Repatriation page 2

Operation Keelhaul

Title: Operation Keelhaul; the story of forced repatriation from 1944 to the present.
Author: Epstein, Julius, 1901-
Published: Old Greenwich [Conn.]: Devin-Adair Co., [1974, c1973] LC Card no: * 72085336
Subject: World War, 1939-1945 --Forced repatriation. 255 p.: illus.; 21 cm.

Eisenhower said there were about 15,000 "self-styled Ukrainians," 400 Kalmuks, and 4,000 former members of the German forces, none of whom wanted to be repatriated. Gen. A. N. Davidov, chief of the Soviet repatriation group, said he had uncovered another 22,000 Soviet citizens in the US zone living outside camps.²⁷  USFET itself did not attempt to track down Soviet citizens in the zone but did check the persons whom the Soviet repatriation group claimed and eventually put the total at just under 38,900. ²⁸

The end of the mass repatriation brought USFET face to face with the possibility of having to use force to send the remaining Russians home. Considering what probably awaited them on the other side of the demarkation line, a surprisingly large number--even of those who had served in the German forces-went, if not cheerfully, at least without overt resistance. No doubt, the preferential treatment the Soviet government secured for them at US expense influenced some. Probably the extensive authority the Americans allowed the Soviet repatriation officers to exercise also convinced many more that resistance was useless. USFET had not granted police powers to the Soviet officers, however. The DPs who were left after August were mostly those who had already demonstrated that they were not open to persuasion or ordinary intimidation. They [Ukrainians} believed their fate in Soviet hands would "be worse than death," and they declared they would resist repatriation "by all means including suicide." ²⁹ The Soviet representatives, Eisenhower informed the JCS, were "most disturbed by the situation and claimed "this headquarters is violating Yalta."^;30 At the time, while enlisting Soviet co-operation in the larger affairs of the occupation still seemed possible, resisting the Soviet demands to have all their people back by any means was as difficult as contemplating the human consequences of forced repatriation. Legally the US command regarded itself as obliged to return the Soviet citizens, and on political grounds it did not see how the eventual use of force could be avoided; but as men and soldiers, Eisenhower and his officers found the business more than they could stomach. Moreover, in the minor disturbances that had already occurred, US troops had sympathized with the demonstrators; and forced repatriation was likely to provoke downright refusals to carry out orders.³¹

On 9 August, slightly anticipating the problem, USFET had issued a policy for forcible repatriation. All persons who were or could be proven, before boards of US officers, to be Soviet citizens were to be transferred to camps under Soviet administration. In the camps, Soviet officials would be responsible for putting the repatriates aboard trucks and trains. Outside the camps, the US forces would guard the transports. The extent to which the troops would be expected to use force was left unclear as was the time at which the police would be put into action. In the first week of September, before any DPs had been shipped under it, USFET suspended the policy and referred the whole question of forced repatriation to the JCS. Seventh Army had asked how much actual force was Army be used. The USFET policy had stated only that the US troops would prevent riots and guard the transports and that military government would arrest and transfer to Soviet-administered camps persons whom the Soviet representatives could prove were their citizens. USFET asked the JCS to review the question of forced repatriation "in its entirety . . . since injuries and loss of life on both sides are inevitable." ³²

The War Department had more direct experience with the consequences of forced repatriation than USFET did but was equally uncertain as to what course to take. In late 1944, the Army had discovered some 5,000 Soviet nationals among German prisoners of war in camps in the United States.³³  Moscow had promptly charged that its citizens were being illegally imprisoned and deliberately mistreated in the United States. Many of the prisoners, however, insisted that restoring them to Soviet control was equivalent to a death sentence. Mindful of the probable consequences for the men lout convinced that the United States should not give refuge to persons who might be guilty of treason to an ally, the JCS had ruled in December 1944 that all prisoners of war in the United States who claimed Soviet citizenship should be returned on request of the Soviet authorities "whether they want to go or not." 34 For a time those who did not claim Soviet citizenship were not affected, but after Yalta an effort was made to send back all who were known to be Soviet citizens.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/other/us-army_germany_1944-46_ch23.htm#b2

 
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From: braveheart180203@hotmail.com
To: braveheart180203@hotmail.com
Subject: Elliott Articles Index
Date: Mon, 2 May 2005 16:09:50 +0100
 
Published Articles of Dr. Mark R. Elliott,
Director, The Global Center

The Soviet Repatriation Campaign
Mark Elliott

Because of early Wehrmacht successes on the eastern front and German occupation of large portions of the European USSR during World War II, Hitler exercised direct control over some 8.35 million Soviet prisoners of war and forced labourers. Approximately 5.6 million of these survived the war and were scattered all over Europe. The advancing Red Army took custody of 3 million outright, while American and British forces liberated more than 2.5 million Soviet displaced persons. The United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union signed agreements at the Yalta Conference in February 1945 that required the repatriation of all Allied nationals, by force if necessary .The language of the American-Soviet document did not specifically call for the use of coercion, but the precedent had been set, and each side recognized privately that the agreements did not provide Soviet citizens any other option.1  Since the Soviet Union regained control of more than 5 million of its citizens displaced during World War II, more than 2 million of these with the active assistance of the United States and Great Britain, by any normal accounting Moscow was remarkably successful in its efforts at repatriation. However, the USSR came to view the few hundred thousand nonretumers in the West as an embarrassing defeat. [Olga's comment: These were Ukrainians who refused to go under Communist control.] Thus by Moscow's reckoning its repatriation campaign failed because it was not total.

Adamant Soviet demands for the return of all their citizens in Western Europe stemmed from a variety of motives. A vindictiveness seemingly endemic to the system certainly played a large part. In addition, psychological, propagandistic, and strategic considerations contributed to Soviet insistence on total repatriation. Soviet statutes defined treason broadly enough to include not only military collaborators but also POWs and, in numerous instances, forced labourers. A deeply rooted desire for vengeance, a longing "to punish the guilty," which had been inflamed by innumerable Nazi atrocities, meant that repatriation spelled retaliation.2  Those associated with the Germans, rightly or wrongly, faced severe punishment. [Olga's comment: Ukrainians just didn't want to go back.]

Psychologically, too, Moscow felt it deserved to have its own way on the DP question because of the disproportionate cost of the war to the USSR. The Soviet Union faced the postwar era painfully conscious of its huge losses, proud of its herculean success in battle, and in no mood to brook opposition on repatriation from Allies it did not consider its equal in victory. Soviet fatalities in World War II ran to 20 million,[Olga's comment: Soviets claiming Ukrainian losses of 10 million as Russian losses] compared to 300,000 for the United States and 330,000 for Britain, which Soviet authorities and ordinary citizens both resented.3  The 130,000 American fatalities from three and a half years of war in Europe "did not even equal the average number of civilian casualties Russia suffered each fortnight before 1943." The Soviet Union inflicted and suffered 90 per cent of the total casualties in the European theatre.4  Besides the human losses, 60 per cent of transportation facilities and 70 per cent of industrial capacity in the invaded portions of the USSR had been destroyed [Olga's comment: USSR had a burn out policy that destroyed a lot of Ukraine also] . The government wrote off 1,700 cities and towns and 70,000 villages as total losses.5  The passage of time has not erased Soviet consciousness of the heavier price the East paid for Hitler's defeat.6

The repeated postponements launching the second front probably contributed to Soviet bitterness. From the Russian perspective, Lend-Lease shipments simply could not compensate for the delays in the cross-channel invasion of occupied France. Soviet leaders likely would have been suspicious of their Allies' ultimate intentions no matter where or when large-scale Western military action on the Continent commenced. The Kremlin seems to have interpreted Roosevelt's ill-advised promise to Molotov of a second front in Europe in 1942 and its delay until 1944 as evidence that the West was content to see the Wehrmacht bleed the Soviet Union white. Ivan Maiskii, wartime Soviet ambassador to London, saw the postponement of Operation Overlord as a deliberate, "ruthless calculation" to let the USSR bear the brunt of the fighting.7

Paradoxically, American technical and material assistance to the Soviet war effort may have heightened suspicion of American motives. Moscow wondered whether the aid was payment for services rendered, much as England had bankrolled Continental armies in centuries past. It is easy to see why the Kremlin concluded that that was the effect. Obviously circumstances beyond the control of either the United States or the Soviet Union played an independent role in determining who would sacrifice what to defeat Hitler. Nevertheless, the contribution of the United States to victory is best calculated in organizational, technological, and economic terms; the Soviet Union's, in casualties. As compensation for its great sufferings and in recognition of its equally great military accomplishments, the USSR seemed to expect its Western Allies to bend over backwards to accommodate it in all outstanding disputes: "Convinced that they had won the war, the Russians showed little inclination to compromise."8  On repatriation the Kremlin was insistent and inflexible.

The Soviet Union also demanded total repatriation because nonreturners posed a threat to the credibility of propaganda that stressed the unqualified wartime devotion of all Soviet citizens. Upholding the international image of the world's first Marxist state necessitated the rapid, forcible return of all displaced nationals before dramatic instances of resistance could damage its reputation abroad. From Moscow, George Kennan cabled Washington that Soviet leaders feared their standing in the world community would suffer "if it becomes generally known that some Soviet citizens are not accepting with enthusiasm offers of repatriation." Similarly, State Department refugee specialist Robert S. McCollum observed, "Each refugee from the Soviet orbit represents a failure of the Communist system" and thereby "constitutes a challenge to the fundamental concepts of that system."9  Leonid Brezhnev contended that "the Great Patriotic War showed very well that any attempt 'to blast the Soviet Union from within' was bound to be thwarted by the monolithic solidarity of the Party and the people, the Soviet people's loyalty to socialist ideals, and the solid national unity of the USSR's nations, who stood firm in the face of the hard trials."10  World War II showed no such thing, but it would have been far more difficult for Moscow to have perpetuated this ideological fairy tale had 5.5 million instead of 500,000 of its charges remained abroad. A vote of no confidence of that proportion would have underscored widespread disaffection and grievously compromised the Soviet myth of an unwavering patriotic response to German aggression from all the peoples of the USSR.11

The prospect of a concentration of anti-communist political expatriates in the West also unnerved Soviet authorities. Ambassador Averell Harriman noted "extreme touchiness" whenever the subject of reluctant repatriates came up.12  Soviet authorities were frightened by the spectre of an anti-Stalinist movement in the West co-ordinated by the remnants of Andrei Vlasov's Russian Liberation Army and other collaborator units. Moscow took the impotent Vlasovites much more seriously than did the Germans or the Western Allies. The story told by captured Soviet agents parachuted behind Wehrmacht army lines convinced General Reinhard Gehlen that this was the case. Gehlen subsequently advocated that more effective use be made of the anti-Stalinist inclinations of many Soviet POW.. The racial bigotry of party zealots, however, prevented any higher officials from acting upon such advice. As long as Red Army captives were treated as Untermenschen (subhumans), massive support for an anti-Soviet movement was out of the question.13

The Nazi failure to capitalize upon Soviet disaffection no doubt lessened the Kremlin's concern, but Russia's leaders, fearing that the Western powers might succeed where Germany had failed, could not relax until repatriation was complete. For example, Soviet Deputy Commissar of Foreign Affairs Andrei Vyshinskii told the United Nations General Assembly in early November 1946 that "it is no secret that refugee camps, situated in the western zones of Germany, Austria and certain other countries of Western Europe, are springboards and centers for the formation of military reserves of hirelings, which constitute an organized military force in the hands of this or that foreign power." Soviet sensitivity on this issue seemed to fulfill the prediction of American military intelligence that "since the majority of displaced persons and refugees are anti- Communist, the U.S.S.R. undoubtedly will view with suspicion Allied action to allow them to remain abroad free of supervision." It may he, as the New York Times contended, that the Kremlin feared postwar political expatriates had "the same potential for causing trouble for Russia as did the White Russians in western Europe after the first World War."14

In the early years of the Cold War no one in the West attempted to exploit the anti-Soviet attitudes of nonreturners, or even recognized them as potential partners in the struggle against world communism. By the early1950s, when East-West hostility had gained a great deal of momentum, this notion finally did surface. A 1953 call to arms by Eugene Lyons bemoaned the past neglect of Our Secret Allies, the Peoples of Russia. To the author of this aggressively anti- communist piece, the Vlasov movement was a lost opportunity, and the forced repatriation of disaffected Soviet nationals was a "Betrayal of Natural Allies."  A Cold War polemic by Boris Shub, a Western journalist, went even further: "the first step should he a solemn proclamation by the President...announcing that the United States will throw its full support behind all groups [Vlasovites included]...who will act to replace the present Politburo leadership with an interim government pledged to the reestablishment of legitimate and representative government in Russia."15 After World War II the American government did not contemplate overthrowing the Soviet regime by force. Nor did it use, or even consider using, disaffected Soviet emigres as the nucleus for an army bent upon eradicating communism in Russia. Nevertheless, given the Kremlin's innate suspicion of the West, it is not surprising that the Soviet Union might have been anxious about this possibility.16

Soviet leaders thus were determined to demand that the United States and Britain repatriate all Allied nationals. Proper handling of the matter necessitated a campaign to gain fun Western co-operation and total refugee participation. The Kremlin relied upon three devices:

1) repatriation agreements to pressure the West into returning all DPs by means of accusations of noncompliance;

2) aggressive utilization of Soviet repatriation missions in the West; and

3) direct appeals to persuade the hesitant to return home. In the first instance, Moscow's program for obtaining the West's unreserved assistance in repatriation relied heavily upon the American and British exchange accords signed at Yalta in February 1945 and similar instruments negotiated with France, Belgium, Switzerland, Norway, and the East European countries occupied by the Red Army.17  If interpreted as the Kremlin wished, those documents would have settled the question by requiring the return of all Soviet nationals abroad, regardless of their individual wishes.

Since Soviet authorities could not consider Western concurrence a foregone conclusion, they coupled demands for adherence to repatriation agreements with accusations of Allied mistreatment of Russian refugees. These complaints served not only to bolster Soviet repatriation efforts, but also to counteract Western dissatisfaction with Red Army handling of POWs.  As one Western repatriation official noted. "it was soon apparent that these complaints were intended to serve Soviet purposes by silencing potential counter-claims concerning Soviet non-compliance with the Yalta Agreement pertaining to British and United States prisoners of war."18   One complaint of this type came from Colonel General Filip Golikov, head of the Soviet Repatriation Commission. Displaced Soviet nationals were being mistreated, he claimed in late April 1945, and the Western powers were deliberately slowing down the pace of repatriation. This public criticism surprised Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) officials in London, who had previously been accustomed to a show of appreciation from resident Soviet officers and DPs. George Kennan, United States charge in Moscow, reacted sharply, dismissing Golikov's accusations as "shameless distortions."19  By early May disagreements over repatriation led to what historian William Hardy McNeill has called "a public exchange of incivilities." The charges and countercharges dragged on month after month and year after year. As late as 1949 Moscow alleged that the United States and Britain were detaining 247,000 Soviet citizens in Germany and Austria. Acrimony over repatriation led to an increase in mutual suspicion and mistrust, which certainly contributed to the postwar deterioration in East-West relations.20

The Kremlin also depended upon the resourcefulness of its repatriation missions in Europe to secure the return of those hesitant to go back. These bodies, self-consciously although not officially autonomous, served a variety of functions. Covertly, they were intelligence outposts in the West and agents of coercive return. Overtly, they served as legitimate expediters of repatriation and as conduits for positive appeals to reluctant returners. The Soviet government, in October 1944, established the Main Administration for Repatriation of Soviet Citizens, better known as the Soviet Repatriation Commission. Serving as the nominal head of the organization was General Golikov.21  He had a reputation as a "spit-and-polish professional officer," a hardened soldier, and a man on the rise in the military hierarchy.22  Golikov perfectly served Stalin's purpose as a repatriation figurehead, since Golikov was unrelated to the Soviet security organs yet had extensive experience in military intelligence as former chief of the Main Intelligence Administration of the General Staff. As head of the Soviet Repatriation Commission he lacked real authority, the responsibility being concentrated, in reality, in the hands of the secret police: the People's Commissariat for State Security (NKGB) within the USSR or Soviet-occupied territory, and SMERSH ("Death to Spies") abroad. The Soviet Repatriation Commission, working primarily in the West, received its directions and portions of its personnel from the Main Administration of Counter-intelligence of SMERSH.23

After the war Soviet authorities had little trouble maintaining an extensive intelligence apparatus in the West because of the vast network of Soviet displaced persons' camps all over Europe, literally from Norway to Greece. Besides providing the rationale for the existence of the Soviet repatriation missions and their extracurricular activities, the camps themselves contained Soviet agents recruited and stationed there in a variety of ways. Some had purposefully fallen into Nazi hands with the aim of offering their services to collaborator groups, such as the Committee for the Liberation of the peoples of Russia. A number of these agents simply maintained their cover after the German defeat, and, for purposes of later reckoning, continued keeping tallies on the behaviour of Soviet citizens abroad.24 

SMERSH also secured help from some DPs by means of bribery, blackmail, and threats. A defector, formerly employed by SMERSH in repatriation work, recited typical tactics: "Some agents were bought for money, others paid in service to us for their own ill-calculated drunkenness and moral depravity…[Others] might be promised complete forgiveness for all past sins and an honourable homecoming to their Motherland. They might also be threatened with reprisals and of course threats would be made against their families, if they happened to be in Soviet hands." The task of tracking down relatives and even close friends of potential agents in the West was "vast" and "laborious"--but rewarding from the Kremlin's perspective.25

Soviet repatriation operations served double duty: returning the maximum number of DPs to Russia and providing cover for Moscow’s espionage activities in the West. The inextricable nature of the two assignments is symbolized in the biography of Major Shikin in Solzhenitsyn's First Circle. A Red Army general as much as told Isaiah Berlin in the British embassy in Moscow that the postwar homecoming of Soviet citizens was the responsibility of the secret police. One former SMERSH officer emphasized in his post-defection memoir that Soviet repatriation personnel "travelled freely about the western zone, at one time without even being accompanied by allied representatives, and collected a mass of useful information about the location and strength of allied troops, etc., in addition to doing their basic job of rooting out former Soviet citizens."26 [Olga's comment: Ukrainians]

None of the handicaps imposed by the Yalta settlement upon American and British DP camp administrators proved as troublesome as the well-nigh impossible task of satisfying and keeping track of the sizeable Soviet Repatriation Mission. By the end of June 1945 its staff numbered 153 in Germany alone, and SHAEF refused a Soviet request to more than double it.27  Difficulties arose at an early stage with these liaison officers over the limits of their authority, a problem that persisted throughout their stay in the West. Incidents involving Soviet repatriation officers occurred in widely scattered locations. On 31 July 1945 General Sir Andrew Thorne, commander of Allied forces in Norway, asked General Ratov, head of the Red Army's military mission in that country, to reduce drastically his staff of 170 men. SHAEF objected to the dragnet-like activities of Ratov's men: besides, most of the 80,000 Soviet citizens found there had been repatriated. The Soviet general objected, claiming that at least 1,000 of 4,000 "disputed persons" had to be returned to Russia. SHAEF personnel came to detest Ratov, describing him variously as "uncooperative, rude, contentious, antagonistic, not to mention stupid." The State Department's Robert Murphy characterized him similarly as "quarrelsome, uncouth, contrary and stupid." Ratov even engaged in an unprecedented public fight with his own superior by claiming jurisdiction over Soviet DPs not only in Norway but in Britain, the Netherlands, and Denmark as well. General V. M. Dragun in Paris made an apparently legitimate counterclaim that he, not Ratov, was charged with the task of repatriating Soviet nationals in those countries. SHAEF finally declared Ratov persona non grata. Possibly piqued by the unseemly, open-air squabbling, in August 1945 Moscow also replaced General Dragun with Major General Aleksandr N. Davidov, who became the chief Soviet repatriation official in Europe.28

Repatriation did not hold as high a priority in Allied negotiations as the East European settlement, German reparations, zonal boundaries, or access to Berlin, but it could never be ignored either, partly because the problem was continent-wide. Top officials had to attend to the question, not only because Moscow would not let them forget it, but also because of the conspicuous presence of innumerable DPs all across liberated Europe. Members of Soviet repatriation teams in a score of countries continually clashed with SHAEF civil affairs officers and regular army commanders, who in turn passed the problem up the chain of command. Subordinate officers bombarded their superiors with requests for instructions on how to handle displaced Soviet citizens. They wanted to know how to treat nationals of an Allied power and simultaneously how to control the meddling members of the Kremlin's repatriation missions.

The answer that Allied Forces Headquarters-Italy (AFHQ) gave to the second question was to "take such steps as you may consider necessary" to keep Soviet officials out of prohibited zones. This British Foreign Office response went to General Harold Alexander, commander of Anglo-American forces in Italy. By September 1945 he had had his fill of troubles with the Soviet repatriation mission, including two Red Army lieutenants who were arrested twice without identification in the compound of General Anders' Polish Corps, and General Basilov, who had commandeered 300 DPs travelling by rail to a screening centre and demanded their immediate repatriation. Alexander called these actions "gross interference" with his command and determined to tolerate them no longer.29  The Soviet mission in Italy, which at one point numbered 101, lost its right to virtually unrestricted movement in Italy in September 1945 and could no longer "break all travel regulations and get away with it."30

From the very start SHAEI' commanders north of the Alps had their suspicions about the role of Soviet repatriation officials. General Mark Clark, commander of American forces in Austria, took great pains to keep under surveillance Moscow's representatives in his occupation zone. He had circumstantial evidence that certain members of the repatriation mission had engaged in espionage, and he made his objections known to General I. S. Konev, military governor of the Soviet Zone of Austria. Konev offered to recall the offending parties and replace them with new representatives who would be placed on a thirty-day trial. Clark agreed, but before that plan could be implemented he learned that the team leaving the American Zone planned to kidnap an American counter-espionage agent in conjunction with its departure. The general, to obtain proof to verify his long-standing suspicions, set a trap. On 23 January 1946, when several members of the Russian mission arrived at the intended victim's house, concealed lights were switched on to prevent the kidnappers' escape, and Clark's men quickly arrested the entire group. One Soviet repatriation officer was wearing the complete uniform of an American military policeman. Two others had on civilian coats over Red Army uniforms. All were armed. Enraged by their clandestine activities, Clark informed Konev that the offenders "would be shoved over the line into the Russian Zone" the next day.31  This incident did not end the general's troubles with the Soviet mission, because he had to accede to the War Department's orders. Despite Clark's contention on 25 January "that all members of this mission have been involved in intelligence activities since they have been in our Zone," Washington required him to admit a new Soviet repatriation team. The outspoken general continued his complaints. In mid-March 1946 he advised the War Department that Moscow was trying to extend the life of the mission indefinitely for intelligence reasons. Clark also let it be known that the British and French representatives in Vienna "are as anxious as I to get rid of these missions, feeling that their most important work is espionage." Again in late June 1946 he reiterated his conviction that "the main object behind Soviet insistence in establishing another mission in the United States zone is for intelligence purposes."32

General Walter Bedell Smith, prior to his appointment as ambassador to Moscow in January 1946, had similar troubles with Soviet repatriation officers in Germany. Requiring members of one especially meddlesome Soviet team to eat at a central facility, in order to keep close check on their number, proved ineffective: as General Smith discovered, several Red Army officers often used the same meal ticket. This deception was part of a larger scheme designed to move unauthorized "transient Russians" about the Western zones undetected.33  A new rationing system put a stop to that, but conflicts continued as long as Soviet repatriation teams operated in the West.

Evidence of illegal seizures of DPs by Soviet officials applied to Germany as well as Austria. At Bad Kreuznach, an American officer of Ukrainian descent saved thirty Ukrainians from unauthorized repatriation. Members of the Soviet mission had loaded the group onto trucks bound for the eastern zone of Germany and might have succeeded in their abduction but for the American officer, who understood the refugees' pleas for help and stopped the transfer. The saga of high-handedness on the part of Moscow's repatriation officials was the same all over Europe. In Brussels, Soviet representatives, searching for reluctant returners, broke into private homes without warrants. In Greece, Moscow's repatriation mission managed to spirit Bulgarian communists out of the country "unscathed" by the Greek police.34  In France, the Soviet Union had perhaps its most pliant Western government. Moscow's prerogatives clearly included flagrant examples of disregard for the assigned tasks of repatriation. A large, effectively autonomous compound at Camp Beauregard, outside Paris, served as the major processing point for persons returning to Russia. The provisions of the Yalta repatriation accords and the French one, which permitted Soviet internal administration of refugee centres, greatly facilitated clandestine activities. In effect, Moscow was able to establish extraterritorial islands throughout Europe.35  Yet Camp Beauregard represented but a fraction of Soviet repatriation activities in France. Witnesses even attested to abductions undertaken without interference from the French police. The meddling of the Kremlin's officials on French soil became so commonplace that Parisian wags declared that German occupation had been replaced by Russian. Nevertheless, the Red Army's repeated delays in repatriating hundreds of thousands of French POWs in the East most decidedly helped to insure that General De Gaulle would tolerate the excesses of the Soviet repatriation mission.36

In Norway, Italy, Austria, Germany, France, and elsewhere, Soviet repatriation missions regularly engaged in a variety of intrigues. Still, their selective participation in strictly illegal repatriation--genuine kidnapping--had less effect than two other approaches:

1) Moscow's emphasis upon Western compliance with its interpretation of the Yalta exchange accords; and

2) an extensive effort to woo Soviet citizens back into the fold through an enormous barrage of verbal and printed appeals. After the transfer to the USSR of the majority of clearly identified Soviet nationals, SHAEF officials still permitted the Kremlin's representatives access to DP camps. In particular, "stateless" refugee--those from East European countries [Olga's comment: Ukrainians] or provinces annexed by the Soviet Union--could be addressed by Moscow's repatriation workers. Far from convincing their captive audiences to return home, Moscow's speech makers more commonly provoked agitation and, on occasion, violence. By every means possible--speeches, personal interviews, films, pamphlets, and newspapers--they told the story of the happy life that awaited the refugees back home. Promises of improved living conditions, the right to return to their old homes and jobs, and pardon for delayed repatriation rarely moved sceptical DPs.37 An ex- Vlasovite held at Fort Dix, New Jersey, reminded Colonel Malkov that the Soviet government considered surrender to the enemy a treasonable offense. The Soviet repatriation officer replied that the law had been changed; those returning were "freely settling" and "nobody had said a word to them." When Malkov added that no one would be held responsible for what the Germans had made him do, the POW was openly sceptical. Another prisoner asked this same officer for something more concrete than oral assurances or Soviet statements to the press, but Malkov had nothing else to offer.38  The United States did repatriate the Wehrmacht's ex-Red Army men held at Fort Dix, but certainly not of their own free will and not because they found the appeals and assurances of the Soviet mission convincing.

More than once the commotion provoked by Soviet visits to DP camps took a sinister turn. At a Leipzig refugee centre, a call for return to the homeland ended abruptly when "an old man with an ax in his hand mounted the speaker's platform and extending to the Soviet officer the ax, said: 'Here is my ax, and here is my head. Chop it off, but 1 won't go back.' An American officer witnessed this scene, and upon learning what the old man had said, promptly ordered the Soviet officials to leave."39 

In July 1945 a disorder in one British camp resulted in a Red Army officer shooting a DP. The foolhardy assailant "was subsequently lynched by an infuriated mob." Because of the repeated physical assaults upon Soviet officials, the United States ruled in May 1946 that the Kremlin's repatriation personnel had to be accompanied by American guards when entering multinational compounds.40  AFHQ informed the Soviet mission in Italy that it would do its best to "assure the bodily safety of...authorized visitors," but that it could not "assume responsibility for any untoward incident." Things got so bad that one Red Army general toured a refugee camp with an escort of two armoured cars.41

In one instance of candour a Soviet representative admitted to a United Nations refugee worker that the chances of persuading the "hard-core" DPs to leave the West were negligible, but to their own superiors repatriation teams from the USSR had to present a picture of energetic, ceaseless activity that, of course, was on the very brink of productivity. One intercepted Russian communication between repatriation officers and their headquarters provides a rare glimpse at the curious combination of obsequiousness and braggadocio seemingly endemic to the Soviet chain of command: "We are about to carry on to incredible measures the pilferage in the so-called 'Ukrainian UNRRA camps.' ...We are able to bring about a mass dissatisfaction, but we did not quite achieve total despondency.42  Whether or not they convinced many wary DPs, Soviet officials had to appear successful to their superiors out of fear for their own safety in Stalin's purge-prone empire.

After the repatriation of the great majority of displaced nationals in the summer of 1945 and the exclusion of civilians from forced repatriation in December of that year, American military officials sought to limit the size and activity of the Soviet repatriation missions in Western zones of occupation. Efforts to curtail and finally terminate them had only begun with Generals Thorne, Alexander, and Clark. Conflict over this Soviet presence in the West provided a protracted test of wills that coincided with other superpower controversies that spelled the onset of the Cold War in the late 1940s. On 5 August 1947 General Lucius Clay ordered a reduction in the Soviet repatriation mission in Germany from thirty-four to four. The number crept back up, however, so that by late March 1948 Moscow had seventeen men at least officially charged with DP work. On 17 February 1949, during the Soviet blockade of Berlin and the Western airlift of supplies to the beleaguered city, Clay further aggravated Moscow by finally ordering the remaining Soviet repatriation personnel to leave the Western occupation zones: "It is apparent that sufficient time has elapsed...for voluntary repatriation to be completed."43  This incensed the Kremlin, which argued that the United States was not only detaining 247,000 Soviet citizens in violation of the Yalta accord, but was now adding to its misdeeds by forcing the termination of the repatriation mission's work. The Soviet Union considered this a flagrant "unilateral abrogation" of a signed agreement. Washington replied to the Russian charges by stating that the United States was not preventing anyone from repatriating; most remaining DPs simply did not want to return home. Besides, the majority of the nearly 250,000 refugees referred to were not citizens of the USSR but were former inhabitants of Russian-annexed territories.[Olga's comment: Ukrainians] Finally, the United States did not consider the closing of the repatriation mission a violation of the Yalta agreement, since the Soviet attaché could easily handle the small number of persons desiring to return to the Soviet Union.44

Unmoved by these explanations, Moscow ordered the Soviet Repatriation Mission in Frankfurt to stay put. When General Clay's deadline of 1 March had passed without compliance, Western occupation officials cut off the group's utilities. On 4 May Moscow finally capitulated and the mission was ordered home. Marshal V. D. Sokolovsky, Soviet military governor in Germany, renewed the charge that the action of the United States was a violation of an international agreement. Moscow also retaliated by ordering a British-American graves registration team to leave the Soviet Zone of Germany.45

Besides the POW and refugee exchange agreements and Soviet missions in the West, Moscow's campaign for total repatriation employed a massive propaganda blitz designed to reassure the reluctant of a cordial homecoming. Soviet spokesmen presented DPs with an elaborate variety of misleading or demonstrably false information about the prospects for repatriates. Normally appeals directed toward Soviet citizens abroad or persons from annexed territories did not risk a negative approach. One 1947 communication that did came from the government of the Soviet Latvian Republic. Nonreturners could hardly find comfort in the veiled censure of, "You...are more than two years serving strange masters in a foreign country, eating strange masters' bread," or "every honest Latvian has to come home."46

Ordinarily Moscow's propagandists avoided pronouncements so chillingly devoid of consolation. Rather they offered an array of positive psychological and material inducements. Playing the chord of the motherland's prolonged suffering proved a popular theme among the Kremlin's phrase makers. In 1945 the Soviet Repatriation Commission's Domoi, na rodinu! [Home to the Motherland!] returned again and again to this theme in the course of thirty pages: "The mother country remembers its children. Not for a minute did the Soviet people, our government, or the party of Lenin and Stalin forget about the fate of Soviet citizens who temporarily found themselves under the yoke of fascist oppressors....Many times throughout the war Comrade Stalin called to mind you who languished in fascist camps and said that the freeing of Soviet people from the German yoke was an important objective of the Soviet people and the Red Army."47  In a similar vein Robert Murphy learned from a Red Army colonel that "these poor unfortunates who were deported to Germany are looked upon at home as martyrs and will be received with open arms by the entire Russian people."

Feigned compassion figured as the common denominator in many appeals. Val kak eta hyla (That's How It Was), Aleksei Briukhanov's memoir of repatriation work, illustrated this approach in its description of the ex-DP-staffed Committee for Return to the Homeland: "Like a beacon, the Committee pointed out to the displaced the path to their native shores."48  A closely related approach involved heart-tugging sentimentality. Vstrecha s rodinoi (Encounter with the Homeland), a Soviet film designed specifically for Armenian émigrés, cultivated homesickness as a means of encouraging return to the motherland. This relatively sophisticated soft sell contained no direct appeal for repatriation. Still that message resounded as the narrator proclaimed, "Soviet Armenia is the last harbour for all our wandering ships." In appeals designed to lure émigrés, this inclination toward sentimentality figured prominently. The Soviet government issued a number of edicts concerning the "Restitution of Nationality to Former Subjects" especially for them. By means of these proclamations pre-World War II expatriates could reacquire citizenship. For many refugees of 1917-21 the second German invasion of their homeland in their lifetime reawakened dormant patriotic feelings that in some cases were translated into postwar repatriation.49

Another of Moscow's psychological approaches to DPs consisted of reassurance of forgiveness for past sins, including capture alive by the enemy, delay in returning home, and even collaboration with the Germans. The success or failure of non-coercive attempts to retrieve displaced nationals depended upon this more than anything else. That the Kremlin's promises left the vast majority of hard-core DPs cold was not for want of trying. One Red Army colonel in Germany told Murphy that military personnel taken prisoner by the Germans had no cause for uneasiness: "We understand perfectly well that under modem conditions of warfare, large bodies of troops may be cut off and forced to surrender. There is no more stigma connected with capture in the eyes of the Soviet Government than there is in the American Army."50  This charitable sentiment contrasted sharply with Decree Number 270 of 1942, which declared surrendered Red Army soldiers ipso facto traitors. Sources confirming this point are as diverse as the wartime edition of Bolshaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia, the Soviet Constitution, the criminal codes of the constituent republics, the Red Army field manual, the leading Soviet scholar on military criminal law, and Stalin himself.51

Moscow also tried to convince its refugees abroad that no stigma attached to delayed repatriation. A 1949 catechism for DPs asked the question, "Are Soviet citizens held to account for not returning home at once after the war was over?" The answer was: "their long sojourn in a foreign land will not be considered their fault," but rather the responsibility of "reactionary elements" in the West.52  Convincing ex-Red Army soldiers who had served in the Wehrmacht that repatriation entailed no dangers taxed the ingenuity of Soviet propagandists as few assignments could. The standard line ran that no retribution awaited collaborators, "provided they honestly fulfill their duties on their return." That innocent-sounding reservation could not have helped but raise the suspicions of wary refugees.53  A section entitled "How Freed People Are Received in the Homeland" appeared in the same tract that carried Stalin’s alleged, pained remembrance of those torn from the motherland. The pamphlet shouted in boldfaced type. "All freed Soviet people are received in their homeland not with contempt or distrust but with consideration, warm encouragement, and affectionate sympathy." A Soviet notice in the British army paper, Union Jack, emphasized to DP readers that this applied even to "Soviet citizens, who, under German opposition and terror, had acted contrarily to the interests of the Soviet Union."54

Referring to Soviet nationals who had served in Wehrmacht ranks, Aleksandr Bogomolov, Moscow's ambassador to France, said: "Some of these are heroes, some of them have been less strong-minded. No nation consists exclusively of heroes. But the motherland would not be a mother if she did not love all her family, even the black sheep…. Every man will be given a chance to redeem himself at home--if he is of military age, in the army; otherwise, in a factory. We take into full account the special circumstances under which each man has lived, the mass psychology of camps and pressure by the Germans."55  The American embassy staff in Moscow noted that even the regular Soviet press, prepared for domestic consumption, occasionally reflected this solicitous, forgive-and-forget attitude.

These American officials, who caught glimpses of Soviet repatriation first-hand, knew that the reception afforded returners in all categories was anything but cordial.56

Besides appeals constructed to work on the emotional level, Moscow's campaign to retrieve all of its nationals abroad included a variety of material incentives. In addition to promises of free transportation home, job security, work in one's native region, and even residence in one's former dwelling, Soviet literature offered repatriates agricultural and building loans, educational opportunities, the right to vote, and. for ex-POWs, veterans' benefits. Also, those coming home were told they could count on social services such as pensions for the elderly, workmen's compensation, and convalescent homes for the disabled. The detailed specifications of advantages to be afforded repatriates' physical security and well-being, no matter how remote from the true circumstances of their reception, were intended to allay their apprehension and to convince them that they would be "treated with the maximum of care and attention."57  At first glance that crowded schedule of inducements might appear enticing. To be convinced of Stalin's good wi1l, however, the Soviet diaspora, raised on a diet of Orwellian doublethink, required more than unverifiable pledges of a warm welcome home.

In the Kremlin's campaign for total repatriation, results based on the Soviet missions in the West were modest, but results based on Moscow's litany of promises and direct appeals fell between negligible and nonexistent. Its monumental dimensions notwithstanding, the Soviet campaign for total repatriation failed. The USSR did retrieve 3 million of its nationals from Eastern Europe and 2 million from Western occupation zones, but the remaining DPs, [Olga's comment: Ukrainians] roughly 500,000 persons, could not be moved by any persuasion short of force.58 

The Soviet government distrusted persons captured alive by the enemy and declared them traitors, prepared a hostile reception for all repatriates, and construed a refusal or even reluctance to return borne as most unpatriotic. Refugees with time to ponder sensed these attitudes through the veil of promises and solicitous attention. Although concern for effect more than accuracy determined what went into Soviet appeals to refugees abroad, few returned home as a result of Kremlin propaganda. In the final analysis, the Soviet Union's campaign to regain custody of every one of its displaced citizens failed because refugees with a choice detected the insincerity of Moscow's appeals. Half-hearted promises of a happy homecoming did not successfully disguise the regime's vindictive spirit.

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Notes
 

1.   Mark Elliott, Pawns of Yalta: Soviet Refugees and America's Role in Their Repatriation (Urbana, Ill., 1982).
2.   Col. T. R. Henn, Acting Assistant Chief of Staff (hereinafter ACS), G5 (Civil Affairs Section of the U.S. Army General Staff) to Deputy Chief of Staff (hereinafter CS), Allied Forces Headquarters = Italy (hereinafter AFHQ), 5 Jan. 1945, National Archives, Suitland Branch (hereinafter NAS), Record Group (hereinafter RG) 331 (Allied Operational and Occupational Headquarters, World War II), AFHQ, Roll 227-B, Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff (hereinafter SACS), 400-7, "Russian Matters."
3.   John L. Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947 (New York, 1972), 80; Frank Lorimer, The Population of the Soviet Union: History and Prospects (Geneva, 1946), 181; Alexander Werth, Russia at War, 1941-1945 (New York, 1964),707; Gordon Wright, The Ordeal of Total War, 1939-1945 (New York, 1968), 263; Georgii I. Zhukov, The Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov (New York, 1971), 643.
4.   Ralph B. Levering, American Opinion and the Russian Alliance, 1939-1945 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1976), 96, 77.
5.   Wright, Ordeal, 264.
6.   John Erickson. '"The Soviet Union at War (1941-1945): An Essay on Sources and Studies," Soviet Studies 14 (January 1963): 268; "History of the United States Military Mission Moscow," (hereinafter USMMM) 30 October 1945, National Archives (hereinafter NA), RG 165, War Department General and Special Staffs, Operations Division (hereinafter WDGSS OPD), 336, Case 233, Part II; N. Lebedev, "The Truth About the Second World War," International Affairs, no. 1 (January 1974): 101-2; V. A. Valkov, SSSR i SShA. Ikh politicheskie i ekonomicheskie otnosheniia (Moscow, 1965), 340; P. A. Zhilin, "O problemakh istorii vtoroi mirovoi voiny," Navaia i noveishaia istoriia, no. 2 (March-April 1973): 12.
7.   Ivan Maiskii, Memoirs of a Soviet Ambassador. The War: 1939-43 (New York, 1967), 277. See also Gaddis, Origins, 80; Keith M. Heim, "Hope without Power: Truman and the Russians, 1945," Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, 1973, 42; Zhilin, "O problemakh," 12.
8.   Gaddis, Origins, 80.
9.   George Kennan to Cordell Hull, 10 Nov. 1944, Foreign Relations of the United Slates: Diplomatic Papers (hereinafter FR), 1944, IV (Washington, 1966), 1264. McCollum was quoted in Anthony J. Bouscaren, International Migrations Since 1945 (New York, 1963), 15-16.
10.   Leonid I. Brezhnev, The Great Victory of the Soviet People (Moscow, 1965), 29. See also Alexander Borisov, "Recent Anglo-U.S. Bourgeois Historiography of the Soviet Union's Great Patriotic War," in M. Goncharuk, ed., Soviet Studies on the Second World War (Moscow, 1976), 233.
11.   A. I. Romanov, Nights are Longest There: Smersh from the Inside (Boston, 1972), 170; Pfc. Dmytro Staroschak to Narodna volia [weekly of the Ukrainian Workingmen's Association], Box 192, United Ukrainian American Relief Committee papers (hereinafter UUARC), Immigration History Research Center, University of Minnesota; Boris Shub, The Choice (New York. 1950), 51.
12.   W. Averell Harriman to Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., 10 Jan. 1945, FR Yalta (Washington, 1955), 455. See also Alexander Dallin and Ralph Mavrogordato, "The Soviet Reaction to Vlasov, " World Politics 8 (April 1956): 322.
13.   Reinhard Gehlen, The Service: The Memoirs of Reinhard Gehlen (New York, 1972), 90. See also John Erickson, The Road to Stalingrad: Stalin's War with Germany (New York, 1975), 353.
14.   Andrei Y. Vyshinskii, Speech Delivered by A. Y. Vyshinskii ...in the General Assembly--November 6, 1946 (Washington, 1946), 12; "DP's Problem in Europe," 2 April 1946, NAS RG 165, WDGSS Military Intelligence Service Project File, no. 2996; New York Times, 19 October 1945.
15.   Eugene Lyons, Our Secret Allies, the Peoples of Russia (New York, 1953), 271; Shub, Choice, 201-2. See also John Scott, "Interview with a Russian DP," Fortune 39 (April 1949): 81.
16.   Speaking specifically of the Soviet campaign for the repatriation of Armenians abroad, Reuben Darbinian suggested that one of Moscow's goals was the destruction of the émigré Armenian Revolutionary Federation: "The Proposed Second Repatriation by the Government of Soviet Armenia: What Does Moscow Want from Its Armenian Collaborators of the Armenian Diaspora?," Armenian Review 15 (April 1962): 7.
17.   George Ginsburgs, "Displaced Persons," in J. M. Feldbrugge, ed., Encyclopedia of Soviet Law, vol. 1 (Leiden, 1973), 231-2.
18.   Malcolm Proudfoot, European Refugees, 1939-1952 (Evanston, Ill., 1956), 213.
19.   New York Times, 1 May 1945; Lt. Col. Zapozin and Maj. Berizoeski to Eisenhower, 9 April 1945, in Alfred D. Chandler, ed., The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower; the War Years IV (Baltimore, 1970), 2603; Kennan to Stettinius, 30 April 1945, NA RG 334 USMMM-POWs, 25 ApriI-15 June 1945.
20.   William Hardy McNeill, America, Britain. and Russia: Their Cooperation and Conflict, 1941-1946 (London, 1953), 580; George Ginsburgs, "Soviet Union and the Problem of Refugees and Displaced Persons, 1917-1956," American Journal of International Law 51 (April 1957): 352.
21.   Aleksei I. Briukhanov, Vot kak eto bylo: O rabote missii po repatriatsii sovetskikh grazhdan: Vospominaniia sovetskogo ofitsera (Moscow, 1958), 38: F. I. Golikov, V Moskovskoi bitve: Zapiski komandarma (Moscow, 1967), 5; A Nemirov, Dorogi i vstrechi (Munich, 1947), 38; Romanov, Nights, 170; Albert Seaton, The Russo-German War, 1941-45 (London, 1971), 15; Mikhail Semiriaga, Sovetskie liudi v evropeiskom soprotivlenii (Moscow, 1970), 326; Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, vol. 1 (New York, 1973), 240, 624; Nikolai Tolstoy, The Secret Betrayal: 1944-1947 (New York, 1978), 399-400; Zhukov, Memoirs, 216.
22.   Raymond L. Garthoff, “The Marshals and the Party: Soviet Civil-Military Relations in the Postwar Period,”  in Harry L. Coles, ed., Total War and Cold War: Problems in Civilian Control of the Military (Columbus, Ohio, 1962), 259-61 ; Seweryn Bialer, ed., “Biographical Index,” Stalin and His Generals: Soviet Military Memoirs of World War II (New York, 1969), 630. For additional biographical data, see Edward L. Crowley et al., Prominent Personalities in the USSR: A Biographic Directory Containing 6,015 Biographies of Prominent Personalities in the Soviet Union (Metuchen. N.J., 1968), 184; and Borys Levytsky, The Soviet Political Elite (Munich, 1969), 156. For the allegation that his wartime transfer to repatriation work was a demotion because of cowardice at Stalingrad, see Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers (Boston, 1970), 194-5.
23.   W. Averell Harriman and Elie Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941-1946 (New York, 1975), 416; Romanov, Nights, 170, 172; Tolstoy, Secret, 400.
24.   Romanov, Nights, 124, 127; Juergen Thorwald, The Illusion: Soviet Soldiers in Hitler's Army (New York, 1975), 254; Tolstoy, Secret, 401-2.
25.   Romanov, Nights, 127.
26.   Solzhenitsyn, The First Circle (New York. 1968), xiii, 509.  The Red Army general's admission is in Tolstoy, Secret, 427-8; the account of the ex-SMERSH officer is in Romanov, Nights, 171.
27.   Robert Murphy to Stale Department (hereinafter SD), 22 June 1945, NA RG 59, 800.4016 DP/6-2245; John R. Deane, The Strange Alliance: The Story of Our Efforts at Wartime Cooperation with Russia (New York, 1947), 201; Office of the Chief of Military History (hereinafter OCMH), European Command (hereinafter EUCOM), Survey of Soviet Aims, Policies and Tactics (Frankfurt, 1948), 276; OCMH, “The Exchange with the Soviet Forces of Liberated Personnel--World War II,” (Washington: OCMH, n.d.), 10.
28.   M. Iskrin, “V borbe protiv gitlerovskikh okkupantov Norvegii,” Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, no. 6 (November-December 1962): 127; Lithgow Osborne to Secretary of State, 21 Aug. 1945, NA RG 59, 762.61114/8-2145; SHAEF to War Department (hereinafter WD), 22 April 1945, NA RG 218 (U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff), Combined Chiefs of Staff (hereinafter CSS) 383.6 (7-4-44) (2) Sec. 5; Murphy to SD, 28 April 1945, NA RG 59, 740.00114 EW/4-2845, enclosure, 2; EUCOM, “RAMP's: The Recovery and Repatriation of Liberated Prisoners of War," (Carlisle Barracks, Pa., Military History Research Collection, 1947), 66.
29.   Brig. Gen. H. Floyd, 8th Army, to AFHQ, 7 November 1944; Maj. Gen. F. G. Beaumont-Nesbitt to CS, AFHQ, 9 January 1945; Lt. Gen. R. L. McBreery, 8th Army, to 15th Army Group, 30 March 1945, NAS RG 331, AFHQ, Roll 227-B, SACS 400-7, "Russian Matters"; Gen. Alexander to Troopers, London, 12 September 1945, NAS RG 331, AFHQ, 383.7-14.4, Reel 17-L, G-5, DP Div., “Travel of Russian Repatriation Representatives.”
30.   Allied Control Commission, Bulgaria (British delegation) to AFHQ, 7 April 1945, NAS RG 331, AFHQ 383.7-14.4. Reel 17-L, G-5, DP Div., "Trave1 of Russian Repatriation Representatives”; Dudley Kirk to Secretary of State, 14 September and 8 October 1945, NA RG 59 (SD), 740.62114/8-2745 and 10-845.
31.   Mark W. Clark, Calculated Risk (New York, 1950), 476-7.
32.   Commanding General (Clark), U.S. Army Forces Europe (Vienna), to WD, 25 Jan., 13 Mar., and 29 June 1946, NA RG 218, CCS 383.6 (7-4-44) (2) Sec. 7 and 8. See also U.S. Political Adviser for Austria (Erhardt) to James F. Byrnes, 26 December 1946, FR, 1946, V (Washington, 1969), 197-8.
33.   Walter Bedell Smith, My Three Years in Moscow (Philadelphia, 1950), 256.
34.   "Plight of Ukrainian DPs," reprint from the Ukrainian Newspaper, Ameryka (n.d.), Box 192, UUARC; Jefferson Patterson, Chargé d'Affaires, to Secretary of State, 8 March 1946, NA RG 59, 840.4016/3-846; Supreme Allied Command, Mediterranean Theater (Greece) to CIGS, 2 September 1945, NAS RG 331, AFHQ, Roll 228-B. SACS 400-7, "Russian Matters."
35.   OCMH, EUCOM, Survey, 216.
36.   "Plight of Ukrainian DPs," Ameryka; cablegram received by UUARC, 8 October 1945, 6; letter by a former Ukrainian member of the prewar Polish Parliament, 16 July 1945, 7-8, Box 192, UUARC; Vasili Kotov, "Stalin Thinks I'm Dead, " Saturday Evening Post 220 (31 Jan. 1948); 57; Lyons, Allies, 268; ToIstoy, Secret, 373, 377. See also First Plenary Conference, 12 September 1945, NA RG 43, Council of Foreign Ministers, Second Meeting, London.
37.   One refugee mentioned receiving a letter from his father stating that there was nothing to fear in returning home. The Soviet repatriation representative beamed at such a positive response--until the refugee added that his father had been dead for ten years.
38. Alec Dickson, "Displaced Persons," National Review, 129 (December 1947): 490-1; Jaroslaw Tomasziwskyj, "'Vozrozhdenie': A Russian Periodical Abroad and Its Contributors" (Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt University, 1974), 18. For the text of a Soviet camp appeal, remarkable in its psychological ineptitude, see minutes of meeting with Soviet Liaison Officer, Mittenwald Camp, 28 August 1947, enclosure to dispatch 409, 14 October 1947, NA RG 59, 800.4016 DP/10-1447.
39.   Fort Dix Report, 19 July 1945, NA RG 59, 711.62114/7-1945.
40.   "Plight of Ukrainian DPs," Ameryka, 9, Box 192. UUARC.
41.   F. S. V. Donnison, Civil Affairs and Military Government, North-West Europe, 1944-45 (London, 1961), 357; Murphy to Byrnes, 16 May 1946, FR, 1946, V, 163-4.
42.   ACC to Col. P. G. Jakovlev, USSR repatriation delegate in Rome, 13 January 1947, NAS RG 331, AFHQ 383.7-14.4, Reel 17-L, G-5, DP Div., "Travel of Russian Repatriation Representatives"; Louise W. Holbom, The International Refugee Organization: A Specialized Agency of the United Nations. Its History and Work, 1946-1951 (London, 1956), 351.
43.   Samuel Snipes, UNRRA Team 1062, to Dorothy Thompson, Refugee Defense Committee, 3 June 1947, folder 38, Panchuk Papers, Immigration History Research Center, University of Minnesota; OCMH, EUCOM. Survey, 279. See also Maj. Gen. F. G. Beaumont-Nesbitt to AFHQ, 5 December 1944, NAS RG 331, AFHQ.
44.   OCMH, EUCOM, Survey, 227; New York Times, 17 Feb. 1949. George Ginsburgs mistakenly states that 1948 saw an end to the Soviet Repatriation Mission in the West.  "Displaced Persons" in Encyclopedia of Soviet Law, I, 232.
45.   U.S. Department of State, Germany, 1947-1949: The Story in Documents (Washington, 1950), 123, 125-6. See also Ginsburgs, "Refugees," 352; Jan F. Triska and Robert M. Slusser, The Theory, Law, and Policy of Soviet Treaties (Stanford, 1962), 174.
46.   3-5 March 1949. See also Walter M. Kotschnig, "Problems of the Resettlement Program," Department of State Bulletin, 20 (13 March 1949), 307-8; Office of Military Government, U.S. Zone, to CS of Civil Affairs Division, 22 March 1949, NA RG 165, WDGSS "IRO Feeding of Soviet Mission"; "U.S. Requests Withdrawal," 320-2. According to Holborn, International, 344, the British were not rid of all their Soviet repatriation personnel until 1950.
47.   Repatriation News, 14 (14 June 1947), 3, folder 9, Panchuk Papers.
48.   Nikolai F. Brychev, Domoi, na rodinu!, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1945), 4, 6.
49.   Lt. Col. Gorbatov. quoted in Murphy to SD, 2 June 1945. NA RG 59, [no decimal number], enclosure to Dispatch 451; Briukhanov, Vot kak eto bylo, 203.
50.   Vstrecha s rodinoi, Soviet Embassy, Washington, D.C.; Vladimir Gsovski, Soviet Civil Law: Private Rights and Their Background under the Soviet Regime, vol. 2 (Ann Arbor. Mich., 1949), 305-6.
51.   Lt. Col. Gorbatov, quoted in Murphy to SD, 2 June 1945, NA RG 59, [no decimal number], enclosure to Dispatch 451. See also A. P. Ivushkina, Rodina zovet! Sbornik. Po materialam gazety "Za  vozvrashchenie na rodinu" (Berlin, 1955), 95.
52.   David Dallin and Boris Nikolaevskii, Forced Labor in Soviet Russia (New Haven, CT, 1947), 282-3; Brig. Gen. R. W. Berry, GSC, Dep. ACS, GI, to Dep. CS, 6 August 1945, NA RG 165, ACS 383.6, Sec. 8, Cases 400...450.
53.   Otvety na volnuiushchie voprosy sovetskikh grazhdan nakhodiashchikhsia za granitsei na polozhenii peremeshchennykh lits (Moscow, 1949), 4.
54.   "Repatriation of DPs from Germany and Austria," NAS RG 165, WDGSS, Military Intelligence Service Project File, no. 2897, 1 March 1946. See also Otvety, 25.
55.   Brychev, Domoi, na rodinu!, 10; Kirk to Stettinius quoting the Union Jack, 2 March 1945, NA RG 59, 800.4016 DP/3-245. See also Ivushkina, Rodina, 34, 52.
56.   Memorandum by Donald Lowrie, 20 October 1944, NA RG 59, 762.61114/14.344.
57.   Harriman to Stettinius, 10 January 1945, FR, Yalta, 455; Kennan to SD, 15 November 1944, NA RG 59, 762.61114/15.44; Solzhenitsyn, First Circle, 463.
58.   Walter Dushnyck and William J. Gibbons. Refugees are People: The Plight of Europe’s Displaced Persons (New York, 1947), 89; Otvety, 5, 20, 30, 39, 40-2; Kirk to Stettinius quoting the Union Jack, 2 March 1945, NA RG 59, 800.4016 DP/3-245.
59.   Elliott, Pawns of Yalta, 243, 247.
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Every oblast in Ukraine was ordered to publish a complete list of all Ukrainian soldiers who died or went missing during World War II. Somewhere close to 300 volumes have been published with each volume naming about 15,000 to 20,000 family names. The books are named "KNYHA PAM'IATI UKRAINY" with subtitles naming the oblast. In most cases the family names are listed alphabetically by Oblast, then by Raion, then by village.

The books are either in Ukrainian or in Russian, and some volumes are available from Ukrainian bookstores (I got mine from the Edmonton Bookstore), at an average price of $40 each. I have about 35 volumes. Allan Szuch

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