Talk:Russian Liberation Army

Heroes/traitors
Am I the only one who thinks this article is somewhat POV in that it tries to portray the POA as heroic? I can't pinpoint an exact offending sentence, but it reads as an anti-Soviet article. For example, look at the sentence "it was declared that they were traitors.. blah blah... and then hanged." "It was declared"?? This makes it look as if it was an arbitrary decision concerning an heroic unit. But they were working for the Nazis! If that's not being a traitor, then what is? How did Britain and the US treat traitors that sided with the Nazis during WW2? 201.235.51.21 04:47, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Get used to it. The whole encyclopedia is packed with anti-Soviet POV. Everyking 04:49, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
 * The question really is, whom were they really worrking for? Were they anti-communists? Were they fascists? Apparantly a million "Soviet" people fought against their government as "anti- communist" liberators, Witness the acceptance of the invading Romanian Army in their seizure of Odessa.--Tomtom9041 16:08, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
 * In fact, Odessa was one of the cities to give the fiercest resistance to the Nazis. And I really don't understand why should the POA not be considered traitors. In all the world, people collaborating with the Axis were called exactly this way - traitors. I'm adding a POV template88.80.130.106 19:26, 30 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Given the fact that Soviet soldiers captured in perfectly understandable circumstances were considered traitors by the Stalinist state anyway, why the hell wouldn't a captured Soviet soldier join the Russian Liberation Army??? Betrayal works both ways. See what happened to the captured Soviet soldiers from Auschwitz after their 'liberation' by the Red Army.

Who should consider them traitors? Wikipedia? The article clearly states that the ROA were considered traitors by the Soviets and the Russians today. I don't see where the ROA is depicted as heroic in the entire article. And maybe Odessa is not a clear example, but Ukrainians surely did not put up a fierce resistance. If I don't get a reply in a few days I'm removing the POV. Seektrue 05:59, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I think labelling them traitors is a bit naive and blinkered. Once one reads a bit about the White Russian Emigration, the pro-Monarchist diaspora in Europe and the Russian Guards Corps it doesn't seem so black and white. In the eyes of these people, it is those who served the Soviet System who were the traitors. One should also note that anti-communist organisations existed clandestinely in Russia before the war. Many of the Russians in Axis Service had no loyalty to the Soviet State, only to their idea of God, Tsar and Russia. God Save the Tsar 04:16, 22 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Defection and treachery are objective terms. For example, noone thinks Judas is a supporter of the lawful Roman authority in Palestine. By the way, there's not a single source cited through the whole article despite all of its brave claims about "fierce resistance to the end" etc. And I would suggest putting a "no cited sources" template such are not provided for a few days. DamianOFF 13:13, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

The article must say that ROA are considered traitors also by the Russians today, there is no division between public opinion here as it is said in one section of the article that is totally not neutral. The Overwhelming majority of Russians think that ROA's soldiers were traitors of their country. If there is some reliable source that indicate it is not like that, then post it. The whole section about "Post - war porspective" is celarly written by a ROA apologist, I don't discuss his ideas, they are his business, but Wiki must stay neutral and objective and not to tell lies.

Taking into consideration that the ROA sympatizer who wrote the section about "Post-war perspective" didn't discuss the matter I'll remove the section, being it totally false and apologist, due to the fact that the public opinion consider this guys as traitors even nowadays.

whose public opinion?? Those of the Russian Emigre community would see the ROA combatants and the Russian Schutz Korps as heroes and all those who served in the Red Army as traitors to all that represents Russia. No person whose family fought for the Whites in 1917-1921 is going to see the ROA as traitors. God Save the Tsar 04:16, 22 October 2007 (UTC)


 * I disagree. Those of the Russian emigrees that understood that the Great Patriotic war was not about ideology, and that the fate of Russia was at stake and not just the fate of the Bolshevik regime - those would definately support the RKKA, not ROA or any other Nazi collaborator groups. With respect, Ko Soi IX 10:14, 8 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I respectfully disagree. Many of us whose families were forced to leave our homeland due to Lenin, Stalin and his lynchmen do not see WW2 as a great patriotic war nor the Red Army as heroes, for us that was between 1917-1921. Only one force fought under the true Russian Flag, and it wasn't the Bolshevik Army. I do not know one person in the Russian Emigre community where I live (in Eastern Australia) who would view the second world war as you have described it. God Save the Tsar 04:16, 22 October 2007 (UTC)


 * So, those are the ones who didn't understand that the Great Patriotic war was not about ideology and that the fate of Russia was at stake etc. What are you disagreeing with? With respect, Ko Soi IX 00:28, 18 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Because one disagrees with Ko Soi IX does not mean one does not understand. Conversely, because you do not understand that a Russia under Lenin & Stalin wasn't Holy Russia in any way, shape or form one could ask what are you disagreeing with?? Funny how Stalin never once showed any sign of Russian nationalism before the war, in fact his disgusting regime was virulently internationalist, and then suddenly decided to make this 'the great patriotic war' after he packed his pants when tens of thousands of Russians willingly volunteered for the German armed forces. God Save the Tsar 04:16, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Ivan Bunin, when asked in 1934, why is he so against bol'shevism, replied "..bol'shevism... morbidly answered this question itself... there was not such a low, lying, evil and despotic regime in human history". Same Ivan Bunin, in 1943: "...Stalin is flying to Persia, and I'm trembling, that, God forbid, something might happen to him as he travels". According to a close person, "the war...scared Bunin; he feared the fate of Russia for decades and even centuries ahead, and this deep fear covered in his mind everything that was still unacceptable to him in the Soviet regime". I hope this illustrates my point. And, just for the record, for me, Russia is my otechestvo, regardless of the form it had over the ages, be it feodal, tsarist, communist or even modern "liberal". Every period had it's heroes, it's martyrs, and it's criminals. Surely, to those, who escaped the wrath of the people fighting for freedom (with predictable results in a country with despotic tradition), they are no more than mere "lynchmen". But it was never that simple. А Бог царя хранил, пока последний царь не отрёкся от престола. With respect, Ko Soi IX 13:56, 24 October 2007 (UTC)


 * No argument here on most of your points, but to me and most descendants of the White emigration the USSR was not a Russian nation, it was an internationalist and brutal regime based on Russian soil. Therefore, I feel that fighting for the ROA was not treason to Russia, as at that time 'Russia' did not exist as a nation state. All in all, its all a personal POV anyway I guess. I am far more sympathetic to the Russiches Schutzkorps (Russian Guard Corps) than the ROA, and will take issue with anyone who labels the Guard Corps traitors.   —Preceding unsigned comment added by God Save the Tsar (talk • contribs) 05:51, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not that idealistic. I'm well aware, that the Holy Russia you speak of was also a tyranical, imperialist state, and that most of it's emperors were slave-owners. Or that the rise of the Soviet Union is associated with tremendous losses of lives. Or that the great conqueror and empire builder Ivan Grozny fried several people on large frying pans, made specifically for this purpose. So? All those ROA, "Russiches" Schutzkorps etc. were enemies to the state, which encompassed the overwhelming majority of the Russians, and as such, enemies to Russia. Of them, those were traitors who were Soviet citizens, especially those who had made a military oath. Just because idealistic ideological opinions on this matter exist among small groups that separated from Russia a long time ago, they should not be presented as anything on par to the facts. If one makes an oath and than breaks it, he's a traitor. Why he's chose to become a traitor is a different story. With respect, Ko Soi IX 14:15, 14 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Fair enough, then the entire Russian Provisional Government of 1917 were traitors, so were the mutinous Imperial Army forces that forced the Tsar to abdicate as well as the Red Army and the Bolsheviks. BTW it wasn't that far removed from 1923 to 1941. The Schutzkorps was made up primarily of White Army veterans, and never once made any oath to the Soviet State. They simply are not traitors. The fact that you compare the Soviet state (a 20th century institution) to Ivan the Terrible 400 years earlier speaks volumes for the relative morality of Stalin and the Communist government. For all their faults, and I'm not a completely naive monarchist who believes that the Tsarist state was perfect, the later Romanovs were not bloodthirsty tyrants, otherwise Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and co would never have been exiled or imprisoned, simply exterminated. In hindsight, the Tsars damned well should have done it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by God Save the Tsar (talk • contribs) 01:03, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Of course, they all were traitors to Russian Empire. During the civil war, both the reds and the whites were revolutionaries. However, eventually the Empire became the Soviet Union. Those who made a pledge to it, and broke it, were traitors. The "russian" schutzkorps was made up of unfortunate fools who allied with the greatest enemy Russia has ever faced to liberate her. Technically, those fools weren't traitors to the USSR, just enemies, and I never claimed otherwise. I can as easily compare other modern states to ancient regimes - the British starving millions of bengalis - no better than tzars of ancient hydralic empires like egypt or babylon, the Americans burning and bombing millions of vietnamese civilians - no better than Chingiz himself, etc. etc. The last three Romanov emperors can be compared to Brezhnev in regards to conditions in which they reigned. Stalin could be compared to Peter the Great. Stalin achieved much more in statecraft, aquired more lands and defeated a considerably stronger adversary with relatively lower losses - yet we have St.Petersburg, but not Stalingrad. With respect, Ko Soi IX 14:55, 15 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Hey guys. I think it's pretty safe to say the RLA soldiers were not pro-Nazi at any moment - they were anti-Stalin. Stalin commited genocide on the Russians, too (killing, starving, etc. millions). --HanzoHattori 02:13, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
 * What fucking genocide 188.242.189.143 (talk) 17:37, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Present more points of view, instead of removing what you don't like
To the person who removed the entire section devoted to offering perspectives: you have no right to remove something simply because you dislike it. The point of that section was to provide a field for different points of view, pro and con. You are welcome to add to the "Detractors" section as many points as you wish.

The question of the ROA's motives is quite "open for discussion" in Russia to this day - it is hardly in the same category of such things as holocaust denial.

Just a few examples, about four years ago the well known "Ekho Moskvi" radio program held a survey where merely 60% of the respondants viewed Vlasov and his army specifically as "traitors". That is hardly a unanimous opinion. The subject was last raised by the Russian press when Putin visited the Czech republic and was at a cemetary where ROA troops were buried (he also spoke in the same hall where the Prague Manifesto was proclaimed). Books are printed in Russian presses with respectable circulations that argue against Vlasov being called a traitor. A television documentary about Vlasov was produced in the mid 90's and shown on Russian television which was quite objectively presented. Needless to say if we take the Russian emigre point of view, one will discover a heavy pro-Vlasov sympathy, and these people are ethnic Russians. There are also people in the west who do not view Vlasov as a traitor, strictly speaking.

In conclusion, your argument that "everyone" (or nearly everyone, whatever that is supposed to mean) believes that Vlasov and the ROA are traitors is quite false. Tgrain 05:13, 11 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Tgrain, I think you missed the point, you are probably a right-wing supporter of this group and there is nothing bad in it, but your opinion is shared by almost none here in Russia. And you have also to add sources to some facts that are quite disputable ( and note! Sources taken from neutral sites, not taken from fascist sites ). I don't know one single person who have a good opinion about them, for sure if we search you can find someone who likes them, as you can find someone who like Adolf Hitler or Mao Tze Tung, but this doesn't mean that Russians are "heavily divided" about these issues or these persons. For example, in Ukraine the UPA has a strong support and in that case you can say that people is "divided", but here pratically noone like ROA, on the contrary almost everyone think they were fighting for the wrong cause. So I'll remove again the issue, because if you want to make propaganda for them, you can built your own site, Wiki is not the right place. If you want to add a paragraph about this, you have to add a reliable source with a statistics that certify that Russians are "highly divided" about this. Until that day, there is no space here for your propaganda and for lies. At the same time, I can add that ROA has some support between Russian emigre and right-wing groups.

With respect. (Henryborowitz 16:20, 11 December 2006 (UTC))


 * It could be argued that Russia still venerates it's historical criminals, like Stalin - so it might be no surprise that the nation still vilifies those associated with Vlasov even 60+ years afterwards.


 * And for the record, at least one Nobel Prize winner argued *for* the Vlasov men, and that many of those involved in ROA detachments were caught between the millstones, being left with an unenviable choice: Hitler or Stalin? Fascism or Bolshevism? Die as a POW inside a Nazi death camp, or die as a "spy" in Gulag upon returning to Russia?...


 * It probably goes without saying that "neutral" in this case is fairly absurd: If you argue that the Vlasov men were "Vlasovites" and traitors, you're biased - if you argue against this and state that they had no choice and were acting as "anti-Bolsheviks", you're biased. Either way, the situation is far from clear cut, and both sides have non-neutral opinions.


 * So let's dispense with the neutrality cover, and allow folks both sides of the coin here, shall we? Let both sides speak... unless of course we favor censorship.

(Kh123 January, 2009) —Preceding undated comment was added at 01:30, 21 January 2009 (UTC).


 * I strongly disagree that the voice of traitor apologets deserves any serious weight. For instance, equating the genocidal policies of the nazis in regards to the treatment of Soviet POW's (3 to 3 1/2 million deaths, out of ~5 1/2 million prisoners taken; 60% mortality rate) and the treatment of those same POW's after their return (out of about 1.8 million people some 339 thousands were sent to labour camps; most of them survived until the 1953 pardons, and, given the large scale of collaborationism, it's not unreasonable to assume that most of them were guilty) is simply bad taste and is unscientific; and as for the Nobel prize... Arafat had one. With respect, Ko Soi IX (talk) 04:34, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

You are practicing censorship
Mr. Borowitz,

The Wikipedia is equally not a place for your brand of censorship, nor propaganda via censorship where you remove an entire section you are not pleased with. This is not in the spirit of the Wikipedia.

In addition to the statistic I already provided, it is an indesputable fact that there are such people in Russia's academic community who view the ROA as a patriotic movement - for example, Professor Kirill Alexandrov of St. Petersburg University who has published three books on the subject of the ROA and was featured in three historical documentary films aired on Russian television. Another example, a well known dissident, Valery Senderov, has written repeated articles in support of the ROA - and he cannot be classified by any means as a fascist, having criticised the Soviet government for antisemitism and writing frequent articles against right wing extremism.

The Posev publishing house continues to publish over a dozen books on the Russian liberation movement, and Posev is hardly classifiable as a "fascist" publishing house.

Stray away from your stereotyping and keep in mind that I am also a Russian, have lived in Russia, and have had family that fought in the Red Army during WWII. Russia is my country as much as it is yours. Извольте вести себя прилично!

Tgrain 04:38, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

No, I just helped you to make the article more balanced and truthful
Tgrain, I'm glad to see that you modified your article including the fact that the majority of Russians still consider Vlasov a traitor. I think that with the edits you have done this paragraph is acceptable and that you understood that the previous version was unbalanced and partisan. I think you have done a good job in making the article more neutral and i thank you for taking into account what I was saying ( that it is also what the majority of Russians think ) instead of making an unproductive edit war. I'll then add a pair of things on "detractors". My regards! (Henryborowitz 12:04, 12 December 2006 (UTC))

That is not what I call "help"
Mr. Borowitz,

Thank you for your "praise", I did indeed strive to paint a larger picture than before. Unfortunately there are no daily polls conducted about the Vlasov movement so it is difficult to properly prove that the majority of Russians think of Vlasov this way or that way. It is certainly not a unanimous or near unanimous opinion as you previously insisted, that is beyond a doubt. This cannot be compared to "Neo Nazi-ism".

I maintain that your attitude of removing an entire section was wrong and disrespectful to the way the Wikipedia is supposed to operate. I would have sooner come to meet you halfway if you had decided to modify that section instead of deleting it entirely, and engauged in a more respectful two way dialog.

Tgrain 16:59, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Tgrain, I didn't want to seem disrespectful and I'm sorry if I gave you this impression, anyway now that the section is written in a very objective way, I have really nothing to oppose. Anyway, just to go a bit "OT", coming back to your previsous statement that I have "stereotypes", if you are interested, I never generalize about this or that group, for sure there was someone in the ROA who was in good faith and had good intentions but my general opinion about them remains negative, sorry and yes, I think they were traitors. But notice, I don't think anything bad about White emigres, some of whom, correct if I'm wrong, were even Pro-Soviet and seeked reconciliation with their former enemies and even took part in anti-Nazi resistence in some countries of western Europe. I think that the Civil War is all another issue, in my opinion there was good and bad in both sides. Many Whites were loyal to the Tsar, to their Country and there were sincere democratics among them, on the other hand, many Reds were in fact people who wanted to help the poor, to create a more equal society ( with wrong methods and the result was bad, but the original intention was good ) and to built a Russia that was free from western countries interests. There were heroes and villains on both sides, you are a White sympatizer but for example, do you think that Brusilov ( who was a monarchist ) was a bad person because he choiced to side with the Reds? And what about the many Kadet officers who decided to join the Reds because their troops decided so? So why to describe as barbarians this or that side when we know well that there were both good and bad persons among them? I think that these divisions don't help, we're all Russians, let's search a reconciliation and let's stay united against the nowadays menaces instead of arguing about things happened 90 years ago like the Civil War. I hope this clearified my position. My regards, wish you all the best. (Henryborowitz 01:40, 13 December 2006 (UTC))

Mr. Borowitz,

To be honest I don't think this is an appropriate forum to discuss our personal political views, whatever they may be. For me to explain who exactly I'm pro and what my views are on this or that subject is too complicated and unnecessary for our purposes here. It would be a different matter if we were both sitting behind a чашка чая, which we don't have an opportunity to do here...

All I ask is that in the future, please refrain from the kind of editing you did. I very honestly tried to present several arguments in that section when I initially wrote it. Even if only one tenth of the Russian population held to the pro-ROA views, it would have been wrong to exclude their argumentation from the article. You could have just as well simply modified that section yourself and said "Russian public opinion overall is critical..." etc. That would have been a much better approach.

My best

Tgrain 17:18, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

General Bunyachenko?
Who? From the context, an important Vlasov deputy. In this article (all of Wikipedia?) this guy even has no name. --HanzoHattori 23:41, 16 January 2007 (UTC) - Уважаемый г..HANZOHATTORI! Если Вы хотите быть таким вежливым, привожу имя и отчество НАШЕГО УВАЖАЕМОГО ГЕНЕРАЛА БУНЯЧЕНКО -СЕРГЕЙ КУЗЬМИЧ. (Полковник РККА) --- The full name is: SERGEY KUZMICH BUN*YACHENKO/ Greetings to WIKPEDIA! If you wish to find out the percentage of "FOR" and "AGAINST" in regard to the *RLD* and "ROA* itself - please visit my W-Page   Respectfully SD

Red Cross agreement?
Some also volunteered in order to flee Nazi POW camps, notorious for starving the Soviet prisoners to death (Stalin refused to sign the Red Cross agreement, believing that all soldiers must commit suicide before surrender).

What purpouse does the later part of that sentence serve? Stalin's stance on this issue is totally irellevant, it is well documented that the conditions in these POW camps constituted a warcrime by Germany. The Stalin comment seems to serve a single purpouse, to put the blame for these conditions on the Soviet Union and detract from the NAZI crimes. I therefore propose deleting the (Stalin refused to sign the Red Cross agreement, believing that all soldiers must commit suicide before surrender) sentence. That information is already covered at a later point of the article.--Caranorn 12:15, 19 February 2007 (UTC) I partially agree. While it is a valid point and a historic fact that the soldiers already by august '41 were under a decree to kill other soldiers who ran or who let them selves be captured, and all soldiers were expected to end their lives before allowing themselves to be imprisoned, it does not actually represent a point in the sentence you mention. So I tend to agree. --Mjjohansen 18:46, 25 February 2007 (UTC)


 * From what I understand, Stalin chose to ignore the Geneva Convention regarding POW's. If this is true, then he contributed directly to the miserable conditions that the Nazis created for (specifically) Russian prisoners of war.

--User:Kh123\Kh123; January 2009 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kh123 (talk • contribs) 01:37, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I added the Gulag archipelago as a reference, I believe that Alexandr Solzhenitsyn portrayed the people who were involved in a very human capacity, caught between two very difficult situations: Being tortured and shot in the lubyanka, or worked to death in the labour camps on the russian side, because the were all imprisoned by the state for a few reasons, or fighting on the other side against their fellow men. Suicide before surrender? Who can rightly ask that of any man for his own ideals, and what wwould *you* have done given the same choice? These people had no other choice. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Skjoldar (talk • contribs) 07:10, 20 February 2009 (UTC)


 * This is a simple case of delegation of responsibility, blaming Stalin for Nazi crimes. Nazi Germany was a signatory of Geneva Convention regarding POW's, hence they were bound by it to treat the prisoners they took a certain way, regardless of whether the prisoners were from a state who signed the convention, or from a state that didn't. Since the nazis fought a war of extermination in the East, the nazi leadership chose not to fullfil this responsibility. USSR, on the other hand, not being a signatory, had no such obligations (if I remember correctly, one of the reasons this didn't fly for Stalin (or at least the declared reason) was that it required different treatment to officers and soldiers). With respect, Ko Soi IX (talk) 04:22, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Flag ?
Did the Vlasov army have a specific flag ? I read somewhere that it used this flag (right), which was similar to the former naval ensign of Russia. Is this true or did they actually use standard german flags ? The blue cross on Vlasov's grave may indicate that this is right, but a source would be nice. Jean-Jacques Georges (talk) 16:38, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
 * AFAIK, they used a pre-Revolutionary (and present-days) Russian tricolor, although I am not sure if they were allowed to use it officially.--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:02, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

After the declaration of the independence of the ROA Army from Germany, towards the end of the war, the tricolor was officially used. 70.22.227.83 (talk) 04:54, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Improved rank insignia
I do not think that this rank insignia chart is "improved" at all. My major concerns are that a non-existent category, enlisted, is used, and that there are no translisteration of the Cyrillic letters. The graphic form is in itself, although widely used for Nazi-German ranks (but no others), rather ugly. Creuzbourg (talk) 19:50, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Higher command
Who did the commander of the army report to, in military and/or political realms? What higher formation was it subordinate to? The article gives no clue how the formation fit into German forces. —Michael Z. 17:21, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Soviets were Allies!
There seems to be the idea that only US,GB,F were Allies but the USSR was as well. "they were then forcefully handed over to the Soviets by the Allies" That was Western Allies handing them over to the Eastern Allies. One needs to bear in mind how many in the administration of the US were Communist sympathizers then as well. So it doesn't come too much as a surprise. 105.0.0.164 (talk) 06:24, 19 December 2023 (UTC)