DEATH WITHOUT GLORY

who exculpate British authorities for handing over the Cossacks

THE release of the Cowgill Report de- scribed by Christopher Booker in his arti- cle 'The conspiracy that never was' (24 September) elicited an almost audible sigh of relief from influential sectors of the British public, echoed by virtually unani- mous acceptance by the media. So the old boy never did it after all, and the whole `conspiracy theory' is proved beyond con- tention to be the accusation of an over- emotional White Russian historian!

Following Booker's authorised summary (24 September) of the Cowgill Report's findings, Alistair Home weighs in with his excoriation of my 'wicked book', (The Minister and the Massacres, 1986) 'based on a few thoroughly specious supposi- tions', which propagates 'the "conspiracy" lie'.

Contending that fresh evidence unear- thed by himself and his colleagues proves the charge I levelled against Macmillan to be 'entirely baseless', and in consequence `can only be regretted', Booker explains that it was 'two fundamental respects' which 'changed the whole perspective in which these events have previously been presented. The first was that far too little account had been taken of the critical military and political situation in which the Allied forces under Field-Marshal Alexan- der found themselves as the war came to an end in early May 1945'.

I can only claim that, while recognising that any attempt to achieve full satisfaction in this respect is doomed to failure, I made every effort to place the operations within their valid context. In particular I devoted considerable space to emphasising that the operations in Austria took place in the immediate aftermath of a long and hard- fought war; that the wartime alliance with `Since Sir Walter had his colostomy, ma'am, they've become all the rage.' the Soviet Union was seen by many as being in the throes of shifting to confronta- tion culminating in cold war; and that the crisis aroused by Tito's attempts to annex Venezia Giulia and southern Carinthia was throughout most of the period in question the foremost problem in Europe exercising the minds of British and American states- man and soldiers.

Booker's second point relates to the question whether Macmillan was alerted at the time of his visit to Klagenfurt on 13 May to the presence of White Russian émigrés among the Cossacks, and if so whether he was aware that Allied policy prohibited their 'repatriation' to a state of which they had never been citizens. Were the answers affirmative, then clearly it was Macmillan's duty firmly to enjoin Keight- ley to screen and retain non-Soviet citizens.

Booker affirms that 'as our investiga- tions have shown, neither of these things were the case. Not only was information about the Cossacks still very vague at this point, more important, there was actually nothing in Allied policy instructions at this time, as we have discovered [italics in- serted], to signal that emigre Russians as such should not be repatriated.'

Regrettably space does not permit effec- tive exposure of the first of these asto- nishing assertions. If anything is clear it is that the White Russian element among the Cossacks was so prominent at the time of their surrender as to provide a greatly exaggerated estimate of their numerical proportion. The Cossack surrender was negotiated by General Vasiliev, formerly of the Imperial Guards; Captain Nikolai Krasnov, of the Royal Yugoslav Army; and Olga Rotova, a Yugoslav citizen who acquired her fluent English working for the Standard Oil Company. On 10 May the 56 Recce Regiment reported 'the personal surrender of an old Cossack Gen. Shkuro, who had fought under Denikin'. On or about the same day a petition concerning the Cossacks' plight was passed up to V Corps from the former Ataman of the Don Cossacks, the aged General Peter Kras- nov. All in all, the overriding impression gained by most eyewitnesses was that vividly reported in 36 Infantry Brigade war diary: 'The Cossacks. . . were a tableau from the Russia of 1812.'

However, the true point at issue is not (as Booker contends) whether many of the Cossacks were readily recognisable as non- Soviet citizens from the outset.

On 11 or 12 May a Soviet general at Voitsberg demanded the return of many of the Cossack officers, handing over at the same time a typwritten list headed by the names of the principal tsarist generals imprinted in capitals. On his return, Briga- dier Tryon-Wilson delivered it to General Keightley, V Corps Commander, who expressed repugnance at the idea.

Immediately afterwards, on 13 May, Macmillan flew in and conferred with Keightley. According to Booker, Keight- ley merely informed Macmillan of the presence of 'Cossacks' in his area, without specifying that they included White Rus- sians. Macmillan correctly advised him that he was empowered to hand them over to the Soviets, since they were covered by the Yalta Agreement. End of story, so far as Macmillan is concerned.

There are some anomalies here, howev- er, which Booker appears to have over- looked. Keightley did not require advice regarding interpretation of the Yalta Agreement. He was already in possession of clear orders from 8 Army to repatriate Soviet citizens, and was in the process that very day of handing over hundreds of liberated Soviet PoWs at Wolfsberg. Apo- logists for atrocities frequently allude to `the fog of war', but the fog must have been dense indeed that day if Keightley really went out of his way to ask Macmillan a question whose answer he already knew, while forgetting to ask another requiring urgent solution: namely how should he reply to the formal Soviet demand for the listed Cossack officers?

But Booker believes this to be precisely what happened, just as he believes that Macmillan's diary reference to 'White Rus- sians' can only mean something other than what it says. It is all rather confusing. Has the fog of war penetrated the study of the Old Rectory at Litton? In his diary Mac- millan claims that his motives were to fulfil the Yalta Agreement and ensure the safe delivery of British PoWs. Now Booker discovers his real reason was to clear the British zone of 'the one group of prisoners who could be removed from the area fairly quickly'. Horne adds another for luck: the emigres were virtually all war criminals with a 'track record. . . of beastliness often paralleling or even exceeding that of the worst SS units'.

The fog of war increaseth. Since Keight- ley forgot to mention the Soviet demand for the White Russians (and contined to, presumably, or he would have raised the matter with 8 Army), Macmillan could not have provided any ruling on the subject.

Moreover the ruling he never gave can be justified both on pragmatic (a need to `clear the decks') and moral (all those repatriated were monsters of depravity undeserving of sympathy) grounds. Maybe that is not enough? Well then, what if it should transpire that, contrary to what everyone has hitherto believed, AFHQ orders included no restriction on the hand- ing over of non-Soviet citizens to the Soviet security forces?

For this is how Booker interprets 'the all-important instruction' issued by AFHQ on 6 March 1945 defining Soviet citizenship as it affected repatriation under the Yalta Agreement. (Despite Booker's equivoca- tions, incidentally, this and all other mate- rial from the National Archives in Washington were obtained by me under the Freedom of Information Act, and only subsequently 'discovered' by Brigadier Cowgill when he visited my home.) Booker's version is as follows:

When the 6 March letter, defining who was or was not a Soviet citizen, is examined, it says nothing which could signal to British units that emigres who had left the Soviet Union before the war should not be repatri- ated. Its sole preoccupation . . . is with people coming from those territories of Poland and the Baltic States which had been forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union after 1 September 1939. Strictly within the terms of the 6 March letter, it would seem that pre-1939 émigrés from the Soviet Union might be considered just as eligible for repatriation as those who left during the war.

Really, Christopher? But the document (Cowgill Report, p.20) states unequivocally that

all persons who are Soviet Citizens under British law will be repatriated, but any person who is NOT a Soviet Citizen under British law will NOT be sent back to the Soviet Union unless he expresses a desire to do so.

The definition of a Soviet citizen under British law was, in the view of the Foreign Office, 'a person born or resident within the pre 1 Sep 39 boundaries of Russia (who had not acquired another nationality — or a NANSSEN passport, which would ren- der the subject Stateless)'.

Nothing could be clearer than this, and the reason why those who issued the definition did not spell it out in various forms is obvious enough: it was not a matter which the Soviet authorities ever attempted to contest. Indeed, their declared defini- tion was identical in purport. On 13 Sept- ember 1944 Major-General Vasiliev of the Soviet Military Mission 'said that the USSR

wished to repatriate all Soviet citizens.. . The definition of a Soviet citizen for this purpose was — "All those who before capture or transportation were citizens of one of the Soviet Republics".'

Furthermore innumerable examples make it clear beyond contention that everyone from Macmillan (who was sever- al times called upon to adjudicate in such cases) downwards was perfectly aware that White Russians were not under any cir- cumstances to be forcibly repatriated.

Booker and Cowgill read much into the fact that the definition goes into rather more detail with regard to people coming from territories annexed by the Soviet Union, whose incorporation into the USSR was not recognised by Britain. The reason for this must surely be plain to anyone who has read anything about the subject. The territories whose sovereignty was in dispute represented a population of more than 15 millions, a very large number of whom had succeeded in escaping to Western Europe. While the Soviets never officially laid claim to White Russians (the demand accepted by Keightley was both unique and covert), they seized every conceivable opportunity of claiming, kid- napping and even murdering refugees from the occupied territories.

Thus their protection was a matter of outstanding concern to AFHQ throughout this period. As was noted at the Foreign C)ftice on 8 September 1945:

The persons in whom the Soviet repatriation authorities are showing most interest at the present time are not those recognised by His Majesty's Government as Soviet citizens, but those coining from the areas annexed by the Soviet Union since the 1st September 1939: the Baltic States, Eastern Poland and Molda- via.

It might seem odd that the Cowgill ommitiee should be so ill-informed on finis particular issue, for the author of this n,inuic was none other than the young booms Bi-iinelow, now the Rt Hon Lord one of the Four Just Men ,,inprising the Cowgill Committee. It one condones deceit as a legitimate tactic for luring thousands of helpless men, onien and children to their deaths (Cow- kill pp. 45-7), then doubtless there is much that may be justified. As Cowgill himself told me, Lord Brimelow's resent- ment over my exposure in Victims of Yalta of his eager role in promoting the forced r.vatriation policy in 1944-7 remains so strong that he cannot bring himself to be in the same room as me. Perhaps I should be grateful for the fact. After all, there was a time when many of my compatriots would have given much not to become objects of his attention. It was the day before my tenth birthday that he penned these lines. fru example: 'As regards. . . [Russian] parents and children who do not possess a s:cond nationality, the Yalta agreement is binding, and I do not think we can do anything to save them from their fate.'