1st Soviet Regiment of Partisans in France

[Lapa]

I have recently stumbled upon what seems to be so far quite a mystery.

Not very long ago, I met an old man who told me that he spent some of the war years in Nimes (south of France). Upon further discussions, he told me that he was a member of the "Frist Soviet Regiment of Partisans in France" in 1944/45. He showed me some old photos, and an article that was published in Litteraturnaya Gazeta in 1955, which showed a picture of French General Zeller awarding the Croix de Guerre (War Cross) to his unit and fastening it to the regiment's flag held by Mayor Kazerian. Incidentally, this flag is today in the Central Museum of the Armed Forces in Moscow.

Now for the mysterious part of it all: I have researched as much as I could (contacts, researchers, archives) in the West, and most especially in France, and so far, NOBODY has ever heard of such a regiment, or did even suspect that one even did exist once. I have no reasons to believe that the story the old man told me is a hoax (I did hold old photos, showing soviet solder in typical French army barrack surrounding, etc), especially that he later on was debriefed by the Smersh in 1945/6 and ended up in one of those "holiday camps" for over 10 years.
A few days ago, totally unexpectedly and unrelated to my source, I found on a Russian auction site some pictures of an ID document to a soviet partisan in France.

So, in my opinion, if this is a hoax, this is a very seriously, thoroughly and well thought of and realized one; I do not believe this to be the case. So, the other possibility is that this regiment did indeed exist (in a way, the Soviet answer to "Normandie-Niemen"), and that with the end of the war and the onset of the cold war, it became one of its first victims, officially deleted from the official History and forgotten thereafter.

Has anyone ever heard anything that could relate more or less directly to this regiment and those who served in it?

Marc

[Lapa]

The ID document

[desantnik]

I have a book for a similar unit of Soviet partisans in ITALY, so I would assume a unit could have existed for France.

My book on Soviet-Italian partisans is in deep storage, but from what I remember they were a group of POWs who escaped and formed their own fighting unit. It's possible the same scenario existed for France...

[desantnik]

Actually now that I looked at your document, that's exactly what happened, he fled the POW camp in JUN 44 and joined the partisan unit in AUG 44.

[Lapa]

Paul,

The document is unrelated to the 1st Soviet Regiment of Partisans in France, I may not have been overly clear about that.

The old man told me that he was taken, with all men between 16 and 55, from is area in Kuban region and sent to work in Germany. Once there, he was "voluntarily" enrolled in a cosak unit fighting under the German uniform, before escaping, somehow ending up in the French Alps from where the French underground led him to the town of Nimes where he joined the Regiment.

Marc

[desantnik]

I don't think there's any region to doubt the existence of a Soviet partisan unit fighting in France, especially in light of the newspaper article, ID card, and similar Soviet-Italian partisan unit.

[Lapa]

Paul,

The French do not seem to be as convinced as you are, to say the least...

Marc

[desantnik]

How do doubters explain General Zeller's photo in the newspaper article and the partisan banner?

[Lapa]

Paul,

The answers I got so far were that the banner is a fake, real ones were not made this way, and that the photo is some sort of early soviet "photoshop" job.

Marc

[desantnik]

The burden of proof is against those alleging fakery.

I don't see any reason for the Soviet Union to "manufacture" this information. The original article was 1955 only 10 years after the war with memory of the war still fresh in many peoples' minds.

Although the Soviets did do disinformation campaigns like spread the rumor that the US "invented" AIDS as a biological weapon against the third world and in the 1930s "erase" undesirable people from pictures, there is little reason for dreaming up such a story.

Soviet propaganda would report factually correct information, yet not the WHOLE story. Thus they would continuously report on poverty, unemployment, race issues and show a stream of pictures of homeless people, civil unrest, etc. to depict an unfortunate aspect of the West that fit in with their world view, but was not the complete or accurate picture. All media of any country is still potentially capable of this, but in a state-controlled media system with no access to other sources of information, the effect is much more concentrated and powerful.

Again, I think the burden of proof is against those that allege this didn't happen. There is a banner, photographic evidence, and an ID card. Is there any way to check Croix de Guerre recipients?