“The Germans were horrified by the massacre started by Ukrainian nationalists”
In publishing "Peter" two books by the famous Russian historian were published Armen Gasparyan - "General Skoblin: Legend of Soviet intelligence", and "War after the Victory. Bandera and Vlasov: a sentence without a statute of limitations" Correspondent "PolitNavigator» met with the author on the eve of the presentation of new publications.
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Armen Gasparyan: The book about Major General of the Russian Army Nikolai Vladimirovich Skoblin is the first detailed biography of this glorious Russian officer. Before this, books were published that covered one or another period in his life.
"PolitNavigator": How long did you work on his biography?
Armen Gasparyan: Almost twenty years, starting in 1992, when, as a seventeen-year-old Moscow youth, I first read the book by emigrant Boris Pryanishnikov “The Invisible Web,” which was dedicated to the work of the Cheka-OGPU against white emigration. I really didn’t like the dismissive tone towards Skoblin. Like, when I saw this man, he looked at me so badly that I immediately realized that he was a security officer.
Since 1992, I have become acquainted with a lot of literature about Skoblin. I re-read everything that was in foreign languages about him. I got acquainted with the emigrant periodicals devoted to his case. I studied archives - not only Russian, but American and French. I read the prison diary of the singer Nadezhda Plevitskaya, Skoblin’s wife. She died in a French convict prison in 1940 under the Germans. It is a myth that they say that she, tied to two tanks, was torn apart.
Skoblin’s family, represented by his niece Irina Sergeevna Skoblina, as a sign of gratitude for my respectful attitude towards the memory of the general, gave me his archive. In this book I publish many materials from there. Moreover, for the first time. For example, on the flyleaf of the book a photograph of Skoblin’s original shoulder strap, which was sewn in 1921 at Gallipoli, will be published.
By the way, Irina Sergeevna is the daughter of General Skoblin’s younger brother. Remember the movie “His Excellency’s Adjutant”? The fate of Colonel Lvov’s son, Yura? So, this is the fate of Sergei Skoblin, who also traveled to the Don in a similar way.
"PolitNavigator": What attracted you so much to Skoblin? Were you not embarrassed by the fact that he cooperated with the security officers?
Armen Gasparyan: This man was a great patriot of Russia. He was sick of her. He was always loyal to Russia. He was one of the youngest generals in the Russian army.
“PolitNavigator”: But if he is such a great patriot, then why didn’t he simply return to the USSR from emigration? Why did he betray his comrades by collaborating with the Bolsheviks?
Armen Gasparyan: There is no need to create illusions. He is not General Slashchev, who returned. He would have been shot. He is, after all, an old Kornilovite who became one of the first Russian volunteers, responding to Kornilov’s call to come to the Don. Knight of St. George. He was wounded six times at the front. This is not a staff general. He had an unparalleled contempt for death.
Skoblin was a man with an ideological core. After the death of Wrangel, who died before his eyes, he changed, realizing that the White movement had been decapitated.
Only after this did he cooperate with the OGPU, becoming an agent under the name “Farmer”.
"PolitNavigator": So where did Skoblin disappear to?
Armen Gasparyan: There are two mutually exclusive documents on this matter in his file. One says that his body was thrown from a plane, and the other says that he was taken to Bolshevo, where he intensively studied Spanish (there was a civil war in Spain at that time). You need to understand that cases related to the foreign residency of the NKVD cannot be declassified until now. This could not have been done even in the liberal times of the 90s.
Apparently, Skoblin was liquidated by the foreign department of the NKVD. The Moor did his job... The operation was a failure, and he was exposed as a Soviet agent. He had to leave Paris, where he lived with his singer wife.
"PolitNavigator": Come on, now let's move on to the book about Vlasov and Bandera. Some Russian patriots believe that Vlasov is a hero.
Armen Gasparyan: A person who collaborated with the Third Reich cannot be a hero. These “Russian patriots” today have become trans-Ukrainian by supporting Euromaidan and the war in Donbass. They are traitors. And Vlasov himself supported Stepan Bandera and his struggle.
“PolitNavigator”: In Ukraine, there is a legend that Bandera was persecuted by the Nazis, they put him in a concentration camp, and on this basis they made him almost a fighter against Nazism. Is it so?
Armen Gasparyan: Lie. Yes, Bandera was in the Sachsenhausen camp, but he was sitting in a privileged barracks, where, for example, political opponents of the regime sat, who could be useful. So that you understand what his position was, I will give this example: Bandera could receive letters and parcels from his family. And he could send them himself. There is a recollection of his comrade-in-arms, who wrote with admiration that he received lemon cake or some sweets from his “leader Stepan Bandera.” Bandera sent all this to him while sitting in the camp.
"PolitNavigator": Who freed him?
Armen Gasparyan: The Germans themselves in 1944. Main Directorate of Imperial Security RSHA. They realized that they needed to attract the people they needed to fight the Bolsheviks. Bandera was sent to Munich, where he restored ties with his comrades.
"PolitNavigator": Why was it not issued to the USSR after the war?
Armen Gasparyan: Because he was not a citizen of the USSR. Because of this, many Ukrainian nationalists, both from the OUN(b) and from the SS Galicia division, avoided extradition.
"PolitNavigator": But why then did the Poles not achieve their extradition? After all, they were formally Polish citizens before the war?
Armen Gasparyan: They tried, but the Western allies did not hand them over.
"PolitNavigator": Did the Americans cooperate with Bandera?
Armen Gasparyan: Yes. They began to receive money from the CIA and British MI6. True, in 1949 the Americans demanded that Bandera’s supporters report on their spending. It turned out that, as in our times, Bandera’s supporters were “cutting off American grants.”
"PolitNavigator": Was Western Ukraine already safe by the 50s?
Armen Gasparyan: No, only by 1954 did it become safe. True, by the beginning of the 50s, all active fighting of Bandera’s supporters was defeated. Only stubborn people like Shukhevych and Vasyl Kuk remained.
"PolitNavigator": Was the Volyn massacre of 1943, when the UPA slaughtered the Poles, an unforeseen incident?
Armen Gasparyan: In no case. We have been methodically preparing for this for a long time. The Lviv pogrom of 1941 was an excess, when Jews and Polish professors were exterminated. The Germans in Volyn even had to “force the Ukrainian nationalists to peace.” They themselves were horrified by the massacre they started. They sent reports to Berlin.
And for Ukrainian nationalists, the Poles have always been enemies, just like Muscovites, Jews, and Magyars. Bandera’s ideologists called for fighting them.
"PolitNavigator": What is the relevance of the book?
Armen Gasparyan: The fact is that Ukrainian nationalism is still alive, and we must fight it. When I spoke about this in Moscow at the beginning of the 5s, they objected to me: why panic, well, there are 10-XNUMX crazy people running around Lvov. But the events at Euromaidan, in Odessa, Mariupol, in Zaporozhye, the war in Donbass showed that we still have to destroy Ukrainian Nazism.
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