Soviet Defectors in Germany after World War II

The article is devoted to the phenomenon of defectors from the Soviet Union in the first years after the end of the Great Patriotic War. The article is based on documents from the Archive of War, Revolution and Peace of the Hoover Institution (Stanford, USA), the Bakhmetev Archive of Russian and East European Culture of Columbia University (New York, USA), the Archive of the Center for East European Studies of the University of Bremen (Germany), etc. The author shows that Germany was the most important center where significant flows of defectors were directed. It is proven that one of the most noticeable groups of defectors were soldiers and officers of the Soviet troops stationed in post-war Germany. The situation of defectors in the Russian diaspora after World War II, their relations with representatives of the “second wave” of emigration from the USSR are analyzed. Particular attention is paid to the 1st conference of post-war political refugees (Hamburg, September 1951), it was established that it did not lead to the consolidation of defectors . The article devotes considerable space to the problem of the perception of the West and its foreign policy of the Cold War era by the defectors , and proves that they repeatedly subjected it to harsh criticism. The article proves that a number of defectors broke with anti-communist émigré organizations and decided to return to the Soviet Union. The author concludes that the reason for this was the disappointment of many defectors in the values of Western democracy, their critical attitude toward the spiritual atmosphere within Western societies and toward the US political elite.