ALEXANDER DALLIN

The Kaminsky Brigade:
A Case-Study of Soviet Disaffection

I. VOSKOBOINIKOV: A PRELUDE

The responses which the German-Soviet war evoked among Soviet citizens ranged from wholehearted defense of the fatherland to determined struggle against the Bolshevik regime.* While certain groups, such as the Soviet partisans and the Vlasov movement, have been studied in some detail, others have received little serious notice. A few of these smaller units are of considerable interest—not because they were typical of the country as a whole, but because they exemplify variations in popular attitudes and reactions.¹

One extreme manifestation of this kind has become known by the name of its leader, Kaminsky. It is generally known only as a group of Russian bandits working for the SS and taking an active part in the German sack of Warsaw during the Polish uprising of 1944. In fact, the biography of the Kaminsky movement is far more complex and intriguing.

After the German troops advanced into Soviet territory in the summer of 1941, large areas of occupied territory behind the front lines remained under military rule. It was in such an area between Orel and Kursk that the Kaminsky movement had its birth. So quickly did the invaders drive through, in the early summer of 1941; so numerous were the Soviet armed forces cut off; and so auspicious was the terrain for concealing isolated units, that the Germans were never able to effectively comb out the wide spaces of the Briansk forests. Where later large partisan units made their headquarters, at first Red Army men hid out in the woods, drifting about hungry but armed. Eventually some of these banded together to form gangs as yet unconnected with the Soviet command; properly speaking, these were marauders afraid to surrender to the Germans, whose mistreatment of prisoners of war was rapidly becoming known. At times these bands would attack German truck convoys or kill a soldier. The Germans would then take quick revenge on the civilian population, with the result that increasing numbers of local inhabitants would take to the woods-not for political reasons but in self-defense against the terror of the occupying forces.

The Germans, unable to exercise more than sporadic or nominal control, encouraged the formation of “native” local governments. This was also the case in the area controlled by Second Army and, more particularly, in the raion of Lokot’.² The prewar population of Lokot’ was only a few thousand; the district had perhaps 35,000 inhabitants, of whom many had been drafted into the army; hundreds of other residents, including local Communist Party and government officials, had been evacuated eastward as the German armies approached. It was still a predominantly agricultural district, barely touched by modernization.

The first mayor of Lokot’ under the Germans is something of a legendary figure. While there is dispute over his biography, the following seems established: Konstantin Pavlovich Voskoboinikov had been a junior officer in the tsarist army during the First World War. In 1917 he supported the Socialist-Revolutionaries. In the 1920s, in Moscow, he was an engineer in charge of an office of weights and measures. He was arrested in 1930 or 1931 and sent to a Novosibirsk concentration camp until 1935. Because of his “political” past he had difficulty finding a suitable job; for a while he evidently taught at a small tekhnikum. It was in some engineering capacity that he came to Lokot’ before the war. When the Red Army retreated, he remained.³ Whether he began working on his own or received preliminary sanction from the German commandant in the region is not known. Evidently a hardworking and skillful organizer, he rapidly set out to introduce “reforms” in local government.

Because of its fairly isolated location, Lokot’ was well-suited to become the object of some administrative experimentation. The German military was content to leave the region alone as long as the local authorities rendered it secure from Soviet marauders and furnished the German army with the requisite amounts of food. Here was the basis of the peculiar “live and let live” policy which the military area commander sanctioned in regard to this venture.

Thus Voskoboinikov was free to initiate a policy which ran counter to Berlin’s directives for the treatment of the Eastern Untermenschen. Voskoboinikov, with five aides, formulated a “Manifesto,” which (along with an Appeal and Order No. 1) was published on November 25, 1941. These documents represent a curious mixture of principle and accommodation. The Manifesto opened with the announcement that “as of this date, the Popular Socialist Party of Russia⁴ has begun its work.” Its origin was traced back to the “underground in the concentration camps of Siberia.” The movement did not hesitate to assume responsibility for the fate of Russia and to demand a government that would assure “law and order and all the conditions necessary for the peaceful flourishing of labor in Russia, for the upholding of her honor and dignity.”

There are in these documents echoes of the old Russian narodnichestvo that made the peasant the center of its concerns. In the labor camp Voskoboinikov had adopted the nickname of Zemlia, or “Soil,” and in the fall of 1941, as self-appointed spokesman for the rural masses, he again signed his Manifesto “Engineer Zemlia,” followed by his initials, K.P.V. The twelve-point program called for the “complete destruction of the communist and kolkhoz system in Russia.” About half the document dealt with questions of landholding and farming, calling for

the free transfer in perpetuity of farm land to the peasantry, with the right to lease, exchange, and will, but without the right to sell. . . . The free award and use in perpetuity by each citizen of Russia of a garden plot, with the right to exchange and inherit, but not to sell. . . . All enterprises shall grant two months’ leave a year so as to enable the beneficiaries to work on their own garden plots. . . . Free distribution of timber from state holdings, for the purpose of housing construction. . . .

Landholding in central Russia was to be set at about ten hectares, the garden plot at about one hectare per household.

The program also promised amnesty for all Komsomol members, Heroes of the Soviet Union, and rank-and-file party members “who have not sullied themselves by abusing the People.” It contained no provisions for elective organs of government. But the most jarring note is the article calling for the “ruthless liquidation of Jews who were commissars.” One may suspect that these points were either urged upon the authors or else volunteered by them with an eye to their acceptability by the German authorities. (But what about Jews who were not commissars? and what about commissars who were not Jews?) “Free labor, private property within the limits determined by law, state capitalism complemented and corrected by private initiative, and civic valor are the bases for the construction of a new state order in Russia,” the Manifesto said. All railroads, forests, natural resources, and all “basic” factories would remain state-owned. In line with its attempt to appeal to national traditions and religious sentiments, the NSPR proclaimed the image and flag of St. George as its symbols.

The other documents were even less elegant of thought or expression. These may have been composed in cooperation with, or at the behest of, the Germans. The Russian soldier must surrender, and (he was told in what was a tip-off to the German paternity of the order) if he did so, his life would be spared. “The Stalin regime is doomed and will perish under all circumstances, but millions of innocent lives must be saved.”

Voskoboinikov’s actual practices and policies are largely unknown. It is a fact that he appealed to former communists for help; in the villages he fostered the return to a system of elective elders (starosty). He seems to have continued social services, taking for granted public responsibility for “welfare” obligations. Some hospitals, elementary schools, and churches were reopened, and special grants-in-aid were provided for families whose heads were in the army.

The collective farms were not chaotically dissolved and looted, as was frequently the case on occupied soil, but rather were declared “people’s property.” In name at least, each peasant household became the owner of a piece of land. Agricultural equipment, however, remained communal property, with the peasants as joint owners of what was left of kolkhoz and MTS* equipment and machinery. In the future the peasants presumably would be free to leave the cooperatives if they desired.

As was true elsewhere on occupied territory, a local police detachment was set up to keep “law and order.” In Lokot’ it initially consisted of twelve men; a number of peasant boys and stragglers from the Red Army soon joined its ranks, and by the end of the year the “self-defense” force had grown to over two hundred men.⁵

On Voskoboinikov’s relations with the Germans we have only the report of the German Foreign Office liaison officer, Anton Bossi-Fedrigotti, who visited Lokot’ in the spring of 1942. Voskoboinikov, he reported, dispatched one of his deputies, Mosin, to the German army headquarters on two occasions; the second time he requested permission for the operation of his party. The army side-stepped this request; instead it sent Voskoboinikov a series of questions revealing the new German preoccupation on occupied soil: “(1) What is Voskoboinikov’s attitude toward the partisans? (2) Is Voskoboinikov prepared to conduct propaganda against the partisans? (3) Is Voskoboinikov prepared to participate actively in the struggle against the partisans?” Mosin affirmed Voskoboinikov’s willingness to fight the partisans and promised to provide further data sought by the intelligence section of Second Army.⁶ Soon Second Army moved on, and Second Panzer Army took over the Briansk-Orel area.

Lokot’ was more independent and more progressive than most areas under the Germans. It was also more active in recruiting peasant support in the surrounding region and blanketed the area with oral and written propaganda. By the end of 1941 Soviet partisans began to pay special attention to Voskoboinikov’s “republic.” The same factors which had enabled him to gain a measure of autonomy—weakness of German personnel and organization, terrain, and general disorganization—had made it possible for pro-Soviet stragglers to band together, too. By December, 1941, some of these groups had re-established contact with the Soviet side, which soon began to provide some direction and reinforcements in men and matériel.

In December, a group of partisans was dispersed near Lokot’ by the new “self-defense” force. On January 8, 1941, another group attacked and briefly seized Lokot’. Some of Voskoboinikov’s men were on leave; others were drunk over Russian Christmas. While sustaining heavy losses themselves, the partisans inflicted considerable casualties on the Lokot’ forces—ostensibly, about fifty men—and shot up Voskoboinikov’s headquarters. Voskoboinikov himself was wounded in the attack and died soon after.⁷

The most detailed (though distorted) accounts of this encounter come from Soviet sources. They betray some awkwardness in dealing with this unit. An early postwar memoir on the Briansk forests partisans relates how Voskoboinikov, “by training a pedagogue, by profession a counterrevolutionary,”

. . . authored a “declaration of the rights of the peoples of Russia” [strictly speaking, an incorrect ascription], which he spread among the population. Often he would himself drive out to villages and khutors, conducting conferences or making speeches at markets and fairs. . . .⁸

Soviet partisan headquarters, these accounts make clear, considered him enough of a menace to order an early raid on Lokot’. Voskoboinikov was to be captured alive. Under the command of Alexander Saburov (later a leading partisan general) several detachments combined forces to carry out the raid.

In his own memoirs, Saburov deals with this episode in greater detail. According to his version, a partisan agent was sent to Lokot’, where he managed to become deputy commander of the headquarters guard. Somehow the Germans managed to intercept a messenger sent by him to the partisans, whereupon Saburov threw his men into immediate attack on Lokot’. The raid succeeded: the core of the officers’ cadres was smashed and the party leadership destroyed.

In his postwar account, Saburov was faced with the problem of how to explain the “experiment,” for the Lokot’ enterprise could not be written off as a Nazi endeavor. In the 1953 Soviet version (reprinted essentially unchanged in later editions), Voskoboinikov and his sponsors emerge as creatures of United States intelligence! This convenient fiction provides an explanation for the “peculiarities” of Voskoboinikov’s program, while simultaneously linking American programs of anti-Soviet intervention with those of the Nazis.⁹ To the analyst, the Soviet linkage of the Voskoboinikov enterprise with American goals or values constitutes an additional piece of evidence in support of the hypothesis that the Lokot’ adventure indeed had aims which differed markedly from those of Moscow and Berlin alike.

II. LOKOT’ AND THE GERMANS

The man who replaced Voskoboinikov was Bronislav Vladislavovich Kaminsky. His father was a Pole who, Kaminsky later alleged, had married a Volksdeutsche girl (a story which, though oft-repeated, cannot be accepted since it is likely to have served merely to make Kaminsky more “equal” to the Germans). Before the Revolution the family lived rather comfortably on an estate in the Vitebsk area, where Bronislav was born on June 16, 1899. In the 1920s he was trained as a chemical engineer in Leningrad. Like others with a Polish background, he was arrested around 1935 and reportedly charged with liaison with Polish and German agents. He was sentenced and shipped to the Nizhnii-Tagil’sk concentration camp, in Cheliabinsk oblast’. Among the camp inmates were a number of intellectuals, including a group he later characterized as Bukharinites. Opposition to the kolkhoz system was common among them. In 1940 Kaminsky was released and assigned to “forced residence” in Lokot’ as an engineer at the local liquor distillery.¹⁰

He impressed friends and foes as basically nonpolitical though obviously anti-Bolshevik and as inordinately ambitious and frustrated. Now at last his thirst for authority and assertion seemed to find an outlet. A former associate of his describes him as “an adventurer, stupid and self-centered, conceited, and politically illiterate.” He liked to picture himself in the role of “an omnipotent executive who made order in his realm in defiance of all difficulties, as well as the military commander of a force which . . . he would time and again lead to victory.” An official German visitor found Kaminsky to be “a pompous ignoramus who enjoyed and hence overdid his warlording.”¹¹

One suspects that Kaminsky had been in some contact with the Germans even before Voskoboinikov’s death; in January, 1942, he requested their confirmation of his authority as his successor. He had survived the partisan raid because he lived at some distance from the Lokot’ headquarters; apparently he had turned down a subsequent partisan appeal to join them.

Little is known of his early dealings with the Germans. Mikhail Oktan, another leading demagogue and collaborator in the occupied area, testified later:

I was invited to the headquarters of Army Group Center and asked to take over the administration of Orel. At headquarters I met Kaminsky, who had been called there in connection with the death of the chief of the Lokot’ district, Voskoboinikov. We lived in the same room, and I had occasion to attend several meetings between Kaminsky and General Hamann, who commanded the rear area of Third [Second?] Army, and to act as interpreter. Kaminsky promised, in return for a mandate to run the district, to bring it into closer ties with the German military administration, to militarize it so as to protect the rear of the German army, and to increase the food supply to the German troops.¹²

German approval came promptly. At a moment of demoralization and in the absence of other “leader” types, Kaminsky stood out. He was sufficiently aware of “public opinion” to depict his assumption of authority as a native act. He persuaded Voskoboinikov’s widow, a local schoolteacher, to endorse his succession.¹³ Thus began the first phase of Kaminsky’s reign: until July, 1943, he was Oberbürgermeister and commander-in-chief of the Lokot’ forces.

The German army soon concluded that the Kaminsky experiment was a success: he kept order, fought the partisans, and supplied the army with the requisite quantities of food. A variety of his new measures were aimed at tightening discipline and giving the “police force” special privileges as incentives for loyal performance. One order proclaimed a “state of war” and authorized the village elders to draft any man between seventeen and fifty years of age for essential tasks. Another decree forbade travel among the villages of the district, barred public gatherings, imposed a curfew, and temporarily placed the Lokot’ market and the church of Brasovo off limits— evidently in anticipation of a new partisan attack. An announcement reported that a policeman had been shot for “drunkenness, robbery, and disgrace.” And Order No. 33 stipulated that

. . . in order to preserve peace and order, I decree that within three days the residents of Lipovaia Alley and Vesenii Pereulok [in Lokot’] be moved to other streets. The apartments thus freed are to be assigned to the families of policemen. . . .¹⁴

In February Kaminsky ordered his troops reorganized into the “First Russian National Army” in anticipation of “major” antipartisan operations.

The Germans’ willingness to support him was increased by the absence of political objections to his reign. “Kaminsky does not spread Russian national propaganda,” one German officer summed it up: “he runs his administration by the prestige of his own personality; and he claims to be a ‘faithful thane of the Germans,’ who come to free the Russian people from Bolshevism.” “For our purposes, the new mayor is a good collaborator,” concludes another reconnaissance report. Kaminsky gave promise of being a useful instrument precisely because he depended on his German masters for help, or so they believed. The German Foreign Office observer, Bossi-Fedrigotti, sent home a detailed report after visiting Lokot’ in April, 1942:

Kaminsky openly grants that without the consent of German political officialdom he will not proceed to make his combat unit into a political instrument. At the moment he understands that his tasks are of a purely military [i.e., antipartisan] nature. . . . Above all, it seems that with clever political handling Kaminsky could be made serviceable for German plans to reorganize the East. This man can surely become a propagandist of the German new order in the East, provided one does justice to certain demands of Russian mentality.¹⁵

A few months later a German propaganda official, after investigating the situation, concluded:

After a number of conversations, I believe I can say with assurance that Kaminsky has no political ambitions, that he wants to become neither “Gauleiter of Lokot’ “ nor “tsar of Russia.” This experiment . . . proves that it is possible . . . to use Russians under a watchful German eye for the benefit of our war effort.¹⁶

Kaminsky’s lack of political ambitions may have been a German misconception. His impact on German policy-makers, however, was clear: he must be supported in his district and in his paramilitary operations.

Two letters from Second Panzer Army on February 23, 1942, reflected the German decision to “promote” Kaminsky. One authorized him to appoint village elders and majors within his district. The other entitled him to give awards, in the form of landholdings, for anti-partisan exploits (normally two but in exceptional cases up to ten hectares of land), and to proceed with at least a tentative distribution of the available horses and cows.¹⁷ His district was soon considerably expanded to encompass several neighboring raiony (including two from adjacent Kursk oblast’).¹⁸ On July 19, 1942, Colonel General Rudolf Schmidt, of Second Panzer, formally charged Kaminsky with “self-government in the administrative district of Lokot’ and appointed him commander of the militias of this area, with the rank of brigade commander.”¹⁹

While there was some autonomy, there was no popular sovereignty. Lokot’ was Kaminsky’s midget realm in which he ruled as a dictator. And yet, compared with German conduct in other occupied areas, Lokot’ constituted a significant exception. It was (excluding the short-lived Karachai and Azov Cossack districts) virtually the only area in which the Germans agreed to place the administration in indigenous hands.

Characteristically, the experiment, which ran counter to basic Nazi policy, was neither stopped nor extended to other areas. It was not the “men of good will” in Berlin—i.e., the advocates of a more generous policy toward Russia, like Schulenburg, Strikfeld, or Hilger—who backed the Kaminsky venture, but primarily the German military, such as General Schmidt and later Field Marshal von Kluge, the ambivalent commander of Army Group Center. Concerned with efficient control, they were scarcely disposed to support a Russian national movement and in all likelihood would have scuttled Kaminsky if he had displayed any independence contrary to the program of his protectors. But Kaminsky did what they wanted him to.

Sooner or later the “autonomous district” had to be sanctioned by higher authority. An early opportunity was created when Kaminsky, after only a few weeks in office, addressed a letter to Hitler. (Apparently it had been carefully gone over by the German liaison staff.) In an accompanying letter to Army Group Center, requesting that the Kaminsky message be forwarded to Hitler, General Schmidt expressed the view that

the ideas contained in the letter unquestionably correspond to the expectations and hopes of those parts of the population who are still in sympathy with us. . . . [He] has created an island within the extensive partisan area of Briansk-Dmitrovsk-Sevsk-Trubchevsk, which prevents the expansion of the partisan movement, ties up strong partisan forces, and offers an opportunity to spread German propaganda among the population. In addition, the district supplies food for the German troops. . . .

The fact that, thanks to the successful deployment of Russian forces under Kaminsky’s leadership, it was possible to invest no further German units and to save German blood in fighting the partisans prompts me to comply with this man’s desire and to forward the letter addressed to the Fuehrer. Moreover, I believe that I may not withhold from the Fuehrer these ideas which are widespread among that part of the Russian population which is prepared to collaborate with Germany, but which are only rarely if ever written down by the Russians themselves.²⁰

Kaminsky’s letter was indeed a curious document. A “sense of obligation” to his native land, he wrote, led him to discuss why the war, once expected to be terminated victoriously within three months, still dragged on. The vast spaces and the weather were not adequate explanations. Red Army discipline and morale, after two decades of indoctrination, proved more formidable than anticipated. Above all, “propaganda, the strongest weapon in a war against the Soviets, had not been used.” After prolonged saturation with Soviet “poison,” Kaminsky continued, “there is a marked demand for the propagation of new ideas in harmony with the new [forthcoming] order of state and economy. The solution of these problems now, in wartime, is of great importance for the further conduct of the war.”

Echoing Voskoboinikov’s Manifesto, Kaminsky proceeded to summarize his program:

Above all else, the peasant wants to have his own land. Therefore it should be divided now, before the spring sowing. . . . The best land should go to those who have fought, arms in hand, against the Soviet system. . . . The second important question for the peasants is the distribution of horses. . . . The third is the economic-industrial question. It is difficult to organize Russian private enterprise. Time is needed to effect the transfer from state to private economy, . . . No enterprise must be permitted to stay idle and its workers unemployed. However, the representatives of the new order have thus far shown very little interest in this problem.²¹

Army Group Center transmitted the letter to Berlin with a favorable endorsement. Hitler was evidently informed and at the end of March was reported to have approved the experiment, though it remains uncertain just how explicit his approval was.²²

Most of the Germans’ dealings with Kaminsky were handled by the liaison staffs assigned to Lokot’ or operating nearby. Until May, 1942 no German troops were stationed there, and he dealt largely with army headquarters in Orel or with smaller units passing through. Even after that date no military government detachment was established in the district; and when the entire army rear area was reorganized into nine administrative units, one of them was the “Self-Governing District.”²³

A regular liaison officer was assigned to Kaminsky in July, 1942. Major von Veltheim was “to assist [Kaminsky] in an advisory capacity. Coordination with other parts of the Army Area is desirable.”²⁴ While Veltheim’s functions were primarily political and administrative, a military staff was responsible for the anti-partisan activities of Kaminsky’s forces: General Bernhard, the commander of the “Rear Area” in which Lokot’ was located, went to some trouble to explain that, though technically Colonel Rübsam was the equivalent of a German commandant for the Lokot’ area, his tasks were primarily those of military coordination.²⁵

Much of this carefully defined chain of command and authority was systematically disregarded by everyone, especially by Kaminsky himself. He was intent on minimizing the interference of the Germans while maximizing their contributions to him in the form of ammunition and weapons, and their recognition of his status by tokens such as letters of appreciation, cases of vodka, and medals of honor.

As time went on, other German agencies also sent their delegates or representatives to Lokot’. Army propaganda and economic agencies had their staffs there. Finally the SS, increasingly taking charge of anti-partisan warfare, was interested in cultivating relations with Kaminsky and—typically, given the power struggle among the Nazi diadochi-in wooing him away from the army. A Russian-speaking Baltic-German officer, Georg Loleit, was made SS liaison man to Kaminsky, apparently managing to win his confidence. In fact, the transfer of further neighboring districts to Kaminsky’s jurisdiction took place with the joint approval of army and SS: these were areas where, in practice, the partisans were in control.

One may wonder why Kaminsky remained so faithful to the Germans. The reason seems to lie partly in his own vanity and ambition for power which, he realized, only German backing could provide. In addition, Kaminsky was virtually isolated from all opportunities to witness the abuse of prisoners of war and the humiliation of Ostarbeiter which so strongly affected captured Soviet officers and civilians. Nor did his men have to pass through the degrading phase of Hiwi battalions of auxiliaries. Kaminsky could explain away all shortcomings as due to the exigencies of war. He saw only a few Germans, and the personnel of the liaison staff consisted, more often than not, of clever and tactful men. Most of them were attuned to Kaminsky’s foibles, and they made sure to “advise” him, not to order him around. They even catered to his inordinate urge for formal recognition.²⁶ Partly by accident and partly by intent, he was placed in a position in which it was relatively easy for him to “collaborate”—easier than for Soviet prisoners of war who remained adamantly anti-German, and for those collaborators who had a more realistic picture of Nazi goals and means.

III. LIFE IN THE DISTRICT

As time passed, Kaminsky became increasingly a military commander. His armed force was both an index and a source of his authority, and (at least to the Germans) the raison d’être of his regime. It began with the small militia detachments established in Lokot’ under his predecessor in the fall of 1941. With the growth of the partisan movement in the Briansk forests, the Germans pressed Kaminsky to expand his own police unit into a fighting force. He needed little encouragement. In February, 1942, the police force was officially renamed the Russian Popular Army of Liberation— Russkaia Osvoboditel’naia Narodnaia Armiia, or RONA.²⁷ It expanded from 5,000 men in July, 1942, to about 8,000 in December, and over 10,000 in the spring of 1943.²⁸

In mid-1942, 85 percent of its troops were local inhabitants; the others were deserters from partisan units, former prisoners released by the Germans, and a few Red Army men who had been hiding in the woods. With the passage of time the relative weight of nonlocal and nonvoluntary elements increased. A number of peasants became Kaminsky’s men—some of them afraid of partisan retaliation. Late in 1942, with the consent of the Germans, Kaminsky toured prisoner-of-war camps in the Orel area to recruit a few officers, whom his brigade lacked. Gradually the assemblage of amateur policemen and opportunist pillagers was transformed into a fairly effective fighting force.²⁹

As new men arrived, the original battalion swelled to five regiments with a total of fifteen battalions, of which fourteen were directly under Kaminsky and one was organized as a special German-trained “volunteer” combat unit.³⁰ In December, 1942, four of his battalions wore German uniforms. “The rest,” a German visitor reported, “make the impression of a heap of wild bandits.” Civilian dress and pieces of Red Army and German uniforms were worn in incongruous combinations. Often it was impossible to tell whether a soldier (or a whole unit) belonged to Kaminsky’s troops or to the partisans.

The brigade was organized on the model of the Red Army. The men were encouraged to gather abandoned Red Army weapons and equipment; additional quantities were captured from the partisans. But there remained severe shortages of many goods, such as shoes, ammunition, and medical supplies, and the Germans were obliged to supply some of these items.

Kaminsky’s men participated in anti-partisan operations with only a minimum of discipline. Indeed, one former RONA man asserts that “the absence of discipline was what kept the organization going. Usually there were no restrictions on looting.” Kaminsky was evidently eager to tighten discipline, both to perform his mission and to impress the Germans.³¹

With all its serious deficiencies, this colorful horde proved relatively successful in fighting the partisans. The brigade was careful not always to accept battle. As a matter of policy it never seized towns, both because the Germans had effective control over urban areas, and because the partisans operated primarily in the countryside. Major encounters were usually accompanied by desertions in both directions. In 1942 the number of partisans joining Kaminsky seems to have exceeded that of RONA men switching to the Soviet side; this was due in large measure to RONA’s better food and supplies.

Summary reports by Germans and RONA officers spoke of the brigade’s accomplishments with praise, whereas individual contemporary documents tended to concentrate on failures and shortcomings. The missions assigned to the brigade appear to have become progressively more taxing and hazardous as the unit and its skill grew. In June, 1942, partisan pressure began to increase markedly; by September they had become reinforced by air from the Soviet side with specialist personnel, explosives, radios, and heavy weapons. Now even Kaminsky’s newly recruited “volunteer battalion,” albeit under German command, was thrown into action against them. Though morale in this unit was admittedly worse than in the older Kaminsky battalions, the following report on its performance is indicative of the general trend (allowing for its author’s prejudices and ignorance of the Russian language):

Despite severe prohibition, there was looting. . . . As officers took part in it, it was quite impossible to keep the men in check. At night the men on guard duty left their posts without cause. The rations issued for two days were consumed in their entirety during the first day; part of the bread was given as a gift to civilians-largely as a matter of convenience, so the men would not have to carry it with them. The following day there was frequent grumbling about lack of supplies. Occasionally uncomradely behavior was exhibited in the distribution of rations. One sought to gain special advantage and outdo the others. . . .³²

In October, 1942, a German officer criticized the brigade’s armor as inferior and recommended withholding fuel from the RONA tanks (given the German gasoline shortage). As partisan attacks increased, General Bernhard was constrained to admit that “in view of the state of its clothing and its local roots, the militia of Engineer Kaminsky would seem at present to be in no condition to fend off major attacks by itself.”³³

As the fortunes of war changed and the partisans picked up strength, the Germans began to respond with a series of major operations against the bands in the Briansk forests, with Kaminsky fighting essentially under German orders. In the words of a Nazi official, he and his men “wage a daily struggle against the partisans, thereby saving the German command the use of one division,”³⁴ Conditions were becoming more and more tense, and correspondingly the treatment of civilians by the Kaminsky troops—especially of residents outside his district-deteriorated further. If they refused to obey RONA orders, survivors recall, “the people were punished, beaten or shot.”³⁵

Given the general trend of events and the behavior of Kaminsky’s men, it was small wonder that by mid-1943 the rank-and-file peasantry had frequently withdrawn what support it had previously given to the Lokot’ experiment.

What authority Kaminsky enjoyed among his own troops and “subjects” is a more difficult question to answer. With those who depended on him he could be both exceedingly cruel and unexpectedly generous. In 1942-43 he appears to have been generally respected by his men. A man who joined his forces after fighting as a partisan for over a year put it briefly: “Kaminsky was popular because he permitted looting.” While this was by no means the whole story, it is clear that the lack of discipline as well as the better material conditions demonstrated to the RONA men the advantages of belonging to it. Indeed, the kinds of “manpower” which Kaminsky and the partisans disposed of were fundamentally the same. “Most of them,” one eyewitness reflected, “did not know what they were fighting for or against. One had to fight-that’s all.”

Kaminsky himself had become a full-fledged dictator. His will was supreme.³⁶ He and his staff acted with an arrogant haughtiness and selfassured disregard for the rights of others, which amazed and distressed their victims as well as some German observers. Major von Veltheim is said to have remarked that Kaminsky ruled “like an African chieftain who was prepared to use any means to prove everyone’s dependence on him.”³⁷

To this picture must be added the extraordinary favoritism shown by Kaminsky and his aides. Partly because of the shortage of trained officers, partly on impulse, Kaminsky promoted soldiers who had been corporals or sergeants in the Red Army to majors and colonels by the stroke of a pen if he took a liking to them. The by-product of this “intuitive” promotion system was the advancement of incompetent sycophants and illiterate adventurers to positions of considerable authority.

The Germans issued 22 rations daily for headquarters [a Kaminsky staff officer relates]. Furthermore, we had considerable supplies—chickens, ducks, meat—for headquarters personnel. We took hams and sausages instead of taxes from the peasants whenever we wanted. In general, headquarters lived well, taking any amount of food and supplies from the storeroom simply by signing for it. Later a special officers’ club was built, and there were frequent drinking parties, to which sometimes a few enlisted men would be invited, usually from the headquarters guard battalion.³⁸

By and large, the special privileges benefited only the top command of the brigade and a few of the civilian officials in the district. A (rather inferior) theater and ballet company was established in Lokot’, and Kaminsky would make pompous appearances at gala performances there—to unending “spontaneous” applause from the soldier and peasant audience. For a while, there was both bread and circus. And then there was neither.

The administration of the district was neglected. Kaminsky, a German visitor discovered, was interested in his own prestige, in anti-partisan warfare, and in vague political plans, roughly in that order; “only in the last place is he interested in administration.” Those who knew him doubted whether he would ever make a decent administrator. On the raion level, section heads, appointed by Kaminsky, had very little responsibility. He reserved the right to make decisions, using the “one form of persuasion [he knew]: an order.” The file of orders issued as laws or decrees was an incredible hodge-podge:

The tax law would be followed by the dismissal of a typist and the appointment of her successor; then comes a proclamation making the Lokot’ newspaper, Golos naroda, the official organ of party and state; a subsidy of 50 kilograms of grain and 300 rubles is given to the family of a slain militia officer; there follows the introduction of daylight-saving time; and then the amnesty of [April 20, 1943], All these orders are issued in the form of an official gazette.

The decrees, orders, and laws (no proper distinction was made among them) reflected Kaminsky’s impulsive approach, uninhibited by traditional procedures and professional standards. In addition, there was the typical tendency to overstaff, both as a form of “conspicuous consumption” and as a way of breeding a sense of dependence and gratitude in a somewhat privileged stratum of officialdom. As of October, 1942, the civilian administration of the district alone included twenty sections with a total of over 500 employees-in addition to those on the raion and village levels. ³⁹

Some social services were provided—reflecting an axiomatic assumption of government responsibility—for such groups as surviving dependents of combat casualties. A number of schools were reopened—first, four-grade schools; then, in the fall of 1942, some seven-and ten-grade schools—but in these attendance tended to be small because of the competing demands on scarce manpower. In November, 1942, the eight raiony of the district were officially reported to have 284 schools in operation—all but 27 of these had four grades. One vocational school and a rudimentary teachers’ college were also begun. German was taught from the fourth grade on. There was no religious instruction in the schools, but technically parents were free to decide whether or not they wanted their children to study religion. There were only two priests in the district (or, rather, two who collaborated with Kaminsky’s authorities), and while apparently a Roman Catholic by background (though hardly an ardent believer), Kaminsky supported and attended the Orthodox church. A primitive hospital functioned in Lokot’ under the guidance of two Russian physicians. In March, 1942, the Germans authorized regular publication of a newspaper, and from then on Golos naroda (Voice of the People) appeared every three days (initially, every ten days; later every week) in some 8,000 to 14,000 copies. Given the lack of other mass media, it was reportedly in great demand in the district. ⁴⁰

The judicial organs were confused by an absence of any definition of their competence. Military and civil jurisdiction overlapped. Courts-martial were convened whenever Kaminsky desired. The head of the brigade’s investigative branch generally acted as prosecutor, and customarily a defendant was allowed an attorney. By special agreement, death sentences against militia members required the approval of the German liaison staff. Much of the judicial process was made ludicrous, however, because all sentences were subject to Kaminsky’s personal review. He had the right to reduce or augment them. Only for minor misdemeanors were norms of punishment fairly well defined; a Justice of the Peace handled many of these as well as civil cases. Appeals were heard by the district court. A special agreement provided for turning over major political offenders to the Germans. In addition to fines, the local court could impose forced labor sentences. These were generally preferred by the population, for treatment in the three jails of the district was deemed to be far more severe.⁴¹

The representatives of “authority”—military and civilian alike—became a distinct caste, which, however, could be joined by peasants and former enemy troops. Indeed, thanks to a peculiar system of “military settlements” there was a considerable overlap of functions between army and peasantry.

Except for guard posts and a part of headquarters, the brigade was quartered in peasant huts throughout the district. In the intervals between fighting, the soldiers worked as farmhands. Later, at the suggestion of the Germans, married soldiers were given higher pay—with the result that the number of marriages increased.

The farm problem had been a major source of grievance and concern from the start. Voskoboinikov had appealed to those who were discontented with the kolkhoz; and German failure promptly to partition the collectives had helped antagonize many peasants. Under Kaminsky, too, there was no full return to private farming, but a make-shift system reflecting an accommodation to German desires and pressures as well as an effort to give the peasants some tangible improvement of their status. Those actively engaged in fighting “the Reds” were given top priority in the repossession of land.

Various forms of agricultural cooperation were adopted in many localities. The existing farm equipment was owned jointly by neighboring households. What cattle the peasants managed to find, they came to own and “use.” Some MTS continued to exist but with only a minimum of equipment (most of the machinery having been wrecked or removed before the Soviet evacuation). Now the stations were attached to specific villages and no longer received the taxes they had levied under the Soviet regime.

In 1942 the peasants were, on the whole, not too badly off. As a result Kaminsky successfully collected a part of the harvest as taxes and deliveries for his own and for the German forces. Until June, 1942, the brigade lived off the land whenever it left the district and survived on partisan supplies it managed to capture. When these supplies were exhausted, however, it was necessary to assess the peasants in the district (with the politically astute proviso that no deliveries were to exceed 50 percent of what had been compulsory deliveries under Soviet rule). The dependents of brigade members received a subsistence allowance in food, also.

Kaminsky endeared himself to the Germans by the efficiency with which he fulfilled the delivery norms. The chief German agricultural expert states that the Lokot’ district was more efficient in collecting grain than were the Germans themselves.⁴² The peasants turned in the grain willingly for two reasons: the protection the brigade afforded them against partisan raids and the realization that the system forestalled direct German levies. Beyond the amounts paid as taxes, peasants and soldier-settlers could sell their produce on the market or turn it over to the local authorities for resale to the Germans.⁴³

And yet, Kaminsky’s rule was distinctly less popular with the civilians than with the soldiers, who were the architects of their own privileges under the new regime. People outside his district rarely heard of Kaminsky; neither Soviet nor German news media publicized his existence. The group which most decisively turned against him was the peasant population in the villages raided by his troops in cooperation with the Germans or other auxiliaries, and which it subjected to considerable privation, often to atrocities and murder. The upshot was a strange glorification of Voskoboinikov, his “well-intentioned” predecessor. As a bitter German officer reported in October, 1942,

several persons acquainted with the situation (Major von Veltheim, Major Muller, 1st Lt. Buchholz) agree in maintaining, independently of each other, that the population still reveres the predecessor of Kaminsky, shot by the partisans, but that they hate Kaminsky. They “tremble” before him and ostensibly are kept in line only by fear.⁴⁴

The situation was bound to become even more serious as the Germans suffered setbacks and the partisans continued to gain in strength.

IV. LEPEL’, 1943-44

The German military situation deteriorated drastically after Stalingrad. Manpower and supply shortages became more telling. The newly-won Soviet victories and the sense of initiative fired the soldiers and partisans with daring and confidence. By 1943 the bulk of the population in the occupied Soviet areas—even those who had originally accepted the Germans without pronounced hostility—had turned sharply against them in reaction to their policies and behavior. In early summer of 1943, when a new Soviet offensive was unleashed along the Kursk-Orel front, Lokot’ found itself close to the front lines. On September 5, Lokot’ was reoccupied by the Soviet Army.

Late in July the German army completed its evacuation plans;⁴⁵ the entire “self-government” of Lokot’ district was to be transplanted and reestablished behind the so-called Panther position in Belorussia. Evacuation was begun in August and completed in September; the most reliable figures speak of a total of 6,000 soldiers and 25,000 civilians.⁴⁶ Meanwhile Army Group Center had informed the high command in Berlin that

The transfer of the Self-Governing District of Lokot’ to the area of Lepel’ is being carried out for the following reasons:

(a) The Lokot’ District was established with the Fuehrer’s specific sanction and has proved itself. It has always been an experiment, which one must in the last analysis consider to have succeeded, in spite of various difficulties.

(b) The new area is economically very valuable and is capable of absorbing an additional 60,000 men.

(c) Because of the lack of our own security forces and the unfavorable transportation situation, economic exploitation to date has been poor.

(d) If the Self-Governing District under Kaminsky proves strong enough to pacify this presently partisan-threatened area (a development for which there is a good prospect in view of Kaminsky’s energetic personality, his political outlook, and the ratio of forces of his militia [to the partisans]), the economic utilization of the area will be very valuable. If on the other hand the District should become unsafe, there would be no immediate threat to the military lines of transportation here. . . .⁴⁷

Actually there was a good deal of disagreement over the brigade’s prospects, even among the liaison staff. Captain Kӧnnecke, who headed the army liaison staff at the new location, and Loleit, the SS aide, expected the Lepel’ experiment to succeed, provided food could be found, evacuees settled, and military equipment supplied. Kraushaar, who represented Third Panzer Army, however, was dubious whether Kaminsky could take root in the new area and successfully fight the “red bands.”⁴⁸

Whatever the reservations, Kaminsky took over his new “Self-Governing District” on October 1. Though the area was to consist of five raiony, he was originally allocated only three (Lepel’, Ushachi, and Chashniki); the other two (Senno and Beshenkovichi) were largely in partisan hands.⁴⁹ The German kommendaturas, which had previously ruled here, now withdrew.

Kaminsky’s task in Lepel’ was more military than it had been in Lokot’. The very reason the German command had selected Lepel’ as his new headquarters was that the district had been virtually abandoned to the partisans. In the area of Ushachi, regular Red Army units remained concealed throughout the German occupation, built defense fortifications, maintained kolkhozes, and established a Soviet-type administration. Here the partisans had at their disposal several airfields through which the Soviet Staff for Partisan Warfare for Belorussia supplied them with arms, ammunition, radio, and other equipment.

Army Group Center officially acknowledged these difficulties:

Kaminsky’s position is not simple, and he himself looks upon it as serious. Conditions in the Self-Governing District of Lokot’ were significantly different from those which now prevail at Lepel’. The new territory, thus far ruled for the most part by bands, and throughout infested by partisans, must first be conquered by Kaminsky and his men. Even if no one thus far has had reason to doubt Kaminsky’s loyalty, his troops cannot any longer be deemed reliable.⁵⁰

Thus the brigade had to fight its way into its new domicile. Even when it managed to dislodge the partisans, the civilian population was overwhelmingly hostile to this “band of outsiders.” It was not so much the fact that it was a Russian group stationed on Belorussian soil—there is no evidence of chauvinism in the peasants’ reaction—as the fact that the peasantry, having been exposed to German treatment for two years, had resolutely taken sides against the Nazis and their allies. Perhaps more important than political considerations (they had little affection for the marauding partisans who restored collective farms) was the fact that the arrival of the RONA brought a further deterioration of material conditions.

Kaminsky made no effort to win the good will of his new subjects. His men constituted an elite superimposed on an impotent population deprived of all support except from the Red partisans. Moreover, Kaminsky promptly antagonized those among the indigenous population who had collaborated with the Germans by ousting local residents from their houses, which he used as billets; next he replaced the indigenous administration with his own men.

The result was the first serious clash between Kaminsky and the German military. Third Panzer Army, in whose area Lepel’ was located, sought to mediate between the brigade and the inhabitants. Kaminsky, however, indignantly insisted that the German command keep its promise that he would have the same prerogatives as he had had in Lokot’. Additional friction stemmed from the appearance of new German agencies at his side. German censorship over his printing presses was established. Economic agencies insisted that their (very small) yield from the Lepel’ area must not be jeopardized by the brigade’s arrival. Finally, a conflict developed when the Germans decided that Kaminsky was to secure “his” three raions in their entirety, while he sought to concentrate all his men in and around Lepel’, apparently for the sake of greater safety. The upshot was continuous friction with the Wehrmacht—a development which was to foster his transfer to the SS. ⁵¹

While thus waging a three-cornered fight against partisans, population, and (only “diplomatically”) against the Germans, Kaminsky was faced with revolt in his own midst. Given the semi-anarchical way of life of his men and the continual interpenetration between partisans and RONA, it is not surprising that both Soviet-sponsored cells of dissidents and independently-dissatisfied groups willing to redefect to the “Reds” developed.

The trouble began in Lokot’ in November, 1942, when three communist cells with a total of thirty-four members were uncovered. Other contacts had been established within Kaminsky’s units by the Soviet partisan brigade, Za Rodinu. Among others, it was in touch with his chief of the Mobilization Section, Vasiliev, who had been a Red Army quartermaster officer. On one of his trips into remote areas of the Lokot’ district, Vasiliev was evidently won over by the partisans and instructed to form a cell that might try to overthrow Kaminsky, help the partisans blow up railway tracks, and disrupt telephone lines around Lokot’. On March 26, 1943, the partisans were to come out of the forests and break through to the Soviet lines, some twenty miles away. Meanwhile Vasiliev was to arrest the officers of the RONA. But the plot was uncovered; all that took place on the prearranged date was a Soviet air raid on Lokot’. The summary court sentenced some 38 men to be shot. Characteristically, Kaminsky commuted the sentence of Vasiliev, his mother, and his wife-ostensibly because he had been on intimate terms with the nineteen-year old sister of Vasiliev’s wife. Vasiliev evidently managed to stay behind when the brigade moved west; he was reported captured in Soviet-held Minsk and hanged there. ⁵²

No wholesale defections occurred during the brigade’s move to Lepel’. But once it arrived, a new and more serious revolt was not long in coming. On September 20, 1943, the commanding officer of Kaminsky’s Second Regiment, Major Tarasov, stationed at Senno, rebelled and prepared to defect to the partisans. Between September 20 and 23, over 250 soldiers actually did desert with heavy weapons and equipment. Kaminsky flew to Senno, where he apprehended Major Tarasov and three of his officers. Tarasov was promptly condemned to be hanged, his politruk and two aides to be shot. The sentence was carried out in the presence of the Kaminsky force in the Senno area, with Kaminsky attending in general’s uniform with decorations. Following this, Kaminsky toured his remaining outposts; he was again master of the situation, but the revolt had done irreparable harm to his self-assurance and prestige. ⁵³

Rebellions and attempts on Kaminsky’s life continued. The situation was such that terror against deserters caught in the act no longer sufficed to intimidate others. The general disorganization, defeat, and depression, accompanied by shortages and German encroachments, propelled many into the partisan camp, where safe-conduct and possible forgiveness were promised to those who returned voluntarily.

Still there was a hard core, both in the brigade and among the civilians, who firmly held that there was no returning to the Soviet fold. Out of fear, conviction, or a quest for adventure and gain, they were determined to stick it out under Kaminsky’s command.

In this atmosphere of growing insecurity and hostility on all sides, the brigade continued its operations. Even less inhibited on alien soil, answering partisan terror with terror, treating the local inhabitants with unwarranted brutality, Kaminsky’s men became the scourge of the land. Even the Germans had no illusions on this score. Kaminsky himself went so far as to “trap” political rivals whom he “invited” to Lepel’. The local residents spoke of him as an appanage prince. As for the spreading abuse and immorality, the worst offender was one of his henchmen, the chief of the Prosecutor’s Section, Protsiuk, who was rumored to have been an NKVD man before the war.⁵⁴ For a long time Kaminsky, who knew of his aide’s cruelty, made no effort to interfere.

The soldiers of the brigade were scattered throughout villages of the district but in larger groups than before. Fighting now absorbed a much larger proportion of their energies, so that the system of “military settlements” was far less efficacious than it had been in Lokot’. Typically enough for the growing conversion from a “government” to an “army,” 50 percent of the rations were now supplied by the Germans. There was no longer any question of selling surpluses to them.

Kaminsky’s troops had become an unruly horde of mercenaries. While discipline continued to deteriorate, the loyal elements relied even more heavily on their leader. “After the evacuation from Lokot’,” a German observer notes, “relations between Kaminsky and his men and the camp-followers became even closer. Here, on alien soil, one felt more keenly that one was fully dependent on him and that one’s own fate hung on Kaminsky’s fate.” Moreover, his men felt that, once they were branded as followers of Kaminsky, they could expect no pity from their erstwhile masters and had little choice but to fight to the end.

Even at this stage, however, there were still defections to the brigade as well. One informant, captured in January, 1944, describes his own decision:

I was captured by Kaminsky’s men and some Cossack units fighting with them. They mistreated us but our village elders within the Lepel’ district vouched for us and got me released on parole. What was I to do? If I went home, the partisans would shoot me for having fallen into Kaminsky’s hands. If I stayed around, I’d have to hide, and the frontline was right near-by. So I decided to stay with the Kaminsky Brigade. . . .

Another notes that

. . . in Belorussia we no longer had orders to shoot the partisans. So we would bring them back with us. Of course they would be beaten and mistreated, perhaps struck with rifle butts. After a day, the headquarters company would release them, give them a rifle, and they’d be kamintsy. The men had no choice: they could not be neutral; and if they did not risk going back, they had to stay with the German-controlled police—or with Kaminsky.

Actual military operations became increasingly bitter. Kaminsky, in a new tactical departure, kept the bulk of his forces in a few populated centers. On operations the brigade now acted as one element in a combination of German-directed forces and suffered increasingly heavy casualties.⁵⁵ By January, 1944 the armored battalion and the 5th Regiment were utterly decimated.

Confronted with hostility in his own ranks, among the local inhabitants, from the German military, and by the Soviet partisans, by early 1944 Kaminsky could think of only one potential “ally” left to rely on: the SS.

V. WESTWARD TO WARSAW

From February, 1944 on, Kaminsky’s men were absorbed in incessant battles, which were part of the intensive though often futile German antipartisan campaign in Belorussia. On the whole, the Brigade still performed more acceptably than some of the other “Eastern” units on the German side. Yet the partisans usually managed to elude their foes until finally joining the advancing Red Army.

Kaminsky seemed to acquiesce gladly to the military functions being thrust on his brigade. The one demand he made of his German liaison officers was to move “his” civilians to safety. Lepel’ was no longer secure, especially when the brigade was far away in the forests and swamps. The Germans, foreseeing further retreats, prepared a new district for Kaminsky farther west: on February 23, 1944, the first order was issued to prepare for a transfer to Diatlovo, near Lida, in (formerly Polish) Western Belorussia.⁵⁶ This migration was to be slower and more hazardous than the move from Lokot’. By the end of March, some 3,000 soldiers and about 10,000 civilians—peasants from Lokot’ and the soldiers’ families—along with some 2,000 horses and 1,500 cows had been moved, and the name, “Kaminsky Self-Government District,” was attached to this third area in the brigade’s history. The transfer of authority was to take place gradually as the move from Lepel’ was carried out.⁵⁷ The remaining troops were soon to follow.

Meanwhile a serious tug-of-war was raging within the Nazi elite. The influence of the professional military had declined sharply, while the SS continued to take over new branches of government and economy, displacing both civilian and military authorities. After his tiffs with Third Panzer Army, Kaminsky appears to have sensed that the SS managed to obtain more arms and equipment than did the army. His shift of allegiance was facilitated by the fact that virtually the entire anti-partisan effort was now directed by the SS.

For the SS, Kaminsky was a welcome tool. By 1944 it had begun to recruit replacements in the Baltic states and in other occupied areas. Important elements of the SS leadership had become convinced, reluctantly, in the face of disastrous retreats, that the only “secret weapon” which Germany still had was the population of the USSR.

The efforts of two high SS officials sufficed to bring Kaminsky under the wing of the SS. They were von Gottberg, the “Higher SS and Police Leader” for Belorussia, and Gottlob Berger, who headed the SS “Main Office” and represented the SS in Rosenberg’s “Ministry for the Occupied East.”

Sometime in the early summer of 1944 Himmler approved the absorption of the Kaminsky Brigade into the SS; as of July the SS listed it as the 29th SS Waffen-Grenadier-Division RONA (russische Nr. 1), a designation suggesting a projected expansion in size and the planned integration of the brigade into the regular Waffen SS machine. And on July 31, Himmler personally received Kaminsky at his headquarters in East Prussia, formally made him a SS officer, and awarded him the Iron Cross, first class. ⁵⁸

For the men in the brigade, the shift of jurisdiction was of little practical significance. Outwardly, the only change was the adoption of SS uniforms, but bearing the familiar “RONA” insignia on the new black coats. Discipline in the division continued to deteriorate. There were instances of rape. Two men from the headquarters platoon-once the elite of the unit-broke into a priest’s house and stole valuables from his cellar. In its path the division burned down whole villages and killed the inhabitants.⁵⁹

The change which both the division and its leader had undergone is expressed in the memoirs of the SS officer attached to Kaminsky:

Kaminsky viewed the tie binding his following increasingly from the point of sheer utility, as the distance in space and time from Lokot’ increased. In Lepel’ they still hoped for an early return to the home district . . . , but with the increasing transition of the Kaminsky action into a Russian mercenary operation and the simultaneous change in Kaminsky’s own attitude, the moral assessment of Kaminsky by his subordinates declined. They recognized increasingly that now the motives for his behavior were personal ambition, lust for adventure, and finally, even thirst for profit.

In May the remainder of the division, with heavy losses, fought its way westward from Lepel’ to Diatlovo. The situation was familiar: the division had to oust the local population and fight at every step to “establish” itself. But the stay in Diatlovo was shortlived, too. The Soviet breakthrough was faster and more decisive than anticipated. In July, 1944, the remnants of the division-three regiments of some 4,000 men, almost 10,000 dependents, and camp followers (variously estimated at up to 14,000 men, women, and children)—again moved on, leaving Soviet soil forever.⁶⁰ Continuing westward, they were slated to move to the Sokolów area of the Government-General of Poland, north of Warsaw.⁶¹

Kaminsky’s band was now only one of several refugee problems the Germans faced. Many thousands of Belorussians, Cossacks, Caucasians, and others were on the move as the Red Army stormed into Bobruisk, Minsk, and Baranoviche. Indeed, the German command now had little use for the “29th SS.” Rosenberg’s official representative with the badly mauled Army Group Center opined:

To what extent this rather depraved group, which moves across the countryside stealing and plundering, heeding nothing, can be made to settle in the Government-General and to fight against partisans, cannot as yet be judged.⁶²

At the end of July the fate of Kaminsky’s hordes was in doubt.⁶³ Most of the personnel was moved to Upper Silesia, to the area between Ratibor and Czȩstochowa. Meanwhile the Polish underground army rose in Warsaw on August 1, 1944. With the Red Army but a few miles away, across the Vistula, the Poles opened an attack on the Germans, expecting the Russians to join hands and liberate the Polish capital. But the Soviet troops remained immobilized on the far side of the river, standing by while the Germans defeated the Polish rebels.

To suppress the rising, the SS badly needed reinforcements. Among those sent to Warsaw were Turkestanis and Cossacks fighting on the German side; the Dirlewanger Brigade, consisting of criminals released from Nazi concentration camps; and Kaminsky’s “29th SS.”

It is understandable that the participants in this, the most shameful episode of the Kaminsky affair, have been silent about it. It is equally natural that various myths should have arisen about their participation. Many of Kaminsky’s officers, finally out of the fighting area and looking forward to relative comfort, were apparently loath to go into action in Warsaw. One version even speaks of an understanding among them to oppose the Warsaw venture —evidently an overstatement.⁶⁴ Their reluctance may, however, account for the decision to send only a part of the division into Warsaw.

A special regiment was speedily activated with members drawn from all units of the 29th SS, in compliance with German orders. The diary of a Kaminsky soldier killed in Warsaw contains an entry that on August 2 all single men in his unit were ordered to Warsaw.⁶⁵ As early as August 3 and August 4 the regiment was rushed to the Polish capital and promptly thrown into action.⁶⁶ The appointment of Major Frolov as regimental commander supports the hypothesis that there was friction within the division: Frolov was an undistinguished officer at Kaminsky’s headquarters. None of the more dashing and better-known officers was offered—or, at any rate, none held— the job.⁶⁷

The regiment, some 1,700 men in all, went into action in the borough of Ochota and found itself in a crucial sector for at least a week; later it was moved north of the rebel stronghold and into the suburban area of Puszcza Kampinoska.⁶⁸ From August 5 to August 27 the regiment was engaged in such “action” as to make its name synonymous in the popular mind with plunder, abuse, murder, and rape.

How is one to explain this? The debauchery cannot be considered merely the logical culmination of a continuous deterioration in morals and morale; its enormity was out of all proportion to what had occurred previously. Several interpretations may be considered. The least convincing is that of Kaminsky’s German friends, who attribute this development to the absence of German liaison personnel, who (they insist) had invariably had a restraining effect on the unit. More significant is the general atmosphere in which the action took place. In the course of savage street fighting, house after house went up in flames, and whatever was not seized or stolen was demolished and burned. The very tempo and destructiveness of the battle encouraged disregard for property and decency.⁶⁹

Even more important was the predisposition of the troops as they entered Warsaw. After the long, weary trek from Central Russia, they had realized finally that they were on the losing side. They knew they had nothing to hope for. Whatever the outcome of the war, they were doomed. Thus Warsaw provided them with one, perhaps the last, opportunity to live riotously and release all restraints of civility and morals. Après nous, le déluge!⁷⁰

This attitude was abetted by the fact that Warsaw was the first contact which Kaminsky’s men had with the wealth and comfort of the “West.” Here the loot and opportunities were far richer than those they had encountered in the desolate and impoverished villages of the USSR.

The upshot was an orgy horrifying enough to turn even the most ruthless Germans against the Special Regiment. A German general on August 5 asked to be relieved of his command because of the behavior of the RONA regiment, but his request was turned down by higher headquarters. Army and SS admonitions to restore discipline in the unit were in vain.

After the war, von dem Bach-Zelewski, who had overall charge of the Warsaw operation, was to testify that he had seen Kaminsky’s men cart off entire carloads of “stolen jewelry, gold watches, and precious stones.” As he recalled it, “The capture of a liquor supply was more important for the brigade than the seizure of a position commanding the same street.”⁷¹

An eyewitness claims to remember how “Kaminsky was seen sitting on a Warsaw balcony with a girl on each knee, drinking champagne.” To anyone familiar with the mood during the life-and-death struggle raging in Warsaw, this vignette—if true—speaks eloquently. Small wonder that a member of the Special Regiment concluded:

There were savage orgies there. They raped nuns and plundered and stole anything they could get their fingers on. Some returned from Warsaw with five kilograms of gold. It was the most shameful episode I know of.⁷²

The Germans hastened to get the rebellion over with, hoping that the Poles would yield more readily once they realized that neither the Red Army nearby nor the Western Allies would or could give them material aid. Von dem Bach therefore demanded that the Turkestanis and Kaminsky troops be brought under control. By the end of August the regiment was moved out of the Warsaw area. Minus some sixty casualties, the Special Regiment counted its loot, slowly sobered up, and prepared to rejoin the rest of the brigade.

What happened next is shrouded in contradictions. Two Germans who were close to Kaminsky seem to supply the most reliable account. According to them, Kaminsky was called to a German headquarters for a conference designed to settle the fate of his civilians. Meanwhile von dem Bach-Zelewski had related the excesses to Guderian, the newly-appointed chief of the General Staff. SS General Fegelein, an intimate at Hitler’s headquarters in the final stages of the war and himself no better than Kaminsky’s men, in turn informed Field Marshal Jodl of the incidents. “Ten minutes later,” Jodl testified at Nuremberg, “I reported this fact to the Fuehrer, and he immediately ordered the dissolution of the brigade.”⁷³

The fate of the division was thus sealed. When Kaminsky showed up before the German command and was reproached for his troops’ “wild plunder,” he sought to defend himself.

Kaminsky was enraged [one of the German officers recalls]: firstly, before going into action his men had been promised a free hand; secondly, he failed to understand the German point of view: he and his men had, in years of fighting for the Germans, lost all they had-and now they would not even be allowed to compensate themselves at the expense of the treacherous and rebellious Poles?⁷⁴

Serious altercations ensued, until a clearly disgruntled and fearful Kaminsky, “put in his place” by the Germans, was hurriedly called back to Warsaw. A few days later his men were informed that he had been killed.

The version first broadcast blamed the murder on Polish partisans who allegedly ambushed Kaminsky, his chief of staff, doctor, and driver in a car about twenty miles south of Warsaw. Soon different versions, contradictory regarding time, place, and circumstances of the assassination, began to circulate. While some claimed that Kaminsky was shot while trying to escape the Germans, others asserted that, far from fleeing, he was on his way from Warsaw to his troops. The vicinity of Warsaw, the road to Ratibor, the city of Cracow, and the Tatra Mountains have all been given as locales of the murder. All these versions appear to have been concocted in the aftermath of the leader’s disappearance.

The officers of the Special Regiment, suspicious of the official account, insisted on investigating the circumstances on the spot. Ten days passed before the Germans let them visit the alleged place of the murder. What they found was Kaminsky’s car, spattered with blood and riddled with bullet holes. No bodies were found. The investigation only reinforced their suspicions.⁷⁵

Kaminsky was clearly shot on German orders. After receiving instructions to dissolve the division, von dem Bach evidently decided to dispose of Kaminsky.⁷⁶ He admitted the killing in a memorandum presented at the Nuremberg trials in 1946 and in later testimony before the Polish procuracy.

My measures [Bach states with regard to the steps taken at the end of the Warsaw uprising] were . . . shooting of Brigade Commander Kaminsky under martial law, as well as his staff, because they had sanctioned further plundering and requisitioning. . . .⁷⁷

The execution is described by an SS officer who later read the top-secret SS file on the case. According to him, Kaminsky was arrested in connection with the removal of a truckload of jewelry and valuables from Warsaw. “The sentence was to be carried out in all secrecy by the Gestapo in Litzmannstadt [the Nazi name for Lódź].” On August 26, Kaminsky was “sentenced in Warsaw by a nominal court-martial at Bach-Zelewski’s request, probably without formal trial.” Supplementary oral information suggests that Kaminsky was shot in the back without warning while eating in Lódź.⁷⁸

Thus Kaminsky disappeared from the scene as mysteriously as he had entered three years earlier. His troops, startled by this turn, accepted their leader’s end without particular commotion. Perhaps they were relieved to see someone else take the blame for the atrocities of the Special Regiment.⁷⁹

VI. PARTY AND POLITICS

In the chaos of 1941 Voskoboinikov had formed the nucleus of a “Popular Socialist” party. To him, the political and ideological aspects of the movement which he fancied himself as heading seemed to be of intrinsic importance. Not so for Kaminsky, even though he perpetuated the political shell that his predecessor had created. The fact that it is possible to trace the history of the Kaminsky “movement” without reference to political ideals is characteristic; fundamentally it was not a political movement at all.

Even after he had assumed Voskoboinikov’s mantle as head of the “party,” Kaminsky’s relative indifference to issues remained striking. According to a German visitor, the 1942 elaborations of the party program seemed to amount to “a certain alignment with German ideas and institutions.” In this rather more opportunistic form, the program of what was henceforth a Russian Nazi party amounted to: a complete liquidation of communism; reconstruction of a Russian government; friendship with Germany and the German Nazi Party, “cognate to us in spirit and ideas”; abolition of collective farms and free distribution of land; state ownership of forests, natural resources, railroads, and key industries; furtherance of private trade; and an extensive political amnesty, though not for “Jewish commissars, parasites, and scoundrels.”⁸⁰

Actually this program was of scant significance to the Kaminsky complex itself. The interests and motives of the leaders as well as the rank and file were overwhelmingly personal or material. Absorbed in day-to-day struggle with peasants and partisans, preoccupied with activities that often revolved around plunder, lacking politically sophisticated figures, isolated from intellectual and urban life in general, the brigade and the district seemed profoundly devoid of ideological convictions.

This feature distinguished Kaminsky from many of the other “movements” of former Soviet citizens on the German side. Most other groups—the Ukrainian separatists, the Vlasov movement, the “real” Russian Nazis, the conservative nationalists—had a cause for which they were prepared to fight. This is not to suggest that there were not large clusters of opportunists or confused victims of circumstances in all of these, nor that their alignment on the German side thereby assumes a different moral hue. Yet the difference is important for an understanding of the Kaminsky Brigade: it underscores the logic in the transformation of the Lokot’ regime into a horde of unprincipled mercenaries.

It was no paradox that Kaminsky became the leader of a Russian Nazi Party. Under different circumstances he might have espoused a communist, monarchist, or any other cause—provided it promised to bring him prestige and power. In this regard Kaminsky, even though a victim of the Soviet system, typified the frustrated Soviet-bred technician, potentially a dangerous careerist, willing to subordinate his overt behavior to his drive for advancement—a drive inordinately fostered by the barriers endemic to Soviet life. Not at all the “new man” whom the Stalin era had sought to produce, he was rather the unbidden product of the regime, without any inhibitions that might keep him from becoming a turncoat, a “Bolshevik with a minus sign.” His anti-communism was imbued with the same mores and attitudes that had characterized his earlier beliefs. Unable to differentiate except between extremes of black and white, he invariably sought to wind up on the winning side.⁸¹

While Kaminsky probably did desire a “free” and presumably noncommunist (or at least non-Stalinist) Russia, he had no conception of what values or institutions this might require. His insistence on running things his own way was not motivated by national pride or disagreement with the Germans. As an SS official correctly stated,

It was not political dogmatism but experience and utility that made him recommend to the Germans to leave the practical execution of administrative tasks and the command of troops to him and not to interfere in details. Then, and only then, he claimed, could he guarantee the fulfillment of German wishes.⁸²

Never did he recommend to the Germans any measures to improve the lot of the Russian population. Never did he appeal for the respect of national traditions. Indeed, this was one reason why the Germans—or at least some Germans—would confidently entrust a district and a brigade to him.

Still his experience in Lokot’ must have fostered Kaminsky’s political ambitions. The designation of the RONA as an “army of national liberation” and references in his editorials to the “Russian national state” of which Lokot’ was to be the nucleus, betray intentions beyond the scope of his own realm. His future political role was likewise enhanced by his intuitive sense (no doubt conditioned by his Soviet experience) of the importance of demagogy and propaganda. At an early date he established political sections in his brigade, after the model of the Red Army. His Political Administration prepared leaflets, which the Germans dropped behind enemy lines; another important phase of its work was the indoctrination of the Kaminsky troops themselves. In 1942 propaganda within the brigade and district appears to have lacked effective slogans and symbols, resting largely on vague anticommunism plus opposition to collective farming.⁸³

Berlin would not allow a Russian party. Hence tacit sanction had to come from a lower level, in the form of de facto toleration rather than outright permission. In this regard, Kaminsky looked to General Schmidt as his protector. But when, in early April, 1943, Kaminsky sent him his Order No. 90 establishing a Party Committee and instructing it to draft a new program, Schmidt asked Kaminsky for restraint. The latter promised to submit his program before proclaiming it, adding that in reality no party had been founded yet. Meanwhile, however, Golos naroda published the appeal of the party’s organizing committee as a fait accompli.⁸⁴

For his German backers there was indeed reason for caution. The more highly-sponsored, propagandistically more promising, far less blatantly pro-Nazi “Vlasov action”—or rather, its first round—had just run its course and was soon to be called off entirely. It seems that this is precisely what stirred Kaminsky to insist that he had already established a tangible prototype of a non-Bolshevik Russia, whereas Vlasov could only talk and make promises for the future. Actually the Germans did succeed in getting Kaminsky to restrict his political activities to the Lokot’ district. Neither the Russians nor the Germans knew much about his party, and almost the entire population of German-occupied Russia never heard of it. Thus the party is interesting as a curiosity, not as an effective force.

In the late spring of 1943, Kaminsky’s political career appeared to be in the ascendant as the “political warfare” wing of the German military sought to promote a scheme calling for the establishment of some Russian government-in-exile. Kluge’s memorandum of May 22, 1943, suggested that the chairmanship of the Russian National Committee, which he proposed to establish, go to Vlasov. Its other members were to include one or two Belorussians, the German-oriented mayor of Gomel’—and Bronislav Kaminsky. This was to be merely an advisory committee on administrative, cultural, and economic affairs, but gradually its functions were to be increased (even though Kluge made sure to recommend the inclusion of German secret informants in its midst).⁸⁵

This put Second Panzer Army in an awkward position. While its staff favored the idea of a Russian Committee, the inclusion of Kaminsky as a member under Vlasov raised ticklish questions of “diplomacy.” Second Panzer Army recommended the establishment of subcommittees in various cities; and it urged that the Orel committee be headed by Kaminsky.⁸⁶ As it turned out, the whole effort collapsed; on June 8, 1943, Hitler torpedoed the entire “Vlasov action” and with it, all alternative plans for the use of Russians in political warfare experiments.⁸⁷

Kaminsky’s ambition, even with his anti-Vlasov animus, thus did not suffice to blow life into the “Russian Nazi Party.” It was to receive support from another, unexpected quarter. While Berlin recognized no Russian emigre group as its ideological ally in the war, various German agencies had availed themselves of the services of “activist,” dynamic emigre organizations. Foremost among these was the so-called NTS (Natsional’no-Trudovoi Soiuz, or “Solidarists”), which took advantage of this collaboration to establish a modest network of its representatives in occupied Russia. Often through official channels, sometimes sub rosa, it placed a number of its men in responsible positions and won to its ranks some of the mayors, chiefs of police, and editors appointed by the Germans in occupied Russia. Kaminsky’s abortive political movement struck the NTS as a suitable vehicle for the promotion of its goals. Indeed, several sources believe that the very idea of reviving the party was urged on Kaminsky by the first NTS official sent to him. Sometime in March, 1943, the NTS executive dispatched to Lokot’ a young engineer, Georgii Efimovich Khomutov.

Khomutov had been captured by the Germans early in the war. He was soon sent to Wustrau, a special training camp of propagandists and government personnel for occupied Russia and collaborating troop units; its Russian section was in the hands of the NTS (which Khomutov had joined in 1942). Khomutov is roundly described as an attractive fellow. “He made the impression of an honest, decisive and convinced patriot and anti-Bolshevik,” a seasoned observer recalled. “He looked upon the Germans as upon a temporary tool to be used in the struggle against Stalin, hoping that in the course of time the intrinsic strength and abilities of the Russian people would free it from German tutelage.” His patriotism did not prevent him from becoming a German propaganda officer or from being a faithful representative of the NTS, in which he appeared to see the only available focus for Russian “national forces” in the German orbit.⁸⁸

Khomutov evidently exerted considerable influence on Kaminsky. After the move to Lepel’, Khomutov and his friends ran the ephemeral party, themselves residing in nearby Minsk at what was referred to (in good Soviet terminology) as the party’s “oblast’ committee.” A number of other NTS men also became officers of the group. Through Khomutov the Central Committee soon provided an “interlocking directorate” with the NTS, in which Kaminsky would never have accepted a subordinate position.⁸⁹

The program, by-laws, and manifesto, were modeled closely on those of the NTS, in some cases copied verbatim (such as the key formulae, “national revolution” and “land to the toiling peasants”). The manifesto appealed to all “Russian citizens” to reflect on the heavy casualties and untold suffering which their homeland was sustaining: “The peoples of Russia know that the sole guilty ones are the Bolsheviks, with the bloody Stalin at their head.” After an unoriginal review of events since 1917, it called for the total defeat of the Bolshevik regime. In one version, the appeal repeatedly stressed the menace of “Judeo-Bolshevism” and promised “the total elimination of all Jews from the territory of Russia.” In another, it insisted instead: “History will not again grant us such a favorable moment, and if we fail to use it, Russia will perish and our children and their children will damn us.” Hence only an organized party could properly unite all honest anti-Stalinists, “under the leadership of B. V. Kaminsky, the experienced fighter for Russia’s happiness, the leader of the new power.”

The party’s goals were briefly described as the establishment of a new and sovereign Russian state; an end to the kolkhoz system; the recognition of private enterprise; a guarantee of work and minimal income to workers and intellectuals; social services such as old-age pensions, education, and vacations; and freedom of religion, conscience, speech, assembly, and press.⁹⁰

The manifesto received some publicity outside the Kaminsky District, a reflection of the wider scope which the Germans tacitly allowed the NTS, especially by opening branch offices in a half-dozen Belorussian towns. Thus the appeals caused a minor ripple. At first, a former member relates, “as was to be expected, local officials flocked to it [the party]: members of the police, mayors, municipal clerks, including many shady characters. All of them were easily given entry into the party.” Along with them, some idealists joined, in search of a movement “without Sonderführer or commissars.”⁹¹ The bulk of the political activists were men like Vasiukov, the secretary-general, who until the war had been a communist raikom secretary: a turncoat who had evidently maintained the basic patterns of Stalinist mentality. ⁹²

The Russian Nazi Party thus became a strange hybrid. It was a means of adding luster to the leader; it was a tool for the advancement of the NTS; it was a propaganda weapon exploited by the Germans. It remained largely ineffectual in all three functions, small in the scope of its activity, and overwhelmingly bereft of faith and inherent meaning. As for Kaminsky himself, there is no evidence that he, any more than his followers, genuinely believed its tenets.⁹³

To the Germans, the evolution of the Russian Nazi Party raised some problems. The military high command (OKH) adopted an ostrich-like approach, promising directives from the Rosenberg Ministry “in several months.” The latter, in essence, concluded that common sense militated against banning the party even if in principle it would be impermissible for the Nazis to give it open succor: the political vacuum created by a new ban, it argued, would redound to the benefit of the communists. But the SS objected: Kaminsky was under von Gottberg’s command who (as an SS general) must be given a free hand to deal with the matter. In practice, any effort to secure von Gottberg’s consent to a joint directive meant postponing the idea sine die,⁹⁴

One other ministry, however, was prepared to back the miscellaneous efforts of various “Eastern” politicians and adventurers to set up little Nazi parties of their own: Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry. In particular, Eberhardt Taubert, the head of its Soviet section, pursued this course through various subsidiaries. As early as the fall of 1942 an internal report of the ministry had spoken in laudatory terms of Lokot’ as a “National-Socialist Russian Republic.”⁹⁵ Thereafter the ministry tried to supply Kaminsky with equipment, newsprint, and slogans. In return, Kaminsky sent Goebbels a carload of vodka produced in his area. Similar shipments went to the major commanding the propaganda detachment to which Khomutov was assigned.⁹⁶ In practice, such efforts mattered little.⁹⁷

When finally, at the end of 1944, Taubert summarized his work in a confidential memorandum to Joseph Goebbels, he stressed the virtues and advantages of Kaminsky’s orientation as compared to Vlasov’s. In terms suggestive of Taubert’s own outlook, he concluded:

The Vlasov movement is not National-Socialist. While National-Socialist ideology has the effect of dynamite in the [former] realm of Bolshevism, as has been demonstrated by the experience of Kaminsky, the Vlasov movement is a watered-down infusion of liberal and Bolshevik ideologies.⁹⁸

Dmitrii Soshal’skii, chairman of the Minsk branch of the Russian Nazi Party, was the pseudonym of an historian who had taught at Moscow University.⁹⁹ An elderly man, educated in Germany before 1914, he was poorly acquainted with the substance of National-Socialism. Early in the war he went to work for a German propaganda agency in Smolensk and later in Minsk. Wholeheartedly on the German side, he applied every effort to rectify what he considered mistakes of German policy in the occupied areas. Typical in this connection is the lengthy memorandum which he submitted to the Germans in 1943. Aspiring to a future alliance between the Reich and Russia, Soshal’skii pointed to the inane measures that could not but arouse popular anger against the Germans.¹⁰⁰ Of course his memorandum had no effect on German conduct.

Though increasingly disappointed in the Germans, Soshal’skii kept hoping for an opportunity to do productive work and was therefore amenable to the role which Khomutov offered him in February-March, 1944. He became the head (or, Khomutov must have reasoned, figurehead) of the Minsk branch of the party. He was suited for this role both because of his age and background, and because he was on relatively good terms with Germans and Russians alike. In the next three months—from March to May, 1944—the Minsk branch attracted a few dozen individuals to its ranks. In practice, however, there was nothing for the party to do. During the entire period there were only two open meetings, each attended by some fifteen members. These included several former prisoners of war, a few society ladies, two or three newspapermen, and Russian employees of the local German agencies.

Before the Minsk “committee” ended its sterile existence, a minor coup was staged within it. The man behind the coup was one of the local party officials, Mikhail Bobrov. This was the assumed name of a former Soviet journalist who had worked on Moscow dailies and at the Comintern radio station. Under the Germans he had edited the Bobruisk newspaper, Novyi put’ (later, Rul’). He withdrew with the German troops to Minsk, where he joined the “committee” at Khomutov’s request. Probably by agreement with the NTS, which was tired of Soshal’skii’s inaction and ceremoniousness, the ambitious and energetic Bobrov tried to take over the Minsk branch. After conferring with Kaminsky in Diatlovo in late May, he arranged with the German sponsors in Minsk to oust Soshal’skii from the chairmanship of the group.

In practice, the episode was farcical. A few days later Minsk was evacuated, and the “activity” of the Russian Nazi “movement” ceased once and for all. Khomutov urged Soshal’skii to join the brigade, but the elderly professor had become disappointed with the “uncouth youths.” He fled to Germany, where he was involved on the fringes of the final Vlasov “action” at the end of 1944.¹⁰¹ Bobrov too joined the westward evacuation and wound up as a Vlasovite propagandist in the final stages of the war. His otherwise trivial coup is interesting in that it exemplifies a type of Soviet-bred dynamic ambition and reflects the attitude then reigning in certain German and NTS circles.¹⁰²

As the Germans withdrew, the NTS wound up its own work. At the printing shop of the brigade, NTS printers ran off, sub rosa, leaflets to Red Army troops, which were left behind as the units retreated. Khomutov stayed in territory reoccupied by the Soviet army; there is some dispute whether he meant to redefect, or to carry on “subversive” work. Rumors among emigres have it that he was shot by the NKVD in 1947.

However warped or naive their ideas and methods, Khomutov and Soshal’skii, in their very different ways, were basically sincere men who thought of themselves as idealists: something that could not be said of Kaminsky. In effect, the party slipped out of Kaminsky’s hands. Under the circumstances, it had been doomed from the start.

VII. THE END

In Army Group Center, Kaminsky and Vlasov symbolized alternative experiments. It was natural that a profound gulf should develop between them and between their backers. A keen German observer who knew both men writes:

The main argument of Vlasov and his followers was: “Kaminsky has put himself in the service of the Germans for a German cause. He has assumed German tasks without considering the interests of the Russian people as a whole and without seeking to lay down the conditions of future German-Russian relations. . . . His attitude can be explained only in terms of his personal ambitions.”

The Vlasovites stressed that Kaminsky had never protested against German colonial and Untermensch policies in occupied Russia.

He was reproached for waging the struggle against the Soviet regime in purely negative terms and for not offering the Russian people any constructive solutions, especially with regard to social questions.¹⁰³

In return, a German officer reported from Lokot’ in May, 1943, Kaminsky claimed to see in Nazism a common ideological basis for Germany and his movement, whereas “he for this reason opposes the national-Russian movement of General Vlasov, who he fears may one day turn against Germany.”¹⁰⁴

When the Kaminsky Brigade was transformed into the 29th SS Division, Vlasov objected (partly out of fear of being outplayed) and told his German friends that this sort of venture was “bound to be a failure, that he [Kaminsky] had no character, and that one could never make the Russian people into an ally against the Soviet regime by such measures.”

In the spring of 1944 the OKW recognized that “in ideology and goals” Kaminsky’s movement “diverged” from Vlasov’s. It was only natural, however, that when elements in Berlin sought to step up the utilization of Vlasov, attempts would be made to bring the two men together. The First Corps, for instance, advised Sixteenth Army in May, 1944, that Kaminsky’s party must be “reorganized” by the Reich as a measure of political confidence in the wavering Soviet population. In addition, “the Vlasov-Kaminsky dualism must be eliminated. The Vlasov idea must be absorbed in the new [Kaminsky] movement. A personal visit by General Vlasov would be of far-reaching significance.”¹⁰⁵

While Army Group Center was by then sober enough not to seek futile political experiments, Army Group North pressed for prompt action, stressing the psychological-warfare potential of the wholehearted promotion of an indigenous political movement.¹⁰⁶ By this time the course of military events had made such endeavors ludicrous. Before long, Kaminsky’s men were in Poland. As his first echelons moving southward reached the Katowice area, on September 5, 1944, the anti-German partisans in Slovakia began an open revolt. While the Germans rushed reinforcements to suppress them, trainloads of Kaminsky’s men and refugees piled up in Upper Silesia, in the vicinity of Ratibor, virtually abandoned by their preoccupied masters. Finally the Gauleiter of Upper Silesia threatened to court-martial the SS officer attached to the refugees if they did not move out of his province immediately.

The SS considered throwing the Kaminsky Division into action against the Slovaks; Gottlob Berger, the SS chieftain who had general authority over Kaminsky as well as the anti-Slovak campaign, reportedly favored this way out. However, opposition to the idea arose both within the SS and outside it.¹⁰⁷ By this time Himmler had been persuaded to receive General Vlasov in a final, quixotic “political warfare” maneuver. The Kaminsky Division was about to be dissolved. Its leader was gone; its men were restive. When their fate was weighed, the contemplated new “Vlasov divisions” suggested themselves as a natural and suitable destination for them.

A carefully staged “election” was held in the division. The man chosen as the new leader was Kaminsky’s deputy, Lieutenant Colonel Belai. An honest fellow, Belai had been (according to one source) a senior lieutenant or (according to another) a junior politruk in the Red Army, and had been a partisan until his capture by Kaminsky’s men. According to some, Belai had emphatically objected to the participation of the division in the Warsaw operation.¹⁰⁸ But Belai’s assumption of command was purely nominal. The fate of the division was sealed.

While the families of the Kaminsky men were moved from Upper Silesia to Pomerania, the soldiers-between 6,000 and 8,000 men-remained at the training camp of Neuhammer. There, in the late fall of 1944, the division was absorbed into the new Vlasov complex.

One of the Vlasovite representatives recalls: “We were struck by the utter chaos that reigned there. It was a real gypsy camp. Horses ran about ungroomed. Uniforms were untidy. Equipment consisted of the queerest mixture of German and Soviet types. Still, they had twelve T-34 and two ‘KV’ tanks.”¹⁰⁹ Vlasov’s men were received coolly by the leaders of Kaminsky’s division. “Secretary-General” Vasiukov threatened to lead his men off into the Carpathians rather than see the unit disbanded. Protsiuk, due to be arrested, disappeared, never to return.

However great the difficulties among the officers, the rank and file were anxious to identify themselves with the Vlasov movement. Without any overt trouble, some 6,000 men were transferred to Bavaria—first to Feldstetten, then to Münsingen, where Vlasov’s “First Division” was being activated. After three months of screening and training, most of the officers and men, demoted to their actual ranks, joined the new division as regular troops. Many Vlasov officers were unhappy about the infusion of these elements who in their minds “compromised” the movement. Indeed, to the end the kamintsy remained an alien body even within this unit. Occasionally it took severe punishment to keep them in line. ¹¹⁰

The reorganization had its ludicrous aspects. For all intents and purposes, Germany had lost the war. In March, 1945, some kamintsy participated in a small operation on the Oder front. Then they marched southward to Prague, defying German orders and, in the first days of May, fought with other Vlasov units against the SS on the side of the Czech rebels. But by then the Kaminsky forces were no longer an entity; they obeyed other—or no—authorities.

Most of the survivors were turned over to the Soviet armed forces in the general chaos of repatriation that followed the capitulation of the Reich. Others got to Plattling, from where they too were extradited to the Soviet Union a few months later. Only a handful remained in the West. About the fate of the thousands who fell into Soviet hands one can only speculate. Their lot was undoubtedly among the most severe meted out by Stalin’s punitive organs.

VIII. KAMINSKY: A LAST LOOK

The sudden German occupation of vast areas of the Soviet Union permitted, for a short time, the emergence of local authority against the background of the accumulated frustrations and grievances of the prewar years. The rapid collapse of the Soviet control system over this part of the USSR set the stage for a range of “alternatives”—from microcosms of relatively untrammeled life on the village level to stringent and oppressive German dictation and terror. One such variant was the Kaminsky complex.

Against the titanic background of World War II, Kaminsky and his movement-district, party, and brigade—were but a petty episode. Their emergence did not alter the course of history. Had they never existed, neither military operations, nor German occupation policy, nor popular attitudes would have been materially different. And yet the Kaminsky phenomenon is illustrative of a curious and characteristic development.

He and his movement were accidents in the pattern of wartime policies. There was no logic in the fortuitous toleration of a measure of indigenous self-government which one German officer proferred while another forbade it; no reason why one cluster of villages should have organized local administration on their own while another did not. The role of individuals, in a situation of general paralysis from fear or inertia, is exemplified by the changes wrought as a result of the replacement of Voskoboinikov by Kaminsky. Whatever would have been the former’s fate, had he not been killed, Kaminsky’s rule wrote finis to all plans for a politically meaningful non-Soviet experiment. Less appealing than the Cossack atamans of yore; less daring than the pioneer leaders of the vol’nitsa; less splendiferous or competent than the Chinese warlords; less independent than the condottieri, in the latter stages of his career, Kaminsky was an opportunist par excellence.

From the German vantage point, the Kaminsky “formula” for occupation government arose almost accidentally through the realization of some of the military that effective occupation of an area as vast as the USSR was impossible, and especially hopeless without relying on some elements of the population. Yet the very effectiveness of a homegrown movement lies in its relative autonomy from the occupying power. It is more appealing to the inhabitants precisely because it has its own dynamics which the foreign power cannot expect to control—and which present this power with the dilemma of whether or not to support the movement at the risk of its potential deviation into “undesirable” channels.

Kaminsky was particularly well suited to the purposes of the Third Reich. Eschewing broad social movements as well as ideologically-oriented groups, the Germans in this instance chose to throw their backing to the nonideological, ambitious opportunist. In a Russia that was to be a colony of Greater Germany, in a region that was not to be reconstructed socially or culturally according to the wishes of its population, the occupying power could afford to have a Kaminsky rule much as he pleased, so long as he was loyal to Berlin.

The Kaminsky “formula,” however, as applied in Lokot’ and Lepel’ could work only under certain special conditions. If some part of the population backed Kaminsky in the early stages of his venture, this was due primarily to the fact that he was “one of them” and that he kept the Germans (and partisans) away. Others, with fewer drawbacks, also met these two conditions; Voskoboinikov is the most obvious example.

Kaminsky’s approach was bound to be ineffective—indeed, it boomeranged with a vengeance—when applied within the framework of a broader, let alone national, policy of reconstruction or an extensive effort at political propaganda. Likewise, the Kaminsky formula became inapplicable if an overall plan of socio-economic and political engineering was to be implemented. One need only imagine a Russia ruled by a bevy of Kaminskies, each refusing to carry out the dictates of a central indigenous authority—and the result is ominously reminiscent of China ruled by feuding warlords, unwilling or unable to embark on large-scale reforms, pool economic resources for the common good, or establish anything more than mere “order.”

Built on the quicksand of individual ambitions, the Kaminsky alternative to Soviet rule—without the cement of political, social, and national ideals— inevitably deteriorated as soon as it was transplanted outside its original area. “Administration” became terror; arbitrariness replaced law; looting took the place of orderly assessment, with the result that the population was transformed into bitter enemies; and in the end Kaminsky was more feared and hated by the peasants than the Germans were.

The Kaminsky movement was not effective in controlling cities, where at least part of the remaining intelligentsia demanded answers to questions which Kaminsky never even raised. Nor could the Kaminsky formula inspire a military movement of any scope: this conclusion is supported by a comparison with the Vlasov approach. With all the similarities of collaboration and all the moral compromises, the differences between the two types—and those whom they attracted—are persuasive.

A man of limited intellectual resources, Kaminsky successfully manipulated his environment for his own ends. Yet paradoxically in some of his ideas he was closer to an “old emigre” of pre-1917 vintage, even if his program mirrored contemporary grievances of Soviet men. Kaminsky’s outlook in political affairs (or perhaps, the absence of such an outlook) further aroused some of the politically-motivated or socially-responsible defectors against him.

Kaminsky charged the Vlasov men with having remained communist in their ideals; Vlasov accused the kamintsy of having remained Bolsheviks in morals and behavior. Within limits, both were right. With regard to ideology and political orientation, moreover, the Vlasovites could castigate Kaminsky as a puppet

. . . who would build the future Russia unilaterally on the basis of German power, rather than seek the forces needed for this reconstruction in the power inherent in the peoples of Russia. Like the Germans and the old Russian emigres, he [Kaminsky] negated everything that had taken place in the Soviet Union since 1917.

More fairly, one might say, Kaminsky neither negated nor approved recent socio-political change: he ignored it. He was far more at home as a minor tyrant than as a politician, let alone as a theorist laying plans for a better tomorrow.

Not all the men in his “movement” shared their leader’s characteristics. While some of his henchmen, like Protsiuk, exceeded Kaminsky in cruelty and immorality, others, like Belai, were evidently more decent. Among the rank and file of peasants, prisoners, and partisans, there were men to whom— had they had a free choice—many of the associations which Kaminsky’s name evoked would have been plainly repugnant. But once they had deserted the Soviet side, they had little choice. A hostile observer states that “among his officers there were efforts to find another leader, but under the circumstances this was bound to be chimeric.”¹¹¹ And a former partisan who wound up in the brigade recalled years later:

We would sometimes reflect that after all we were mistreating our own people. But then again the partisans were doing the same thing. I sometimes wished I could just get away from it all to the end of the world. We didn’t care much for either side. . . .¹¹²

As in most units, the bulk of men were content to survive, with an occasional “good time” and by inertia, to follow the general pattern that was being shaped with blood and fire.

It had been a short road from the populist hopes of late 1941 to the savagery of Warsaw three years later. Ironically, as Kaminsky lost all his inhibitions, he became increasingly a tool of other men. His opportunism had helped him so long as he remained at the head of a relatively small, self-contained peasant area. Once he had left it, he was bound to fail. But then, the collapse of his enterprise was preordained as much by the general conditions under which he operated as by the organic weaknesses he and his movement possessed.

Kaminsky was representative of a personality type which persists in Soviet society. Ability and arrogance, ambition and mediocrity, nihilism and conviction merge to produce a prototype which must be placed close to one extreme and on the spectrum of potential counter-elite cadres of the Stalin era. Fortunately for the Soviet population—and for the world abroad—there are, increasingly, other and better types, too.

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*The author wishes to express his gratitude to the Russian Research Center, Harvard University, for enabling him to conduct the interviews with Soviet refugees which constitute a substantial part of the source material for this paper, and for supporting the research which resulted in an earlier, unpublished version o f this report. He is also grateful for the technical assistance provided by the Russian Institute, Columbia University, and for the comments and advice from his former colleagues on the staff of the War Documentation Project, Columbia University.

Interviews with refugee informants (conducted in the main in 1950-51, in Germany, as part o f the Project on the Soviet Social System, Russian Research Center, Harvard University) are cited by informant code number. Those with former German officials were held from 1951 on. Several manuscripts by eyewitnesses have been of substantial value; these were procured through or commissioned by the Russian Research Center, Harvard University, the Research Program on the USSR, New York, or individual intermediaries.

In addition to published Soviet sources, the documentation stems largely from German wartime records. Other than the author’s own files, the major collections used were:

Centre de Documentation Contemporaine Juive (CDCJ), Paris, France;

Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford, California;

Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich, Germany;

International Military Tribunal (IMT) and Nuremberg (U.S.) Military Tribunals (NMT), records, documents submitted in evidence, and proceedings;

Jewish Scientific Institute (YIVO), Archive, New York;

National Archives of the United States, Washington, D.C.;

U.S. Army, The Adjutant General’s Office, Departmental Records Branch, Captured Records Section, Alexandria, Va.

*Machine-Tractor Station.