In the history of the Great Patriotic War, unfortunately, there were many examples of the betrayal of Soviet citizens - military and civilians, who went over to the service of the enemy. Someone made their choice out of hatred of the Soviet political system, someone was guided by considerations of personal gain, being captured or being in the occupied territory. Back in the 1920s and 1930s. several Russian fascist organizations appeared, created by emigrants - followers of fascist ideology. Oddly enough, but one of the most powerful anti-Soviet fascist movements was formed not even in Germany or any other European country, but in the east of Asia - in Manchuria. And it acted under the direct tutelage of the Japanese special services interested in using the Russian fascists for propaganda, espionage and sabotage in the Far East and Siberia.
On August 30, 1946, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR completed the examination of the case, which had begun on August 26, on charges of a group of persons with high treason and waging an armed struggle against the Soviet Union with the aim of overthrowing the Soviet system. Among the defendants - G. S. Semenov, A. P. Baksheev, L. F. Vlasyevsky, B. N. Sheptunov, L. P. Okhotin, I. A. Mikhailov, N. A. Ukhtomsky and K. V. Rodzaevsky. Familiar surnames.
Grigory Mikhailovich Semyonov (1890-1946) - the same famous Cossack chieftain, lieutenant general of the White Army, who commanded anti-Soviet armed formations operating in Transbaikalia and the Far East during the Civil War. The Semenovites became famous for their atrocities even against the background of other, in general, not prone to excessive humanism, armed formations during the Civil War. A hereditary Trans-Baikal Cossack, Grigory Semyonov, even before becoming an ataman, showed himself to be a brave warrior on the fronts of the First World War. A graduate of the Orenburg Cossack cadet school, he fought in Poland - as part of the Nerchinsk regiment of the Ussuri brigade, then participated in a campaign in Iranian Kurdistan, fought on the Romanian front. When the revolution began, Semenov turned to Kerensky with a proposal to form a Buryat-Mongol regiment and received the "go-ahead" for this from the Provisional Government. It was Semenov who, in December 1917, dispersed the Soviets in Manchuria and formed the Daurian Front. The first experience of cooperation between Semyonov and the Japanese dates back to the beginning of the Civil War in Russia. Already in April 1918, a Japanese unit of 540 soldiers and 28 officers under the command of Captain Okumura entered the Special Manchu Detachment, formed by Semyonov. January 4, 1920 A. V. Kolchak handed over to G. M. Semyonov the entirety of military and civilian power in the "Russian eastern outskirts". However, by 1921, the position of whites in the Far East had deteriorated so much that Semenov was forced to leave Russia. He emigrated to Japan. After the puppet state of Manchukuo was created in Northeast China in 1932 under the formal rule of the last Qing emperor Pu Yi, and in fact completely controlled by Japan, Semenov settled in Manchuria. He was given a house in Dairen and given a pension of 1,000 Japanese yen.
"Russian Bureau" and Japanese special services
A large number of Russian emigrants concentrated in Manchuria. First of all, these were officers and Cossacks who were ousted from Transbaikalia, the Far East, Siberia after the victory of the Bolsheviks. In addition, quite numerous Russian communities have lived in Harbin and some other Manchu cities since pre-revolutionary times, including engineers, technical specialists, merchants, and employees of the CER. Harbin was even called the "Russian city". The total Russian population of Manchuria was at least 100 thousand people. The Japanese special services, which controlled the political situation in Manchukuo, were always extremely attentive and interested in the Russian emigration, since they viewed it from the perspective of using it against Soviet power in the Far East and Central Asia. In order to more effectively manage the political processes in the Russian emigration, in 1934 the Bureau for the Affairs of Russian Emigrants in the Manchurian Empire (BREM) was created. It was headed by Lieutenant General Veniamin Rychkov (1867-1935), an old tsarist officer who until May 1917 commanded the 27th Army Corps, then the Tyumen Military District of the Directory, and later served with Semyonov. In 1920 he emigrated to Harbin and got a job as head of the railway police department at the Manchuria station. Then he worked as a proofreader in a Russian printing house. In the Russian emigration, the general enjoyed a certain influence, and therefore he was entrusted to head the structure responsible for the consolidation of emigrants. The Bureau for Russian Emigrants was created with the aim of strengthening ties between emigrants and the government of Manchukuo, and assisting the Japanese administration in resolving issues of streamlining the life of the Russian emigrant community in Manchuria. However, in fact, it was the BREM that became the main structure for training reconnaissance and sabotage groups, which were then sent by Japanese intelligence to the territory of the Soviet Union. In the mid-1930s. the formation of sabotage detachments began, staffed by Russian emigrants who were in the field of ideological influence of the "Russian bureau". BREM covered almost the entire active part of the Russian emigration - 44 thousand Russians out of 100 thousand living in Manchuria were registered with the Bureau. The organization published printed editions - the magazine "Luch Asia" and the newspaper "Voice of Emigrants", had its own printing house and library, and was also engaged in cultural, educational and propaganda activities among the emigre community. After the death of General Rychkov, which followed in 1935, Lieutenant General Alexei Baksheev (1873-1946), a longtime associate of Ataman Semyonov, who served as his deputy when Semyonov was a military ataman of the Trans-Baikal army, became the new head of the BREM. A hereditary Trans-Baikal Cossack, Baksheev graduated from a military school in Irkutsk, participated in the Chinese campaign of 1900-1901, then in the First World War, on the fronts of which he rose to the rank of military sergeant major. Having emigrated to Manchuria in 1920, Baksheev settled in Harbin and in 1922 was elected military chieftain of the Trans-Baikal Cossack army.
Konstantin Vasilyevich Rodzaevsky (1907-1946) was responsible for the cultural and educational work in the Bureau for Russian Emigrants. He was a personality, to some extent, more remarkable than the old tsarist generals who were considered the formal leaders of emigration. Firstly, due to his age, Konstantin Rodzaevsky did not have time to either take part in the Civil War, or even catch her at a more or less adult age. He spent his childhood in Blagoveshchensk, where his father, Vladimir Ivanovich Rodzaevsky, worked as a notary. Until the age of 18, Kostya Rodzaevsky led the lifestyle of an ordinary Soviet youth - he graduated from school, even managed to join the ranks of the Komsomol. But in 1925, the life of young Kostya Rodzaevsky turned in the most unexpected way - he fled from the Soviet Union, crossed the Soviet-Chinese border along the Amur River, and ended up in Manchuria. Kostya's mother Nadezhda, having learned that her son was in Harbin, obtained a Soviet exit visa and went to see him, trying to persuade him to return back to the USSR. But Constantine was adamant. In 1928, Rodzaevsky's father and his younger brother also fled to Harbin, after which the GPU authorities arrested Nadezhda's mother and her daughters Nadezhda and Nina. In Harbin, Konstantin Rodzaevsky began a new life. He entered the Harbin Law Faculty, a Russian émigré educational institution, where he fell under the ideological influence of two teachers - Nikolai Nikiforov and Georgy Gins. Georgy Gins (1887-1971), he served as Deputy Dean of the Harbin Faculty of Law and gained fame as the developer of the concept of Russian solidarity. Hins was a categorical opponent of the concept of “change of the rule”, which had spread among the emigre community, which consisted in the recognition of the Soviet Union and the need to cooperate with the Soviet government. As for Nikolai Nikiforov (1886-1951), he adhered to even more radical views in the late 1920s. He headed a group of students and teachers of the Harbin Faculty of Law, who created a political group with a completely unambiguous name "Russian Fascist Organization". Among the founders of this organization was the young Konstantin Rodzaevsky. The activities of the Russian fascists in Harbin almost immediately after their organizational unification became very noticeable.
Russian fascist party
On May 26, 1931, the 1st Congress of Russian Fascists was held in Harbin, at which the Russian Fascist Party (RFP) was created. Konstantin Rodzaevsky, who has not yet turned 24 years old, was elected its general secretary. The party initially numbered about 200, but by 1933 it had grown to 5,000 activists. The party's ideology was based on the conviction of the imminent collapse of the Bolshevik regime, which was viewed as anti-Russian and totalitarian. Like the Italian fascists, the Russian fascists were anti-communists and anti-capitalists at the same time. The party introduced black uniforms. Printed editions were published, first of all - the magazine "Nation", which came out from April 1932, and from October 1933 - the newspaper "Our Way" under the editorship of Rodzaevsky. However, the RFP, which originated in Manchuria, was not the only organization of Russian fascists in those years. In 1933, the All-Russian Fascist Organization (VFO) was created in the United States, at the origins of which was Anastasiy Andreevich Vonsyatsky (1898-1965), a former captain of the Denikin Volunteer Army, who served in the Uhlan and Hussar regiments, and later emigrated to the United States. Vonsyatsky, when he was an officer of the Volunteer Army, fought against the Reds in the Don, Kuban, and Crimea, but was evacuated after contracting typhus. Having created the All-Russian Fascist Organization, Captain Vonsyatsky began to look for connections with other Russian fascists and during one of his travels he visited Japan, where he entered into negotiations with Konstantin Rodzaevsky.
On April 3, 1934, in Yokohama, the Russian Fascist Party and the All-Russian Fascist Organization merged into a single structure called the All-Russian Fascist Party (WFTU). On April 26, 1934, the 2nd Congress of Russian Fascists was held in Harbin, at which Rodzaevsky was elected General Secretary of the All-Russian Fascist Party, and Vonsyatsky - Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the WFTU. However, already in October 1934, contradictions began between Rodzaevsky and Vonsyatsky, which led to a demarcation. The fact is that Vonsyatsky did not share the anti-Semitism inherent in Rodzaevsky and believed that the party should fight only against communism, and not against Jews. In addition, Vonsyatsky had a negative attitude towards the figure of Ataman Semyonov, with whom Rodzaevsky closely cooperated, who was associated with the structures of the Bureau for Russian Emigrants in Manchukuo. According to Vonsyatsky, the Cossacks, on which Rodzaevsky urged to rely, no longer played a special role in the changed political situation, so the party had to look for a new social base. Finally. Vonsyatsky dissociated himself from Rodzaevsky's supporters, who, however, put the entire WFTU under their control.
- K. V. Rodzaevsky, at the head of the RFP militants, meets A. A. Vonsyatsky
Quite quickly, the WFTU turned into the largest political organization of the Russian emigration in Manchuria. Several public organizations operated under the control of the WFTU - the Russian Women's Fascist Movement, the Union of Young Fascists - Vanguard, the Union of Young Fascists - Vanguard, the Union of Fascist Babies, the Union of Fascist Youth. On June 28 - July 7, 1935, the 3rd World Congress of Russian Fascists was held in Harbin, at which the party's program was adopted and its charter was approved. In 1936, the provisions “On the Party Greetings”, “On the Party Flag”, “On the National Flag and the Anthem”, “On the Party Badge”, “On the Party Banner”, “On the Party Form and Hierarchical Signs”, “On religious badge ". The WFTU flag was a cloth with a black swastika on a yellow background, a rhombus in a white rectangle, the party banner was a golden cloth, on one side of which the Face of the Savior Not Made by Hands was depicted, and on the other side was depicted St. Prince Vladimir. The edges of the cloth are bordered by a black strip, on which on one side there are inscriptions: “May God rise and scatter Him”, “God is with us, understand the heathens and submit”, and on the other side - “With God,” “God, Nation, Labor "," For the Motherland "," Glory to Russia ". In the upper corners there is an image of a two-headed eagle; in the lower corners there is an image of a swastika”. The party banner of the All-Russian Fascist Party was consecrated on May 24, 1935 in Harbin by Orthodox hierarchs, Archbishop Nestor and Bishop Demetrius. Party members wore a uniform consisting of a black shirt, a black jacket with gold buttons with a swastika, a black cap with orange piping and a swastika on the cockade, a belt with a harness, black breeches with orange piping and boots. An orange circle with a white border and a black swastika in the center was sewn onto the sleeve of a shirt and jacket. On the left hand, the party members wore the distinctive signs of their belonging to one or another level of the party hierarchy. Public organizations operating under the party used similar symbols and had their own uniforms. So, members of the Union of Young Fascists - Vanguard wore black shirts with blue shoulder straps and black caps with yellow piping and the letter "A" on the cockade. The union included teenagers 10-16 years old, who were to be brought up "in the spirit of Russian fascism."
The Supreme Council of the WFTU was proclaimed the highest ideological, programmatic and tactical body of the All-Russian Fascist Party, headed by the Chairman - Konstantin Rodzaevsky. The Supreme Council in the intervals between congresses carried out the leadership of the party, its composition was elected at the congress of the WFTU. In turn, the elected members of the WFTU Supreme Council elected a secretary and two vice-chairmen of the Supreme Council. At the same time, the party chairman had the right to "veto" any decisions of the congress. The Supreme Council included an ideological council, a legislative council and a commission for the study of the USSR. The main part of the structural divisions of the WFTU operated on the territory of Manchuria, however, the WFTU managed to extend its influence to the Russian emigrant environment in Europe and the USA. In Europe, Boris Petrovich Tedley (1901-1944), a former participant in the Ice Campaign of General Kornilov and the St. George Knight, became the responsible party resident. While living in Switzerland, Tadley first collaborated with the Russian People's Liberation Movement, and then in 1935.created a cell of the All-Russian Fascist Party in Bern. In 1938, Rodzaevsky appointed Tedley chairman of the Supreme Council for Europe and Africa. However, in 1939 Tedley was arrested by the Swiss authorities and was in prison until his death in 1944.
From Japanese support to "opal"
In 1936, the All-Russian Fascist Party began preparing anti-Soviet sabotage. The Nazis acted on the instructions of the Japanese intelligence, which provided organizational support for sabotage actions. In the fall of 1936, several sabotage groups were thrown into the territory of the Soviet Union, but most of them were identified and destroyed by border guards. Nevertheless, one group of six people managed to penetrate deep into Soviet territory and, having overcome the 400-kilometer path to Chita, appeared at a demonstration on November 7, 1936, where anti-Stalinist leaflets were handed out. It is noteworthy that the Soviet counterintelligence officers were unable to apprehend the fascist propagandists in time, and the group safely returned to Manchuria. When the law on universal military service was adopted in Manchukuo, the Russian emigration as one of the groups of the population of Manchuria fell under its influence. In May 1938, the Japanese military mission in Harbin opened the Asano-butai military sabotage school, which admitted young people from among the Russian emigrants. On the model of the Asano Detachment, several more similar detachments were created in other settlements of Manchuria. Units manned by Russian emigrants disguised themselves as units of the Manchu army. The commander of the Kwantung Army, General Umezu, ordered to train saboteurs from among the Russian population of Manchuria, as well as to prepare a Red Army uniform in which sabotage groups sent to the territory of the Soviet Union could operate for camouflage.
- Russians in the Kwantung Army
Another aspect of the activities of the Russian Fascist Party in Manchukuo was the participation of a number of its activists in criminal activities, behind which the Japanese field gendarmerie stood. Many fascists became involved in drug trafficking, organizing prostitution, kidnapping and extortion. So, back in 1933, the militants of the fascist party kidnapped the talented pianist Semyon Kaspe and demanded from his father Joseph Kaspe, one of the richest Jews in Harbin, to pay a ransom. However, the Nazis did not even wait for the money and first sent the unfortunate father the ears of his son, and then his corpse was found. This crime forced even the Italian fascists to dissociate themselves from the activities of Russian like-minded people, who were called "a dirty stain on the reputation of fascism." The involvement of the party in criminal activities contributed to the disappointment of some previously active fascists in the activities of Rodzaevsky, which led to the first withdrawals from the party.
The Japanese special services financed the activities of the WFTU on the territory of Manchukuo, which allowed the party to develop its structures and finance the education of the younger generations of Russian emigrants in the fascist spirit. Thus, members of the Union of Fascist Youth received the opportunity to enter the Stolypin Academy, which was, in a way, a party educational institution. In addition, the party supported Russian orphans by organizing a Russian home - an orphanage, where children were also brought up in the appropriate spirit. In Qiqihar, a fascist radio station was created, broadcasting, among other things, to the Soviet Far East, and fascist ideology was practically officially promoted in most Russian schools in Manchuria. In 1934 and 1939. Konstantin Rodzaevsky met with General Araki, the Japanese Minister of War, who was considered the head of the "war party", and in 1939 - with Matsuoka, who later became the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Japan. The Japanese leadership was so loyal to the Russian fascists that it allowed them to congratulate Emperor Hirohito on the 2600th anniversary of the creation of the Japanese Empire. Thanks to Japanese funding, literary and propaganda activities were put on a fairly high level in the All-Russian Fascist Party. The main "writer" and propagandist of the WFTU was, of course, Konstantin Rodzaevsky himself. The authorship of the party leader published the books "The ABC of Fascism" (1934), "Critique of the Soviet State" in two parts (1935 and 1937), "Russian Way" (1939), "State of the Russian Nation" (1942). In 1937, the WFTU was transformed into the Russian Fascist Union (RFU), and in 1939 the 4th Congress of Russian fascists was held in Harbin, which was destined to become the last in the history of the movement. There was another conflict between Rodzaevsky and some of his supporters. A group of fascists, which by that time had managed to understand the true essence of the Hitler regime, demanded that Rodzaevsky sever all ties with Hitler's Germany and remove the swastika from the party banners. They motivated this demand by Hitler's hostility to Russia and the Slavs in general, and not only to the Soviet political system. However, Rodzaevsky refused the anti-Hitler turn. The Second World War was approaching, which played a pivotal role in the fate of not only Russian fascism, but also the entire Russian emigration in Manchuria. In the meantime, the number of structures of the WFTU-RFU party was about 30,000 people. Party branches and cells operated practically everywhere where Russian emigrants lived - in Western and Eastern Europe, USA, Canada, Latin America, North and South Africa, Australia.
The RFU faced its first problems after the Soviet Union and Germany signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Then the USSR and Germany temporarily began to cooperate with each other, and this cooperation for the German leadership was of greater interest than the support of émigré political organizations. Many RFU activists were extremely unhappy with the fact that Germany began to cooperate with the USSR. An epidemic of withdrawals from the RFU began, and Rodzaevsky himself subjected the pact to harsh criticism. On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union, which attracted strong approval from Rodzaevsky. The leader of the RFU saw in the Nazi invasion a chance for the possible overthrow of the Stalinist regime and the establishment of fascist power in Russia. Therefore, the RFU began to strenuously seek entry into the war against the USSR and the Japanese Empire. But the Japanese had other plans - busy with the confrontation with the United States and Great Britain in the Asia-Pacific region, they did not want to enter into an armed confrontation with the USSR at the moment. Since a treaty of neutrality was signed between Japan and the Soviet Union back in April 1941, the Japanese special services were instructed to minimize the aggressive potential of the Russian fascists in Manchuria. The circulation of the newspaper, in which Rodzaevsky called on Japan to enter the war with the USSR, was confiscated. On the other hand, many supporters of the RFU, who received news of the atrocities committed by the Nazis on the territory of Russia, left the organization or, at least, refused to support Rodzaevsky's position.
As Germany's position on the Soviet front deteriorated, the Japanese leadership became less and less willing to open confrontation with the USSR and took steps to avoid aggravating relations. Thus, in July 1943, the Japanese authorities banned the activities of the Russian Fascist Union on the territory of Manchuria. However, according to some reports, the reason for the RFU ban was not only and not so much the fear of the Japanese to worsen the already extremely tense relations with the Soviet Union, but the presence in the ranks of the Russian emigrants of Soviet agents who worked for the NKVD and collected information about the deployment of Japanese troops on the territory Manchuria, Korea and China. In any case, the fascist party ceased to exist. Since that time, Rodzaevsky, who himself was under the supervision of the Japanese special services, was forced to concentrate on work in the structures of the Bureau for Russian Emigrants, where he was responsible for cultural and educational activities. As for his longtime partner and then an adversary in the ranks of the Russian fascist movement - Anastasia Vonsyatsky, he, who lives in the United States, after the outbreak of the war was arrested on charges of espionage for the Axis countries and was imprisoned.
In the early 1940s. BREM was headed by Major General Vladimir Kislitsyn.
In fact, Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kislitsyn rose to the rank of colonel in the tsarist army, but fought heroically - as part of the 23rd Odessa border brigade, and then - in the 11th Riga dragoon regiment. He was wounded many times. In 1918, Kislitsyn entered service in the hetman army of Ukraine, where he commanded a cavalry division, and then a corps. After being arrested by the Petliurists in Kiev, however, he was released at the insistence of the Germans and left for Germany. In the same 1918, from Germany, he again returned to Russia, engulfed in the Civil War, and made his way to Siberia, where he commanded a division at Kolchak, and then a special Manchu detachment at Semyonov. In 1922, Kislitsyn emigrated to Harbin, where he worked as a dental technician, in parallel with the local police. The social activities of Vladimir Kislitsyn were reduced at this time to support as the heir to the throne of the Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich. In 1928, the Grand Duke promoted Colonel Kislitsyn to the rank of Major General of the Russian Imperial Army for this. Later, Kislitsyn began to cooperate in the structures of the BREM and headed the Bureau, but in 1944 he died. After the death of Kislitsyn, the head of the BREM, as it turned out, was Lieutenant General Lev Filippovich Vlasyevsky (1884-1946). He was born in Transbaikalia - in the village of Pervy Chindant, and in 1915, after the outbreak of the First World War, he was drafted into the army, graduated from the school of warrant officers and by the time the war ended, he had risen to the rank of lieutenant. At the ataman Semyonov, Vlasyevsky was first the head of the chancellery, and then the head of the Cossack department of the headquarters of the Far Eastern Army.
The defeat of Japan and the collapse of Russian fascism in Manchuria
The news of the beginning of hostilities by the Soviet-Mongolian troops against the Japanese Kwantung Army came as a real shock for Russian émigré leaders living in Manchuria. If the tsarist conservative generals and colonels meekly awaited their fate, hoping only for a possible salvation by the retreating Japanese troops, then the more flexible Rodzaevsky was rapidly reorganized. He suddenly became a supporter of Stalinism, declaring that a nationalist turn had taken place in the Soviet Union, which consisted in the return of officer ranks in the army, the introduction of separate training for boys and girls, the revival of Russian patriotism, the glorification of the national heroes Ivan the Terrible, Alexander Nevsky, Suvorov and Kutuzov. In addition, Stalin, in the opinion of the “late” Rodzaevsky, was able to “re-educate” Soviet Jews who were “torn out of the Talmudic milieu” and therefore no longer posed a danger, turning into ordinary Soviet citizens. Rodzaevsky wrote a letter of repentance to I. V. Stalin, in which, in particular, he emphasized: “Stalinism is exactly what we mistakenly called 'Russian fascism', this is our Russian fascism, cleansed of extremes, illusions and delusions.” Russian fascism and Soviet communism, asserts he, have common goals. "Only now it is clear that the October revolution and the five-year plans, the brilliant leadership of I. V. Stalin lifted Russia - the USSR to an unattainable height. Long live Stalin, the greatest commander, unsurpassed organizer - the Leader, who showed a way out of the impasse to all the peoples of the earth with a saving combination of nationalism and communism! "Counterintelligence officers from SMERSH promised Konstantin Rodzaevsky a worthy job as a propagandist in the Soviet Union, and the leader of the Russian fascists was "led". He contacted the Smershevites, was arrested and taken to Moscow. At his villa in Dairen, an NKVD landing force arrested Lieutenant General Grigory Semyonov, who for many symbolized the anti-Soviet white movement in the Far East and Transbaikalia. Semenov was arrested on August 24, 1945.
Obviously, the ataman did not expect the appearance of Soviet troops in Dairen, since he was sure that after the surrender of Japan on August 17, 1945, the Soviet troops would not advance further and he would be able to sit out a dangerous time in his villa. But Semyonov miscalculated and on the same day, August 24, 1945, he was sent by plane to Moscow - along with a group of other arrested persons, among whom were prominent white generals - leaders of the BREM, and propagandists of the Russian fascist union. In addition to the generals Vlasyevsky, Baksheev and Semyonov, among those arrested was also Ivan Adrianovich Mikhailov (1891-1946) - the former Kolchak minister of finance, and after emigration - one of Rodzaevsky's associates and editor of the Harbinskoe Vremya newspaper, which every now and then published anti-Soviet materials … They also arrested Lev Pavlovich Okhotin (1911-1948) - the "right hand" of Rodzaevsky, a member of the Supreme Council of the WFTU and head of the organizational department of the fascist party.
Boris Nikolaevich Shepunov (1897-1946), arrested along with other BREM members, was an even more dangerous figure. In the past, a white officer was a Semenovite, he was in the 1930s - 1940s. worked as an investigator for the Japanese police at the Pogranichnaya station and at the same time headed the department of the Bureau for Russian Emigrants in Mukden. It was Shepunov who supervised the preparation and deployment of spies and saboteurs from Manchuria to the territory of the Soviet Union, for which in 1938 he was appointed head of the BREM department in Harbin. When twenty activists of the Russian Fascist Union were arrested in 1940 on charges of espionage for the USSR, and then they were acquitted by a Japanese court and released, Shepunov directed their extrajudicial execution. In 1941, Shepunov formed a White Guard detachment intended for an armed invasion of Soviet territory. Prince Nikolai Aleksandrovich Ukhtomsky (1895-1953), unlike most of the above persons detained by SMERSH, was not directly involved in organizing sabotage and espionage, but was active in propaganda, speaking from sharp anti-communist positions.
The Semenovtsev process. Rehabilitation is not subject
All of these persons were taken from Manchuria to Moscow. In August 1946, a year after the arrest, the following persons appeared before the court: Semenov, Grigory Mikhailovich; Rodzaevsky, Konstantin Vladimirovich; Baksheev Alexey Proklovich, Vlasyevsky, Lev Filippovich, Mikhailov, Ivan Adrianovich, Shepunov, Boris Nikolaevich; Okhotin, Lev Pavlovich; Ukhtomsky, Nikolai Alexandrovich. The trial of the "Semenovites", as the Japanese henchmen detained in Manchuria were called in the Soviet press, was carried out by the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court under the leadership of the Chairman of the Collegium, Colonel-General of Justice V. V. Ulrich. The court found that the defendants had been actively subversive activities against the Soviet Union for many years, being paid agents of Japanese intelligence and organizers of anti-Soviet organizations operating in Manchuria. The troops, which were commanded during the Civil War by Generals Semenov, Baksheev and Vlasyevsky, waged an armed struggle against the Red Army and the Red Partisans, participating in mass killings of the local population, robberies and murders. Already at that time, they began to receive funds from Japan. After the defeat in the Civil War, the "Semenovites" fled to Manchuria, where they created anti-Soviet organizations - the Union of Cossacks in the Far East and the Bureau for Russian Emigrants in Manchukuo. The court found that all the defendants were agents of the Japanese special services and were engaged in the creation of espionage and sabotage detachments sent to the territory of the Soviet Union. In the event of the outbreak of a war by Japan against the Soviet Union, the White Guard units concentrated in Manchuria were assigned the task of directly invading the territory of the Soviet state.
After the end of the trial, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced: Semenov, Grigory Mikhailovich - to death by hanging with confiscation of all his property; Rodzaevsky Konstantin Vladimirovich, Baksheev Alexei Proklovich, Vlasyevsky Lev Fedorovich, Mikhailov Ivan Adrianovich and Shepunov Boris Nikolaevich - to death by execution with confiscation of property. Ukhtomsky Nikolai Aleksandrovich was sentenced to twenty years of hard labor, Okhotin Lev Pavlovich - to fifteen years of hard labor, also with the confiscation of all property belonging to them. On the same day, August 30, 1946, all the defendants sentenced to death were executed in Moscow. As for Nikolai Ukhtomsky, he, sentenced to twenty years in a camp, died 7 years after the sentence was passed - in 1953 in Rechlag near Vorkuta. Lev Okhotin died in a felling in the Khabarovsk Territory in 1948, having served 2 years out of fifteen.
In 1998, in the wake of the fashionable revision of Stalin's sentences, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation began to review criminal cases against all the defendants in the Semenovtsy case, with the exception of Ataman Semyonov himself, who back in 1994 was recognized for his crimes not subject to rehabilitation. As a result of the work of the collegium, it was established that all persons convicted on August 30, 1946 were indeed guilty of the acts incriminated to them, with the exception of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda provided for in Article 58-10, Part 2. Therefore, in relation to all the accused, they were canceled sentences under this article. For the rest of the articles, the guilt of the accused was confirmed, as a result of which the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation left the sentences unchanged and declared the listed persons not subject to rehabilitation. In addition, the Smershevites arrested and brought to the USSR Professor Nikolai Ivanovich Nikiforov, the founder of the fascist movement in Harbin, who was sentenced to ten years in the camps and died in 1951 in prison.
Anastasiy Vonsyatsky was released from an American prison, where he served 3, 5 years, in 1946 and continued to live in the United States - in St. Petersburg, retiring from political activity and writing memoirs. In 1953 Vonsyatsky opened a museum in memory of the last Russian Tsar Nicholas II in St. Petersburg. Vonsyatsky died in 1965 at the age of 66. Unfortunately, in modern Russia there are people who admire the activities of the fascists of the 1930s - 1940s. and forgetting that Semyonov, Rodzaevsky and people like them were instruments of anti-Russian policy, and their actions were stimulated by their own lust for power and the money of the Japanese and German special services.
