Socialists and Vlasovites

Abstract

This chapter examines a project of the late 1940s to forge a transatlantic alliance in the Russian emigration. The unlikely initiators of this scheme were elderly Russian socialists in the United States, including Russia’s former premier Aleksandr Federovich Kerenskii, who attempted to build an alliance against Stalin with the Vlasovites in Germany. The intended partnership was troubled from the start, as émigré attempts to mobilize against communism instead gave rise to divisive debates about collaboration during World War II and the Russian Revolution. As seen throughout the book, exile mobilization against the Soviet Union gave rise to debilitating conflicts to define the Russian national interest.