Moscow Police Chief Major General Oleg Baranov And Garegin Nzhdeh

 

At the end of January 2022, many news agencies reported that Moscow Police interrupted the screening of a movie depicting the life, hardships, achievements, and execution of our beloved national hero Garegin Nzhdeh.

The Union of Armenians of Russia organized and advertised the event several weeks prior to the screening. In other words no effort was made to conceal the time, place, and nature of the gathering based on the logical assumption that Russia has been a so called “Democracy”, since the collapse of The Soviet Union, where freedom of opinion is one of the most basic pillars upon which democracies rest.

None of the decision makers of The Union of Armenians of Russia knew that Garegin Nzhdeh has been declared a “Persona Non Grata” in Moscow in particular, and the Russian Federation in general, until Moscow Police Chief Major General Oleg Baranov released a statement indicating that he instructed his officers to shut down the event, based on the Russian Federation Criminal Code article 354 on the inadmissibility of the “rehabilitation of Nazism.” 

 

 Moscow Police Chief Major General Oleg Baranov

 It is ironic that Chief Oleg Baranov is associating the name of Nzhdeh with Nazism, while he has under his command a “Cossack Auxiliary Force” with a notorious collaboration history with Nazism that makes Nzhdeh look like an altar boy.

Any reader interested in exploring the origins of the Russian Cossacks, can consult dozens of online sources about their history, and the role they played in defending The Romanovs from the reign of Catherine the Great (1762) to the final days of Nicholas II who was overthrown by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The Romanov rulers of Russia were ardent antisemites, and extensive historical evidence does exist to support the fact that Cossacks, in tandem with The Russian Orthodox Church, were the enforcers of The Russian State’s antisemitic policies. From the mid 1800s to February 1919, Russian Orthodox Priests leading columns of the Cossack Cavalry organized and executed bloody massacres of Jews, and extended the venomous hatred of the Jew from Russia to Ukraine to Poland. 

The most horrific pogrom following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 happened on Feb.15, 1919 in the Ukrainian city of Proskurov. Over a period of three days, in an unprecedented orgy of cruelty, Cossacks massacred 1500 Jewish residents of the city. Of course, the bloody events of Proskurov were not the final chapter of the wave of antisemitism that swept Russia for three centuries. After a brief respite, World War II created a new opportunity for the Cossacks to unleash a long list of bloody reprisals against minorities under the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe, including Jews.

To understand the role of The Russian Cossacks during WWII, we need to revisit key events that shaped and coloured the close cooperation between the Nazi Army and the Cossacks. It all started with the invasion of The Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. Within the first six months, following the launch of “Operation Barbarossa” The Nazi Army Captured four million soldiers fighting under the banner of The Soviet Red Army. Many minorities who had suffered tremendously under the Stalinist purges of the 1930s welcomed the presence of the Nazi Army on Soviet territories, and decided to take advantage of the German military might to topple by force the Stalinist regime of the Soviet Union.

One of the first ethnic minorities to desert the Red Army and join the Nazi invaders, 60 days after the launch of Operation Barbarossa, were the Cossacks. Major Ivan Nikitich Kononov of the 436^th Infantry Division defected to the Nazi Army with fully equipped 70,000 Cossacks on August 3,1941. By 1942 Cossack desertion and surrender to the Nazi Army reached a total of 120,000 Cossack soldiers.

Cossack soldiers switched uniforms, and under the leadership of German Lt. Gen. Helmuth Von Pannwitz scored great successes on the multiple theatres of military operations of The Eastern Front. 

Cossack units played a vital role in Operation Driving Hunt, Ball Lightning, and Autumn Storm. In the Autumn of 1943, Cossacks were deployed to Croatia and Bosnia. From July 1944 to the final days of The Reich, Cossacks fought the Communist partisans in Northern Italy.

Cossack units performed with flying colours in Yugoslavia where Tito and more than 250,000 Communist partisans were seriously harassing the Nazi Army. Heinrich Himmler, head of the “Waffen SS” was so impressed by the legendary reputation the mounted Cossacks managed to build, that he decided to recruit and integrate thousands of Cossack warriors into The SS. In August 1944 Himmler announced the birth of the new SS XV Cossack Cavalry Corps.

The SS used the Cossacks for punitive missions, and multiple mass executions of entire villages in Serbia, Croatia, and Italy were directly connected  to The Cossack Cavalry Corps.

In the end, Hitler’s empire collapsed on May 1945, and the Cossacks who surrendered to the Allies were betrayed by the British Army, forcefully packed into cattle cars, and handed over to the Soviet Red Army. Many Cossack soldiers committed suicide knowing well that Soviet reprisal will be painful and swift. 

Most Cossack senior officers were tried, convicted, sentenced to death, and executed in The Lubyanka Prison. “Lubyanka is the name commonly used to refer to the building that has historically housed the security services of the USSR and modern Russia, from the Cheka to the KGB to the FSB.”

Ordinary Cossack soldiers were exiled to Siberia, where they were quietly executed by the henchmen of Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, head of The NKVD, who designated the Cossacks as “Enemies of The Soviet People.” 

Since the mid 1990s, President Putin as part of his drive to “Make Russia Great Again” decided to resurrect the legendary narratives surrounding the dedication of The Cossacks to the defence of Mother Russia. The Tsarist warrior caste was reorganized, trained, and deployed in many major Russian cities to patrol the streets, fight crime, specifically petty criminals who do not look very Slavic, and retain the many physical characteristics of Chechens.

Under President Putin’s supervision, Cossacks have become an efficient component of the State Apparatus mobilized to suppress political dissent in Russia. Cossack units/thugs are often seen wielding batons and whips used to disperse opponents of the regime demonstrating against Putin’s policies. 

 Cossacks attacking the opponents of Putin

Since the infamous speech of Aliyev on Oct.11, 2019, in Ashgabat (Turkmenistan) at the CIS Heads of State Council's Session, demonizing Nzhdeh and condemning Armenia for honouring “...  Garegin Ter-Harutyunyan, who served German fascists under the nickname of Garegin Nzdeh” , Putin, to satisfy the whims of a Petro Dictator who buys billions of dollars of Russian weaponry, decided to join the chorus determined to destroy the legacy of Nzhdeh. 

After all, the patriotism of Nzhdeh, if it gains momentum in Armenia, can well threaten the territories coveted by Aliyev to connect Baku to its exclave Nakhichevan. Nzhdeh fought heroically to make sure that the territories envied by Aliyev remain an integral part of Armenia. Today the ghost of a dead Nzhdeh is more dangerous to the vested interests of three powers (Azerbaijan, Turkey, Russia) trying to carve Armenian lands to protect their geopolitical intrigues.

Unfortunately, the spineless lackey the three powers placed in Yerevan, Nikol Pashinyan, did not dare to open his mouth, and voice any concern, objection, or criticism about the Kremlin’s decision to ban Nzhdeh’s movie. After all, the type of patriotism Nzhdeh adopted as a guiding principle threatens the “Globalist” project Pashinyan is peddling to the 680,000 followers who voted for his party.

It seems that Putin and his chorus members (Aliyev, Erdogan, Pashinyan) are unable to grasp the basic reality that KGB Colonel Martiros Aghekian executed Nzhdeh but failed to kill his ideas and the evidence supporting this fact is overwhelming on every continent of this planet. Nzhdeh, the founding father of the Armenian Youth Federation (AYF), passed the torch of patriotism to generations of Armenians born in the diaspora. Thousands of Nzhdehs, from all over the world left the comfort of their homes to defend Artsakh during the 1989-1994 war. Many more made the ultimate sacrifice on the battle fields of Artsakh during the 44-day war, making it clear that bullets killed Nzhdeh but failed to kill his ideas and ideals. 

The final question we need to ask is: Can we blame Moscow Police Chief Major General Oleg Baranov for following orders emanating from The Kremlin, involving a close coordination between Putin, Aliyev, and Pashinyan?

 

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