The most famous traitors to Russia

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Collaborator Andrei Vlasov brought the greatest harm to the country. With his assistance, tens of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war began to fight against their homeland on the side of the Nazis.

1. Ivan Mazepa

Ivan Mazepa was one of the few people who enjoyed the boundless trust of Tsar Peter I. As hetman (ruler) of Left-Bank Ukraine (part of Russia at that time), he faithfully served the monarch for many years, for which he received from his hands the highest state award - the Order of Andrew Of the First-Called.

However, the unsuccessful course of the Northern War for Russia (1700-1721) made Mazepa think about the prospects for getting out of Moscow's power and creating an independent Ukraine, where he himself would be the ruler. After secret negotiations with the Swedish king Charles XII, the hetman openly sided with him in October 1708.

Peter immediately stripped Mazepa of all titles and regalia, and the Russian Orthodox Church imposed an anathema on him. Most of the Cossacks did not support the hetman and remained loyal to the tsar. When on July 8, 1709, Swedish troops, and with them small rebel forces were defeated near Poltava, Mazepa had to flee to the territory of the Ottoman Empire, where he died on October 2 of the same year.

2. Genrikh Lyushkov

Genrikh Lyushkov was one of the highest-ranking defectors in Soviet history. State Security Commissioner of the 3rd rank, head of the NKVD Directorate of the Far Eastern Territory, he secretly crossed the border of the puppet state of Manchukuo created by the Japanese in the early morning of August 13, 1938.

During the period of massive political repression in the USSR, known as the "Great Terror" (1936-1938), Lyushkov was engaged in the struggle against "enemies of the people" in the Far East. As a result of his activities, a wave of arrests swept through the army, the NKVD, the party apparatus and the Pacific Fleet.

Often at that time, the accuser himself became the accused. When Lyushkov was recalled to Moscow in May 1938, he realized that there, most likely, nothing awaited him except trial and execution. Then the commissar decided to escape.

From Genrikh Lyushkov, the Japanese received unique detailed information about the number and deployment of Soviet troops in the Far East, the location and condition of defensive fortifications, military codes, NKVD working methods, opposition sentiments in the region and the armed forces, and so on. In accordance with these data, the General Staff of the Imperial Japanese Army adjusted its strategy for a future war with the USSR.

Lyushkov was not destined to survive the Second World War. The Japanese did not want the former commissar, who had learned a lot about Japanese intelligence, to fall into the hands of the USSR. It was liquidated on August 19, 1945.

3. Andrey Vlasov

Before becoming the number one traitor for the Soviet Union, Andrei Vlasov was considered a talented and promising military leader. In 1939, he served as the main military adviser in China, and Chiang Kai-shek even awarded him the Order of the Golden Dragon.

During the first catastrophic months of the war against Germany, Vlasov acted boldly and effectively. The 20th Army under his command played a significant role in the defeat of the Germans near Moscow in December 1941.

In 1942, Lieutenant General Andrei Vlasov was transferred to the subordination of the 2nd Shock Army, which in the summer of the same year was surrounded by Leningrad. The commander himself was captured and sent to the camp. There he decided to cooperate with the Germans.

For the Nazis, Vlasov turned out to be a valuable acquisition. The illustrious Soviet general, who went over to Hitler's side, played an important role in the propaganda war. All subsequent time he devoted to agitation among the prisoners of war soldiers of the Red Army, attracting them to his side for the sake of the struggle "for the construction of New Russia without the Bolsheviks."

The main task of traitor number one was to unite all the created units of Russian collaborators into one Russian Liberation Army (ROA), at the head of which he saw himself. The leadership of the Third Reich, however, for a long time was suspicious of the idea of creating a large united army of Soviet prisoners of war and slowed down the process. Vlasov received a free hand only at the end of 1944, when the fate of the Nazis was, on the whole, a foregone conclusion. As a result, the ROA never became any significant military force.

The general was captured by Soviet troops on May 12, 1945 on the territory of Czechoslovakia while trying to break through to the west to the American troops. Together with a group of his followers, he was accused of high treason and hanged on August 1, 1946 in Moscow.

4. Oleg Penkovsky

In 1960, Colonel of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR, Oleg Penkovsky, turned to an American tourist group in Moscow with a request to convey his letter to the US Embassy. In it, he offered his services to the CIA in collecting classified information for the CIA.

The following year, during a business trip to London, the British intelligence service MI6 supplied Penkovsky with all the necessary spy equipment, including a portable camera and special radios. The colonel received the operational pseudonym "Hero".

One of the most successful agents of the West in the USSR, Oleg Penkovsky handed over 11 tapes to the special services of the United States and Great Britain, on which 5,500 documents of 7,650 pages were filmed containing classified information regarding the Soviet armed forces. On his tip, about 600 Soviet intelligence officers were neutralized.

In 1962, Penkovsky was discovered and arrested by the KGB. On May 16 of the following year, he was shot for treason.