Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008
From: "Nick Holdsworth" <holdsworth.nick@googlemail.com>
Subject: Memoirs of a Russian Army of Liberation veteran published in English
Readers of JRL might be interested to know that the memoirs of a veteran of General Andrei Vlasov's anti-Stalinist Russian Army of Liberation (ROA) have just been published in Britain by Spellmount Books, part of the History Press.
"The Russian Patriot - A Red Army Soldier's Service for His Motherland and Against Bolshevism" records the remarkable war experiences of Sigismund Diczbalis, who was by turns, a Red Army soldier, prisoner of war, agent for Red partisans, member of a White partisan group, part of Vlasov's Russian Army of Liberation, a prisoner of Smersh and finally escapee to the American sector of occupied post-war Germany. A naturalised Australian, Mr Diczbalis now lives in Brisbane. The book, thought to be the first account published in English of the experiences of a rank and file member of ROA, is a much expanded version of an earlier Russian language memoir Mr Diczbalis published in Russia some years ago.
The new book - which is fully illustrated with many previously unpublished photographs - is the result of several years of close collaboration between myself and Mr Diczbalis and brings to light many previously unknown details of the experiences of ordinary Red Army soldiers who through the tumult of war and capture on the Eastern Front eventually found their way into the Russian Army of Liberation.
General Vlasov - who was a highly decorated and well-respected senior Red Army officer before his capture by the Germans outside Leningrad in 1942 - remains a deeply controversial character in Russia where many still consider him a national traitor. Captured by the Red Army in 1945, Vlasov and other senior ROA officers were executed in Moscow in 1946. Many rank and file members suffered the same fate or spent decades in the Gulag. Few still survive and Mr Diczbalis' memoirs offer a rare and fascinating insight into the motivations - and moral dilemmas - of those Soviet citizens who joined a force that to this day remains little known and understood.
The book is available via Amazon and many other online outlets as well as regular book stores in Britain & the US.