The Hidden Russia: My Ten Years as a Slave Laborer

By Nikolai Krasnov

The Hidden Russia, first published in 1960, is a detailed recounting of the author’s ten-years as a political prisoner inside the prisons and slave labor camps of the former Soviet Union. From the mock-trials and cells of the infamous Lubyanka, to the freezing boxcars and inhuman conditions, beatings and deprivations of the Siberian camps, Nikolai Krasnov paints a bleak picture of daily life in the Russian prison system established by the Communists. In the freezing mud huts of the Siberian Correctional Labor Camps Krasnov learned that hunger and brutality can reduce inmates as well as their slave masters to a common denominator of slovenly bestiality where “crime in the labor camps exceeds all dimensions.” Even so, even under the most brutal conditions the literary eyes of the author were able to see some human decency. Whether jammed in the “icebox” freight car, tortured in a dreadful prison, or laboring animal-like in the muddy tundra there was for him always the memory of the love of his family. There persisted always his love of Russia. “The Russian people are strong and tough...they have survived more than one tempest...the future lies with the people not the government.” Through his torture there yet gleams a poetic appreciation of Mother Russia. “Outside my window the spring sun was still smiling, the cloudless sky was like an inverted bowl of brilliant pale blue enamel. Cabbage butterflies fluttered by in pairs...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Burtyrki Books
• Release date: Jan 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781839742163

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Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

THE HIDDEN RUSSIA

My Ten Years as a Slave Laborer

By

N. N. Krasnov, Jr.

The Hidden Russia was originally published in 1960 by Henry Holt and Company, Inc., New York.

• • •

Dedication

To the memory of my grandfather General Peter Krasnov, of my father Nikolai Krasnov, of my uncle Semyon Krasnov, and of all those who, together with them, suffered the death of martyrs at the hands of the executioners of our land and our people.

Table of Contents

Contents

Table of Contents 4

Foreword 5

Preface 7

Prologue — From a Diary That Was Never Written 8

1 — Betrayal at Lienz 11

2 — Judenburg—In the Hands of Soviet Soldiers 27

3 — Lubyanka Prison—In the Hands of Soviet Police 47

4 — Separation in Lefortovo Military Prison 61

5 — Life and Death in Butyrki Prison—Prelude to the Labor Camps 80

6 — A Soviet Court and Krasnaya Presen Prison 90

7 — By Freight from Moscow to Mariinsk 106

8 — In a Siberian Camp 113

9 — Special Camps for Political Prisoners 130

10 — Last Days of the Special Camps 143

11 — Talks with Fellow Prisoners 157

12 — After Stalin Died 164

13 — At Large But Not Free 177

14 — In the Steppes of Central Asia 189

15 — The Way Back 209

16 — Hail and Farewell to Russia 225

Epilogue 229

Appendix 232

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 234

Foreword

Like Dante’s Inferno this beautifully written account of Krasnov’s suffering is fascinating. That the story is true makes the book priceless as documentary proof that all is not as secure in the Soviet Union as Khrushchev and his clique of conspirators would have us think.

The author, N. N. Krasnov, Jr., like Pasternak, is Russian. He thinks as a Russian. He loves Russia. He respects the honesty of the Russian people.

Judged as literature The Hidden Russia can stand on its own. It has the warm feeling of human beings struggling against the cruelty and indifference of the Soviet system—a system which works to the death political as well as criminal prisoners for the value of their labor and the patient destruction of its opposition.

Krasnov’s experience in Lubyanka, Lefortovo, and Butyrki prisons taught him that there are four types of Soviet oblique pressure...isolation, lack of oxygen, lack of knowledge of time, and quiet.

In the freezing mud huts of the Siberian Correctional Labor Camps Krasnov learned that hunger and brutality can reduce inmates as well as their slave masters to a common denominator of slovenly bestiality where crime in the labor camps exceeds all dimensions. Even so, even under the most brutal conditions the literary eyes of the author were able to see some human decency. Whether jammed in the icebox freight car, tortured in a dreadful prison, or laboring animal-like in the muddy tundra there was for him always the memory of the love of his family. There persisted always his love of Russia. The Russian people are strong and tough...they have survived more than one tempest...the future lies with the people not the government.

Through his torture there yet gleams a poetic appreciation of Mother Russia. "Outside my window the spring sun was still smiling, the cloudless sky was like an inverted bowl of brilliant pale blue enamel. Cabbage butterflies fluttered by in pairs...

I, as a military government officer on my way to be commanding general in Berlin, saw the followers of General Vlasov being turned over to the Soviet executioners. Krasnov was one of them. The cries of these men, their attempts to escape, even to kill themselves rather than to be returned to the Soviet Union against which they had fought still plague my memory. Krasnov and his followers consider they were betrayed by the British. I’m not sure that betrayal is the correct word but certainly if the British and Americans had at the time twenty-twenty foresight instead of now having twenty-twenty hindsight Vlasov’s fighters for freedom, fighters against the Soviet regime, would not have been turned over to the Soviet Union. In that event there would be no story, The Hidden Russia, and we would be deprived of a great book. Through Krasnovs ten-year odyssey we have authentic documentation of the lingering fate of twenty million Russians who constitute the world’s greatest chain gang.

At the end of the book is an appendix giving the nine articles extracted from documents formulated at the Yalta Conference, February 4-11, 1945, and signed by J. Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston S. Churchill. This is typical of documents signed at the ending of World War II—documents which sound reasonable in content but which have enabled the Soviet government to do injustice to millions of persons, citizens of Russia as well as non-citizens.

Shown in this remarkable book, The Hidden Russia, the Russian people, not the Russian government, are our only real hope for enduring peace.

FRANK L. HOWLEY

Brig. General USA ret.

Vice-president, New York University

Preface

Let the reader not look in these pages for vivid imagery and polished phrases because I bear the name of Krasnov and am a descendant of Peter Krasnov, bard of the Cossack world and old Russia. What I have tried to do here is to write with sincerity and truthfulness, as a minor chronicler, about the events I witnessed, beginning with Lienz and ending, for me, in a miraculous escape to freedom.

The more than ten years I spent behind the Iron Curtain left indelible, never-to-be-forgotten memories. Indeed, I have no right to forget. It would be criminal to do so. I must remember, and use what human capacity and art I can muster to share my memories with all who wish to know the truth.

I am only one of thousands who passed as prisoners along the line from Lienz to Judenburg to Moscow and the Arctic Circle; but one of very few to return to life in the free world. Those who returned have no right to be silent, for silence can only condone the numberless crimes committed by those in power, the enemies of Russia, at home and abroad.

I shall always remember my grandfather’s parting injunction: Do not try to dazzle anyone by the beauty of your language. Do not imagine yourself to be a writer. If ever you get back, back to freedom, speak and write the truth. The truth about communism, the truth about the people. Make every effort to remember, to note, to fix everything in your mind so that you will be able to pass on to future generations the unvarnished truth about the betrayal, the broken promises, the sufferings undergone by Russia.

I beg the reader to accept my book as nothing more than the memories of an ordinary man, without looking for sensational stories, plots, or special heroes. My story is the reflection in a single tear of all the infinite martyrdom through which my country is passing. Its only merit lies in its sincerity, which has not been sacrificed for the sake of literary effect.

It is not the purpose of my book to spread hatred or arouse a spirit of revenge, but rather to act as a warning against the terrible, irreparable consequences of treaties such as those made at Yalta, Teheran, and Potsdam.

Russia exists. Her people are alive. Her spirit is alive. And when she awakens she will take to her heart all her children who have longed for her resurrection not for their own sakes but for hers.

—N.K.

Prologue — From a Diary That Was Never Written

A cart piled high with freshly felled tree trunks creaks along....

Eight ragged slaves, summoning their last strength, haul the cart to the accompaniment of yells from guards and the savage barking of watchdogs. Weary, their legs trembling from strain, they slip and founder in the mud. The hauling strap cuts deep into ones shoulder, the hauling strap of the slave who replaces the beast of burden in the Correctional Labor Camps of the Soviet Union.

Their breathing, like the pumping of a piston, comes whistling from their lungs. Their fists are cramped to their chests in a vain effort to stop the ghastly sound. It seems as though at any moment, with the noise of a taut string, the muscles in these pitiful, hunger-withered bodies must snap.

Step after step. Day after day. Through rain and snow. Against lashing winds and black clouds of pitiless insects. The column of two-legged beasts of burden, harnessed to carts laden with coal or lumber, moves on.

Always eight in a team.

Hauling straps over raw chafed shoulders.

Step after step.

Day after day.

How tired I am. How tired we all are. Sleep. To sleep and not wake up. Not to feel hunger and cold. Sleep the sleep of the dead....

Death! Is not that the only way out of this freezing purgatory? How easy it would be to give in to it. All you need to do is step out of the column, throw off your strap, and start to run.

Let them shoot....

The rain streams down the collar of the water-soaked quilted jacket. The rain streams down off the cap and blinds the eyes. Hey you! Step on it. Keep hauling! What are you crawling around for like a louse on a wet body! Move along! The guards are in bad humor because they have to stand around in the rain on our account.

Each team of eight—bound together in harness, bound together until death—slips, falls, gasps for breath, but they haul...they haul the load, the building material for the socialism they abhor.

There are hundreds of thousands of these teams, forcing themselves beyond their strength to do this senseless work, like slaves in the days of the Pharaohs, like the slaves who hauled the slabs of stone to build the pyramid for Cheops.

We too are building...to the cracking of whips, the barking of dogs, the foul language of our drivers. We are building a prison, a prison for the Russian people, a prison for the whole complacent and blind world, for all humanity. Every bit of coal that is mined, every load of minerals taken from the earth, every tree cut down, every brick, every early grave, support, sustain, and exalt those who have surrounded themselves with the Iron Curtain. This building material also goes, by land and by sea, to other lands where it will eventually build prisons of universal forced labor, to attract people who are always ready to trade, for whom no money is tainted, who do business with cannibals.

Day after day slaves swarm around in labor camps like ants, blind laborers doomed to eternal work and ignominious death.

Condemned by some diabolical evil, we die from starvation, we fall to the ground from exhaustion, we flicker out like gutted candles, working in mines, laying roads, felling trees in MVD camps strewn over the Soviet Union. With our own hands we are building the socialism we abhor.

Raw wood crackles in the stove. Acrid smoke chokes you and makes your eyes water. There’s a stench in the barracks, and dampness, and quarreling. Whoever is fortunate enough to get there first hangs his wretched clothing near the stove. Clouds of steam rise from the quilted jackets, the ragged trousers and vests. These lucky ones sit with their streaming eyes on their belongings. If they doze off their clothing will be gone and next morning there will be nothing to put on to go out into the cold; yet go you must, even though you are naked.

Most of the prisoners are already stretched out on their bunks. They haven’t bothered to take off their wet clothing. Rheumatism? Pneumonia? Does it make any difference?

Yes, it does make a difference.

At night when you cannot sleep, when you are doubled up with a barking, racking cough, when your whole body aches with pain or hunger, then you suddenly know that it does make a difference. You know that you want to live, that you must live.

What if all at once...?

Yes, all at once it could happen, but you must wish for it with all your being.

You must close your eyes tight and put your fingers in your ears so that you neither see nor hear. Then you can tear yourself away from the stinking barracks and go off into your memories...you see again your mother’s sweet face, the tender, loving look of your wife. You bury yourself under the cover of your past, your unforgettable past, as you would under a blanket.

How hopelessly, bitterly, like small children, some grown-up, mature, even elderly people can cry. In the darkness of the night their tears flow in floods. And how fervent their hidden prayers! How large to them is the tiny little sign of the cross made by their cramped fingers under wet vests, right over their hearts.

And their lips murmur, Mama...Lili...

It’s hard to get up in the morning. You drink some hot water, swallow a piece of stone-like bread, and go out to put on your hauling harness, but your thoughts of home and your nightly prayer give you the moral power to endure.

I will live! I must live!

But I cannot write. There’s no place to do it. Nothing to write on. Yet I dare not forget I gave my word. If I live, if I come back I must remember everything, beginning with Lienz....

Let the strap tear into my shoulder. Let my breathing rattle in my chest. Let my heart pound like that of a hunted animal. This twentieth-century beast of burden will write his diary in his head.

1 — Betrayal at Lienz

It was spring. The sun poured down its rays. Bees hummed and birds chirped. The Alpine uplands were emerald green.

It was the spring of 1945.

I can see the bridge across the boisterous Drau River and the tidy little town of Lienz unharmed by the war, the neat little houses, the gardens, the beautiful Roman Catholic church, and the house used by the staff of General Domanov and his Cossack detachments.

At the time it seemed to all of us that the worst was behind us. To be sure the war had not ended with the freeing of Russian territory, for which many thousands of Russians had sacrificed their lives. To be sure it was not pleasant to recall the last months in Northern Italy, the campaign in Austria, the day of surrender to the English.

Perhaps things had not turned out exactly as we had wished, yet for men who have looked death in the face more than once the very consciousness that the war was over and that we had escaped falling into the hands of either the Italian partisans or the Soviet troops was cause enough for rejoicing.

Who of us could have thought that May, the month that sobs with thunderstorms and laughs with roses, would be for so many of us the last May in our lives?

As they pulled out of Italy the Cossack detachments of General Domanov lost all military discipline. There was no one to blame for this. There were no military encounters, except occasional exchanges of shots with partisans. The confusion resulted from the varied groups of men who from time to time joined General Domanov’s forces. First among these were the reinforcements which were constantly being sent to Domanov by the Germans who were anxious to rid themselves as painlessly as possible of self -constituted detachments. Then, at railroad junctions and elsewhere in the rear of the army, the numbers were increased by groups of former Soviet prisoners of war, made up of men who had gone over to the Germans right on the field of battle. But the factor that disrupted discipline the most was the unexpected appearance of a heterogeneous band of men from the Caucasus who wanted to join the Domanov detachments. Well armed with automatic rifles, clad in German uniforms, but speaking the seventeen different dialects of their country, they had gone through fire, flood, and hell at the time of the famous pacification after the Warsaw rising.

These accidents of circumstance were responsible for the undermining of authority in General Domanov’s best troops, the backbone of his detachments. The newcomers indulged in looting along the main highway, raped women, burned settlements. Their misconduct threw a shadow over those who behaved with strict military propriety, those who had come to fulfill a duty, to fight against communism, who believed also that the victory of the Western Allies would not be the end of the fight to save Russia.

In addition to these self-constituted detachments General Domanov was literally overrun with every kind of refugee—old people, women, children, families of émigrés, and those hapless forces (Ost-Arbeiter) who, hearing of the approach of Russian troops, overcame the most dreadful handicaps and trials to reach us.

When you add to these miscellaneous groups the families of the Domanov troops, you can possibly get a rough idea of the confusion in the army during the last days of the war in Northern Italy. I saw it in particular in Tolmezzo, a small town where the Cadet Engineers which I commanded were quartered.

With the news of Germany’s capitulation all of us moved into Upper Austria, to the town of Lienz. Our men were quartered in nearby Ober-Drauburg.

The move was accomplished with very little trouble. We were met and partially disarmed by the English division which had previously arrived there. General Domanov assigned me as aide-de-camp to General Vassiliev, who immediately sent me and a woman interpreter by the name of Rotova to staff headquarters of the English division.

The English general received us at once and very graciously. He listened attentively as the interpreter delivered the message from General Vassiliev: In the name of General Domanov and of all the detachments which had surrendered, General Vassiliev asked that we be considered English prisoners of war. He asked that the refugees be put under the protection of the English crown. As for the rest of us, the military, he asked no lenience, no indulgence, but merely pointed out that we were fully aware of our status as defeated soldiers and prisoners of war.

The Englishman smiled gently, nodding his graying head in a friendly way. When he had heard the whole message he asked the interpreter to convey his reply to the effect that the English were well able to appreciate and respect a defeated adversary and that they never harm their prisoners of war. The war is over. The victors and the vanquished must now beat their swords into plowshares and try as quickly as possible to establish a peaceful life. When he had finished, still smiling, he invited us to be his guests at lunch.

Not one of us, even for a second, had any doubt about the word of this English general. How could we do other than believe this royal officer of high rank? Joyfully and filled with high hopes we returned to Ober-Drauburg and passed the glad tidings on to both the military and the refugees.

They all heaved a sigh of relief. They felt that they were blessed with good fortune, because they knew the dire lot of their fellow countrymen who had been unable to escape from Soviet-occupied territory.

I recall bits of conversations between old émigrés and the more recent ones who had lived under the Soviet regime and were always on the alert for trouble. The older ones were fervent in assuring these newer ones, who felt that they had been betrayed by fate and by their fellow human beings, that there now lay before them, without any doubt, the prospect of a quiet life as ordinary citizens—well, yes, as émigrés, but in territory occupied by the army of the great and civilized British monarchy, bound by close ties to our former Russian dynasty.

I recall too the furtive, scarcely audible whispering that went on, to the effect that if anyone got into trouble it would, of course, not be the old émigrés, for in the twenty years of their wanderings they had acquired rights of citizenship in the free world.

Then there was the talk among the officers of the Domanov detachments. I remember the questioning eyes and the longing for reassurance of those who had come to us from over beyond. For them to be prisoners of the English, or rather the West, instead of the Nazis seemed equivalent to winning a lottery. How they cross-questioned the old émigrés as to what they might hope for!

How fortunate we are! they exclaimed. It could not possibly be bad to be prisoners of Anglo-Saxons. After all the English are gentlemen! We are not dealing with some ephemeral Hitler, said they, but with officers of His Majesty the King. An English officer does not give his word in his own right but on behalf of a sovereign power; even if he is a field marshal he speaks for the Crown.

How eagerly the rank and file drank in these misleading words! They never even noticed their high flown accents. They so longed to believe in the things they wished for. A peaceful life, quiet work, a family existence, property of their own....

In the early days of this honorary captivity it was possible to leave. Some did, those who distrusted the promises, others who learned that their families were somewhere nearby. A few unmarried men left, preferring to take no chances. But all these represented only a small percentage.

The rest sat and waited. Among them, as I have said, was our own sensible family, which believed in human justice and submitted to Gods laws. We were old Émigrés. So we undertook to train the newcomers—former Soviet citizens; former Soviet prisoners of war; former collective farmers and workingmen who first had been a German labor force (Ost-Arbeiter) and then soldiers and who were now straining to acquire their own individual personalities—we trained them all to become emigré, people perhaps without a national passport but still people.

The word emigré is a terrible one. It means a man without a country of his own. He is forever a burden, an undesirable element in the country that has taken him in. He may have all the brains in the world but to the legitimate children of any country he will remain the sale étranger, der verfluckte Ausländer. Yet to our former Soviet citizens the opportunity to become an émigrés seemed to be something ineffably wonderful. They looked into our eyes, they listened to every word, they literally drank in our stories about life before World War II. At first they were incredulous, but then they became convinced and dreamed of similar good fortune.

In these days, however, we were thankful to live quietly even if we were not too comfortable. There were no bombardments, no exploding mines, no raids by partisans.

We were quartered in different places, some in Ober-Drauburg, some in Lienz, some in the Peggetz camps spread along the highway. Since they did not feel that they were guilty of any wrongdoing, the domesticity of the Russians was soon in evidence. They laid out little vegetable gardens and settled down to keep house.

Days went by. People strayed in from other parts. Next door to us in Lienz there were some Serbian volunteers. We also met some Serbian Chetniks who were trying to get to some Italian city no one had ever heard of, Palma Nuova, where it seemed young King Peter II was waiting for them. We discovered too that not far away there were thousands of Cossacks in the Corps of General Helmuth von Pannwitz and a battalion from the Varyag regiment of Lublin. Then we got word of the tragic fate of parts of the ROA (the Vlasov forces).

This caused a pang in the hearts of some of us.

It was a strange life, this mixture of prisoners of war and refugees. We lived in comparative freedom, quartered in apartments, barracks, and haylofts. We realized that to feed so many people, and a great number of horses, was putting an unbearable burden on the Austrian population. Our conquerors paid scarcely any attention to us; they had not divided us into sheep and goats and seemed in no hurry to make any decision about us one way or another.

General Domanov made a number of sallies in the direction of the English. Accompanied by an interpreter, he made frequent visits to their headquarters and when he came out he appeared to be increasingly disturbed. To be more exact, each time he came out his face was gloomier and his step heavier. He seemed to shrink into himself, but he did not share his thoughts with anyone.

Why?

Did General Domanov have some secret knowledge? Was he already aware of the full extent of the amoral, criminal intentions of the Western Allies? Would it not have been better had he communicated these intentions to at least his senior officers, warning them of the dark clouds that were soon to cover the bright blue sky of our confidence?

Those days in May, 1945, pass before me now like a film in slow motion.

Every man is an egotist. Each of us in his own way was selfishly glad that he had escaped with his life and that he was able to save his family. That is the way I felt in Lienz.

We were all together there: my father, Nikolai, known as Kolyun to his family and his fellow officers in the Life Guards; Mother; Lili, my wife; Uncle Semyon; my grandfather, Peter Krasnov, and my grandmother, Lydia. We lived in different buildings, but we saw each other every day. Toward the end of the war we had succeeded in gathering the whole family together and that had seemed to me to be a good omen. I thought that this was to be the start of real family life for me with my dearly loved wife, my parents and grandparents, and other relatives. We would form a clan of Krasnovs perhaps; we would settle on the land or cross the ocean; but we would never be separated from one another again, and the young ones would see that the older ones lived out their lives in peace. Nevertheless there were moments when my optimism was rent by sudden gusts of premonition, feelings that told me it was not all over yet, that it was too soon to be building plans for the future.

Sometimes at night I would waken with a start and look at the dear features of my quietly sleeping wife. I somehow felt the need of impressing on my mind forever the way she smiled, the color of her eyes, her little habit of slightly raising one eyebrow, the timbre of her voice, the sound of her laugh. I took special pleasure in visiting my father. I would take his arm and walk up and down with him, discussing our situation, the various possibilities of what we should or should not do, speaking with him as man to man, soldier to soldier. I was full of childlike devotion to my mother, and I never missed a chance to spend some time with my grandfather or have a little joking word with my grandmother.

I thought then that I was trying to make up for lost time, to catch up with all I had missed. I know now that actually I was projecting myself into the future and trying to grasp what fate was to tear from me later on.

My grandfather would sometimes growl at me for my occasional attacks of melancholia. He believed in an imminent solution to our problems, and he would not tolerate any deviation from his absolute, irrevocable, military faith in the nobility and justice of the English. But my fears were sadly confirmed by the events of the last days.

As I have said, the whole process of the surrender passed off smoothly. Arms were quietly given up, but officers were allowed to keep their revolvers and a certain number of rifles for self-protection. Then a sudden order came to turn in all firearms. Naturally we complied very unwillingly and those who had two revolvers turned in only one.

This total disarming gave rise to a variety of opinions. Some were in favor of moving out. Who knows, they said, what may be in store for us? They were the suspicious ones. But the sensible ones, among them my family, protested, said that we dare not betray the confidence shown in us, that we were much better off than ordinary prisoners of war—we were not separated from our families, we were not put behind barbed wire—therefore we were bound to respond to this treatment with loyalty and show the English what sort of people they were dealing with.

For me it all began on the twenty-sixth of May. That evening, after supper, my wife and I started out for a stroll, thinking that we would look in on the old folks and hear the latest news.

I had not taken off my uniform, nor had I removed my insignia. Perhaps my trim and carefully groomed appearance made me a target. As we approached the bridge near the English staff headquarters an English sergeant came up to me and ordered me to follow him.

"Du kommen, he said in broken German. Du kommen mit."

"Warum?" I asked in astonishment. I could feel my wife’s nails digging with a warning clutch into my arm.

The Englishman grinned genially and spread his hands. Order!

I asked my wife to wait and followed the sergeant into the large yellow building. In the corridor where he left me I waited anxiously for some fifteen minutes. Through a window I could see the bridge and my wife nervously pacing up and down.

Finally the sergeant reappeared accompanied by an elderly officer. The sergeant was trying to say something but the officer cut him short, then walked by me as though I were not there. I saluted, as officer to officer, but he continued on through the corridor without acknowledging my salute by even so much as a nod.

"Du frei!" said the sergeant with some embarrassment.

Why did you bring me here? I asked.

"Nix verstehen, was the quick reply to which he added, Go!" and pointed to the door.

Our stroll was ruined. We went home. My wife cried and begged me to put on civilian clothes, abandon all our belongings, and leave immediately. We still held valid Yugoslav passports. We could have gone to Salzburg, to Munich, and from there, after getting a visa, to friends in Switzerland.

But I would not budge. This English invitation had no wrong intent about it. They had simply taken me for someone else, probably a German officer. I felt that it was beneath my dignity to shed my uniform and flee; such action could not possibly be squared with ones concept of an officer, and a prisoner at that. Moreover, I could not leave my Cadet Engineers in the lurch. I was still aide-de-camp of General Vassiliev and I would await the order for demobilization or any other order binding equally on all officers in the detachment of General Domanov. If we were disbanded I would then consider myself free to choose my own path.

That night we did not close our eyes. We talked of many things, discussed many possibilities. I once more reminded my wife of my first visit to the commanding officer of the English division and of his word of honor as an officer. Anyhow, I said, we would be wiser in the morning.

Indeed the next morning, alas, brought terrible wisdom.

In 1955, in the prison camps of Karaganda (in Kazakhstan), I met the personal aide-de-camp of General Domanov, a Captain Butlerov, who had been lucky enough to live through the tragic events. From my conversations with him I was able to piece together a more or less clear picture of what had happened in Lienz.

Captain Butlerov told me that vague rumors of the fate awaiting us had reached General Domanov but the General had had no confidence in the interpreters and had tried to find out the facts for himself. In the meantime he had enjoined strict silence on the interpreters and his aides.

Domanov preferred to believe that it was certain insubordinations on the part of the seventeen nationalities from the Caucasus and other ruffians, acts committed on Austrian territory after the surrender and imprisonment, which were the cause of the total disarming. The spreading of false or vague rumors among the military or the refugees could, in the opinion of General Domanov, lead to a complete rout, the scattering of tens of thousands of people, and, of course, to total confusion. This would cause the English to take severely repressive measures.

The old emigré generals may have believed in the unblemished word of an English general, but, according to Butlerov, it was the former Soviet officer Domanov who most of all believed or wished to believe in it. He had a well-developed sense of respect for the Western conquerors and, as later shameful events proved, he preferred to remain silent and accept the blame.

On the evening of May 27, 1945, General Domanov was visited by Major Stone of the English general staff accompanied by an aide. Stone asked the General to notify all officers of his detachment to gather without fail at certain points in their area at one o’clock in the afternoon of May 28 and to be prepared to proceed to a conference with the Commander of the English Eighth Army, and possibly also with Field Marshal Alexander, who, it seemed, had expressed a desire to talk with the Russian officers.

According to Butlerov, the General asked why all officers were summoned. There were two thousand of them! It would be difficult to handle such a crowd at a conference.