By Michael Kellogg
RRP:
£25:00
Publication
Date: 2005
ISBN: 978-0521070058
Classification:
Noodle Scratcher
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The role played after 1917 by White émigrés from Russia
in the embryonic stage of National
Socialist movement has already been the focus of diverse studies (I found out
to my disappointment when I considered a project on it some time ago) such as
Robert Williams’ excellent analysis of Russian émigrés in Germany, which showed
the collaboration between Russian and German right-wing terrorists in the attacks
on Miliukov and Rathenau. Moreover, in the so-called Historikerstreit in
Germany, the question as to whether there was a ‘causal nexus’ (Ernst Nolte)
between Bolshevism and National Socialism was intimately linked to the role
played in the development of National Socialism by the image spread by Russian
émigrés of Russian revolution and civil war. Michael Kellogg’s book re-examines
this in critical fashion, as he concludes:
Historians have generally overlooked the fundamental
political, financial, military, and ideological contributions that White
émigrés made to National Socialism. This book has partially redressed this
historiographical weakness, but scholars should conduct much more research on
National Socialist–White émigré collaboration, especially in newly accessible
Eastern European archives. When we examine the roots of National Socialism, we
find alienated völkisch Germans collaborating with vengeful White émigrés. . .
. War and revolution . . . created large numbers of rancorous White émigrés,
several of whom played crucial roles in the making of National Socialism with
its virulent anti-Bolshevik and anti- Semitic ideology. Hitler’s National
Socialists in turn committed grave crimes in the name of combating ‘Jewish
Bolshevism’, and these National Socialist atrocities undermined Western ideals
of historical progress.
For Kellogg, late Wilhelmine Germany and the Romanov
Empire were already experiencing an almost simultaneous extreme-right,
anti-modern, anti-liberal and anti-Semitic movement, which did not, however,
manage to become a mass movement. During the German Reich’s occupation during
the First World War of wide tracts of the Russian Empire, in particular Ukraine
and the Baltic area, direct contacts were made which were crucial for the
intense cooperation later. Kellogg shows this in two chapters on the
intervention in Lithuania and the role of Ukraine in the transfer of ideas
(especially the ‘Protocols’) and people from the Russian Empire to Germany.
Three central chapters deal with the intellectual, financial, and
organizational heart of this alliance: Munich and the Aufbau journal, centred
around the figure of Max von Scheubner-Richter. The same names turn up again
and again: Biskupskii, Bermondt-Avalov, Poltavets-Ostranitsa, Kursell,
Rosenberg, Schickedanz. A final chapter describes how, despite decreasing
cooperation following the failed Hitler-Ludendorff Putsch in 1923, contact was
maintained and was to take on unforeseen dimensions after 1933 and 1941 -a
chilling preview of things to come for those of you who will end up reading
this book. The innovative angle taken in Kellogg’s work is clear; he suggests
deriving the origins of National Socialism not only from ‘German relations’,
but to integrate them into the crisis in European civilization following the
First World War and the revolutionary trauma, for anti-modernism,
anti-liberalism, anti-Bolshevism, and anti-Semitism were present in almost all
of central Europe. For the development of one particular concept in the Nazi
movement, ‘Jewish Bolshevism’, Kellogg has an overwhelming amount of precise
archival evidence on the role of figures such as Ludwig Müller von Hausen; the
collaboration between the violent, terrorist wings of the German and Russian
right-wing; the procurement of financial support for Aufbau and other ventures;
and the decisive role of Scheubner-Richter in the emigration coalition movement
at the Bad Reichenhall conference in 1921. Kellogg has accessed and made
fruitful analytical use of the ‘looted files’, i.e. the reserves in the Centre
for the Preservation of Historical-Documentary Collections now part of the
Russian State Military Archives. There can no longer be any doubt about the
continuous collaboration between German and Russian right-wing militants. Nevertheless,
it is still questionable whether this invalidates the assessment Walter Laqueur
made in his research 40 years ago. Hitler never attempted to hide his contempt
for the ‘failed existences in the emigration’ and always ridiculed Rosenberg
and his fellow émigrés, who were only puppets in the hands of the Nazi
movement. However, one important aspect is missing from the historical
contextualization, namely the Russophile – in fact, Sovietophile – attitudes
present in the post-1918 period. After all, contacts were also made in the
Weimar Republic between German rightists and Bolshevik representatives in the
‘struggle against Versailles’ and ‘against the West’. There were also elements
of Hitler’s image of Russia which are incompatible with even the most reactionary
views of the Russian right: Hitler’s view of Russian territory as ‘Lebensraum’
and of the Russians, and more generally the Slavs, as ‘subhuman’. In short, the
National Socialist programme of colonization and annihilation placed definite
limits on collaboration with the Russian right and adherents of the ‘united and
indivisible Russia’. While the research for this book is outstanding, the
weaknesses in contextualization mean that, overall, the importance of the White
Russian émigrés is slightly overestimated at which I was particularly
disappointed (for instance, when Kellogg states that Hitler’s ultimately fatal
change of direction after the assault in Ukraine in 1941 was influenced by his collaboration
with the Whites) but this does not weaken the quality of this valuable and
important work (paperback cover is quite nice too).
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