Sergei Postnikov, founder of the Russian Archive in Prague, was also arrested in May 1945. The Gestapo had arrested him previously in 1941, but released him in 1943. SMERSH was interested in Postnikov because Soviet security services were extremely anxious to get access to the Russian Archive. It contained information about the majority of the Russian emigrants in Europe. After the war the Czechoslovak government decided to give the archive to the Soviet Academy of Sciences.52 However, it was taken by the NKVD, and in December 1945, a train consisting of nine cars loaded with 650 boxes of documents and guarded by NKVD troops arrived in Moscow. The documents were immediately classified and the NKVD used them to compose a list of 18,000 names of wanted emigrants in Europe. On June 6, 1946, a new wave of arrests of Russians named on the list began in Prague.
The OSO sentenced Postnikov to five years in the labor camps. After his term he was exiled to the city of Nikopol in Southern Russia. Luckily, he survived, and returned to Prague in 1955.
Additionally, in May 1945, SMERSH operatives of the 1st Ukrainian Front arrested about 1,000 Ukrainian emigrants. They were brought to Kiev, where their cases were investigated by the Ukrainian NKGB. Tried by the Military Tribunal of the NKVD troops of the Kiev Military District, most of the arrestees were sentenced to terms of ten to twenty-five years in labor camps.
Thousands of ROA privates and officers became SMERSH’s main target in Czechoslovakia. As Romanov wrote, on May 7, 1945, ‘not far from Pibran, the Czechs [Czech partisans] seized General Vlasov’s assistant, his chief of staff General [Fyodor] Trukhin, and handed him over to a Smersh operational group. The Czechs hanged Trukhin’s deputy, Colonel [Vladimir] Boyarsky, on the spot.’53 Later, American officials handed more of Vlasov’s soldiers over to SMERSH.
On May 12, Vlasov was caught near Prague in the American zone. Major Gen. Yevgenii Fominykh, Commander of the 25th Tank Corps, and Colonel Zubkov, his head of staff, reported to the Military Council of the 1st Ukrainian Front:
Intelligence reconnaissance… showed that Vlasov’s 1st Division under the command of former General Buyanichenko [incorrect spelling of Bunyachenko], Vlasov, and his staff were there…
Captain [Mikhail] Yakushev [commander of a battalion in the 162nd Tank Brigade] drove to the head of the column [of the 1st ROA Division] and stopped his car across the road…
After approaching Vlasov’s car, Com.[rade] Yakushev found Vlasov hiding under a blanket and shielded by a translator and a woman.
Vlasov refused to follow Yakushev’s order to get out of his car and follow Yakushev to the headquarters of the 162nd Tank Brigade. His reason was that he was going to the American Army headquarters and that they were on the territory controlled by American troops.
Only after Yakushev threatened to shoot Vlasov on the spot was Vlasov forced to take a place in the car. On the way Vlasov tried to jump out of the car, but he was recaptured…
Yakushev handed Vlasov over to Colonel Mishchenko [Commander of the 162nd Tank Brigade].
In a conversation with Com.[rade] Mishchenko, Vlasov repeated that he needed to go to the American headquarters.
After a short conversation, on May 12 [1945], at 18:00, Com.[rade] Mishchenko brought Vlasov to me…
After questioning Vlasov and talking to him, I suggested that he write an order to all [his] units to give up arms and join our side.
Vlasov agreed and immediately wrote the order.
The order was typed in four copies and signed by Vlasov…54
On May 12, 1945, at 22:00, Vlasov was brought to the headquarters of the 13th Army. Colonel Zubkov, head of the Staff of the 25th Tank Corps, and Lieutenant Colonel Simonov, head of the OKR SMERSH, escorted him. On May 13, he was handed over to the OKR SMERSH of the 13th Army. Most probably, Fominykh and Zubkov fabricated the story that Vlasov, a man almost six feet tall, had tried to hide under a blanket in his car. It is also unclear whether Vlasov or Fominykh wrote the order to the troops because Bunyachenko’s name was misspelled in it the same way as in Fominykh’s report. Furthermore, knowing the Soviet treatment of traitors, it is hard to believe that Vlasov himself wrote the order’s last phrase: ‘The safety of everyone’s life and their return to the Motherland without repercussions are guaranteed.’55
In a 1996 interview, Yakushev described the details of Vlasov’s seizure more realistically than in his report, and the story was different.56 In fact, there was a jeep with American officers in Vlasov’s column, and a second jeep with Americans arrived after the officers in the first jeep contacted their headquarters by radio when the incident started. Yakushev claimed that to prevent an American intervention, he told them that Vlasov was a traitor and he would bring him to the American headquarters. It remains unclear how he could explain all this to the Americans in Russian. Probably, the Americans simply did not understand what was going on and did not intervene.
According to Yakushev’s account, he climbed into Vlasov’s car and ordered Vlasov’s driver to turn around and drive to the Soviet-controlled territory instead of going to the American headquarters. Vlasov tried to escape, but Yakushev threatened to shoot him. Apparently, Vlasov was unarmed and could not resist. At 8:00 p.m. Yakushev handed Vlasov over to Major General Fominykh.
Abakumov immediately informed Beria of Vlasov’s capture:
According to the SMERSH Directorate of the 1st Ukrainian Front report, on May 12 of this year [1945], the traitor Vlasov was detained near the city of Prague. He was going by car in the direction of the Allies.
On the suggestion of… Maj. Gen. Fominykh, Vlasov ordered his servicemen to join the Red Army’s side. Yesterday a division of 10,000 men surrendered to our troops.
I have ordered head of the SMERSH Directorate of the 1st Ukrainian Front, Lt. Gen. [Nikolai] Osetrov, to bring Vlasov under heavy guard to the Main Directorate SMERSH.
Vlasov was transported to Moscow and placed in Lubyanka Prison as Prisoner No. 31, which meant that he was held as a secret prisoner in Cell 31. Abakumov was waiting to conduct the first interrogation by himself.
Notes
1. Mikhail Koryakov, I’ll Never Go Back, translated from the Russian by Nicholas Wreden (London: George G. Harrap & Co., 1948), 59–61.
2. Zhukov’s orders to the 1st and 2nd Tank Armies on April 20), quoited in O. A. Rzheshevsky, ‘Poslednii shturm: Zhukov ili Konev,’ Mir istorii, no. 5 (2001) (in Russian), http://militera.lib.ru/research/rzheshevsky1/02.html, retrieved September 9, 2011.
3. Table on page 171 in G. F. Krivosheev et al., Velikaya Otechestvennaya bez grifa sekretnosti. Kniga poter’ (Moscow: Veche, 2009) (in Russian).
4. Shtemenko, General’nyi shtab, 424–6, 436
5. G. K. Zhukov, Vospominaniya i razmyshleniya Vol. 2 (Moscow: OLMAPress, 2002), 330–2 (in Russian).
6. Antony Beevor, The Fall of Berlin 1945 (New York: Viking, 2002), 403–5.
7. Memoirs by Lyushen’ka Glushkova, the NKVD cook (the NKVD had its own schools for cooks) in Tat’yana Romashenkova, ‘Lichnyi povar Zhukova,’ Rossiiskaya gazeta, no. 3768, May 13, 2005 (in Russian), http://www.rg.ru/2005/05/13/povar.html, retrieved September 9, 2011.
8. GKO Order No. 8377ss, dated May 2, 1945. Document No. 306 in Lubyanka. Stalin i NKVD, 511.