LETTERS Macmillan's silence
Sir: Robert Knight's attack (Letters, 14 June) on Christopher Booker's review of my The Minister and the Massacres would appear to reflect the by now familiar tactic of worrying at peripheral issues while ignoring the mass of direct evidence indica- tive of Macmillan's decisive role in the illicit repatriation by force or deceit of Cossacks and Yugoslays to Stalin and Tito. In fact he is even wrong about those marginal issues which he does take up. There is not space here for a detailed refutation, which I shall be publishing elsewhere. Nevertheless his points cannot be permitted to pass unchallenged.
Dr Knight ingeniously seeks to evade the apparently damning implication of Mac- millan's diary reference to the presence of `White Russians' among the Cossacks, by suggesting the reference is to Colonel Rogozhin's separate White Russian Corps from Serbia. But since Macmillan included these 'White Russians' among those whose return he had ordered, the reference can scarcely be to Rogozhin, whose unit was not repatriated. In any case, Knight oddly overlooks Lord Stockton's unambiguous admission in his 1984 television interview that he knew the White emigres to be among those repatriated.
He goes on to ask why Macmillan should have confided so incriminating a reference to his diary. The question scarcely needs to be a rhetorical one. Lord Stockton's mem- ory by all accounts remains excellent. It is to him, surely, rather than Christopher Booker, that Knight should address his query — though whether he will receive a reply is another matter.
Mr Knight's other points may be dealt with briefly. His belief that no orders were issued for the screening of Cossacks is eccentric, as any reader of my book will discover. Virtually every relevant oper- ational order includes the provision, set out in explicit terms.
He points to ad hoc arrangements made at Wolfsberg from an early date for the repatriation of Russians and reception of British PoWs. Again, what he omits is the i aspect that matters. The Russians in ques- tion were liberated slave-workers and PoWs and, as relevant orders make clear, the Cossacks were throughout excluded from this 'exchange'.
Knight believes that Robertson's order of 14 May was intended to cover Serbian and Slovenian refugees held by 5 Corps. This cannot be so, for the simple reason that Brigadier Toby Low's corps report to which it was ultimately the response had suppressed all reference to their presence. Equally, it is untrue to suggest that Alex- ander did not rescind this order. On 17 May he required all Yugoslays in 5 Corps's area to be evacuated to Italy, which by any interpretation excluded their repatriation to Yugoslavia.
If Dr Knight cannot even get his nit- picking right, it is understandable why he is so chary of discussing the major issues. To those perplexed by this shoal of red her- rings, one may once again address the perennial question: why, if the inculpatory evidence is so readily to be dismissed, do Lord Stockton, Lord Aldington and Sir Charles Villiers remain so pertinaciously silent, when they might so easily still the controversy by providing full first-hand versions of what really happened?
Nikolai Tolstoy
Venture Inn, 83 Avenue Road, Toronto
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