27 Facts About Vyacheslav Naumenko

Vyacheslav Grigoryevich Naumenko was a Kuban Cossack leader, commander in the White Army, and later Nazi collaborator.

Vyacheslav Naumenko entered the First World War with the rank of voiskovi starshina, serving as chief of staff of the 1st Kuban Cossack Cavalry Division.

Vyacheslav Naumenko served the Provisional government and on 14 August 1917 he was appointed a senior adjunct to the quartermaster of the Special Army.

Later in March 1918, Vyacheslav Naumenko led the first joint operation between the Whites and the Kuban Host to take the stanitsa Novo-Dmitrievakain from the Bolsheviks.

However, Vyacheslav Naumenko was against Cossack separatism, and favored having the Kuban Host accept the authority of the White leaders instead of operating alone as the separatists favored.

Relations between the rada and Vyacheslav Naumenko were strained and he was forced to resign on 14 September 1919.

Vyacheslav Naumenko served in the reserves of the Armed Forces of South Russia from 14 September 1919 to 11 October 1919, when he took command of the 2nd Kuban Corps, which he held until March 1920.

In March 1920, following the defeat of the AFSR, Vyacheslav Naumenko fled down the Black Sea coast into Georgia.

In July 1920, as part of Wrangel's attempt to break out of the Crimea, Vyacheslav Naumenko was landed on the coast of the Kuban with the aim of distracting the Red Army, but by August 1920 Vyacheslav Naumenko had been defeated and was forced to evacuate to the Crimea.

From 9 September 1920 to 3 October 1920, Vyacheslav Naumenko commanded the 1st Cavalry Division.

On 3 October 1920, Vyacheslav Naumenko was badly wounded in action and therefore was confined to a hospital to recover from his wounds.

Vyacheslav Naumenko went into exile in 1920 following the final defeat of the White Army in the Crimea and was elected ataman of the Kuban Host on the Greek island of Lemnos in the Aegean Sea.

Vyacheslav Naumenko was still serving as the ataman of the Kuban Host at the time of his death in 1979, setting a record for longevity as no other ataman ever held office for so long.

At a meeting in Constantinople in 1921, Vyacheslav Naumenko met with the atamans of the Don and Terek Hosts which led to the establishment of the United Council of the Don, Kuban and Terek Hosts to manage the affairs of the Cossacks in exile.

Vyacheslav Naumenko was active in trying to preserve the Russian heritage of the emigres, setting up schools to discourage assimilation and encourage the children of the emigres to speak Russian instead of Serbo-Croatian.

In Belgrade, Vyacheslav Naumenko founded the Museum of the Cossacks to encourage the children of the Cossack emigres to remember their heritage.

In exile, Vyacheslav Naumenko published several books in Russian about the Civil War.

In December 1942, Vyacheslav Naumenko raised a regiment for the Russian Protective Corps serving in Serbia.

In January 1944, Vyacheslav Naumenko left his home in Belgrade and reviewed while wearing the traditional black uniform of the Kuban Host the 1st Cossack Cavalry Division serving in Bosnia and Croatia, which he then praised in a speech.

Vyacheslav Naumenko lived in Berlin from March 1944 onward, but in February 1945 left the threatened German capital as the Red Army had advanced to within 60 miles of Berlin.

In 1945 Vyacheslav Naumenko surrendered to the Americans rather than the British, which almost certainly saved his life as the Americans were less strict about repatriating Cossacks to the Soviet Union.

Together with his son-in-law, the Don Cossack Nikolai Nazarenko, Vyacheslav Naumenko surrendered to the Americans in Munich in April 1945.

Vyacheslav Naumenko settled in New York, where he published a two-volume book in 1962 and 1970 about the Repatriation of Cossacks entitled Velikoe Predatelstvo.

Vyacheslav Naumenko was greatly embittered against Britain for the 1945 repatriation, and the matter was something of an obsession for him.

Vyacheslav Naumenko spent much time during his second exile visiting Australia, which took in a substantial number of Cossack refugees after 1945.

Vyacheslav Naumenko assisted the historian Count Nikolai Tolstoy with his books Victims of Yalta and his controversial book The Minister and the Massacres.

Vyacheslav Naumenko spent his last days in a nursing home run by the Tolstoy Foundation in New York city, where he suffered from senility.