Tsarist General Smyslovsky, who fought the Stalinist regime in the ranks of the German army, did at least one good deed - he saved the lives of 500 Russian soldiers.
The strongest snowstorm broke out on the mountainous border of the Principality of Liechtenstein with Austria on the night of May 2–3, 1945, a few days before the end of World War II. In the state archives of the Principality of Liechtenstein, the smallest state in Central Europe, sandwiched between Austria and Switzerland, there is a report from the head of the border guard, Lieutenant Colonel Wyss, about the events of that night. The Swiss border guards who were guarding the border witnessed an unusual sight. A column of military vehicles and infantry slowly moved through the snow veil from the Austrian side along the mountain road, scattering obstacles in the neutral zone.
Above the head car, in which a man in the general uniform of the German army was seen, the three-color white-blue-red flag of pre-revolutionary Russia fluttered. Dumbfounded, the border guards, realizing that the balance of forces was not in their favor, nevertheless fired several warning shots into the air. In response, from the general's car came the voice of his adjutant, who shouted in German: "Don't shoot, there's a Russian general here!" The column stopped, a stocky man of medium height in the greatcoat of a general of the German Wehrmacht got out of the car and introduced himself to the head of the Liechtenstein border guard: “Major General Holmston-Smyslovsky, commander of the First Russian National Army. We crossed the border to apply for political asylum. With us in one of the cars is the heir to the Russian throne, Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich and his retinue."
The next morning, a column of about 500 people bivouacked at the village of Schellenberg in the Rhine Valley. The Russian flag flew over the local school, where the headquarters of General Smyslovsky was located, and negotiations began on internment. The sovereign prince of Liechtenstein himself, Franz Joseph II, arrived at the location of the unexpected guests. Two days later, the army disarmed, people were given the right of temporary asylum. Thus ended this little-known episode of World War II.
RUSSIAN PATRIOTS
When they write or talk about the participation of Soviet people on the side of the German troops in World War II, they usually mean General Vlasov and his Russian Liberation Army. Meanwhile, there were three more Russian military-political movements that came out of the ranks of the old military emigration, or rather, from the ranks of the Russian combined arms union that existed in the West. These include the Russian Corps (aka Shutskor), which fought in Yugoslavia under the command of General Steifon, the Cossack units of General Krasnov, and the so-called "Northern Group", which later became known as the First Russian National Army under the command of General Smyslovsky. Unlike the Vlasov army, which consisted mainly of former Soviet soldiers and officers, the command of these military formations was staffed by former generals and officers of the Tsarist and White armies, who continued the tradition of the White movement.
In the fall of 1942, there were 1 million 80 thousand Russian people in German greatcoats in the German army. By 1944, their number had already reached 2 million. The figure is too impressive to be explained by elementary betrayal or moral inferiority of the nation. Later, Boris Smyslovsky himself explained in one of his articles the tragedy of the choice between Hitler and Stalin: “It was a choice between two devils. What the Germans were doing was terrible. Hitler corrupted their souls. But the Bolsheviks were also engaged in the destruction of the Russian people. At that time, I believed that Russia could be liberated only from the outside and the Germans were the only force capable of ending Bolshevism. The Germans could not win. The forces were too unequal. Germany could not successfully fight alone against the whole world. I was sure that the Allies would easily end a weakened and exhausted Germany. The count was that Germany would put an end to Bolshevism, and then she herself would fall under the blows of the allies. So we are not traitors, but Russian patriots."
FROM WHITE TO BROWN
Count Boris Alekseevich Smyslovsky was born on December 3, 1897 in Terrioki (now Zelenogorsk), not far from St. Petersburg, in the family of the General of the Guards Artillery, Count Alexei Smyslovsky. In 1908, Boris Smyslovsky entered the cadet corps of Empress Catherine II, and then at the Mikhailovskoye Artillery School, from where in 1915 he was released into the 3rd Guards Artillery Division with the rank of lieutenant. At the age of 18 he was at the front. He witnessed the disintegration of the Russian army, the February and October revolutions. In 1918 he joined General Denikin's Volunteer Army. In March 1920, part of it was interned in Poland, and Boris Smyslovsky moved to Berlin, one of the centers of the then Russian emigration.
There he met an old comrade-in-arms, Baron Kaulbars. At that time, in the mid-20s, Kaulbars served in the Abwehr - under this name, the intelligence service of the Reichswehr, the one hundred thousandth German army, was hiding, which, according to the Treaty of Versailles, was prohibited from having intelligence and a general headquarters. Baron Kaulbars was the adjutant of Canaris, the future leader of the Abwehr. And the baron persuaded Smyslovsky to go to serve in the Abwehr and at the same time enter the higher military courses in Konigsberg, where the German Academy of the General Staff secretly functioned. So, Boris Smyslovsky turned out to be the only Russian who not only graduated from the Academy of the German General Staff, but also worked there.
RUSSLAND
The beginning of the war against the Soviet Union found Smyslovsky in the northern sector of the front in Poland, in the rank of a major in the Wehrmacht, he was engaged in frontline intelligence. He worked under the pseudonym von Regenau. Then Smyslovsky was allowed to organize a Russian training battalion. And at the beginning of 1943, the Russland special-purpose division appeared, and Colonel von Regenau was appointed its commander. His chief of staff was Colonel of the Soviet General Staff Shapovalov, later a general and commander
3rd division of the Vlasov army. Division "Russland" was staffed mainly by prisoners of war, former soldiers of the Soviet Army. The division, in particular, was tasked with fighting the partisans. For this, von Regenau begins to cooperate with the insurgent movement on the territory of Ukraine and Russia, establishes contact with partisans-nationalists, units of the Polish Krai Army and formations of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. This led to the arrest of Colonel von Regenau by the Gestapo in December 1943 and the disbandment of the Russland Division. Smyslovsky was accused of communication with the enemies of the Reich, refusal to extradite to the Gestapo one of the leaders of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army who had come to his headquarters, and refusal to sign the appeal of General Vlasov, who called on the Russian people to fight in the East against the communists, and in the West against "Western plutocrats and capitalists."
Only the intervention and surety of Admiral Canaris, as well as General Gehlen from the General Staff, led to the termination of the case. A significant role in justifying Smyslovsky was also played by the fact that the Germans, experiencing a terrible shortage of manpower, threw formations of captured Soviet soldiers to the front. An order was given to reinstate the Russian division in the ranks of the Wehrmacht, which in February 1945 was transformed into the First Russian National Army with the status of an allied army and the Russian national flag. By that time, the real name of Colonel von Regenau became known to Soviet intelligence, and Boris Smyslovsky took the surname Holmston.
This army, which numbered 6 thousand people, existed for 3 months.
RUN
On April 18, 1945, the commander of the First Russian National Army, General Holmston-Smyslovsky, convened a military council, at which he dictated his decision: “The surrender of Germany is inevitable. I order you to move towards the Swiss border. It is necessary to save the cadres of the army."
The defensive SS units stopped Smyslovsky's army in Austria. The SS men said that everyone must fight now. But then an SS general suddenly appeared, who was present at the ceremony of awarding Smyslovsky with the Order of the German Eagle at Hitler's headquarters "Wolf's Lair". The Russian army received permission to continue on its way.
By the time of the last dash, crossing the Austrian-Liechtenstein border, there were no more than 500 people in Smyslovsky's army. In the Austrian city of Feldkirch, the heir to the Russian throne, Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich, with his retinue, as well as an emigrant committee from Poland and scattered Hungarian units joined the army.
When Smyslovsky's army was interned in Liechtenstein, a Soviet repatriation commission arrived there. The commission demanded the extradition of the general and 59 of his officers, stating that they were war criminals. But she could not provide evidence of her charges, and the Liechtenstein government rejected her claim.
In 1948, General Smyslovsky emigrated to Argentina. There he lectured at the military academy on anti-partisan tactics and headed the Suvorov Union, an organization of Russian war veterans. In the mid-60s, at the invitation of the General Staff of the FRG, Smyslovsky became an adviser to the West German General Staff, where he worked until his retirement in 1973. The last 13 years of his life, Smyslovsky lived in Liechtenstein, where he led his soldiers in 1945. Boris Smyslovsky died on September 5, 1988 at the age of 91. He was buried in a small cemetery in Vaduz, adjacent to the local church.
Can Smyslovsky be called a traitor? The 88-year-old widow of the general, Irina Nikolaevna Holmston-Smyslovskaya, emphasizes: unlike Vlasov, Boris Smyslovsky was never a citizen of the USSR and did not go over to the side of the enemy. He became a German officer long before Hitler came to power.
The Western allies handed over to Stalin generals Krasnov and Shkuro, who were also never citizens of the USSR (according to the Yalta Treaty, only Soviet citizens who fought on the side of the Germans were subject to extradition), and they were executed in 1947 as traitors. Of course, Smyslovsky knew that if extradited, he would never be treated like other German prisoners of war.
NO ISSUE FROM LICHTENSTEIN
The tiny principality with a population of 12 thousand people turned out to be the only country that subsequently refused to hand over the Russian soldiers who fought on the German side to punish the Stalinist regime.
Who were these soldiers who traveled with Smyslovsky the long journey from Poland to Liechtenstein? Here is what he told me about the fate of one of them, Smyslovsky's adjutant, Mikhail Sokhin, his son, Mikael Sokhin. The younger Sokhin lives in the small Liechtenstein town of Eschen, teaches at the local technical school and does not speak Russian.
“My father was born in the vicinity of St. Petersburg and was a military man. During the Finnish war he was wounded and by the time of the war with Germany he was a lieutenant in the Soviet Army. At the very beginning of the war, my father was surrounded, and then captured by the Germans. It happened somewhere on the border with Poland. He, like many captured soldiers in the concentration camp, went to serve in the German army in order to survive. This is how my father got into the Russland Special Forces Division, commanded by Colonel von Regenau. In the German army, he held the rank of chief lieutenant.
After the war, my father went with General Holmston to Argentina, where he lived for some time with my mother, whom he married in Liechtenstein. Many Russians started families there. From Argentina, my father returned to Liechtenstein, quickly obtained citizenship and worked as an electrician. He died in 1986. My father really did not like to remember the war and even avoided meeting with former fellow soldiers."
The son recalls that Mikhail Sokhin was always afraid of something. It seemed to him that his mail was being opened, that the locks in the house were not strong enough. The younger Sokhin is not even sure of the authenticity of his father's surname.
In 1980, on the 35th anniversary of the passage of the army of General Smyslovsky through the pass on the Austrian-Liechtenstein border, a simple monument was erected in the small village of Schellenberg in honor of the rescue of Russian soldiers of Smyslovsky. The unveiling of the monument was attended by Crown Prince Hans-Adam, head of the Liechtenstein government, and 82-year-old Boris Smyslovsky. This monument has become not only a symbol of a difficult and cruel time, but also a reminder of almost 2 million Russian people, "victims of Yalta", thrown by the allies into the meat grinder of the Stalinist regime.
