Uprooted
Alex de Jonge
The Russian Fascists: Tragedy and Farce in Exile 1925-1945 John J. Stephan (Hamish Hamilton £7.50) Every emigration has its own particular blend of irony, poignancy and farce. I suppose one of the farcical poignancies of the White Russian emigration was the widely held belief that one day they would all go home. As Nabokov put it 'I was absolutely sure, with a number of other intelligent people, that sometime in the next decade we would all be back in a hospitable, remorseful, racemosa-blooming Russia'. While belief in an imminent collapse of the Soviet regime was still possible the emigration had a role. It preserved Russian civilisation, language, customs. A simple act like cooking the traditional Easter dishes had an extra 'value while it was still possible that one day it might all be taken home again. But it was a likelihood that faded with each year as the books in the lending libraries grew more tattered and the Persian lamb wore out. The final recognition that the emigration no longer had a role came in an article in the Russian language journal Contemporary Annals in 1939; entitled 'The end of Russia abroad' it pointed out that even if the Soviet regime were to collapse, which was unlikely, the returning émigrés would be so old and out of touch that they would have nothing left ephan's fascinating book tells onoffer. j.S the story of various groups of Russian 'revolutionaries' who plotted more or less actively to take over the Soviet Union, smash communism and establish a fascist regime there. This is a special and hitherto virtually uncharted aspect of the general belief in the possibility of a retour des lys. The Russian fascists described here tend, on the whole, to be pro-Hitler, until along with a tot of other people they got a nasty shock from the Hitler-Stalin pact. Always worth recalling incidentally that there were French communists who welcomed their comrades in the Wehrmacht with open arms when they turned up in Paris in 1940. Some of Hitler's earlier Russian sympathisers went to unusual lengths to indicate their solidarity with him. When studying the iconography of the NSDAP I have always been surprised at the almost total absence of tooth brush moustaches worn in emulation of Hitler. Perhaps it was considered a form of lesemajeste. At all events his Russian admirers were less restrained in theirenthusiasm. One of the splendid illustrations in this book shows a group of Russian National Socialists or White Shirts, all sporting the appropriate moustache as they celebrate the first May Day after the Machtiabernahme.
Professor Stephan's book deals briefly With White Shirts, and is not at all concerned with pro-German units such as Krasnov's cossacks which fought against the Red Army in the second World war. It concentrates on two explicitly fascist groups, in Manchuria, and Windham County Connecticut. It begins with a sensitive and intelligent account of the moods of the early emigration, in the Far East in particular. The description of Harbin provides a lot of fascinating background material, and shows how a Mussolinian brand of fascism appealed to that wretched and uprooted generation. He also establishes the connection between the right wing prerevolutionary Union of Russian People, Rasputin's original sponsors, and its antiSemitic activists the Black Hundreds, with later crusaders against Jews and Freemasons who still remembered the old watchword 'God save the Czar and smite the Jews'.
The leading figure of Manchurian fascism was Konstantiri Rodzaevsky whose Russian Fascist Party had a membership of thousands at one time. Rodzaevsky's party collaborated openly with the Japanese Kempei or Military Police, and their so called 'kingly way', a policy of corruption, extortion and narcotics trading. The part Played by the RFP in Manchuria was not always very pretty, and involved at least one exceptionally hasty case of kidnapping. The Japanese Kwantung Army also made use of would be White Russian activists in various attempts at long range penetration and sabotage in Soviet Russia — from which no one very much came back.
Professor Stephan goes on to trace the collapse of the RFP as Japan fell and the Red Army invaded Manchuria, while thousands of emigres found themselves on the run yet again. Rodzaevsky managed to get out of Manchuria only to be persuaded by an astute Soviet diplomat, along with countless others, that Papa Joe had forgiven and forgotten and had a place for him in the Fatherland. The sancta simplicitas which had always been with him now peaked disastrously as he declared that 'Stalinism is exactly what we called Russian fascism. It is our Russian fascism cleansed of extremes, illusions and errors'. He went back expecting to get a job as a journalist; instead he received a show trial and a bullet in the head.
The .story of far Eastern fascism is a wretched blend of exile, thuggery, futility and considerable misguided courage. Russian fascism, however, has its lighter side, much lighter. Anastase Andreevich Vonsiatsky had fought bravely in the civil war, but by 1921 he was somewhat down on his luck, working as a stage hand in the Folies Bergeres when he had the good fortune to meet a divorced American heiress fifteen years older than him, who encouraged him to follow her to the United States and married him shortly afterwards. They settled down in a farmhouse in Connecticut which Vonsiatsky transformed into the headqUartersof the All Russian Fascist Organisation. Von siatsky was a fantasist who loved to play at politics, preferrably in uniform. He transformed their home into a stronghold, defended by a machine gun and stocked with a collection of rifles and tear gas bombs — which he once made available to the local police who were going into action against some strikers. Friends established a Russian restaurant close by which he used to entertain distinguished visitors such as Prince Theodore Romanov, a nephew of Nicholas 11.
Vonsiatsky made a series of world tours visiting sympathisers, although his own party was tiny, and went out to Manchuria to attempt a link up with Rodzaevsky. The two groups did indeed amalgamate for a short period but there were irreconcilable differences. Vonsiatsky, a great admirer of Trotsky, was anything but anti-Semitic, and was also unhappy about the RFP's open collaboration with Japan. He did not accept the principle of political intervention in Russia by a foreign power, looking for a National Revolution from within and eventual government by a charismatic fascist leader, probably Vonsiatsky.
His political career came to an end in 1941. The trouble was that the State Department had taken his blustering conspiratorial claims seriously, and he had moreover made the mistake of associating with some very dubious German American Bundists. He was found guilty of conspiring to spy against the United States and sent to prison for five years, having failed to get away with a plea of madness. He was released in 1947 and died nineteen years later.
Professor Stephan has written a highly original, detailed and carefully documented book. His knowledge of Russian and Japanese makes him peculiarly well qualified to tell the story of Far Eastern Fascism; he also has a sense of humour which helps him tell the story of the Connecticut brand. He does full justice to his material at all times and also makes an important contribution to the study of the wilder shores of fascist ideology. It is interesting that despite the considerable and quite successful efforts of the Nazis to enlist White Russian support for their war in the East, they never paid the slightest attention to Russian fascism of either kind. One would love to know why, and I suspect there must be some German archive material that remains to be explored. Perhaps it was Rus sian fascist aspirations for a post-war Russian National State that were unacceptable. However, interestingly enough, in 1942 the Third Reich banned the translation of national socialist writings into Russian. Perhaps they just felt that National Socialism was simply much too good for Slays.
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