The Victims Of Yalta

[Rogernoble]

I attach the article I included in the June 2018 White Star Newsletter and have added Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s comments:The Victims of Yalta – Nikolai TolstoyMy knowledge of twentieth century Russian history has been particularly influenced by three pieces of information. The first is a TV programme on the 1917 Soviet Revolution which centres on the Kronstadt sailors who became national heroes. By 1921 they had become disillusioned by the monster that they had helped create and revolted. The Red army were sent to deal with them across the sea ice to their fortified island. They were defeated and those not killed in the battle either died escaping to Finland across the ice or were marched into a forest and shot. The second was another TV documentary on the siege of Stalingrad. It is a story of epic courage which turned into a defeat for the German army which surely must have made a material contribution to the eventual defeat of the Nazis. The third occurred on a cruise to St Petersburg when I was following a yacht club friend through immigration. The officer started questioning him about an innocent sailing voyage he had made there thirty years before. This seemed to have produced a security file on him. The picture emerging in my mind was of a proud and heroic people governed by a gang of tyrannical thugs.Against this background I managed to acquire a copy of Nikolai’s book “The Victims of Yalta”. The background is best summed up by the summary on the fly leaf: “By the end of the second world war, nearly six million Russians were stranded in Germany. Some had been imported by the Nazis for slave labour, some were prisoners of war, some were anti-communists in German uniforms, and there were many women and children. Of the total, over three million were in territories overrun by the Western Allies. By a secret agreement made between Eden and Molotov in 1944, and confirmed by Churchill and Stalin at Yalta, these people were condemned to be sent back without choice to the USSR – which meant, for vast numbers, to such hell-camps as Vortkuta in the Arctic Circle. The victims were aware of what lay ahead. Their efforts to escape their fate included many suicides.A contributory factor in the story is that the Western Allies and Germany were signatories to the Geneva Convention which, in the main, both parties had adhered to, The Soviets had refused to sign up and treated German POWs appallingly and Germany retaliated. It is also important to understand the Soviets view of their forces who had been captured. As far as the Soviets were concerned any members of their forces who was captured, had not fought to the death and was therefore a traitor and could well have also become tainted by western democratic thinking. The vigour with which this principal was upheld is amply illustrated by Stalin’s repudiation of his son who was captured by the Germans.As the war progressed to its conclusion some 25,000 British and US personnel were rounded up by the Soviets while the Allies came across the millions of Russians referred to above. Faced with forcible repatriation they all had a pretty good idea of the fate that awaited them. The best they could probably hope for was a bullet in the head on arrival against torture or the hell of the Gulags and a long lingering death. With this prospect many committed suicide. Nikolai relates one harrowing story where a man goes into the wood with his wife and three children and shoots all of them including himself. The allied soldiers soon realised what was happening and complained bitterly, a cry which was picked up at the top of the army command. As well as their humanitarian concerns the soldiers were also no doubt conscious of the emerging Nuremburg rulings where “I was just following orders” was not raising much sympathy with the judges.Why did the foreign office not stop this atrocious policy? The implied threat was that the Allies might not get their prisoners of war back if the Soviets did not also get their people. The powers that be were desperate to keep all this quiet realising that there would be a public outcry if it was realised that millions of men, women and children were being sent to a horrible end. Nikolai argued very strongly that the Soviets were as anxious to keep this whole affair under wraps as the Allies were and a more robust response would have been successful and may have saved many lives. Two statements stuck in my mind as I finished reading the book:General Vlasov (White Russian) – “We are not a power factor; but to have trodden on our Russian hopes for freedom and for human worth, out of ignorance and opportunism, is something that Americans, Englishmen, Frenchman and perhaps Germans too, will one day regret”. How perceptive!The Western Allies had all, with one exception, been pretty mealy mouthed in response to the bullying Soviets. The exception was Liechtenstein, a country with no army and a police force of eleven men:“I (Nikolai) asked the Prince (of Liechtenstein) if he had not had misgivings or fears as to the success of the policy (frustrating the Soviets). He seemed quite surprised at my question. “Oh no” he explained, “if you talk roughly with the Soviets they are quite happy. That after all, is the language they understand””.We are talking of events that occurred more than seventy years ago and a book published in 1977. What relevance has it got in 2018? Throughout the forced repatriation the Soviets continually argued that they were welcoming back the people concerned with open arms, not-withstanding the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. In almost all cases they accused the allies of holding the people against their wills and mistreating them. How many weeks not years do we have to go back to hear “of course we would not destroy our citizens with polonium or nerve gas and shoot down civilian air craft and why are you holding our people against their wills”.In this review I have only skimmed through a substantial volume. It is an extraordinarily well- researched book and so relevant today that one can’t help feeling that it should be compulsory reading for all new MPs. I have an article on Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s view of the (very supportive) which I will be happy to email on to anyone who is interested. Roger Noble – June 2018                    RUSSIAN TELEVISION INTERVIEW WITH A.I. SOLZHENITSYN                                                Broadcast on 30 September 1994                                                                        and                                  Published in RUSSKAYA MYSL on 12 October 1994Interviewer:You are speaking about those people whom Stalin hated and liquidated.  But in reality the Americans and British helped him to do it?  They perpetrated a dreadful betrayal ...Solzhenitsyn:Yes.  And now we’re coming to this in the next book.  Because with this book I want to concern myself only with the prisoners.I have to say that I feel very strongly about this subject.  I was arrested at the front in 1945.  I had a completely clear conscience: I was arrested because I criticized Stalin.  And I was not in the least resentful: I sat and sat, I was trapped.  But I saw those children with whom I sat in gaol - they waged war against them!  They were sentenced by the Motherland!  And yet again they were sentenced by the Motherland: there, in prison, they were abandoned; and again, a third time, they were sentenced, when they took them away and arrested them once more.  What for?I took their fate deeply to heart.  And I consider this matter one of the greatest importance, one that must be fully understood.  Yes, it was in the West - why in the West is there such general silence about this matter?  The West stays quiet about their fate - not only were they handed over, but I'm talking about the governments.  Why do they remain silent?  Three American presidents were in some degree indirectly guilty of their handover and that of other fugitives in the West: Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower.  And the British Government was utterly tarnished.  And a few lovers of justice and truth among Western and our own émigré scholars unearthed it with difficulty, barely penetrating the full truth.  And now for the next book, that by Nikolai Tolstoy.Nikolai Tolstoy - he is the great-nephew.  Broadly speaking, it’s like this: Nikolai Tolstoy’s great-grandfather was the first cousin of Lev Nikolaevich - a close relative of Lev Nikolaevich.  Earlier in “The Gulag Archipelago”, not suspecting the implication, I wrote: “What Tolstoy will some day write about this?  About the prisoners-of-war?”  And a Tolstoy appeared, and he wrote.He wrote a superb book: “Victims of Yalta”.  Victims of Yalta.  Here it is [Solzhenitsyn shews the photograph on the back cover], who today is fighting heroically for truth - today!  This is what I have to say about it. He wrote the history of the Yalta Agreement, how Roosevelt and Churchill agreed that they would deliver up by force all those Soviet citizens who found themselves in the West (whether they were prisoners, or abducted to the West by the Germans to work, or refugees - all of them were to be handed over by force).  And then something terrible began: that dreadful period of 1945 -1946, when our Allies - the British and the Americans - by force, with bludgeons, delivered hundreds of thousands of our Soviet citizens into the hands of the Soviet counter-espionage organization SMERSH.I spoke about this.  Much is now - now! - generally known about this.   But the British Government customarily retains its secrets for thirty years, while much documentation is withheld for fifty years.  Already fifty years have passed - they remain inaccessible.When I was in England, I immediately addressed the English people on the radio, and said that it is a disgrace, this British betrayal: it is burned into our memory, and it must somehow be atoned.  They handed over not only those who fought in the second World War.  They handed over General Krasnov, who was an ally of the British in the first World War, who scarcely participated in the second.  They gave him up to be hanged by the Bolsheviks, together with other Cossacks: old and young, with their Cossack wagons ...Interviewer:With children and women ...Solzhenitsyn:With children and women.  People committed suicide on the spot.  The “democratic” British drove them at bayonet point, or by deception, to the handover point - as happened at Judenburg, where they were told they were going to a conference.  All the officers believed in the “conference” concerning the fate of their army - and were promptly handed over to SMERSH.And now there is a further extraordinary story.  Tolstoy wrote this work.  And he shewed that the British Government and Macmillan in particular were guilty of all this, and he identified individual senior officers.  Moreover he he drew atttention to one of the commanders, whom he mentioned, and a leaflet was published (not by him!): “look, here’s a war criminal!”  A war criminal - Warden of such-and-such a College, an honourable lord, so it appears - well, a highly honourable peer.  This occasioned a trial of the pamphlet’s author.  But Tolstoy nobly said: since the evidence comes from my book, I will place myself in the dock.And so the trial began.  I have to say that justice in present-day Britain ... many of us in Russia have the impression that British democracy has created a judicial system incredible in its fairness and its democratic procedure.  Don’t believe it!British justice, the evils of which were exposed by Dickens, has become more rotten after a century - after a century and a half.  I have had experience of it – I’ve experienced it twice over.  Once I was involved in an action lasting eight years: an action over half a line, half a phrase, in my book “The Oak and the Calf”.  A rascal brought an action against me, claiming I had libelled him in that book.  And thus a work of literature is brought to court to be evaluated by a jury.Our people fancy that a jury means something open and fair ... selected by lot, these were people who sleep at night under London’s bridges: dock labourers, and prostitutes, who haven’t any idea what literature is.  And they sat in literary judgment!  They sat for seven days, but afterwards the proceedings dragged on for eight years, and I was found guilty of defamation.  And this very rascal published a book about me, filled with lies and calumnies occurring in just about every sentence.I never went to court over that.  But a noble émigré involved himself in court proceedings lasting ten years.  Justice was done!  They proved him to be a scoundrel, who swinishly wrote this book; proved him to be a common criminal - in every sentence.  Never mind - never mind!  He refused to pay: “I am bankrupt, I possess nothing, I am not guilty”.And the English court excused everything.  Do you appreciate that?  And then this English court ordered Nikolai Tolstoy to pay his fine for telling the truth: one and a half million pounds sterling ...Interviewer:Three million dollars, almost.Solzhenitsyn:Two and a half million dollars to pay.  And still the judicial proceedings go on.  Now he is completely bankrupt, and may be put in prison: “How can we fleece him further?  He has children ...”  Everything is lost.  He is still researching the matter, he has discovered new facts, he is unearthing the whole business.  But for them it is distasteful and boring.I was unable to contain myself, and several years ago I wrote a letter to the British Queen.  I wrote: “Your Majesty, I appreciate that you do not control British justice.  I understand that British justice is completely independent of you.  But the blot of this betrayal will lie on the whole of Britain: this unbearable betrayal of your allies, this betrayal of defenceless people.  Take a moral step: it is within Your Majesty’s power to distance yourself morally from what British justice is doing”.I received a reply from some official: “Her Majesty read your letter with interest”.  That was it.Interviewer:And you received no further reply?Solzhenitsyn:There was no further response, and there won’t be - and I don’t expect it