Using archival evidence, this article reveals atrocities committed by the Varjag regiment, a nominal part of General Vlasov's anti-communist Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia, in Slovenia in the final months of World War II. The fact that the Varjag unit mistreated a civilian population that was generally supportive of the Slovene anti-communist domobranci (home guard) units challenges the myth of fraternal solidarity between the Third Reich's non-German collaborators that was trumpeted in domobranci wartime propaganda. As a corollary, this article also highlights the veil of silence that anti-communist Russian authors as well as anti-communist émigré Slovenes cast on these events from exile in the postwar period. The reticence of survivors to acknowledge or to speak of such events underscores the correlation between personal trauma and memory.
Julius Epstein, Operation Keelhaul: The Story of Forced Repatriation from 1944 to the Present (Old Greenwich, CT: Devin-Adair , 1973), 1.
2.
Jürgen Thorwald, The Illusion: Soviet Soldiers in Hitler's Armies ( New York : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974 ), 315-6.
3.
Epstein, Operation Keelhaul , 60-61.
4.
George Fischer, Soviet Opposition to Stalin: A Case Study in World War II ( Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1952), 51.
5.
This is certainly the case in Fischer, Soviet Opposition to Stalin; Sven Steenberg, Vlasov (New York: Knopf, 1970); Wilfred Strik-Strikfeldt, Against Stalin and Hitler: Memoir of the Russian Liberation Movement, 1941-45 (London: Macmillan, 1970); Thorwald, The Illusion; and Catherine Andreyev, Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement: Soviet Reality and Émigré Theories (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press , 1987).
6.
This is true of earlier works, such as Peter Huxley-Blythe, The East Came West (Caldwell, ID: Caxton , 1964), as it is of more recent studies such as Samuel Newland, Cossacks in the German Army (London : Frank Cass, 1991); and François de Lannoy, Pannwitz Cossacks, 1942-1945 (Bayeux : Heimdal, 2000).
7.
Epstein, Operation Keelhaul , 1.
8.
Nikolai Tolstoy, Victims of Yalta (London: Corgi Books, 1977), 543.
9.
Tolstoy's criticism of Lord Aldington, a former Conservative government minister, for the role he played in the repatriations as chief of staff of the British 5th Corps resulted in Tolstoy's being successfully sued for libel.
10.
Tolstoy, Victims of Yalta , 31.
11.
Franklin Lindsay , "Report of Operations Military Sub-Mission to Fourth Operational Zone Yugoslav Army of National Resistance, 15 January 1945 ," in Thomas M. Barker, Social Revolutionaries and Secret Agents: The Carinthian Slovene Partisans and Britain's Special Operations Executive (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 134.
12.
Lindsay, "Report of Operations,"133.
13.
Also spelled "Wariag" in some accounts.
14.
Mark Aarons and John Loftus, Unholy Alliance: The Vatican, the Nazis and the Swiss Banks ( New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1998), 154.
15.
Ibid., 185.
16.
Ibid.
17.
Fischer, Soviet Opposition to Stalin, 210.
18.
Aarons and Loftus, Unholy Alliance, 187.
19.
Stanko Kociper , Kar sem živel (Ljubljana : Založba mladinska k[CH1]njiga, 1996), 337-8.
20.
Mile Pavlin , Petnajsta brigada (Ljubljana : Knjižnica NOV in POS 18, 1969), 392.
21.
Janez Marolt, Darja Mihelič, Maja Žvanut , Franc Rozman, Janko Prunk, Franc Kresal , Milica Kacin-Wohinz, Tone Ferenc, Božo Repe, and Jaro Mihelač, eds., Slovenci skozi žas: Kronika slovenske zgodovine (Ljubljana: Zalobaž Mihelač , 1999), 407.
22.
Kociper, Kar sem živel , 338.
23.
Nikolai Tolstoy , The Minister and the Massacres ( London: Century Hutchinson, 1986 ), 18.
24.
Marjan Drnovšek, France Rozman, and Peter Vodopivec, eds., Slovenska kronika XX stoletja 1941-1995 (Ljubljana: Nova Revija, 1996), 83.
25.
Report from Izidor Cergolj, Informativni urad, 5 February 1945, document 66431, fascicle 115, record group Arhiv Slovenija 1912 IU-TOS, Informativni urad-Tajna obveščevalna služba (hereafter cited as AS 1912), Arhiv Republike Slovenije, Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino, Ljubljana, Slovenia (hereafter cited as ARS.)
26.
"Radijski vesti," Za blagor očetnjave, 18 November 1944, fascicle 15, record group Arhiv Slovenija 1878 Slovenski narodni varnostni zbor v operacijski coni Jadransko primorje, ARS.
27.
Fischer, Soviet Opposition to Stalin, 97.
28.
Slovensko domobranstvo, 30 November 1944, fascicle 6, record group Arhiv Slovenija 1902 Zbirka tisk nasprotnikov NOB in politične sredine (hereafter cited as AS 1902), ARS.
29.
Untitled leaflet, 1944, fascicle 24/II, AS 1902, ARS.
30.
"What does the OF want to do with Slovene children?" [leaflet], n.d., document 68329, fascicle 118, AS 1912, ARS.
31.
"How the Communist Authorities Extort the Russian Peasant" [leaflet], 1944, fascicle 24/II, AS 1902, ARS.
32.
Janez Martinc, "Ob desetletnici Vetrinjske tragedije," Zbornik koledar svobodne Slovenije (Buenos Aires: Svobodna Slovenija, 1955), 23-24.
33.
Matija Škerbec, Krivda rdeče fronte, II del (Cleveland, OH: Mohorjeve družbe, 1957 ), 108.
34.
Kociper, Kar sem živel , 372.
35.
Tolstoy, The Minister and the Massacres, 16.
36.
Ibid., 18.
37.
Ibid., 15.
38.
Ibid., 29.
39.
Ibid., 29-30.
40.
Boris Pahor and Alojz Rebula, Edvard Kocbek: Pričevalec našega časa ( Trst: Zaliv, 1975), 71.
41.
Edvard Kocbek , Tovarišija (Maribor : Založba obzorja, 1967), 347-348.
42.
Daily reports to the Intelligence Branch, 4 March 1945, document 14307, fascicle 25, record group Arhiv Slovenija 17 Slovensko domobranstvo (hereafter cited as AS 1877), ARS.
43.
Ibid., 5 March 1945, document 14308, fascicle 25, AS 1877, ARS.
44.
Ibid., 7 March 1945, document 14312, fascicle 25, AS 1877, ARS.
45.
Ibid., 8 March 1945, document 14316, fascicle 25, AS 1877, ARS.
46.
Ibid., 28 March 1945, document 14359, fascicle 25, AS 1877, ARS.
47.
Ibid.
48.
Ibid.
49.
Ibid., 3 April 1945, document 14372, fascicle 25, AS 1877, ARS.
50.
Ibid., 20 March 1945, document 14343, fascicle 25, AS 1877, ARS.
51.
Ibid., 11 April 1945, document 14391, fascicle 25, AS 1877, ARS.
52.
Ibid., 16 March 1945, document 14334, fascicle 25, AS 1877, ARS.
53.
Ibid., 28 March 1945, document 14358, fascicle 25, AS 1877, ARS.
54.
Ibid., 26 March 1945, document 14356, fascicle 25, AS 1877, ARS.
55.
Ibid., 19 March 1945, document 14340, fascicle 25, AS 1877, ARS.
56.
Ibid., 7 March 1945, document 14312, fascicle 25, AS 1877, ARS.
57.
Ibid., 28 March 1945, document 14359, fascicle 25, AS 1877, ARS.
58.
Ibid., 3 April 1945, document 14372, fascicle 25, AS 1877, ARS.
59.
Ibid., 28 March 1945, document 14359, fascicle 25, AS 1877, ARS.
60.
Ibid., 19 March 1945, document 14340, fascicle 25, AS 1877, ARS.
61.
Fischer, Soviet Opposition to Stalin, 97.
62.
Rudolf Hirschegger , "Resnica o naši borbi," Zbornik koledar svobodne Slovenije (Buenos Aires: Svobodna Slovenija, 1966), 116-7.
