A famous Soviet general who fought in the Battle of Moscow (1941/1942) and the siege of Leningrad (1941-1944), Andrey Vlasov (1901-1946) was captured by Nazi troops and then defected to the Third Reich. Supported by Nazi propaganda, he created a "Russian Liberation Committee" that later became the "Russian Liberation Army" (RLA). The RLA was a body of several hundred officers and several thousand troops who had defected from the USSR and served Nazi purposes on Soviet territory. Vlasov was arrested by Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia while trying to escape to the Western Front and was subsequently tried for treason and executed by Soviet authorities. In 2015, the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (RGASPI) released three volumes of archives documenting the infamous "Vlasov Case," the main instance of Soviet collaborationism with Nazi Germany. With this volume, which draws on the archives of Russia, Belarus, Germany, and the US, the English-speaking audience can now access the most important documents on this topic for the first time. The documents tell the story of Vlasov's betrayal, from the moment he became a prisoner, to his service under the Nazis, and up through the trial in Moscow in 1946. Volume 1 is comprised of archival documents on Vlasov's activities from 1942 to 1945. Volume 2 explores the Soviet investigations of Vlasov during the 1945-1946 trial.

A famous Soviet general who fought in the Battle of Moscow (1941/1942) and the siege of Leningrad (1941–1944), Andrey Vlasov (1901–1946) was captured by Nazi troops and then defected to the Third Reich. Supported by Nazi propaganda, he created a “Russian Liberation Committee” that later became the “Russian Liberation Army” (RLA). The RLA was a body of several hundred officers and several thousand troops who had defected from the USSR and served Nazi purposes on Soviet territory. Vlasov was arrested by Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia while trying to escape to the Western Front and was subsequently tried for treason and executed by Soviet authorities. In 2015, the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (RGASPI) released three volumes of archives documenting the infamous “Vlasov Case,” the main instance of Soviet collaborationism with Nazi Germany. With this volume, which draws on the archives of Russia, Belarus, Germany, and the US, the English-speaking audience can now access the most important documents on this topic for the first time. The documents tell the story of Vlasov’s betrayal, from the moment he became a prisoner, to his service under the Nazis, and up through the trial in Moscow in 1946. Volume 1 is comprised of archival documents on Vlasov’s activities from 1942 to 1945. Volume 2 explores the Soviet investigations of Vlasov during the 1945–1946 trial.

A famous Soviet general who fought in the Battle of Moscow (1941/1942) and the siege of Leningrad (1941-1944), Andrey Vlasov (1901-1946) was captured by Nazi troops and then defected to the Third Reich. Supported by Nazi propaganda, he created a "Russian Liberation Committee" that later became the "Russian Liberation Army" (RLA). The RLA was a body of several hundred officers and several thousand troops who had defected from the USSR and served Nazi purposes on Soviet territory. Vlasov was arrested by Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia while trying to escape to the Western Front and was subsequently tried for treason and executed by Soviet authorities.

A famous Soviet general who fought in the Battle of Moscow (1941/1942) and the siege of Leningrad (1941-1944), Andrey Vlasov (1901-1946) was captured by Nazi troops and then defected to the Third Reich. Supported by Nazi propaganda, he created a "Russian Liberation Committee" that later became the "Russian Liberation Army" (RLA). The RLA was a body of several hundred officers and several thousand troops who had defected from the USSR and served Nazi purposes on Soviet territory. Vlasov was arrested by Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia while trying to escape to the Western Front and was subsequently tried for treason and executed by Soviet authorities.

Return to the Motherland follows those who were displaced to the Third Reich back to the Soviet Union after the victory over Germany. At the end of World War II, millions of people from Soviet lands were living as refugees outside the borders of the USSR. Most had been forced laborers and prisoners of war, deported to the Third Reich to work as racial inferiors in a crushing environment. Seth Bernstein reveals the secret history of repatriation, the details of the journey, and the new identities, prospects, and dangers for migrants that were created by the tumult of war. He uses official and personal sources from declassified holdings in post-Soviet archives, more than one hundred oral history interviews, and transnational archival material. Most notably, he makes extensive use of secret police files declassified only after the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine in 2014. The stories described in Return to the Motherland reveal not only how the USSR grappled with the aftermath of war but also the universality of Stalinism's refugee crisis. While arrest was not guaranteed, persecution was ubiquitous. Within Soviet society, returnees met with a cold reception that demanded hard labor as payment for perceived disloyalty, soldiers perpetrated rape against returning Soviet women, and ordinary people avoided contact with repatriates, fearing arrest as traitors and spies. As Bernstein describes, Soviet displacement presented a challenge to social order and the opportunity to rebuild the country as a great power after a devastating war.