Hero of the Battle of Moscow who defected to lead the Nazi-backed Russian Liberation Army
June 1942: with his 2nd Shock Army encircled, Vlasov was offered escape by plane. He refused, hid in German-occupied territory with his men, and was betrayed by a local farmer ten days later.
Andrey Vlasov was a Red Army lieutenant general hailed as a "defender of Moscow" for leading the 20th Army in the capital's defense, who after his capture in the 1942 Lyuban operation defected to Nazi Germany. As leader of the Russian Liberation Army (ROA) and the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (KONR), he advanced an anti-Stalinist program for a democratic Russia, codified in the 1944 Prague Manifesto with its pledges of national self-determination and basic freedoms. The Nazis used him chiefly as a propaganda weapon, but in the war's final days the ROA's 1st Division joined the Prague uprising against the Germans. Captured by Soviet forces after the war, he was hanged for treason following a secret trial; his legacy remains fiercely contested in Russian historiography and memory politics.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1919Joined Red Army; fought White armies and Makhno's forces on the Southern Front
- 1930Joined the CPSU(B); instructor at the Frunze Military Academy
- 1938–39Posted to China as military adviser to Chiang Kai-shek
- 1940–41Commander, 99th Rifle Division (named best in the Red Army); then 4th Mechanized Corps
- 1941Commander, 37th Army (Kiev); then 20th Army, retook Solnechnogorsk in the Battle of Moscow
- 1942Commander, 2nd Shock Army; encircled and captured in the Lyuban operation; defected to Germany
- 1944Chairman of KONR; issued the Prague Manifesto
- 1945Commander-in-Chief of the ROA; captured by Soviet forces after the war
Related historical events
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionRed Army officer on the Southern FrontIn 1919, he fought White armies and Makhno’s forces on the Southern Front.
- 1941–1945The Great Patriotic War20th Army commander in the Battle of MoscowHe commanded the 20th Army in the Battle of Moscow and retook Solnechnogorsk.
From German propaganda to the KONR manifesto
After his capture, the Germans used Vlasov’s name and signature in propaganda directed at Red Army soldiers and people in occupied territories. His appeal of 10 September 1942, “Comrade Commanders! Soviet Intelligentsia,” was an early public document of his activity on the German side. On 27 December that year, an “Appeal of the Russian Committee to the Warriors and Commanders of the Red Army” was issued at Smolensk; its 13-point policy section became known as the Smolensk Declaration. These documents presented an anti-Bolshevik struggle but circulated within Germany’s war effort and propaganda system in the occupied territories. German authorities promoted Vlasov in an effort to weaken Red Army resistance. At this stage, the Russian Liberation Army nominally led by him comprised several hundred officers and several thousand Soviet-origin troops and served German purposes in occupied territory.
The Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (KONR) manifesto, issued in Prague on 14 November 1944, gave Vlasov’s political project an organizational and programmatic form. It combined varied ideological influences and offered a political framework for the committee, rather than simply repeating earlier propaganda appeals. It should not, however, be treated as evidence that the movement had become independent of Nazi Germany’s control. The historical record of the Vlasov movement relies substantially on German official documents and staff memoirs; some materials, including KONR meeting minutes and membership lists, were destroyed near the end of the war. This limits reconstruction of the manifesto’s actual drafting and the committee’s internal operations.