" as pathologically anti-Soviet and therefore incapable of sober or democratic sentiments or politics...
...As Canon states, Hitler "refused to accept the aid of Soviet groups which he feared might try to put in a bill for their services at the end of the war...
...In the midst of grueling personal hardships and insecurity on the part of these fugitives from the Land of Socialism, such American treatment has already led to many a "second thought" on the drastic decision to abandon their whole Soviet existence...
...The Anti-Communist Manifesto was published —as a draft for discussion purposes—by Borba, the two-year-old journal of SBONR, the Fighting Union for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia...
...in terms of hostile cliches...
...Carroll bases his views on World War II: "The lesson of the German experience in Russia is simply this: that the decisive element in a war against the Soviet regime can be the Soviet people...
...Although Carroll's article is a welcome relief from American disinterest in this potentially crucial question, it hardly mentions a vital group...
...GOVERNMENT and the American public are ever to think in Wallace Carroll's terms, a proper understanding of and rapprochment with the presently accessible Soviet "non-returners" is clearly essential...
...Like the Soviet emigration itself, SBONR is centered in Western Germany, specifically in Munich...
...Making use of unpublished American and Nazi records, Carroll corroborates earlier reports that after June 22, 1941, "mass surrender of more than two million (Red Army) men took place" and "Soviet soldiers, peasants and townspeople, particularly those of the minority races, welcomed the Germans as liberators from a hated regime...
...This warning dramatically substantiates a point that Wallace Carroll's Life article and similar discussions by Hanson Baldwin and others have failed to stress: The present aloofness of the West from the genuinely democratic segments of the Soviet emigration is not only senseless but potentially tragic...
...He has contributed to Russian Review, the New Republic, and other periodicals...
...And, like a majority of all recent exiles from the U.S.S.R— and more than any other exile organization— SBONR and its organ pay boundless homage to Vlasov...
...Like most of the political activities of the "non-returners," neither Borba nor SBONR is officially recognized by Allied, occupation authorities, since outspoken antir Sovietism is taboo for DP'e...
...Or, put still more simply, ihe lesson is that it takes a Russian to beat a Russian...
...Embracing the questionable policy of fighting a Stalin with a Hitler, Vlasov was nevertheless distrusted and hamstrung by Nazi leaders...
...In the summer of 1948 he made a survey of Soviet refugees In Europe for the Russian Research Cantor of Harvard University...
...In 1945 Vlasov was turned over to the Soviets by U.S...
...19, 1949...
...their primary task But they also sound a categorical warning: if a war with the U.S.S.R...
...This is the conclusion reached by Wallace Carroll, psychological warfare expert and wartime European director of OWI (Li/e, Dec...
...3. A more richly integrated communal existence than either Soviet or Western society has attained as yet...
...Too many Americans also assume that "non-returners"—because they are Russian!—congenitally fit only into authoritarian patterns such as "Tsarist," "fascist," "quisling"—or "Soviet spy...
...does break out, and is accompanied by blunders like those of Hitler's invasion, Stalin will be able to galvanize the flagging loyalty of the Soviet population as he did in World War II...
...The SBONR platform calls for: 1. Economic pluralism 2. Political libertarianism and constitutionalism...
...The U.S...
...Army units, and was hung in Moscow a year later.] Some much-needed light is thrown on the present ideas of Vlasov's former followers—and many other non-returners—by a document entitled The Ideological Doctrine of the Liberation Movement of the Peoples of Russia...
...But fallacious a priori logic and writings like Isaac Deutscher's New York Times article ("Strange World of Russian 'Non-returners' ") and Geoffrey Gorer's phantasmagoric The People of Great Russia have made many Americans think of exiles from the U.S.S.R...
...General Vlasov, a Red Army hero in the 1941 defense of Moscow, was captured in 1942 and became leader of the German-sponsored "Russian Liberation Movement...
...The answer is that Hitler blundered on every point...
...The programs and publications of all these groups deal chiefly with the coming struggle against the Soviet regime...
...Political and material aid should be given without delay to the kind of Russian who, after "beating" the Soviet regime, will champion the ideals and practices of free society...
...The "nonreturners" are the many thousands of Soviet exiles who have refused to return to the U.S.S.R...
...It is particularly revealing—and heartening— that democratic groupings among Soviet exiles should turn toward Western liberalism and Russia's own democratic February Revolution, rather than to the methods or slogans of absolutism, Tsarist, Fascist, or Soviet...
...It was published in Germany last summer, and is popularly subtitled the Anti-Communist Manifesto...
...How did this chance slip through the Nazi hands...
...Stalin will succeed more easily if well-organized native "resistance" groups are not associated with the forces opposing the U.S.S.R...
...Andrei Vlasov's wartime "Russian Liberation Movement...
...If the United States is not to let this unique political capital dwindle away, if it is to encourage the most effective democratic segments of the new Soviet emigration, how and where are these to be found...
...George Fischer is Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows...
...They emphatically favor an internal anti-Stalin revolution—without outside intervention—and consider activities towards that end within the U.S.S.R...
...That group is the nevozvrashchentsy, the self-styled Soviet "non-returners...
Vol. 33 • February 1950 • No. 7
